Converting Facebook leads into sales has been challenging for marketers. Ally provides some insight based on a point that Bryan Eisenberg made in a previous post related to keywords. He explains that keywords don't fail to convert -- instead, marketers fail to convert visitors from those keywords. Ally believes this same strategy should also apply to Facebook ads, and he tells us how.

Microsoft held 26.2 million Facebook shares equal to 1.7% after the initial public offering. The company supports Facebook with its Bing search engine. Bloomberg BusinessWeek points to regulatory filings that estimate the stake at a worth of $571.9 million. Microsoft will likely hang onto the stock, according to Bloomberg, which cites people in the know. Microsoft and big investors can start selling shares this week.

Google plans to rerank Web sites of repeat copyright offenders to make it easy for consumers looking for movies and music to find legitimate sellers, according to the Associated Press. As a "peace offering" to Hollywood and music labels, the AP notes, Google joined several large companies to kill legislation that would have given government and content creators more power to shut down foreign Web sites promoting piracy.

Microsoft Bing has announced two companies funded under its Bing Fund program: Kirkland, Wash-based Buddy; and Bellevue, Wash.-based Pinion. While Buddy's tool set manages Web services for application development, Pinion supports online gaming by helping companies generate revenue.

How do marketers design effective image ads for remarketing and have them handy when needed? Amanda WestBook provides some tips. She starts by finding the repeated elements throughout the site and creating an ad in every size that incorporates call-to-action buttons and taglines, for example. Post it live, she says, and continue to test. 

Jonathon Colman looks at four principles of agile marketing and tells us how to break down barriers and remove impediments to add more value to the company and its customers. He explains how agile methods can help quickly respond to changes, such as the 52 changes to algorithms Google published in April, and another 39 in May.      

Google made several acquisitions this year, such as Sparrow, Quickoffice, Meebo, TxVia, and Milk, but some companies have been known to hoard cash. FT.com points to some number-crunching from UBS that found the opportunity cost of higher cash levels is lower than many expect, yet "the best way for corporates to improve return on equity is to buy back equity." Masa Serdarevic takes us through the data.

Kristine Schachinger touches on an important topics -- security, exploration and hacking -- that not many search marketers want to think about. Unlike negative keywords, she tells us that negative SEO covers a broader set of potentially harmful techniques other than a series of bad links. Schachinger guides us through holes in HTML5, cross origin resource-sharing attacks and CSRF exploits, third-party widgets, and more.

Kayla Kurtz runs through the alphabet providing basic insights for paid-search campaigns. The list may seem a little simplistic, but many marketers might find a few tips they forgot to review. For example, "V for View-Through Conversions" explains how counting view-through conversions can add the same value as click-through rates, because they contribute to the overall goal.

Timothy B. Lee reports that the classified ads site Craigslist cut off search engines, claiming that the "would-be competitor" like 3taps and Padmapper violate terms of service. The company reportedly told these search engines to stop indexing user ads, which blocks 3taps and other third-party companies from indexing the ads. These ads are used to build a database.