Conventional wisdom suggests timing is everything, but money and power certainly sway things as well. Being first only matters until it doesn't.
Facebook has no problem selling ads and encouraging marketers to launch campaigns on its platform, as consistently demonstrated by its financial results. However, the quality of campaigns varies widely. Facebook says it wants to help marketers and brands be more creative and increase the impact of their work by collaborating with a growing team of specialists who work at a special division within the company that's dedicated to this purpose, called Facebook Creative Shop.
Many modern businesses live and die by the stories they tell -- and the stories that are told about them. It's crucial to strike the appropriate tone in today's always-connected forum of oversaturated media and crowded mobile and social distribution channels, but it's no longer about one narrative from a single voice.
Facebook last week detailed a number of initiatives meant to help it form a more cohesive strategy for implementing its arsenal of recently acquired advertising technology.
Marketers have devised all sorts of creative ways to promote and sell their brands on Facebook. Of course, there are many marketing tactics Facebook doesn't want to see on its platform, and it created a specific set of policies to weed them out.
Snapchat just recently started to include advertisements in its popular ephemeral messaging app, but its advertising strategy is notably different than its competitors' strategies. Snapchat says it has no interest in tricking its users into clicking ads by blurring the line between advertising and organic content created by actual users.
Marketing is sometimes considered a niche form of storytelling, but its stories mean nothing if they don't make brands resonate with potential customers and ultimately lead to sales. Many modern marketers view the people who connect with their brands on social media as potential leads that could become customers.
In conversations with marketing professionals, it's rare for five minutes to pass without the topic turning to programmatic advertising. Ad dollars spent on direct programmatic initiatives are expected to reach $9.8 billion by the end of 2014, according to eMarketer.
Social media is an opportunity unfulfilled in Hollywood. It bears surprisingly little to no impact on the success of films and TV shows, according to a group of seven film studio executives speaking here at The Grill.
Ello, a new social network that's trying to make a name for itself as the latest alternative to Facebook, sure isn't much to look at. In fact, there really isn't much to do or see on Ello at all.
Social media is a virtual ghost town for most CEOs with participation among the world's most elite leaders at embarrassing low numbers. A staggering 68 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies have no social media presence at all, according to a new study from CEO.com and Domo.
Apple CEO Tim Cook unequivocally tells PBS' Charlie Rose that the company has no plans to be in the social media business. "We have no plans to be in the social networking area," he tells Rose without hesitation.
For digital marketers, the road to riches on mobile screens has been long and riddled with holes of divergence. But the pursuit, which harkens back to the pre-smartphone era, has gotten more promising thanks to social media.
Twitter is moving away from its cost-per-engagement model for ads and putting objectives like app installs, follows and leads front and center. Campaigns on Twitter will now begin with the end goal in mind, enabling advertisers to only pay for specific actions they deem most effective in achieving that objective.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple has been flattering competitors for years. The company has famously copied, redesigned and reimagined many more products and services than it has ever invented.
