advertising

GM to yank $10M in Facebook ads, saying they don't work

General Motors will pull some $10 million in paid advertising from Facebook, the Wall Street Journal reported, striking a discordant note with the growing public frenzy over the social network's pending IPO.

GM marketing executives apparently started reviewing the company's Facebook strategy earlier this year, and eventually determined that it wasn't getting much mileage out of paid ads, unnamed individuals told the WSJ. The automaker, however, will continue to expand its use of free marketing on Facebook.

Marketing chief Joel Ewanick told the newspaper that GM "is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content … Read more

Yahoo tackles big data with Genome ad platform

Yahoo today announced Genome, a data-intensive advertising system designed to help marketers navigate the wilds of the "big data landscape" on the way to more precise ad targeting and personalization.

Genome is designed to pull together Yahoo data with third-party data from Interclick and first-party data from advertisers, while also making sense of heaps and heaps of less-structured information. It's all about helping marketers tame what Yahoo terms "the chaos of the data ecosystem" in order to build brand value, boost conversion rates, and elevate revenue.

"With Genome, we can help marketers transform consumer … Read more

Limit your participation in Facebook social ads

What makes Facebook worth $100 billion? (Likely somewhat less, as Suzanne Vranica and Shayndi Raice explain in The Wall Street Journal.)

Topping the list is the revenue-generating potential of the company's upcoming Premium ads and other new advertising programs.

Facebook, Google, and just about every other big-name Web service make their money by selling ads that get targeted based on what they know about you. The companies say they don't sell personally identifiable information to third parties, but one way or another, information about their users is the services' bread and butter.

The Facebook Data Use Policy explains … Read more

Tumblr allows advertising at $25K a pop

Just one month ago, Tumblr CEO David Karp announced that displaying ads was the "complete last resort" for the microblogging service. Well, financial temptation must have gotten the better of him.

Tumblr announced the introduction of Tumblr Radar and Tumblr Spotlight today, which are two types of advertising products available to sponsors for an entry-level price of $25,000, according to VentureBeat. Although this is an about-face to what Karp said last month, there are still some conditions for potential advertisers.

First, the advertisers must be "approved" by Tumblr. Second, they must be willing to shell … Read more

Frustrated advertisers to Facebook: Take our money -- please!

With a reach approaching 15 percent of the world's population, Facebook is a thriving media business. In the last quarter alone, it raked in more $1 billion in revenue, almost entirely from advertising.

But to hear some people at big ad agencies talk, it could be a whole lot more.

And that's the double-edged sword hanging over Facebook these days, for the company has become a victim of its own success. It's automating its process and using technology to increase efficiency. But that's not the same as dealing with a human being; big advertisers are a … Read more

Apple, U.K. regulator continue their '4G' dance

The U.K.'s advertising regulator continues to battle with Apple over its claims that the iPad 3 is 4G-capable.

A letter seen by the BBC suggests the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is willing to "close the file" on its investigation should Apple agree to amend its claims that U.K. customers can access the 4G network.

Two problems: first, Apple appears to be standing its ground, causing further headaches for the regulator, despite the iPad 3's inability to connect to any 4G network outside the U.S. and Canada.

And second, the U.… Read more

Study: Apple's UDID restrictions cost developers 24% revenue

Privacy concerns have been at the top of many tech industry reports lately. Between Apple's Flashback Trojan issues, Google's faux pas with Safari privacy settings, and a myriad of other privacy-related stories, consumers, lawmakers, and the media have been pressing for greater privacy restrictions.

Partly in response to a Congressional inquiry, Apple has begun restricting access to consumers' UDID numbers, a unique identifier that individually accounts for all iOS devices Apple sells.

Ad servers, like MoPub, have been using UDIDs to serve particular ads to targeting demographics for years. Now that Apple has begun rejecting apps that continue … Read more

LG home theater ads: Movie posters in reverse

Print advertisements for home theater systems aren't always the most exciting to look at -- visualizing surround sound on a printed page isn't easy, after all.

The recent ad campaign for LG's latest home-theater-in-a-box systems, which feature "3D" surround sound, however, is among the more creative we've seen. The ads are pretty accurate copies of the original movie posters for the Hollywood blockbusters "Kill Bill: Volume 1," "Forrest Gump," and "Pretty Woman" -- if posters were made in 3D. … Read more

For digital video to live, the 30-second pre-roll ad must die

Video is moving to the Web in enormous leaps; the promise of online video seems to be at our doorstep. Millions are cutting the cord, beloved television shows are returning through the seemingly divine intervention of online distribution, and people are consuming Web and mobile video in increasingly staggering numbers.

But all that video consumption is saddled with a burden that's keeping it from reaching its full potential: the ads just haven't caught up.

You all know the problem I'm talking about, and yes, you've seen it on our own site -- on videos hosted by … Read more

Spotify press event lacks sizzle or substance

NEW YORK--Someone needs to remind Spotify that you need news at a news conference.

Spotify, one of the top music subscription services, announced today that Coca-Cola is launching an app on its music platform. Three Coca-Cola executives and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek tried to convince a gathering of about 30 members of the media that the partnership can offer Spotify users untold number of benefits and help extend the streaming-music service's brand.

By being everywhere that Coca-Cola is, which is just about everywhere, the agreement will spread Spotify's brand to new markets. What they didn't tell us … Read more