Advertising and marketing

Facebook looking to partner with Samsung?

During Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's whirlwind Asia tour, he stopped by the offices of Samsung this week for a quick meeting with the company's president, Shin Jong Kyun.

After the meeting, Shin stopped to talk to reporters and said that the two discussed potential partnerships, according to Bloomberg. The partnerships would reportedly center on advancing mobile-advertising sales.

Facebook has been long pushing to boost advertising on mobile. In April, the social network debuted Facebook Home, which is a family of mobile apps and a social-networking-focused skin that runs over Android in smartphones like HTC's One and Samsung'… Read more

Facebook reportedly delays release of video ads

Facebook is postponing the release of video advertisements that automatically play in News Feed, according to Ad Age.

The social network wants to release the specialized units alongside new social-networking features and is now targeting an unofficial mid-October launch date, Ad Age reported, citing a source familiar with the product.

Fifteen-second video ads that auto-play in the Facebook feed have been rumored since late last year and were supposedly on track for a June or July release. In April, Ad Age reported that the social network was shopping around the units for a price tag upwards of $1 million for … Read more

Microsoft's new ad: Even Dell tablets are better than iPad

Microsoft is not going to stop until iPad sales go down to zero.

It's not going to stop until there are no iPads left in the world.

Because this is payback and war and so many other cliches of aggression that companies are fond of exhuming.

In its second assault on the iPad released Thursday, Microsoft tries to explain very quietly that even a Dell tablet is better than an iPad.

Just as in the first ad of this phase, Redmond is using Siri's measured tones to show how a Windows tablet measures up to an iPad. This time it's the Dell XPS 10. … Read more

Google expected to sell $8.8B in mobile ads this year

Google is expected to sell more mobile ads this year than the rest of its competitors combined for the second straight year, according to a new forecast.

The Web giant will generate $8.8 billion in revenue from mobile advertising this year after paying commissions to its ad partners, a 92 percent increase over the previous year, according to a forecast released Thursday by research firm eMarketer.

Mobile ad sales are expected to hit nearly $16 billion this year, meaning Google will have a 56 percent share. Google sold $4.6 billion in mobile ads in 2012, capturing 52 percent … Read more

Twitter releases analytics for all

Twitter has started letting its entire user base get a glimpse of a subset of their account analytics.

First noted a week ago, and reported on this morning by The Next Web, the analytics provide a partial view into some of the activity related to users' accounts. In the past, Twitter has provided analytics just to its advertising clients.

Average users seem to be able to see information about their total number of followers, as well as a graph showing the growth of that number since signup, and other tidbits such as the top 10 Twitter users that an account'… Read more

Wrapp hits 15 million digital gift cards, raises $15 million

Wrapp, the company that lets Facebook friends send digital gift cards to one another, has picked up $15 million from investors in the mobile manufacturing and mobile payments industries.

The money is going toward the development of the app's latest feature: brand pages. Users can now follow a brand for special deals for themselves.

"The whole idea with Wrapp is to build a win-win relationship between consumers and retailers," CEO Hjalmar Winbladh told CNET. Wrapp will start to add other features as well, he said.

The company is truly mobile first, according to Winbladh. Wrapp users access … Read more

Funny or Die explains the new Apple ad: iPhone is your boyfriend

You've probably not been the same since you saw the latest Apple ad.

It's helped you understand your indispensable place in the world, your iPhone's indispensable place in your life, and Apple's indispensable place in American business.

For those who didn't quite get it, the folks at Funny or Die thought they'd rewrite the voiceover to make things a touch clearer.

"We spent a lot of time developing things so that you don't have to watch concerts you paid for," explains the very level voice of Apple reason. … Read more

Twitter's flattery of ad creatives has bottom-line agenda

The Vine is pretty clever. It shows, in six rapid seconds, how to quickly and easily put up a simple bookshelf.

Done in the stop-motion technique that has been the hallmark of most of the best Vines to surface so far, the video is an ad for Lowe's home improvement stores, and is part of a series called, appropriately, #lowesfixinsix.

Published more than three weeks ago, the video got a fresh life today when Twitter featured it as the inaugural poster child for its new #CreativeFavorites program, an initiative that aims to celebrate the best work being done on … Read more

Facebook kills some redundant ad units

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Facebook wants to make it less confusing for marketers to advertise on the social network, so it's killing some ad units and consolidating others, the company announced Thursday.

"What we want to do is take the guesswork out of the process," Fidji Simo, a product manager for ads, said during a press event at Facebook's headquarters. The company is rolling out several changes in the next couple of months to its 27 types of advertising, including the elimination of Facebook questions, online local offers, and the individual page posts ads.

The simplified … Read more