Agency teams have begun to consolidate media buys -- search, social, display -- which has generated some pretty amazing results. Marty Swant tells us about Red Roof Inn's experience with cross-device targeting. The hotel chain managed to lift its mobile ad spend to 40% from 20%, after finding success by partnering with 360i in 2015, targeting campaigns to consumers stuck in an airport looking for a place to stay for the night. Among the stats he shares, last-minute bookings rose by 60%. 

Most product search listing ads serve up in bunches of five to eight, but ChannelAdvisor has noticed Google begun testing double that amount up to 16. The post attributes it to the increase in popularity of PLAs and the impact the ads have on conversions. 

VidCon announced Wednesday that YouTube will once again takes its place as the title sponsor at this year's conference in June, held annually in Anaheim, Calif. YouTube has supported VidCon as the title sponsor since the 2013 event.

Brian Wood over at Wayfair.com tells marketers about what he calls "accidental SEO tests," which happens when bad code unintentionally hurts optimization tactics and the retailer ends up learning something useful from the mistake. One test involved 301 redirects. Google says that a small amount of ranking in search engine queries is lost through them. Wood takes us through the structure and the ways to measure the impact, to explain what it all means.

Over the next three years, Microsoft plans to donate cloud services worth over a $1 billion to nonprofit groups. “The largest part of the funds will provide free or discounted cloud services, such as Azure computing power and data storage, Office 365 Internet-based corporate programs and other products to nonprofit groups worldwide,” Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

Yahoo announced Wednesday that it has made native advertising available on the BrightRoll Exchange. Advertisers, demand-side platforms and agency trading desks using the BrightRoll Exchange for display advertising will now also have access to bid on native mobile programmatic inventory through an API that aligns with the IAB OpenRTB 2.3 standard. The ads accessible through Gemini also complement search native advertising for its engine across Yahoo's properties.  

Chris Lake things advertising needs another metric, so he created one. He describes it as a real-time marketing metrics, effort vs. engagement. It's a measurement of how much return you get for the money spent. Lake explains.

An in-depth analysis of Microsoft's potential acquisition of InMobi suggests that not only is InMobi's technology "far superior than the ad networks that Microsoft previously had," the app-based approach gives Microsoft a head start and "catapults them straight into the top three spots," according to Amartya Baidya. The reported price suggests it will cost Microsoft $2 billion.

Microsoft just bought MinecraftEdu -- a simplified version of Minecraft designed for use in schools. “Over the last several years, MinecraftEdu has attracted a strong following and is used in over 7,000 classrooms in more than 40 countries,” The New York Times reports. “The modifications to the game were created by a startup, TeacherGaming, that Microsoft is not acquiring.”

Google will shutter in February some of its search APIs. In 2011, Google said it would discontinue use of its Patent Search API, Google News Search API, Google Blog Search API, Google Video Search API and Google Image Search API. Vijay Subramani explains why.