@Publish

The median page load time  for desktop websites, as measured by Google Analytics, is about 2.45 seconds. That means that half the pages measured were faster than this, while the other half were slower. The mean page load is about 6.4 seconds.

On mobile, things are significantly slower, the median page load is about 4.4 seconds, while the mean is above 10 seconds.

More formal and professional than Facebook; Hashtags have major search value

et up Google Authorship to have your Google+ profile follow your content from across the Web in search results. More than any particular feature of Google+, users are enticed by integration with Google’s other products.

audience skews female by 4:1

To which social media brands do consumers feel the most attachment? Facebook ranked number one in a Brand Dependence Social Media Survey conducted by UTA Brand Studio

And we're not talking about "liking," apparently. To clarify, attachment, which is at the core of Brand Dependence research methodology, refers to the degree to which consumers believe a brand is like themselves and the degree to which thoughts and feelings about a brand come to mind,

Facebook was followed by Instagram, then YouTube, Pinterest and Reddit in the February 2014 survey of 2,006 U.S. adults aged 18 and up.

brands will be able to use historical affinity behavior of consumers to target more precisely than ever before. It’s clear that the database of affinity is a prize of gigantic proportion, and ultimately, Nate concludes that Google will end up the winner in that battle because they have the broadest data to draw upon and best chance of making sense of it.

not long ago, I bought a pair of jeans online from Bonobos. A little while later, I was shown an ad for Bonobos in my Facebook feed. I was perplexed by the timing of it, until I read an article that described brands’ practice of providing Facebook with customer email addresses that were then mapped to Facebook logins so that targeted ads could be shown to brand customers. This is technically more targeted, but I responded negatively since I had never opted into their feed. I think the question this raises is this: when it comes to targeting, is there a point of diminishing returns? Maybe there is such a thing as just enough targeting and no more.

In search, I am in research mode: in entering a query into the search box, I am announcing my intent to accept “bids” for my attention from all takers, and I’m prepared to act upon the provider of the best information in the search results to that query. In social, I am in a very different state of mind. I expect content from my closed network, and unless I have invited a brand in by Liking or following them, their presence is very much viewed as an uninvited intrusion. It’s the loud, slightly drunk guy at the party that keeps interrupting your conversation with the interesting guy/gal.

The embedding tool that the agency announced will give websites and social media users access to roughly 40 million images — out of a digital collection of 60 million — via a small snippet of computer code that is easily copied. It can be included to illustrate a blog post, for example, or a post to Twitter. (In the case of the images not included, Getty lacks the appropriate permissions, Mr. Peters said.)But, crucially, these users will not be making a copy of those images. Instead, the images will be stored on the agency’s computers; each embedded image will include a credit and a link back to the Getty Images website, where higher-quality versions will be available to license.

We found that the call-to-action button didn’t necessarily hurt our cost-per conversion price but it also did not improve it, either.

“Facebook ads work because they are highly targeted to personal interests and demographics and they are injected directly into the reading experience for each person,” Kukral said. “Also, and most importantly, they aren’t designed to look like ads; but rather “updates”. Perhaps we’re finding out that adding the new call to action buttons tip the viewer off more quickly that they are viewing an advertisement, therein directly affecting the effectiveness of the ad itself. One thing is for sure; the only true way to know is to do proper testing and monitor the results over time.”

just a 1-second delay can lead to a 7% lower conversion rate:

during the audience review (which is typically our first workshop session), we focus entirely on user personas and, critically, the context of the mobile interaction with a company’s intended end users. The goal here is to map out the type of user, mindset, location, and specific needs at the time they are interacting with or accessing the mobile content. It’s not enough to know just the demographics and some sample scenarios. We need to study the end user’s goals through all touchpoints that frame the context.

The Washington Post. Its native ad program, WP BrandConnect, is adopting the multimedia, longform template that’s been used in the newsroom for features like this one. 

This isn't the first time the sales side has peeked over the proverbial Chinese wall to get inspiration from the editorial side. The New York Times has done it via its Idea Lab. The Post has an Ad Innovations team that sits in the marketing group but looks for inspiration in the newsroom. 

Publishers have been slow to migrate their native ads to mobile devices, despite native being seen as the solution to ineffective and poorly paying display advertising on mobiles. Nearly half of the Post’s online traffic comes from mobile devices

Kentico found that 68 percent of respondents “never” or “hardly ever” pay attention to brands’ posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, yet only 5 percent of that group unliked or unfollowed brands on those social networks.

Of those who like brands on Facebook, 39 percent did so in order to receive special offers, while 12 percent did so due to recommendations from friends, and just 8 percent were seeking more information. The most common reasons for unliking or unfollowing brands were uninteresting posts (32 percent) and too many posts (28 percent).

While our latest Digital Experience Survey may be bad news to some, it only reinforces our notion that the social media efforts of a company need to be measured by community engagement, rather than likes or follows. Equally critical is content that is compelling and personalized whenever possible to maintain the interest of people who may have become somewhat impervious to the constant bombardment of various marketing messages today.

When you first load a webpage, the first thing that happens is it generates an impression, which is then forwarded to an ad server. So far, so good, but you might be surprised by how much that ad server knows about you. Using information gathered from Internet cookies, social media, and more, an ad server is capable of generating a unique profile of various metrics, almost like a QR code, that contains everything it knows about you: how old you are, your relationship status, what websites you browse, where you're located, etc. With that code generated, the ad server tries to match it against a pre-sold inventory of ads, almost like a key fitting into a lock. If the key fits, the process ends there, and an ad is returned that advertisers believe jibes with your unique personal profile. But it's what happens if the server doesn't have an ad that matches where things gets interesting.

Without a pre-sold ad to serve you, an ad server forwards your profile to an international ad exchange, where a network of different ad servers examine it and bid on it in real time. In a fraction of a second, a host of third-party servers around the world go into a bidding war for the opportunity to show you an ad, with the highest bidder taking the prize and filling your eyes.