Social Media Marketing

Facebook announced this week that it will test a new feature that allows select advertisers to run additional targeted ads in user's News Feeds. The test is an expansion of Facebook Exchange, one of the social network's most profitable advertising initiatives. The service allows marketers to check u...

Brands may be shifting more money to digital advertising and social media marketing efforts, but so far that's not buying them a lot of trust from consumers, according to a new report from Forrester Research. Seventy percent of more than 57,000 U.S. consumers surveyed trust brand or product recommen...

After a year of testing and much feedback, Twitter on Monday released a set of tools for small businesses and self-service advertisers -- tools that will give businesses more of an opportunity to speak directly to consumer interests. Targeting was the most requested feature in the feedback that the ...

The Federal Trade Commission released its updated Dot Com Disclosures guidance on Tuesday, emphasizing the requirements for advertisers targeting mobile devices. In short, the rules that apply to ads in newspapers, radio and television also apply to mobile devices and social media. The update is th...

Facebook unveiled its new look this week, providing bigger photos and more links in users' News Feeds, along with additional ways to view specialized streams based on topics of interest, such as music. This is apparently an attempt to corral all the random musings and disjointed pictures users are a...

Facebook users will soon see ads in their feeds that are more specifically targeted to what they like and where they've shopped -- both online and offline -- thanks to a series of agreements with data companies announced Wednesday. The agreements expand the social network's Custom Audiences program ...

Twitter launched an API for advertisers Wednesday, a move designed to help the social network boost revenues to better compete with its Internet ad competitors. The company has had an ad structure in place since 2010, when it launched its Promoted Tweets program, which allows advertisers to push 140...

The Twitter accounts for fast-food chain Burger King and automaker Jeep were taken over by hackers this week, prompting calls for stronger authentication practices while forcing marketing professionals to once again confront the shadowy regions of social media. Burger King was the first brand to rep...

The tweets were flying this week, and not just about Beyonce and blackouts at the Super Bowl. Twitter was itself the subject of tweets following the announcement late Monday that it had inked a deal to buy social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs. Terms were not disclosed. Bluefin Labs, founded in 2008...

As the U.S. prepares for kick-off of Sunday's Super Bowl, advertisers already have their plays in motion. Many of the commercials are already viewable online, and ads get support from online components. Over the past few years, the brands who buy air time for the Super Bowl have begun posting their ...

Pinterest, the social scrapbooking site that has quickly captured the Web's attention, this week rolled out a beta test of a redesigned look that features larger pictures and a new way of navigating pages. The biggest change to Pinterest is that images are larger, and there's more information on pin...

This week's revelation that a pornographic video briefly made the "Editors Picks" recommendations for the new Twitter app Vine is raising questions about whether the ultra-short form video-clip sharing app is at risk for more such content -- and whether this could scare users away from the service.

So now we know why Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have been so busy recruiting former Google big brains: They coveted their mastery of algorithms, their sure-footedness in navigating mountains of Web-based data. The result? Facebook Graph Search, announced Tuesday by Zuckerberg. Those who were quick ...

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied "because that's where the money is." Many e-commerce businesses adopt Willie's strategy by focusing their marketing efforts where all the people are. That may work for robbery, but it's a poor strategy for e-commerce. Instead, adopt an ...

The U.S. mobile advertising outlook is a bit rosier, according to eMarketer's latest forecast. Native display ads running on sites such as Facebook and Twitter are leading the charge for the mobile channel. Overall spending on U.S. mobile advertising -- which includes display, search and messaging-b...