But are they getting substantial returns on their investment? Are they able to target the right segment of the audience who would actually be interested in their product as in whatever it is a movie, a documentary or a TV serial. Perhaps no!

Then why are the trendsetters not able to recognize the trend of marketing and switch to digital than still practicing the same old traditional marketing and splurging money like anything.

Let’s go ahead and see how digital marketing can help Bollywood and your business.

Specific Targeting

First thing first! Specific targeting! Spending money is not a big issue if you get an appreciable amount of customers by doing so. By advertising on TV, Radio , newspapers or through posters you simply broadcast your information to the masses and who all would interested will become your customers however how about if you can specifically target your ads to these ‘who all’ . Certainly, you will get better results and will save a lot of money too. This is what you can do in digital marketing. Whether they are the ads on search engines or various websites, they are only displayed if your buyers’ persona matches your ads. So, depending on your product, you very well know what part of the audience will need it and that through digital marketing you can extend your offer to only that part of the audience. Chances of any miss outs on it are kind of negligible here.

Cost-Effective

Not only you can put across your message to the right segment of the audience but you also save a lot of money in digital marketing. You only spend where you need to and that too far lesser than what you were paying in the traditional marketing.

Measure it at its every part

The best thing about digital marketing is that you can monitor traffic and results and optimize your advertising campaigns accordingly. The tool called analytics in digital marketing helps you measure different ad campaigns with respect to traffic and other results. Thus, you get to have a better idea of what part of your budget is bringing result and what part is going waste so that you take actions in view of that.

Customer Engagement

Being interactive in design digital marketing lets the customer to interact and get engaged. Unlike the traditional marketing, here the user has the command to browse through whatever they wish to, making it far more interactive and engaging. Gone are those days when your audience will entertain your ads even on getting interrupted by you while they are on their go. They would simply change the channel on TV or radio, or overlook the ad on newspaper. No one loves interruption marketing now. Recognize this trend and switch to digital marketing. The sooner you switch the better results you gain.

Generating awareness for your business and spreading business defying all geographical constraints are something that you can do with traditional marketing as well the only difference is that in digital marketing you do the same thing at relatively very low cost and in a more specifically targeted way. In simple words, digital marketing is far more effective than traditional marketing and that too at relatively very low cost.

The post How Digital Marketing Is Helping Bollywood? appeared first on Digitrock.

But are they getting substantial returns on their investment? Are they able to target the right segment of the audience who would actually be interested in their product as in whatever it is a movie, a documentary or a TV serial. Perhaps no!

Then why are the trendsetters not able to recognize the trend of marketing and switch to digital than still practicing the same old traditional marketing and splurging money like anything.

Let’s go ahead and see how digital marketing can help Bollywood and your business.

Specific Targeting

First thing first! Specific targeting! Spending money is not a big issue if you get an appreciable amount of customers by doing so. By advertising on TV, Radio , newspapers or through posters you simply broadcast your information to the masses and who all would interested will become your customers however how about if you can specifically target your ads to these ‘who all’ . Certainly, you will get better results and will save a lot of money too. This is what you can do in digital marketing. Whether they are the ads on search engines or various websites, they are only displayed if your buyers’ persona matches your ads. So, depending on your product, you very well know what part of the audience will need it and that through digital marketing you can extend your offer to only that part of the audience. Chances of any miss outs on it are kind of negligible here.

Cost-Effective

Not only you can put across your message to the right segment of the audience but you also save a lot of money in digital marketing. You only spend where you need to and that too far lesser than what you were paying in the traditional marketing.

Measure it at its every part

The best thing about digital marketing is that you can monitor traffic and results and optimize your advertising campaigns accordingly. The tool called analytics in digital marketing helps you measure different ad campaigns with respect to traffic and other results. Thus, you get to have a better idea of what part of your budget is bringing result and what part is going waste so that you take actions in view of that.

Customer Engagement

Being interactive in design digital marketing lets the customer to interact and get engaged. Unlike the traditional marketing, here the user has the command to browse through whatever they wish to, making it far more interactive and engaging. Gone are those days when your audience will entertain your ads even on getting interrupted by you while they are on their go. They would simply change the channel on TV or radio, or overlook the ad on newspaper. No one loves interruption marketing now. Recognize this trend and switch to digital marketing. The sooner you switch the better results you gain.

Generating awareness for your business and spreading business defying all geographical constraints are something that you can do with traditional marketing as well the only difference is that in digital marketing you do the same thing at relatively very low cost and in a more specifically targeted way. In simple words, digital marketing is far more effective than traditional marketing and that too at relatively very low cost.

The post How Digital Marketing Is Helping Bollywood? appeared first on Digitrock.

Facebook has impressed analysts and investors in each quarter so far this year by reporting strong growth in mobile ad revenue. The company revealed that mobile ads accounted for 41% of total ad revenue in the second quarter this year, up from 30% in the first quarter and essentially nothing a year earlier. If that growth continues, Facebook could approach or even surpass the 50% mark this quarter.

Facebook has taken steps in recent weeks to make mobile ads more effective, including testing autoplay video ads in the news feed and introducing more calls to action on mobile app install ads to entice users to click, though it’s doubtful either had much impact on the previous quarter results.

Beyond the mobile ad stats, analysts will likely be looking for any updates or hints about the company’s new and as yet unannounced ad products. Instagram is expected to introduce ads this week, perhaps finally justifying the amount Facebook paid for the company. On the other hand, Facebook has repeatedly delayed introducing video ads on the homepage raising questions about when and how the company will choose to go this route.

Overall, Facebook is expected to report earnings per share of $0.19 on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter, up from earnings of $0.12 a share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Facebook stock has been on a tear this year, rising to as high as $54.83 earlier this month, roughly three times the low of $17.55 a share it hit a year earlier. The stock was hovering just below $50 a share in early trading Wednesday, an increase of 1% on the day.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

The post Is Facebook a Truly Mobile-First Company Yet? appeared first on Digitrock.

Facebook has impressed analysts and investors in each quarter so far this year by reporting strong growth in mobile ad revenue. The company revealed that mobile ads accounted for 41% of total ad revenue in the second quarter this year, up from 30% in the first quarter and essentially nothing a year earlier. If that growth continues, Facebook could approach or even surpass the 50% mark this quarter.

Facebook has taken steps in recent weeks to make mobile ads more effective, including testing autoplay video ads in the news feed and introducing more calls to action on mobile app install ads to entice users to click, though it’s doubtful either had much impact on the previous quarter results.

Beyond the mobile ad stats, analysts will likely be looking for any updates or hints about the company’s new and as yet unannounced ad products. Instagram is expected to introduce ads this week, perhaps finally justifying the amount Facebook paid for the company. On the other hand, Facebook has repeatedly delayed introducing video ads on the homepage raising questions about when and how the company will choose to go this route.

Overall, Facebook is expected to report earnings per share of $0.19 on revenue of $1.91 billion for the quarter, up from earnings of $0.12 a share on revenue of $1.26 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Facebook stock has been on a tear this year, rising to as high as $54.83 earlier this month, roughly three times the low of $17.55 a share it hit a year earlier. The stock was hovering just below $50 a share in early trading Wednesday, an increase of 1% on the day.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

The post Is Facebook a Truly Mobile-First Company Yet? appeared first on Digitrock.

The reports come from Adobe and Kenshoo Social, which are both part of Facebook’s Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer program, meaning they drive “outstanding positive impact in [Facebook’s] marketing developer ecosystem.”

The first annual Social Media Intelligence report released Monday by Adobe found that Facebook’s ad clicks, ad impressions and advertisers’ return on investment were all higher in 2013 than in 2012. According to the study, which took into account more than 131 billion Facebook ad impressions and 4.3 billion social engagements, Facebook ads were clicked 29% more often in 2013, and the return to investors was 58% higher than last year.

Other advertising metrics like cost-per-click were lower (by 40%), meaning advertising on Facebook is becoming cheaper and more effective, according to Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst of Adobe’s Digital Index. In some cases, Gaffney said, Facebook and other social platforms like Twitter and Pinterest are being undervalued by marketers using the last click model.

The last click model means that users may see an ad for an item they like on Facebook, then buy it online at a later date without going through Facebook to the retailer’s website. The purchase is still driven by the Facebook ad, but Facebook doesn’t always get the credit.

A separate study by Kenshoo Social found many of the same ad metric improvements for the company’s Q3 over Q2. According to Kenshoo’s data, which incorporates info from 85 million Facebook ads, ad clicks were up 14%, cost-per-click was down 9% and advertisers’ returns were 3 times higher than the same figures last quarter.

These improvements were similar to Kenshoo’s findings for Facebook ads last quarter. It appears that marketers can expect similar improvements moving ahead into the future.

“Part of the reason Facebook seems to accelerate each quarter is because of adoption,” said Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo CMO. “As more and more advertisers use it, they get more and more signals about how they can improve their ad delivery.”

In other words, the ads are growing more effective over time, according to Goldman.

Facebook is not alone in its social ad success. Adobe’s report found that both Twitter and Pinterest made significant ground on Facebook in terms of referral traffic to retail sites. Facebook still holds the top spot, but Twitter’s share of referral traffic grew more than 250% last year.

“I had thought that Facebook was running away with the game,” Gaffney said. “What’s coming out of our data set is that Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr are all making inroads themselves in a marketplace that I thought was already [dominated].”

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Facebook(Let), Flickr

The post Are Facebook Ads Working? The Clicks Say Yes appeared first on Digitrock.

The study, published by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, found that almost half of American users click on news in their Facebook feeds. Since 64% of adults in the United States use Facebook, that means one in three Americans consumes news on Facebook.

However, only 22% of the 30% who get their news on Facebook think the site is a useful source for information about the world, and only 4% of those think Facebook is “the most important way” to get their news.

“People go to Facebook to share personal moments — and they discover the news almost incidentally,” Amy Mitchell, Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research, said in a statement. “The serendipitous nature of news on Facebook may actually increase its importance as a source of news and information, especially among those who do not follow the news closely.”

The study quotes one respondent, who said he believes “Facebook is a good way to find out news without actually looking for it.”

The importance of the social network also depends on how much of a news junkie the user is.

Among those who click on news links in their Facebook news feeds, just 38% of heavy news followers think the social network is “an important way to get the news,” but among those who follow news “less often,” 47% consider Facebook as an important source.

On Monday, Facebook announced that it was driving 170% more traffic to media sites this year than in 2012.

This is the first of a series of studies on social media and news published by Pew in collaboration with the Knight Foundation. For this study, Pew surveyed 5,173 Americans ages 18 and older. You can read the full report here (.PDF).

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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The company did not immediately respond to our request for comment on the cause or extent of the outage, but Downrightnow.com shows there has been a “likely service disruption” for the better part an hour. LinkedIn acknowledged that it is “currently experiencing some issues” in a statement provided to Mashable and in the tweet below:

Our site is currently experiencing some issues. Our team is actively working on it. We’ll keep you updated here. Thanks for your patience.

— LinkedIn Help (@LinkedInHelp) October 23, 2013

LinkedIn isn’t the only social network to experience problems this week. Facebook suffered a prolonged outage on Monday morning, which prevented users from posting and engaging with posts on the site.

Image: Creative Commons, Nan Palmero

The post LinkedIn’s Website Goes Down for Some – Digital News appeared first on Digitrock.

A new tool, offered through Twitter’s API, allows marketers to send targeted tweets to specific geographic locations. For example, a brand could send a tweet to followers in the United States and a separate tweet to users in Japan from the same account. The tweets will not show up to followers in the brand’s Twitter timeline unless those followers reside in the country targeted.

This capability makes it possible for brands to consolidate their Twitter accounts, eliminating the need for different accounts for various countries or languages. It also lets brand target messages more directly to consumers by sending offers or promotions to followers in a specific region or create customized content for a specific country.

With roughly 77% of Twitter’s monthly active users located outside of the U.S., the ability for brands to connect with international users will be key to helping Twitter continually grow its advertising revenue moving forward.

The ability to geo-target messages is available to partners with access to Twitter’s Ads API, which was updated a few weeks ago. London-based TBG, a social media ad management company, first rolled out a country-specific tweeting tool on Oct. 4, although its customers aren’t utilizing the feature yet, according to a spokesperson.

Last week, Austin-based Spredfast, which offers tools that allow clients to better manage multiple social media accounts, became the first U.S.-based company to offer geo-targeted tweets.

“We think this is just the start,” said Jim Rudden, CMO of Spredfast. “The whole focus is on, ‘How do we get relevance in the news feed?’ The more targeted you can get, the better.”

For brands, the benefit is minimizing the number of social accounts to manage, creating a more direct funnel for consumer feedback. Brands would no longer need to manage or monitor regional Twitter handles; all messaging would come from the same account, so all feedback, comments or complaints would be directed to the same place.

However, compacting a brand’s Twitter handles also means consolidating a brand’s current followers and convincing users to follow a different Twitter handle (the brand’s main one).

TBG hopes brands will be willing to look past this issue, even if the process of shifting to a single account takes six months to a year.

“[One handle] is more efficient and it makes it easier for users to find you,” said Ian Cassidy, TBG’s executive creative director, in a statement to Mashable. “It also means that brands that have a global Twitter account can test localized, more specific messaging in different countries, which should increase engagement.”

As brands start to test out this new technology in the coming months, we’ll find out exactly how specific those messages can get.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Mashable composite; Flickr, Kevin M. Gill

The post Tailored Tweets, Coming to a Country Near You appeared first on Digitrock.

Facebook also disclosed that from September 2012 to September 2013, Time’s referral traffic rose 208%, BuzzFeed’s increased by 855% and Bleacher Report experienced a boost of 1,081%. Facebook also announced a feature called Stories to Share for page managers of media firms that recommends which stories to share on Facebook.

Andy Mitchell, director of partnerships for Facebook, attributes much of the growth in referrals to improvements in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. “We’re getting better at showing the right story at people who are interested in it,” he says. In addition, Facebook has shared best practices with media firms, which help them post more effectively, he says.

New research from SimpleReach bolsters the claim. SimpleReach found that Facebook drives more traffic to media sites than any other social media platform.

Meanwhile, Facebook had some advice to media firms: Post more. Facebook worked with 29 media sites over a seven-day period recently and found a greater number of posts “frequently” increases referral traffic by more than 80%. During that test period the site posted 57% more articles, which netted an 89% increase in outbound clicks to their domains plus 10% more Likes on average. The number of net fans per page rose 49%.

That said, Mitchell does acknowledge that the law of diminishing returns applies: At some point, you can overload fans with too many posts. Facebook doesn’t have a recommended number of posts. Mitchell says media properties have to determine a figure on their own.

Along the same lines, Stories to Share helps those media firms figure out which stories to post next. The recommendation widget is pretty straightforward: It analyzes your homepage to see which stories people are sharing the most on Facebook even though the media property hasn’t yet shared it through its Facebook account. That feature is going live on Monday with 1,5000 news organizations. Stories to Share had been in beta with a handful of news organizations (the company declined to identify which ones) over the past few weeks.

The emphasis on media partners comes as Facebook has recently revved competition with the much-smaller Twitter for ad-spending opportunities related to real-time marketing like second-screen conversations and trending news items. Encouraging news organizations to post more often will aid a Trending Articles feature that seems to be a likely next move for the company.

Image: Getty/KIMIHIRO HOSHINO

The post Facebook Average Referral Traffic to Media Sites Up 170% This Year appeared first on Digitrock.

While the outage may have been a headache for Facebook and many users, some brands decided to turn it into a marketing opportunity — for better or worse:

#Facebookdown Grab your Venus razor and Embrace your extra "me" time. pic.twitter.com/pUYjLVobBb

— Gillette Venus (@GilletteVenus) October 21, 2013

#facebookdown? Ci pensiamo noi. pic.twitter.com/NLKDR5j47s

— Red Bull Italy (@redbullITA) October 21, 2013

Facebook is down, but don't worry, here’s our status update: thirsty #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/RJXVWkvnur

— Jupiler (@Jupiler) October 21, 2013

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Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty

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