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What Google Authorship also does is help rank that author in search for original content all over the Interwebz. Can you say guest posting anyone? How about blogging communities? (Just so you know, The SMB Collective is accepting new bloggers; it’s a blogging community I established in 2010 that is ebbing out of dormancy.)

To start, each user will have the ability to add 10 deals from a variety of Collections -- groupings of offers themed around Mother's Day or spring, for example -- or to search different categories. Deals are typically valid for one month and can be used four times per transaction, as well as multiple times throughout the month. The deals are also stackable with manufacturer's coupons or other offers.

P&G is fully endorsing the often controversial Media Rating Council viewability standards for digital media -- which defines display ad impressions as "viewable" if at least 50% of pixels are on-screen for at least one second and video as viewable if at least 50% of the player is on-screen for at least two seconds.

While Facebook indicated other post types “may” increase in engagement and distribution, our research is evidence that this is clearly the case as our data pool showed a 30% increase in reach per post for link posts.

status update posts saw a 65% decrease in engagement. Not only do status updates have little to no real impact on your business, but now they have less reach, too.

1. Decrease output of status updates Replace these post types with a link, photo or video post.

That research unveiled that video posts collected the largest amount of average viral impressions as a share of average total impressions with a 36% boost. Paid media also affected engagement quite meaningfully. While its impact varied across post types, Photo and Offer post types increased most in engagement when paid media was applied, making them ideal units.

Photos also had a high CTR average compared to other post types when paid media was applied, further reinforcing the Photo post type as a good choice for paid, rich media campaigns.

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