Advertising & Marketing

Google announced a policy change on Friday that lets the company create sponsored endorsements based on reviews it collects from YouTube, Zagat and other Google-controlled sites. In practice, this means that after November 1 (when the policy goes into effect), you may see yourself appearing in ads. Some people will be fine with this — Continue Reading →

Instagram announced earlier this month that it will begin serving in-feed advertising before the end of the year, and the Facebook-owned photo and video app has made a subtle, but important, change after it removed the option to switch off autoplay for videos on iOS. (The Android app retains an option to disable autoplay entirely, Continue Reading →

Microsoft is set to become the latest tech giant to develop its own tracking technology to replace the ubiquitous “cookie,” which has become the focus of regulators and privacy advocates. The company is internally developing the technology that would enable tracking across desktop computers, tablets and smartphones running Windows, as well as the company’s Xbox Continue Reading →

Startups are usually small businesses that take huge risks in identifying an unseen opportunity and being the first to take on that market. While being first comes with its first mover advantages, it also has its first mover disadvantages. The Yahoo Problem: Lapped By the Competition Perhaps the quintessential example of being a first mover Continue Reading →

SCORE counselors in Northeastern New York developed a series of questions for start-ups and established businesses that are considering expanding. These included five key questions that are numerically driven. 1.  How Much Do You Need to Make? The key concept is “need.” How much is needed to pay for necessities such as housing, food, transportation, current debt, Continue Reading →

Remember Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy champion? A couple years ago, Watson beat the top two human champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at a game where even interpreting the cue is complex with language nuances. (Not to mention finding answers at lightning speed on any subject matter.) Yet after the initial excitement, most people – except Continue Reading →

Well here it is, Instagram is getting ads and it’s starting with users in the US. In a blog post on Thursday, Instagram says that users in the country are going to start seeing video and image ads. Instagram says that the ads will start appearing over the next couple of months and will come Continue Reading →

Would you check in on Facebook in exchange for free Wi-Fi at a hotel, restaurant, or retailer? That’s the pitch Facebook has cooked up to hook its social network into companies big and small. Facebook and Cisco are jointly announcing Wednesday that they’ve partnered to bring the social Wi-Fi option to more businesses after a Continue Reading →

Fall is here, and with it everyone is talking football. Well, not everyone, perhaps. But befitting the nation’s most popular sport, it generates a huge amount of conversation. According to my firm’s research, there are 15 billion annual WOM impressions about football. In fact, over the course of the year, a full third of all Continue Reading →

Did you find this blog post through Bing?  Probably not — 67% of worldwide searches go through Google, 18% through Bing.  But Microsoft has advertised in a substantial TV campaign that — in the cyber analog to blind taste-testing — people prefer Bing “nearly 2:1.”  A year ago, when I first saw these ads,  the Continue Reading →