Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Facebook has disabled almost 1.3 billion fake accounts over the past six months
Facebook has stopped nearly 1.3 billion fake user accounts over the last six months, one of numerous statistics the company has revealed for the first time in a preliminary report announced this week. Recode

Pinterest proves popular with dads, pointing to shifting parental role
Pinterest has increased its popularity among millennial dads, with 42 percent of U.S. fathers in that demographic reporting that they find new products on the site, while nearly half of overall U.S. dads with a household income of $100K or more use Pinterest, according to new analysis data. Marketing Dive

Digital video ad spend keeps rising, with social media (i.e., Facebook) set to see most growth
Social media and digital video advertising spending will see the biggest gains over the next year, according to new IAB study data from $1M+ buyers, with two-thirds planning to move traditional video budgets to digital video. Marketing Land

Unskippable six-second video ads are coming to Snapchat
Snapchat plans to test short unskippable ads, in what would be an about-face from the firm’s traditional practices, appearing in certain Snapchat Shows content. DigiDay

Instagram is Testing Slo-Mo Videos, a Mute Button, More
Instagram has been testing a number of new features including slow-motion videos, a story archive calendar, the ability to hide unwanted users, and other changes, according to an examination of the app’s code, in a possible preview of coming enhancements. Search Engine Journal

Report: Social media use is increasing despite privacy fears
3.3 billion people worldwide use social media, an increase of some 100 million over the first three months of 2018, according to new report data from Hootsuite and We Are Social, despite a spate of recent privacy fears surrounding Facebook and other social companies. The Next Web

Google posts $31.1B in total revenue, beats top- and bottom-line expectations
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent firm, posted better than expected revenue results, with almost $27 billion in advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2018, beating both Wall Street and analyst predictions and continuing year-over-year increases. MarTech Today