Tiffani Allen

SEJ Annual Report: State of Digital Marketing 2017
Search Engine Journal conducted their annual study and found some fascinating statistics. For example, 42% of respondents allocate almost all of their digital budget to PPC and display advertising, and 62% of marketers surveyed listed Facebook as their preferred social platform. Search Engine Journal

New Geostickers in Instagram Stories for New York City and Jakarta
If you are using Instagram in New York or Jakarta, you may have noticed a new feature – Geostickers. When you take a photo, you can click on the sticker icon and the Geostickers will appear. This is coming from a long line of changes Instagram is making that look — probably non-coincidentally — a lot like Snapchat. Instagram

139 Stats and Facts About Instagram [Infographic]
A new infographic has highlighted 139 fun facts and stats about Instagram. Notably, the network brought in an estimated $1.53 billion in advertising revenue and accounted for 8.4% of Facebook’s total advertising revenue. Another fun tidbit – if Selena Gomez were a country, and her followers were a population, she’d be the 12th most populous country in the world. MarketingProfs

40% of Online Ads Are Found to Be Overweight and Slow Sites
A recent report showed that 40% of online ads are ‘overweight’ and are slow to load, causing advertisers’ content to not show up to users. Publishers like Business Insider have taken measures to notify their advertisers that their ads need to be within a certain size to guarantee visibility. Ad Age

Your Guide to Email-Open Statistics on Mobiles [Infographic]
Well over half of all email users are opening their email on mobile devices. It’s important that marketing emails are mobile friendly, because although a majority of emails are being opened on mobile, most conversions are coming from desktop. MarketingProfs

YouTube Kills 30-Second Unskippable Mobile Ads for Shorter and More Interactive Formats
Beginning on January 1, 2018, YouTube will kill the unskippable 30-second ads users see on mobile videos. Brands can still buy 20-second and 6-second bumper ads. YouTube has reportedly made this change as part of their ‘commitment to providing better ad experience’. AdWeek

10 Trends Driving Visual Content Marketing in 2017 (Infographic)
AdWeek reports: “53 percent of survey participants said that between 91 and 100 percent of their published content contained visual material, and more than 90 percent are using visual content in at least one-half of their posts.” AdWeek

Snapchat QR Codes Can Now Deep Link to Websites
Yes, you read that right — QR codes are back! Snapchat is now allowing users to send ‘Snapcodes’ to other users, and outside of the Snapchat network, that lead to whichever web page they’d like. With Instagram overtaking some of Snapchat’s user base with their live stories, this is definitely a level up move for the media platform. Snapchat

The Future of Influencer Marketing Research Report 2017
TopRank Marketing and Traackr, in partnership with Altimeter, released a brand new report this week. The goal of this report was to clarify the definition and meaning of influencer marketing and provide solid future direction to influencer marketing programs through research. For example, 71% of marketers said their influencer marketing programs are strategic or highly strategic, but account for less than 10% of total marketing budget. As Lee said in his blog post: “Clearly, enterprise companies need to put their money where their strategy is.” Online Marketing Blog.

Facebook Overhauls Trending and Will Now Show the Same Topics to Everyone
Facebook announced on Wednesday that it won’t be personalizing their list of trending topics going forward, meaning that everybody will see the same stories in Facebook’s Trending section without consideration given to location. This is done in an effort to help users avoid missing important news. Entrepreneur

How Millennials and Baby Boomers Consume User-Generated Content [Infographic]
47% of millennials trust user-generated content, vs. 36% of their baby boomer counterparts. However, each generation shared a relative distrust of content created by brands. This infographic shows the generation gap of UGC. HubSpot

Survey: 60 percent of voice users want more answers and fewer search results
People who use voice search — the majority of whom prefer to do so in private vs. public — use it because it’s fast, doesn’t require reading, and gives you fewer answers to sort through. What does voice search mean for the future of search marketing? Search Engine Land

The Most Important Google Search Rank Factors [Infographic]
Search rankings are a key consideration for many aspects of a digital marketing strategy — and the ever-changing nature of search algorithms doesn’t necessarily make it easy to determine where the most impact can be made. This infographic spells out the top 20 most important Google search rank factors. MarketingProfs

Edelman Digital’s 2017 Trends Report
Edelman released their annual digital trends report and things are looking good for virtual and augmented reality, as well as programmatic digital ad spend. What else will be trending this year? The 50 page report has all the details. Edelman

Infographic: How Millennials and Baby Boomers Consume User-Generated Content
Content and recommendations from other consumers are generally considered more trustworthy than content coming from a brand. This infographic lends more credibility to that idea. Although Boomers and Millennials consume content differently, they have one key preference in common: 76% of consumers believe that content shared by average people is more honest than advertising from brands. AdWeek

The Top Three Data Trends of 2016
Ad Age discusses the top three data trends of 2016: The customer ID movement, growth in data sharing and the location data tracking boom. What’s the common thread? Collecting more data to enable greater personalization for the consumer, and to foster a better understanding of your audience, were keys strategic elements of 2016. Ad Age

Infographic: Average Cart Abandonment Rates for Q3 2016
Why, and at what frequency, are users abandoning their online shopping carts? Many folks are abandoning carts simply because they’re just looking or researching — 34% to be exact. 23% are abandoning carts because of issues with the cost or time required for shipping. ClickZ

3Q16 Email Marketing Benchmarks and Trends
Marketers sent nearly 20% more emails in Q3 of 2016 than in the same period of 2015. However, click through rates were 12.5% lower. This could be due to the rising share of mobile ‘clicks’ to marketing emails, meaning that the emails we send to our list need to be mobile-friendly and actionable from a mobile device. MarketingProfs

Get Proof: The Case for B2B Marketing on LinkedIn [Infographic]
A new infographic from LinkedIn makes a compelling case for B2B Marketing on the channel. 92% of B2B marketers leverage LinkedIn over all other social platforms for their marketing efforts, and 80% of B2B marketing leads generated through social come from LinkedIn. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog

Facebook Page Layout Changes: How Marketers Should Respond
Facebook pages have a new layout for visitors — bumping up videos and photos underneath shopping recommendations where popular content used to live. Not a fan? Not to worry! You can still edit the order of your page’s content by editing the order of the sidebar tabs. Social Media Examiner