Lane Ellis

Social media ad spend to surpass print for first time
Ad spending in 2019 will for the first time see social media topping print, with global spending growth up 20 percent increasing to $84 billion, according to recently-released forecast data from Zenith. Marketing Land

LinkedIn Launches Events to Facilitate Professional Meet-Ups
LinkedIn (client) has released a robust new tool allowing users to create and manage events pages, the culmination of a program first announced late last year, the professional social networking firm revealed this week. Social Media Today

Facebook testing ads in Groups tab
Facebook has begun allowing certain advertisers to utilize new mobile Facebook Groups ads, as part of an Ads Manager test, the social giant recently announced. Should the option eventually be rolling out to all advertisers, digital marketers will be able to target new audiences with mobile group ads. Marketing Land

LinkedIn takes the top spot for the third straight year in our annual Digital Trust Report — and Facebook remains in dead last
For the third consecutive year LinkedIn (client) has garnered the most-trusted social media platform spot, according to Business Insider Intelligence’s Digital Trust Report, which also saw Facebook ranked at the bottom. Business Insider

Instagram in-stream video ads driving more purchases than Story Ads: Report
Instagram’s in-stream video advertisements have edges out Story ads, according to new report data, with some 12 percent of consumers making a purchase after seeing a story video, while 27 percent did so after watching an in-feed video ad. Marketing Land

B2B Personalization Strategies Pivoting As Buyers Require Confidence, Consensus
A new survey from Gartner reveals that there is plentiful high-quality buying information available to B2B buyers, even to the point where 50 percent view the large amount of trustworthy data at hand as overwhelming. Demand Gen Report

Giphy to partner with Oracle Data Cloud’s Moat to measure viewability
Animated GIF image firm Giphy has partnered with Oracle Data Cloud’s analytics and measurement platform Moat to measure branded GIFs used with in-app and via mobile and desktop landscapes — a move aimed at providing greater validation to branded content on the service. Marketing Land

YouTube starts phasing out exact subscriber numbers
YouTube has begun removing precise subscriber counts for channels with over 1,000 followers, replacing them with rounded overview numbers, the Google-owned video service recently announced. The move has left some brands with subscriber accuracy concerns, especially large ones that could see rounded counts hiding nearly a million subscribers. Campaign US

Now Facebook says it may remove Like counts
Facebook has begun testing the elimination of “like” counts in news-feed posts, the social media giant recently confirmed, in a move echoing a similar shift from tests conducted with its Instagram property — aimed at placing greater focus on content and less on “like” counts. TechCrunch