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

Twitter Launches Initial Test of ‘Professional Profiles’ for Brands and Creators
Twitter has begun testing new brand and creator professional profiles, which include information about a business, verification badges, and which may feature galleries and other elements, the social media platform recently announced. Social Media Today

These Are Marketers’ Top Organizational Priorities Right Now
45 percent of CMO Council members expect to upgrade or recruit for go-to-market execution and operations, while 38 percent say they’ll do so for content and demand-gen, followed by some 33 percent who plan to upgrade digital interactive marketing efforts — the top three spots in recently-released CMO organizational priority survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts

The Buzz On B2B: Email Is Tops For Both Acquisition And Retention
Half of B2B marketers have seen email click-through rates (CTRs) remain steady during the first quarter of 2021, while 28 percent saw higher CTR than during 2020, according to recently-released survey data, which also showed that by early 2022 some 40 percent of marketers expect to restore their marketing spending to regular levels, with 25 percent doing so in early 2021. MediaPost

Vast Majority of Consumers Associate High-Quality Creative with Brand Trust
85 percent of U.S. adult consumers in a recent survey said that well-designed ads help build brand trust, while 64 percent said that brands with poor creative design were less trsutworthy, according to the Celta survey. MarketingCharts

B2B Myopia: Brands And Visitors Disagree On What Works On Websites
59 percent of B2B marketing customers say they like reviews and testimonials on websites, compared with just 37 percent of B2B marketers, while 44 percent of marketers viewed compelling brand messaging as important when it comes to creating a powerful website experience, compared to only 24 percent of website visitors — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers contained in recently-released survey data. MediaPost

Pinterest Kicks Off ‘Be Their Next’ B-to-B Campaign
Pinterest has launched its first global B2B campaign aimed at advertisers is the U.S. and five other countries, seeking to bolster B2B brand involvement on the visual-oriented social media platform, and shared survey data showing that Pinterest users are 25 percent more likely to tell others about new products, the firm recently announced. Adweek

More B2B Tech Content Marketers Successfully Building Trust, Loyalty
86 percent of B2B technology marketers have said that they rate their content marketing efforts as being successful, while 88 percent attributed that success to providing content that offers value — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in recently-released report data. MarketingCharts

B2B Buyers Prefer Email Over Other Channels, Especially Older Generations, Study Finds
Email is the leading overall communication channel among B2B decision makers, preferred by 54 percent of millennials and 60 percent of members of older generations, while 51 percent of millennials said they see digital purchasing channels as fostering more personalized solutions, according to newly-released survey data. MediaPost

Instagram Announces That Stories Drafts are Coming Soon
Facebook-owned Instagram will roll out a new scheduling option that will provide a helpful change for digital marketers who are using the native Instagram Stories interface, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today

B2B Highlights From “The CMO Survey”
51.3 percent of B2B marketers said they were more optimistic in January 2021 than during the fourth quarter of 2020, while 77 percent said it isn’t appropriate for their brand to take a stance on politically-charged issues — two of numerous findings of interest to digital marketers in new CMO survey data. B2B Marketing Directions

Longer Articles Associated with More Traffic, Shares
Longer articles tend to get greater numbers of views and shares, with 7,000-plus word articles the most likely to be shared and garner the most page-views, according to recently-released SEMrush data examining some 1.2 million blog articles. MarketingCharts

Gartner: 75% of VCs will use AI to make investment decisions by 2025
Study data looks at how shifting from gut-feel decisions to artificial intelligence-based investment has begun to affect venture capital, while moving from a pilot program to production is a top data science and machine learning challenge, newly-released report data shows. VentureBeat

Livestreaming finds a home among influencers
Live-stream content usage by influencers has remained steady during the pandemic, with some 37 percent of U.K. and U.S. social media users who follow influencers noting that they actively watched the live-stream influencer content, in surveys conducted both in May and September 2020, according to recently-released report data. eMarketer

How and Why B2B Marketers Are Using Intent Data [Report]
56 percent of B2B marketers use intent data to identify new target accounts, while 51 percent use this data to align sales and marketing, according to recently-released report data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingProfs

Post Engagement Rates Remain Far Higher on Instagram Than Facebook or Twitter
Across industries, Instagram saw an average engagement rate more than four times that of Facebook during 2020, according to a recently-released report that examined more than 22 million business page posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. MarketingCharts

Microsoft Bing updates search results interface to make it more visually immersive
Microsoft’s Bing has augmented its search result experience to include expanding image carousels and infographic-like knowledge panels, in addition to several other new additions, Bing announced recently. Search Engine Land

New Channels, Better Targeting: How B2B Tech Marketing Is Changing [Survey]
54 percent of global B2B marketers plan to use more marketing channels during 2021, and 51 percent say they are seeking out new ways to tell their brand’s stories — two of several statistics of interest to digital marketers in newly-released report data from Spotify and WARC. MarketingProfs

New Report Looks at the Rising Influence of Online Communities
77 percent of consumers say that online groups are the single most important communities in their lives, a trend that has increased during the pandemic, according to recently-released global survey data. Social Media Today

Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets
Twitter has announced a selection of payment tools that will allow online publishers to provide exclusive content on the social platform, while a new Twitter Communities feature will bring topic-specific groups to the platform. The Verge

Brand marketers stick to trust-building strategies forged in 2020’s fires, study finds
91 percent of brand marketers will keep focusing on the strategies aimed at building trust they developed in 2020 as a response to the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. Marketing Dive

Ad Prices Forecast To Inflate 3% This Year
Digital display ad price inflation for 2021 is expected to be 3.4 percent, with digital video slightly higher at 3.6 percent, while this year is expected to hold some recovery from the impact of the pandemic in 2020, according to newly-released forecast data. MediaPost

In Engagement Shift, Friday Proves Top Day for Email Response Rates in 2020
With an 18.9 percent click-to-open (CTO) rate, marketing emails sent on Friday lead the way when it comes to engagement levels, according to recently-released survey data, with Saturday coming in as having the lowest engagement rates. MarketingCharts

LinkedIn Provides New Tips on How to Create Engaging B2B Content [Infographic]
LinkedIn (client) has launched a new 17-page guide offering B2B marketers tips, statistics and a variety of insight and examples surrounding the production of successful B2B creative on the Microsoft-owned platform, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today

2021 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report
Overall social media posting frequency has fallen, while engagement has declined on Instagram, according to newly-released report data from Rival IQ, which also found that platform-specific hashtags have seen growing success. Rival IQ

Dentsu Finds ‘Social Good’ Branding Attitudes Index High Among Most Nations, Less So In Japan
Brands that actively promote a variety of social good initiatives garner positive attitudes towards those brands, according to recently-released global survey data of social media users, examining how social media user attitudes differ in various nations. MediaPost

COVID-19’s Impact on B2B Tech Marketers’ Channel Strategies in 2021
Among B2B marketers, webinars, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and LinkedIn ads have grown in importance the most during the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data. The data also shows that the top challenges faced by B2B technology marketers in 2021 are balancing quantity with quality, digital fatique, and measuring the right key performance indicators (KPIs). MarketingProfs

LinkedIn Announces New Measures to Tackle Inherent Bias as Part of Black History Month
LinkedIn (client) has launched an array of new initiatives that are part of a push towards systemic change to increase the Microsoft-owned professional social platform’s value to people in underrepresented groups, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today