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The image-focused social network says Kosei's technology should help improve its advertising offerings. Pinterest launched its first ad format on Jan. 1 after eight months of testing. Pinterest, which launched its first ads on Jan. 1, isn't wasting any time working to improve the tools it offers marketers.

Pinterest is taking the plunge. Starting January 1, the popular social-media site will start selling advertisements in earnest after a limited test period in June, when the company experimented with Promoted Pin ads. As other companies, such as Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) and Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) have done, Pinterest is expected to target those ads to specific people based on information it's gathered about them.

Really interesting the way that Pinterest positions its acquisition to the public in this piece. One of the key ways we provide relevant and scalable solutions is through building distributed systems using machine learning. To accelerate our work in discovery and monetization, today we're announcing the acquisition of Kosei, which includes some of the best minds in machine learning and data science.

More than 60 percent of the $6.8 billion expected to be spent on social advertising in the U.S. QUOTE: "'People tend to go on Facebook and mobile platforms the way that people use mobile a lot, which is kind of as a time-waster. You use mobile when you're in line, when you're commuting, when you're waiting for something. It's not what we all use when we're sitting at our desks doing our jobs,' she (Rebecca Lieb) says. 'So it's about not being interruptive, it's about being informative and interesting. It's really a dimension of content marketing, which is the marketing of attraction much more so than it is the marketing of interruption.' Shifting dollars from online or traditional advertising to mobile has taken longer than most expected, says Albright. But the money is flowing now and it will continue to grow as the makeup of advertisers gets more diverse, he says."

Released at the beginning of 2014. Some really great facts, but focused on Internet advertising as a whole as opposed to breaking it down into social networks and other types of Internet advertising. I e-mailed you guys the 2015 Pack (it's only available for download right now). Subject line of the e-mail is "AdAge 2015 Marketing Fact Pack."

Facebook is making it harder for some ads to have organic reach. They say they will "begin curtailing the reach of brands' unpaid, or organic, posts that the social network's algorithms consider 'overly promotional.'" "The change will not apply to all of a brand's posts, just the less creative ones that fit certain criteria, like pushing people to buy a product, install an app or enter a contest or sweepstakes. Also under fire: posts that are just repurposed ads." "A Facebook spokeswoman said the company's algorithm will evaluate these promotional posts with the same filters it puts on ads -- checking, for example, how many people engage with or hide them -- when determining whether to let them into people's news feeds."

"The company has already been helping its ad prices grow by reducing the number of ads that it shows. In the third quarter, Facebook's average price per ad jumped by 274% year-over-year while the social network served up 56% fewer ad impressions than a year ago."

Looks like Reddit is following the mobile advertising trend! "Reddit recently bought Alien Blue, the app that lets readers access Reddit on mobile, to hone a more sophisticated approach to smartphones and tablets. Alien Blue is Reddit's first in-house app. Now, it has a vp of sales with experience in mobile advertising to go along with the product. 'Mobile is definitely one big area of investment for the company, so my background certainly plays into that,' Jandali said in a phone interview this week."

Earlier this month Instagram revealed it had overtaken Twitter in terms of users: 300 million to Twitter's 284 million. Now there's more evidence underlining Instagram's dominant status versus Twitter. Personal note: It talks about Instagram's engagement rate being 3.31% for the most engaging profiles, compared to Twitter's .07%. I believe that a significant part of the reason for that would be how one can engage with what a profile shares. On Instagram of a company's profile, friends can make comments and tag their friends to show them what they're looking at, BUT it doesn't require the user to share the item on their own profile. In contrast, showing someone something on Twitter requires you to share it on your own profile. There is the direct message component of Twitter, but if you look at the design set up of Twitter, it isn't explicitly displayed as an option unless you click on the "..." button. Just an observation of mine.

Conversion rate of mobile ads is about half of the rate for desktop ads: "According to Marin, while 63% of clicks on Facebook ads came from mobile devices in the fourth quarter, only 34% of "conversions"-purchases and other actions a marketer aims to prompt-happened on smartphones and tablets. That's noticeably worse than search ads, for instance, which displayed a much closer parity between clicks and conversions on mobile devices-39% of clicks and 31% of conversions."

PS - there's a maybe good graph in this article. Not super pretty but it's simple and content is informative

Funding; Public Benefit Corporation status; not-death?

Viber moving to become a social network