Feb 20, 20145 min read

Marketing Day: February 20, 2014

Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on

Marketing Land and other places across the web.

From Marketing Land:

Pirate Sites Earn $227 Million In Ad Revenue Per Year With Some Funded By Major Brands [Report]

The Digital Citizens Alliance claims pirate sites earn $227 million in advertising revenue per year, with ads from major brands like Amazon, McDonalds, American Express and Ford showing up on 30 percent of the largest sites. Yesterday, TorrentFreak covered the Digital Citizens Alliance report Good Money Gone Bad: Digital Thieves and the Hijacking of the Online Ad […]

AdRoll Launches Mobile Retargeting Solution For Cross-Device Campaigns

Today, AdRoll announced a private beta launch of a new mobile retargeting offering that enables marketers to retarget users across devices. The mobile retargeting solution allows marketers to identify high-intent desktop users and target them across mobile devices to promote app installs and conversions on mobile optimized sites. AdRoll, currently the only ad tech that […]

Facebook Rolling Out New Targeting Mechanics, All US Advertisers To Get Partner Categories Access

Today, Facebook announced changes to its ad targeting features will be rolling out globally. Additionally, all advertisers in the US, including local businesses, will have access to the third-party targeting data available in Partner Categories. The new targeting options will be based on four primary targeting types: location, demographic, interest and behavior. Location: Build campaigns […]

Will Facebook Advertisers Look Abroad? 85 Percent Of Ad Dollars Spent On Just 15 Percent Of Users [Study]

While just 15 percent of global Facebook users are in North America, the region accounts for nearly half (48 percent) of the Facebook advertising spend. In a new report that analyzed over 200 Facebook marketers, Marin Software says advertisers are under investing in Facebook in regions outside of North America. North America’s user share is […]

Beckon Launches Out Of Stealth Mode To Simplify Cross-Channel Analytics & Planning

Too much data in too many places has long been the Achilles’ heel of multi-channel marketing campaigns. Harnessing data from multiple sources, teams and formats is time-consuming and not always even that illustrative of what’s working and what’s not. Beckon is aiming to change that. Officially launching today, the company is coming out of a […]

Location-Based Mobile Marketing Is Where It’s At For Consumers

The ability for mobile devices to track and report a person’s location in real time with a reliable degree of accuracy has come into its own. The tendency of consumers to use that feature is increasing in popularity, as well. According to the Pew Institute, “74% of adult smartphone owners ages 18 and older say […]

Google Analytics Now Showing Up On Google+ Page Dashboard

According to a Google+ post from Daniel Waisberg, Google+ Page dashboards now include Google Analytics monthly metrics. “If your page is linked to a website that has Google Analytics you can now view your monthly metrics (and comparison to last month) from your Google+ dashboard,” claims Waisberg. Waisberg, an analytics advocate at Google, included a […]

State-Level Usage Statistics: How They Can Be Leveraged

For many brands, regionalization of marketing programs represents a key pillar to their overarching strategy. Particularly for those companies operating nationally, it’s often difficult and costly to target consumers on a very granular level. Regionalization allows marketers to look at trends across a slightly larger area — typically several adjacent states that share some cultural […]

Boost Your Social Strategy With SEO Data

We all know that a great social strategy can help your SEO efforts — gaining visibility and shares, helping create relationships, etc. — but thinking about things the other way around is a little bit trickier. In other words, can you use your SEO data to help improve your social media strategy? Although this method […]

Shrewd Or Desperate: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp For $19B In Cash And Stock

It’s mostly a stock transaction: $12 billion in Facebook shares and $3 billion more to retain WhatsApp employees over four years after closing. (It will cost Facebook only $2 billion if the deal doesn’t go through). Beyond this, WhatsApp founder/CEO Jan Koum and his fellow workers will get an additional $4 billion in cash up front. […]