Walmart Did It - Why Not Facebook? by Laurie Sullivan

A fine-tuned on-site search engine can drive up conversions and page views. Wal-Mart Stores said its Wal-Mart Labs research and technology hub built a new search engine for Walmart.com from the ground up. The engine relies on semantic search technology to anticipate the intent of a shopper's search, similar to Amazon.com's engine. ...Read the whole story

  • Twitter Identifies Interests To Target Ads by Laurie Sullivan

    Twitter introduced interest-based ad targeting for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts campaigns on Thursday, capitalizing on similarities between like-minded groups of followers and their friends. The tool allows brands to widen or narrow the reach of targeted ads. ...Read the whole story

  • Facebook Must Improve Site Search To Stay Competitive by Laurie Sullivan

    Advertising industry insiders and analysts anticipate that on-site search will become one of the next services Facebook rolls out. With search ads now part of the social network's offering, the next step to ad targeting points to better search functions that link intent. ...Read the whole story

  • Google TV Ads Shuttered by David Goetzl

    After five years, Google is shuttering its auction-based TV ad sales system and "doubling down" on the growing online video space. Google pitched TV Ads as an easy-to-use platform for advertisers that had never used TV before. ...Read the whole story

  • Facebook Forecast Dips To $5 Billion by Gavin O'Malley

    Amid persistent marketer concerns -- and a clumsy public debut -- eMarketer is lowering its revenue expectations to just over $5 billion. The researcher predicts revenue increases in the double digits to continue through 2014, when Facebook's worldwide ad revenues will reach $6.8 billion. ...Read the whole story

  • research Mobile Users Lack Loyalty by Tanya Irwin

    Mobile phone users are likely to become vocal and active detractors if they have a negative customer experience, according to a global study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. Carriers should expect more visible complaints -- including defections -- from consumers made about bad experiences, hidden feeds and poor service quality, says the Palo Alto, Calif.-based CMO Council. ...Read the whole story

A Meditation On Guitars, DVD Players, And Multi-Use Devices by Catharine P. Taylor

This isn't so much a column, I suppose, as it is a meditation. It's the kind of column -- er, meditation ---that I write when I've been spending the week on Cape Cod, alone with my daughter, strolling out at low tide against a limitless sky, and, where the only tweeting is coming from actual, physical birds. ...More

  • Quick, What's The Largest Digital Social Media Platform In The World? by Joe Mandese

    What's that you say, "Facebook?" Not even close. "YouTube," closer, but still off by a mile. The largest digital social media platform in the world is (drumroll please) email. About 80% of all social interactions between people online is still done via email, and according to Tynt.com, a corresponding percentage of links, content and copy are still spread by good old-fashioned email exchanges. ...More