Facebook has been a challenging venue for marketers and advertisers ever since it started really getting popular in 2009. At that time, it was clear that it was the social network to beat and the company started trying to cash in with different types of advertising options. Most of them failed miserably for the same reason that many marketers continue to fail today: people go to Facebook to be entertained, not to be the recipient of ads. Today, it’s getting easier. People are more accepting of ads. A lot of it can be attributed to the way that Facebook has handled their promoted posts. They have done…

We all knew Facebook was huge. We all knew that a ton of people use Facebook on a regular basis. Now we know the true numbers from Q1 2013 and they’re probably bigger than you might have expected. According to their public results release, Facebook had 1.11 billion monthly active users as of the end of March, a number that represents the people who logged into Facebook at least once in a 30-day period. The daily active users is arguably more impressive, nearing 2/3rds of a billion people at 665 million who log in every day. That’s a lot of cheddar potential for the company with the numbers representing…

The ebb and flow of design trends always seems to navigate towards and away from simplicity. Today, simple is hot. Flat is hot. Depth, texture, and complex are all out and Facebook is following the trend with their new logo release. They removed the lower bar that gave it a sheen for a minor 3D effect and are now bleeding the “f” off the bottom edge. It’s also a little larger than before. It’s clean, plain, and simple. It’s very 2013. The new logo can be downloaded from the site. Reactions have been positive from around the blogosphere. While beveling and depth are often used to denote a clickable button,…

In an environment with a billion users, millions of business pages, and just about every company in every industry trying to play along, it’s hard to post content to Facebook as a local business that can truly resonate within the venue. Local businesses have it harder than most as their goal should be to stay local but the attitude is one that demands mass acceptance. How can a business be relevant on Facebook within their local demographic when they are fighting for a fraction of attention in a world that is loaded with noise? There are advertising techniques and promotional tools that can help,…

These days, smartphones are like an extra appendage to most people. We use them for everything, especially searching the internet. Think about how much more convenient things have gotten since the rise of the smartphone. Today, if you need to find the nearest restaurant, you can with the swipe of a screen and a tap of an app. That’s why mobile search is on the rise. Gone are the days of having to wait until you got home to look something up on the internet, now you can do it whenever and wherever you please. So what does the rise of mobile search mean for advertisers? Well, it provides them with a very large…

Online advertising has become one of the most important aspects of running a business. Even companies that do not operate primarily online such as retail shops must still using the internet to be found and to expose their wares to the public. The way that advertising online has evolved over the years has gone form “loud and obnoxious” to “stealthy and smart”. It’s not just about how big your ads are, anymore. This infographic from Yume comes to us via Los Angeles Hyundai and explores “Important Details You Should Know When Placing an Ad”. Click to enlarge. * * * “Online Advertising” image courtesy…

It’s every marketing company’s dream to create a viral video for their clients. In the world of online and social media marketing, there’s really nothing more difficult than to expose a brand to millions of people who really aren’t wanting to see a marketing message. Samsung and the agency they hired to promote their solid state drives, The Viral Factory, committed an atrocious and taboo act by making a “viral” video centered around Laina Walker, a.k.a. Overly Attached Girlfriend. Attempting to piggy-back off of a meme like this is bad form. First, it’s only known by the small (but growing) portion…

Most attempts to work in movie tie-ins into advertisements are poor attempts at best. Attempting to do a movie tie-in during a safety briefing for a trip on an airplane is harder than trying to sneak a pair of hobbits into Mt Doom in Mordor. When you’re Air New Zealand, both are possible and the finished products are amazing. With The Hobbit on its way, geek excitement is at its peak. The national airline of New Zealand put together a surprisingly-fun safety video performed by creatures from Middle Earth. Sir Peter Jackson even makes an appearance. It’s full of win. …

One of the promises of social media in the early days was that it would help businesses generate new customers by exposing their brands and products to people who otherwise might never see them. It was a great reinforcement tool; much in the same way that television ads work through passive acceptance and absorption of messages, so too does social media allow for exposure while people are in their “happy place”. The biggest roadblock to seeing this promise become real is that the options available to businesses to allow them to market properly are so abundant that it can become extremely confusing….

Having the cleanest homepage on the internet has often been attributed to much of Google’s early success. Before they were the search engine, they competed against Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Alta Vista, and other portal sites that had ads, news, and just about everything else that one could fit onto a single website. Google’s was clean back then and remains clean today. Every now and then, they do some promotions. Today, they used the most visited page on the internet to display a simple message: “The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.” The ad linked to a page that offered a special…