It’s been a year since Microsoft unveiled its new “Decision Engine,” Bing, amid a flurry of hype and speculation. Microsoft said the new engine was developed to help searchers navigate more easily through information online – an objective perhaps most vividly captured in the company’s slew of commercials poking fun at “search overload.”

Bing, which was fully rolled out on June 3, 2009, claimed to take a new approach to search through three simple goals (as articulated in the official release): deliver great results, deliver a more organized experience and facilitate fast, more confident decisions through search. Beyond that, Microsoft’s new engine sported a sleek design, with large, vibrant visuals extending across the homepage. Both inside and out, Bing was striving to be different.

Read the full article »

This week, we learned of Facebook’s plans to launch a location-based service with partner McDonald’s, Congress introduced a web privacy bill, Google unveiled a new look and the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance announced that it will soon begin its advertiser transition. Read our complete recap below — and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to find out about new job opportunities with our team.

Report: Facebook to Get in on the McLocation Game with Fast Food Giant

AdAge reports that Facebook is partnering with McDonald’s for the launch of its much-anticipated location service. The new location functionality will not be only for brands – soon, users will be able to post their location within a status update.

Image via InsideFacebook.com

McDonald’s is reportedly building an app that will allow customers to check in to a restaurants and receive information about a featured product for that location. The image above shows a location-based app already live within the McDonald’s Page, though this feature is not yet ready for primetime. According to Inside Facebook, at present the app simply tells users to be on the lookout for updates, as McDonald’s is expanding its “local Facebook reach.”

Read the full article »

The biggest news this week came from Facebook, which announced a significant change in the way consumers interact with brands on the platform. Not to be outdone, Yahoo! announced plans to shut off its publisher network, Twitter and YouTube unveiled site redesigns and Google launched Ad Innovations, a place for advertisers to test and discuss new technologies.

“Fans” Fall Out of Favor at Facebook, More Love for “Likes”

Facebook announced this week that the “Become a Fan” concept for branded pages will soon be replaced with the more prevalent “Like” button and brands will no longer accumulate “Fans,” but “Connections” instead.

This change narrows the list of actions available to Facebook fans, and consolidates the bulk of interactions fans will have with brand content to “Like,” “Comment” and “Share.” The change also affects engagement ads — the “Become a Fan” verbiage will disappear, being replaced by the simple “Like” button and thumbs up icon.

For the complete scoop read 360i’s POV over at Ad Age.

Read the full article »

Yesterday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they’ve been cleared to move forward with their much anticipated search partnership, which was initially declared in July. Since the engines now have received “unrestricted” clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission to implement the deal, we’ve revisited our earlier POV and highlighted some of key areas for digital marketers to focus on in the months leading up to complete, full-scale implementation.

The most obvious impact on marketers is that there will now be two major places to buy search advertising, down from the previous three. And with more scale now aggregated within the next biggest search marketplace to Google, the partnership should ideally build efficiency in search advertising and also enable marketers to take better advantage of Bing’s traffic. Since Google volume is so much greater than either Yahoo or Bing, it enjoys proportionally greater attention from search marketers. This unified marketplace will grant Microsoft and Yahoo! a better chance to compete with Google due to their combined scale.

Continue reading and download the report »

Online video views surged in November, as Americans watched more than 30 billion web videos, like this SNL Digital Short on Hulu (Source: comScore).

This industry moves pretty fast – and sometimes, it’s hard to keep up. Moving forward, we’ll be recapping some of the most important news in digital marketing each week, so you can stay on top of the latest trends and gather information about what these shifts, changes and innovations mean for brands in the digital space.

Google Launches Nexus One ‘Superphone’

On Tuesday Google announced the arrival of its much-anticipated iPhone rival, the Nexus One. Google describes the product as a ‘superphone’ that demonstrates the intersection of mobile technology, apps and the Internet. You can learn more at www.google.com/phone.

In our earlier post, David Berkowitz points out that the Nexus One will propel Android to greater market share – and marketers will inevitably follow suit. A shift in market share might also shift the mobile app market. At present there are 100,000 iPhone apps compared to 20,000 Android apps. In the future marketers can consider targeting media to different platforms and devices.

This latest development from Google is indicative of the company’s continued commitment to moving the needle in mobile technology, as well as a broader, industry-wide shift to reach consumers via mobile platforms.

Read the full article »

Yahoo has announced that it will be canceling Yahoo Search Submit Pro (Y!SSP), its fixed-rate cost-per-click program, as of Dec. 31. Also known as “paid inclusion,” this service enables marketers to submit their URLs and page information directly to the Yahoo natural search web index, rather than having Yahoo crawl them via its primary web-indexing technology (known as SLURP). By submitting pages via Y!SSP, marketers have better control over the content that Yahoo searches and displays for their Web site listings.

360i COO John Ragals wrote a column for Ad Age’s Digital Next blog today that outlines the key marketer implications of the Y!SSP cancellation. For those marketers that don’t use Y!SSP, not much changes. Yet the many marketers that do use this service, especially retailers and other e-commerce providers, may need to fine tune or even rethink their Yahoo search strategy. Here’s why:

• The way marketers using Y!SSP optimize for natural search on Yahoo is fundamentally changing. Formerly, marketers using Y!SSP could rely solely on the information sent in their data feeds to be well-optimized on Yahoo. Now, these marketers must look more closely at how they are optimized for Yahoo and ensure that they are incorporating the same data that was previously in their Y!SSP feeds in order to maintain their ranks and timely messaging.
• Marketers will lose out on the benefits of the Y!SSP program. These include: 1) Faster refresh rates as compared to the standard SLURP web crawler, and 2) Greater control over natural search optimization.

Read the full article »

Read our complete POV on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal below, or download a PDF version via Scribd (above).

Microsoft is effectively acquiring Yahoo’s search business, migrating Yahoo’s search ad customers to its adCenter platform, and licensing Bing’s search platform back to Yahoo. Yahoo will become the worldwide sales organization for the companies’ premium search advertisers, while from an ad technology perspective adCenter will be the search ad platform and Yahoo’s Panama will be phased out. Smaller advertisers will use adCenter directly to purchase their search advertising. After the deal goes into effect, both the natural and paid results on Yahoo’s owned and operated properties will come from Bing’s search platform.

Read the full article »