Industry Insights

Here’s a look at what went on in the digital industry last week: Google unveiled a revamped Image Search product, Facebook announced its new 500M member-strong status, buzz continued to build around mobile barcodes… and more. You can find full recaps on each of these stories below — and if you’re feeling ambitious, be sure to check out 16 awesome job opps at our offices in New York, Atlanta and Chicago.

Improved Google Image Search Brings New Opps for Marketers

At a press conference last week, Google VP Marissa Mayer announced the company’s new and improved Image Search offering, which – beyond providing an enhanced consumer search experience – includes a new ad product for marketers.

Google Image Search Ads allow advertisers to place images alongside their text ads (see above). For product-based brands (such as retailers), this presents an opportunity to offer product images when a consumer enters a relevant search query.

From a user perspective, the improved Image Search delivers faster results and the ability to view up to 1,000 images per results page. In addition, when searchers click a thumbnail they are taken to the host page where the image is blown out in front of page content. ReadWriteWeb reports that the new features will be rolled out to users over the next month.

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Today in iMedia Connection we run down several tips and tricks we employ here at 360i to ensure our corporate blog functions as a living, breathing reflection of what we’re all about. Below are our first five tips — and you can read the full article for 20 more best practices when it comes to article writing, editorial & technical management and promotion.

1. Choose the right topics. Sometimes pinpointing a topic can be more challenging than actually writing about it. We peruse dozens of other blogs each day — as well as trade pubs and other outlets — to find headlines most relevant to our business and our clients.

2. Create an editorial calendar. Coverage can be added on the fly, but it’s always helpful to have a rough outline of planned assignments so you can maintain a regular cadence when it comes to the frequency of your posts. On our blog, recurring features like news roundups, interviews, and POVs ensure that our readers are getting continued value — no matter what’s going on in our industry’s headlines.

3. Provide value. Corporate blogs shouldn’t just be about company announcements; in fact, these types of posts form a very small percentage of our content. Our goal has always been to provide value through thought leadership — inspiring conversations instead of creating monologues around company news.

4. Pool your resources. Our agency is comprised of hundreds of individuals that span several practice groups and areas of expertise — social marketing, creative, media, search, and more. Tap into the power of your company’s collective intellect by opening up your roster of contributors to include employees of diverse backgrounds and skill sets.

5. Have a brand voice. We maintain a consistent style and voice throughout all our posts. This helps ensure a cohesive experience — no matter which topic we are covering, or who is writing about it.

»Read our next 20 tips over at iMedia Connection

Which best practices do you think are most important? Would you add any to our list? Let us know in the comments below.

ABOVE: Jackson, son of 360i Customer Insights Director Lara Hejtmanek, shows off his Silly Bandz collection.

One day you might have seen a few people with funny looking rubber bands on their wrists and then all of a sudden these bands seemed to be everywhere. It started with kids, but now it’s perfectly acceptable for people of all ages to rock the new craze called Silly Bandz. Marketers have the ability to assess and evaluate pop culture trends quickly and in real time through the use of online research.

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It was a busy week in digital – with new numbers on mobile adoption among ad execs, a report from SearchIgnite that shows a 14% increase in paid search spend year-over-year, Twitter’s first @earlybird deal (with partner Disney) and the meteoric rise of Old Spice Man. Get caught up on all these stories and more in our roundup below.

Study: Mobile is Fastest Growing Media Among Ad Execs

Above: Kraft Foods’ new iPad app

According to a new report from Advertiser Perception Inc. (API), 46 percent of ad execs on both the marketer and agency side are leveraging mobile as part of their advertising plans – a number expected to jump to 60 percent within the next year. API projects mobile to grow at a faster rate than any other medium.

At present, the most common ad formats on mobile are banner ads (62 percent of advertisers surveyed), and text ads (60 percent) – though video is the fastest growing and is expected to grow from 28 percent to 43 percent within the next 12 months. As for mobile search, 41 percent of respondents are currently utilizing the channel, and API projects this number will increase to 50 percent in a year.

When it comes to mobile media platforms advertisers overwhelmingly favor smartphones (87 percent of respondents), though the iPad will rise the fastest. About 22 percent of respondents currently utilize Apple’s new tablet in their advertising plans, but API predicts this number will grow to 49 percent in the coming months.

To learn more about emerging opportunities in mobile, be sure to follow our summer POV series that focuses exclusively on mobile marketing. You can read our first five reports below:

• Mobile Marketing Overview
• Mobile Search
• SMS (Text Messaging)
• Mobile Social Marketing
• Mobile Applications

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Here’s a look at what’s covered in this week’s roundup: Bing builds on ‘Bron buzz by powering his official website, Twitter gets into e-commerce with new @earlybird service, Foursquare expands its loyalty program and Yahoo begins tapping into search query data to curate news content. Get the full scoop in the summaries below and follow us on Twitter all week long for the latest digital marketing insights from our team.

Bing Joins LeBron on His Quest for a Ring – and LeBron Joins Twitter

Bing, which bills itself as a “decision engine” is getting in on the buzz surrounding LeBron James’ own decision regarding his future in the NBA. According to a blog post, Bing will be the official search engine of LebronJames.com and a main sponsor of “The Decision,” a one-hour ESPN special during which James will announce which team he will play for next year.

James also made digital headlines this week by joining Twitter and sending his first tweet, in which he blamed friend and New Orleans Hornets guard Chris Paul for “forcing” him to sign up. In two days the King has already amassed 300K followers and counting.

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Happy July! This week’s roundup runs the digital gamut — from the engines (is Google working on its own social network?) to Facebook (guess which beloved cookie brand is launching a global Facebook page?) and everywhere in between. Find full recaps of these and other stories in the post below. And of course, you can follow 360i on Twitter for insights from our team all week long.

‘Google Me’ Rumors Swirl as Details of Facebook Competitor Take Shape

A tweet from Digg’s Kevin Rose (since deleted), a confirmation from a former Facebook exec and a story on TechCrunch were all it took for rumors to fly that Google is working on its own social platform to go head-to-head with Facebook. This week several outlets began speculating about Google Me, which according to former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo (he’s now heads up Q&A service Quora) is a very real project to build a “first-class social network” modeled off of Facebook.

Though none of this has been confirmed by Google, the company did begin integrating Google Buzz updates within Google Social Search this week (via Search Engine Land). Social Search, launched in January, displays search results based on individuals you’re connected to per Google.  As Danny Sullivan notes, if all this represents a larger overhaul of Google Profiles and/or Google Buzz, we can expect that Google Me (if and when it exists) will also be integrated into Social Search.

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This week, Internet traffic soared to new heights following the United States’ dramatic win at the World Cup, LinkedIn added new features to up engagement, Google garnered buzz thanks to speculation that it’s working on a proprietary music service and Bing rolled out a new Entertainment page in addition to some key updates to its iPhone app.  Read our full summary below and be sure to check out this week’s POV on SMS Marketing if you haven’t already. It’s the third installment in our summer-long mobile series — and its completely free to read and download.

Report: U.S.-Algeria Game Might Have Set a New Internet Traffic Record

Mashable reports that Wednesday’s stunning World Cup game between the U.S. and Algeria – in which the Americans won in dramatic fashion, advancing to the second round by a heroic goal in the 91^st minute – just might have set a new record for Internet traffic.

Mashable came to this conclusion by monitoring Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on 100+ news sites in the Akamai network. Following Landon Donovan’s epic goal in the game’s final moments, Mashable says that traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute – a figure greater than the previous high which occurred after the 2008 presidential election.

These figures aren’t yet set in stone, but by early estimation it looks like matchup will go down in history as one of the most exciting sporting events – as well as one of the most highly-trafficked time periods – of recent times.

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