What B2B Buyers Say Sellers Can Do to Influence Their Purchase Decisions [Report]
71 percent of B2B buyers see client desires and needs as the leading influences on purchase decisions, while 68 consider showing what’s possible or how to solve a problem as being the biggest influence — two of several statistics of interest to B2B marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts
U.S. Ad Market Turns In Best March Ever: Up 25% Vs. 2020, 7% Vs. 2019
March saw the U.S. ad market grow nearly 25 percent since the same time last year, and even managed to increase 7.2 percent from pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, according to newly-released Standard Media Index (SMI) data. MediaPost
Zoom launches Immersive View to unify participants in the same virtual room
Zoom has announced that up to 25 people can virtually co-occupy shared environments using a recently-launched feature, in a move aimed at expanding the video conferencing firm’s traditional participant presentation format of individual square streams. VentureBeat
Study Finds Independent Agencies Make Strong Comeback In Q1
64 percent of independent agencies had increased first quarter revenue year-over-year, while 75 percent said that they expect remote working options to endure into post-pandemic routines — two of several findings in recently-released survey data. MediaPost
LinkedIn Announces ‘LinkedIn Learning Hub’ to Provide More Comprehensive Skills Development Pathways
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has announced that its forthcoming learning experience platform (LXP) will offer a variety of new community-based learning and other skill-boosting features of interest to digital marketers. Social Media Today
IAB: Ad ‘Confidence’ Has Surged, Less Frequent Reviews Of Budgets
Some 61 percent of U.S. advertising executives are confident or very confident in the stability of their advertising budget for the rest of 2021 — sharpy higher than the 22 percent who expressed the same levels of confidence in November of last year, according to newly-released survey data. MediaPost
Reddit unveils its Clubhouse clone, Reddit Talk
Social news aggregator and discussion platform Reddit has launched Reddit Talk — its flavor of the audio-call-based communication app format popularized by Clubhouse, which Reddit has made available for both iOS and Android devices, the firm recently announced. TechCrunch
Facebook Tests New Video Ad Options, Including Updated Targeting Categories and Instagram Reels Ads
Facebook has announced testing of new in-stream ads with a variety of topic-based targeting features, utilizing machine learning to offer what the social media giant expects to be increased response rates. Social Media Today
Microsoft Advertising Unleashes Ad Units And The Ability To Import Facebook Campaigns. What Else Is New?
Digital advertisers can use a new feature being tested by Microsoft to more easily bring campaigns from Facebook Ads into Microsoft Advertising, and the firm also released an array of new ad formats including video ads for search results, Microsoft recently announced. AdExchanger
Ad Execs: Paid Content/Influencers Now The Biggest Share Of Digital Budgets
Paid branded content and influencer marketing have accounted for 20 percent of 2021 digital advertising budgets, while influence marketing was seen as the second most important digital ad option for 2021, according to recently-released survey data. MediaPost
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
A lighthearted look at “the state of digital advertising” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist
How Pixar Uses Hyper-Colors to Hack Your Brain — Wired
TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
- Lee Odden — Finding Acceptance and Identity through Trail Running, even though I’m not a Runner [Video] — Tim Washer
- TopRank Marketing — Using Social Media Polls for Market Research — Utah State University
Have you located your own top B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below.
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