Internet Marketing News February 2015 Recap
March 4, 2015Happy March! Here is an overview of the top Internet marketing news stories of February 2015.
- Google announced that fact-checked health information will be coming to its search results in the form of rich media in the Knowledge Graph.
- AdWords debuts call-only campaigns which displays a business’ phone number and call button in the ad. Unlike call extensions, the call-only campaign does not link to a brand’s website; it only allows users to call the business directly.
- In a continuous push for mobile-friendly sites, Google is now including mobile-friendly factors in its mobile search algorithm starting April 21st. In addition, apps that participate in Google’s App Indexing will rank better immediately for signed-in users.
Bing
- Bing is rolling out changes to its quality score reporting. For new campaigns without enough data, Bing will provide a quality score based on marketplace data. Second, reporting will be based on exact match. Third, Bing’s verbiage will be updated to reflect Google’s terminology in hopes of reducing user friction between the two platforms.
- Bing updated its local search results to feature an “order online” button. Clicking on the button takes you directly to sites like Eat25, EATStreet, and BringMeThat.
Yahoo
- During Yahoo’s first mobile developer conference, the team unveiled its mobile developer suite comprising Flurry Analytics, Flurry Pulse, Yahoo App Publishing, Yahoo Search in Apps, and Yahoo App Marketing.
YouTube
- Google launched a kid-friendly version of its app, dubbed YouTube Kids. The new service has a more childish design such as larger titles and images and includes only content approved by YouTube. The app also includes parental controls around time limits.
- Facebook debuts a new ad type, Product Ads, which allows marketers to dynamically display specific products for mobile and app users.
- In celebration of surpassing 2 million advertisers on the platform, Facebook launched an ads manager app for managing campaigns on the go.
- In an effort to expand advertising beyond Twitter, the platform announced partnerships to syndicate promoted tweets to Flipboard and Yahoo Japan.
- Twitter announced a new agreement with Google in which Twitter provides Google with full access to public tweets.
- Twitter acquired Niche, a startup that has over 6,000 image and video content creators across Snapchat, Instagram, and Vine.
- Twitter announced two ad conversion tracking enhancement tools—transaction value and key conversion tags—to help advertisers track an ROI against a promoted tweet.
- LinkedIn has added a new B2B “Lead Accelerator” tool which will serve ads on LinkedIn and on additional sites via their display network. The new tool integrates with Bizo’s Multichannel Nurturing Chanel product. Bizo was acquired by LinkedIn last August.
- LinkedIn added a notification center for company pages where social media managers can view an aggregated overview of likes, comments, and shares on recent updates.
- In the newest iteration of Rich Pins, Pinterest now allows users to pin iPhone and iPad apps. In addition, users can uncover new apps through Pinterest and download them directly via the install button.
Yelp
- Yelp acquired Eat24, an online food ordering service. Stemming from a partnership in 2013, Yelp hopes to make food delivery on their network seamless.
Have any questions about any of the above stories or think we missed something? Let us know in the comments section below. Also, be sure to check back in early April for our March recap. In the meantime, check out our Thoughts Page featuring our latest publications, blog posts, and featured articles; and sign up for the Catalyst Must-Have Digital Insights e-Newsletter for the latest thought leadership, industry updates, and Catalyst news.
