∞ For a 6th straight quarter, mobile search was the main driver of growth for Google. (1/4)
[Business Insider]
∞ 96% of all search-ad clicks Google received in 4Q 2016 were on mobile devices. (2/4)
[Advertising Age]
∞ Google ads are becoming more cost efficient. Cost-per-click (the amount that Google charges for its ads) is down 15% YoY and down 9% QoQ, while paid clicks (the amount of times people click those ads) are up 36% YoY and 20% QoQ. (3/4)
[Business Insider]
∞ About 70% of Google's total revenue in 2016 came from ads on its own digital properties (web search pages, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.) The remaining advertising revenue comes from playing middleman for ads on the web and mobile devices. This latter business is lagging behind (and increasingly accounting for a smaller share of the pie), growing just 4 percent in 2016 compared with 22% of the former. (4/4)
[Bloomberg]
∞ Facebook is testing displaying ads - or "sponsored messages" - in its Messenger app. The ads won't show up inside actual conversations; instead, a carousel of ads will be featured just below the list of recent conversations. (1/3)
[Business Insider]
∞ Avoiding these ads is pretty straightforward - don't start a conversation with any company or brand. Currently, sponsored messages are only activated if a user initiates a conversation with a brand. (2/3)
[Lifehacker]
∞ The development is a result of Facebook running out of room to place ads in the news feed of its flagship app. It is also a sign that its efforts to monetize Messenger with chatbots hasn't yielded any tangible results. (3/3)
[Business Insider]
∞ Google took down 1.7 bn bad ads that violated it policies in 2016, more than double the number it took down in 2015. A sizable portion of these are ads for illegal products, featuring misleading/predatory offers or promoting malicious sites. (1/3)
[The Drum]
∞ However, one of the largest category of miscreants was "trick to click" ads, banners dressed up as system warnings to deceive users into clicking them and triggering the downloading of malware. Google disabled 112 million such ads in 2016, 6x the number in 2015. It also detected and disabled more than 23,000 self-clicking ads.
[Campaign]
∞ Of Google's 66,000 employees worldwide, more than 1,000 are dedicated to removing ads that violate its policies.
[WIRED]
February 02, 2017
Iqbal Mohammed is Head of Innovation & Strategy at a digital innovation agency serving the DACH and wider European markets. He is the winner of the WPP Atticus Award for Best Original Published Writing in Marketing & Communication.
You can reach him via email or Twitter.
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