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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

products with answers from official brand reps get 100% more questions than others – suggesting that, upon seeing that the brand is engaged, shoppers are more likely to ask questions (when they may’ve otherwise left the site to look elsewhere).

After a consumer answers a question or submits a review, never leave them at a dead end; once someone contributes, they’re more likely to contribute again. Take them to a thank you page that includes a few more related, unanswered questions.

Approximately two-thirds of the marketers indicate they will outsource one or more projects involving content creation, creative development, ad unit creation and online production/services.

Event spending will rise sharply as 70% of respondents plan on increases for 2012 with a significant shift to small/local roundtable programs and virtual events.

An amazing 95% of the respondents watch tech videos and three-quarters of them share or post video.  What respondents look for in video varies from one region to another with in-depth product reviews and how-to videos being of most interest.  Most people said they watch on their computers with the majority of viewings after business hours and on weekends.

Google+ also enables marketers and writers to link content to their Google+ profile via its Authorship feature. Once the content is linked, the profile picture will appear next to the link in search results, which in turn, can help gather more page clicks and a higher search ranking.

“You don’t use Google+ in order to get in front of your prospects or your customers,” Herinckx said. “[customers] are still using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because Google+ is so small. From an SEO standpoint, and from a paid search standpoint as well, Google will pull in information from Google+ into the search results, which helps your search result stand out.”

Facebook fails to deliver those messages 84 percent of the time.

It goes back to what Facebook wants to be. They’re going after the easy buck with display ads targeted with the same criteria as ads anywhere else. If all they want to be is Yahoo or MSN, they’ve made great strides.

Don’t be blinded by revenues. Marketers are exceptionally dissatisfied.

What they fail to understand is marketer satisfaction is a leading indicator for spending, not the other way around. If Facebook doesn’t address those problems, more marketers will act on that dissatisfaction.

Another brand manager told me that many agencies are creating social spin-offs but they still operate like traditional ad agencies

 3. Continuity has become more important than campaigns. There’s a key difference between funding an ad campaign and supporting a social media effort.

4. Companies no longer want to outsource customer relationships.

“Agency employees are stretched thin, and their ideas are too. It’s harder to invest in a brand and do a bang up, non-cookie-cutter job for a client when you have 12 other brands on your time sheet. Moving to the client side allows for more opportunity to really invest in one brand and watch it grow.”