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“Twitter ads…generate clicks at a much higher rate as advertisers integrate them tightly with broad trends and conversations, serving up straightforward messaging and content directly into relevant conversation streams.”

– 72.6% -- say their ROI from Twitter desktop and mobile ads are virtually the same, a great sign for Twitter's mobile business. Ad Age readers ranked it the third most-effective ad platform behind Google and Facebook, and ahead of LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL in that order.

when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user’s account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks

I’ve been trying to get Facebook to disclose shadow contact information to users for almost a year now. But it has even refused to disclose these shadow details to users in Europe, where privacy law is stronger and explicitly requires companies to tell users what data it has on them.

To test the shadow information finding, the researchers tried a real-world test. They uploaded a list of hundreds of landline numbers from Northeastern University. These are numbers that people who work for Northeastern are unlikely to have added to their accounts, though it’s very likely that the numbers would be in the address books of people who know them and who might have uploaded them to Facebook in order to “find friends.” The researchers found that many of these numbers could be targeted with ads, and when they ran an ad campaign, the ad turned up in the Facebook news feed of Mislove, whose landline had been included in the file; I confirmed this with my own test targeting his landline number.

“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and were even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”

There are certainly creepier practices happening in the advertising industry, but it’s troubling this is happening at Facebook because of its representations about letting you control your ad experience. It’s disturbing that Facebook is reducing the privacy of people who want their accounts to be more secure by using the information they provide for that purpose to data-mine them for ads.

When I asked the company last year about whether it used shadow contact information for ads, it gave me inaccurate information, and it hadn’t made the practice clear in its extensive messaging to users about ads

Snapchat's focus on "sound-on" video ads has been appealing to its entertainment clients.

The behavior on the app is very different as you want to focus more on shorter content, whereas on Instagram, people tend to watch longer videos."

Snapchat says its vertical video ads are "as good as television" — and in some ways better — because users can choose to skip ads, swipe up to interact with them, and advertisers can use more granular targeting than TV. But with AdAge reporting in November that the average Snapchat video ad lasts less than three seconds and Snapchat counting a video "view" as soon as the video opens, it remains to be seen whether its ads are more effective than those on TV

"In the days and weeks and months following the game, if you [Shazam] a Jaguar ad during the Super Bowl, we can allow Jaguar to remarket to you," said Shazam Chief Revenue Officer Kevin McGurn, who was senior VP-sales at Hulu until Mr. Riley lured him away in September. Those ads could ask people to take a test drive or solicit sign-ups for the auto brand's email newsletters.

The retargeting program could spark or renew interest from advertisers that were previously intrigued by Shazam but unwilling to invest. Previously advertisers that partnered with Shazam were betting on people tagging their TV ads and were further limited because they could only market to those people within the app.

Those surveyed said they were most interested in advertising on Instagram (64%), followed by Amazon (43%) and then Spotify (40%). About 37% of marketers said they are interested in advertising in Snapchat, which is about the same (35%) as what they said in 2015, according to RBC.

Brands may demand powerful ways to unfriend fans: Many brands accumulated "friends" with little to no relationship with the brand.