The Most Popular Branded Boards on Pinterest

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Although the vast majority of brand engagement on Pinterest is user-generated , many branded accounts have achieved an impressive reach of their own. Social media-benchmarking company Unmetric took a look at 5,000 branded Pinterest boards in mid-March to assess which boards generated the most engagement in terms of followers, comments, likes and repins. Unsurprisingly, the most popular branded boards tend to fall in categories that are already popular among Pinterest's predominantly female userbase — namely food, fashion, home and weddings. The standout brand in the study is Better Homes and Gardens , whose "Blogger Faves From BHG.com" — a group board managed by 10 guest pinners — merited the second most repins, the third most likes and the fourth greatest number of comments among branded boards. Its "Blogger Recipes We Love," another group board with 15 contributors, ranked in the top three for repins and likes. Read more »

Dove Experiment Gets a Ballsy NSFW Parody

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You've seen the Dove "sketches" campaign . You've seen the parody . Now, here's another parody. The premise: Men are seated in a room and describe their testicles to an artist. Before long, they get hip to the fact that the man is, in fact, sketching their nether regions according to their description. Then, some men and women describe the body part in question. Sketches based on both descriptions are compared and the men get emotional "Those balls are angry and have no friends," says one such man, referring to the ones based on his self-description. "And these are alive and have hope ..." Is it funny? Read more »

Microsoft Office Ad Turns ‘Forbes’ Magazines Into Wi-Fi Hotspots

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Like other tech companies, Microsoft has advertised some of its products in the past by offering free Wi-Fi in public places like subways and park benches. Now, the company is doing something a little more original and promoting a product by offering free Wi-Fi inside a magazine. Yes, you read that right. In a new promotion, Microsoft is advertising Office 365 by installing a T-Mobile router into the latest issue of Forbes magazine, turning the print publication into a Wi-Fi hotspot for two weeks. The promotion was first reported by Engadget and has since been confirmed to Mashable by a Microsoft rep, who noted that it was only to included in a "limited number" of the magazines. Read more... More about Media , Advertising , Microsoft , and Business Read more »

Facebook Home Ad Encourages Phone Use During Family Dinners

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Facebook Home can make spending time in your real home a little less boring — at least that's the suggestion in a new ad for the product. Facebook's latest video for Home shows a young woman checking her friends' status updates on her phone to escape the "dull" conversation her family is having at the dinner table. Each update she sees on the phone comes to life around her — one friend pounds away at the drums in the corner of the room, another group of friends have a snowball fight around the table — drowning out the real-world conversation in the process. The social network has used this formula in several ads now to promote Home, an Android launcher that centers the smartphone experience around friends rather than apps. In one video, an airline passenger checks Home to entertain himself while waiting for takeoff; in another video, a Facebook employee turns to Home to drown out the sound of his boss Mark Zuckerberg talking. Read more »

I Kind Of Love These “Exit Traffic Ads” That Show Up When You Leave A Site

“Wow, that was a cool ad” is not something I say often. But I was recently browsing Wookiepedia, a Star Wars Wikia site, and when I clicked an external link it popped up a half-screen interstitial for 15 seconds before redirecting me to my destination. Instead of cluttering its site with more ads, Wookiepedia let me bounce around internally for free, but “charged” me to leave. And I was impressed. Advertising is the lifeblood of the consumer Internet. Read more »

Insanely Violent Music Video Helps Vodka Brand Get 10 Million Views

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Should a video be considered an ad just because there's some product placement? Biting Elbows, an indie band from Russia, posted an insane "music video" earlier this month that has all the gore of a Tarantino movie, except it's shot entirely from one person's perspective. According to Creativity-Online , the video was shot with five stuntmen and some GoPro cameras. The music video is so bizarre that it has attracted nearly 10 million views on YouTube and even received a response from Samuel L. Jackson on Twitter: "This is some Buck Wild shit." But all the action almost obscures the fact that the video advertises a product: Neft Vodka. There's no call-to-action in the video, but early on, the main character picks up a canister of the Russian premium vodka and uses it to clean his wounds. The brand name also appears on the side of a plane towards the end of the video Read more »

Twitter Study Shows Its Mobile-First Users Are Younger, More Engaged And Easier To Market To

Twitter released the details of a new study about its “primary mobile users,” or those who engage with Twitter more on mobile devices and on the mobile web than on the desktop. The study, commissioned by Twitter from Kantar Media’s Compete, revealed that Twitter’s mobile-first users are more engaged than mobile users in more ways than one, skew younger, and tend to be more receptive to branded content than their desktop counterparts. Primary mobile users are 57 percent less likely to log into Twitter on the desktop than the average Twitter user, but they check the service much more frequently than most; they’re around 86 percent more likely to be active on Twitter several times a day than the average user. They’re mostly coming in by way of smartphone apps, but a considerable 15 percent of those who are primarily mobile users access by tablet first and foremost. Users who are mobile-first end up being younger than the average Twitter user, too, the study found. Users in the 18-34 range are 52 percent more likely to log in primarily via a mobile device than other age groups. They’re also more likely to check in with the service as a means of book-ending their day, being 157 percent more likely than average to open Twitter when waking up, and 129 percent more likely to do so when going to sleep for the night. They’re also 160 percent more likely to use Twitter at school or at work, 169 percent more likely to use the service while shopping, and three times as likely to use it when commuting or before or after seeing a movie. Read more »

As Mobile Devs Get More Sophisticated, Flurry Adds Crash, User Acquisition Analytics

San Francisco’s Flurry initially got its reach through offering a basic package of analytics that more than 95,000 different developers snapped up. But as the iOS and Android ecosystems have matured, app makers are getting more sophisticated. The biggest ones often juggle 30 to 40 ad networks and marketing channels, and need to understand which ones perform the best. So Flurry’s rolling out user acquisition and crash analytics today. The company’s crash analytics lets developers get automatic alerts on new errors and common crashes. Read more »

Watch Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd’s Teaser for Samsung’s Super Bowl Ad

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Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd pitch ideas for a Samsung Super Bowl ad in this 60-second teaser for Samsung's upcoming 120-second Super Bowl ad. In a very meta concept, the two stars pitch Mr. Show 's Bob Odenkirk on an idea for "The Next Big Thing." Odenkirk, however, is hypersensitive about getting sued for using the term "Super Bowl" or naming either team playing in the game (though the "50 minus 1ers" and the "Baltimore Blackbirds" is fine.) Finally, he suggests using the term "el plato supremo" instead of Super Bowl. The full 2-minute ad, and an extended cut version with never-been-seen footage will be released later this week, according to Samsung. The brand is encouraging consumers… Continue reading... More About: Advertising , Marketing , Paul Rudd , samsung , Seth Rogen , Super Bowl ads Read more »

Mobile Ad Revenues Will Top $11.4 Billion In 2013, Up 19% On 2012. India, China And Display Fuelling The Boost

The growing popularity of free mobile content — largely in the form of apps — is having a big impact on mobile advertising, the route that many developers and publishers are taking to monetize that content. Gartner has released its forecasts for mobile advertising today, and it predicts that this year, mobile ads will collectively bring in $11.4 billion in revenues, a rise of 18.75% on 2012′s $9.6 billion. With that growth will also come an evolution in what kind of ads are doing best: display ads will grow faster than search and eventually over take them, says Gartner. But other things will not change. The Asia Pacific region will keep its dominant position in mobile ads in 2013, and for the next three years to come, as the global market for mobile ads grows by a further 400% between now and 2016 to $24.5 billion. Gartner, it should be pointed out, first published these projections in November 2012 , but has actually revised them up. ”The mobile advertising market took off even faster than we expected due to an increased uptake in smartphones and tablets, as well as the merger of consumer behaviors on computers and mobile devices,” writes Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. The growth of display advertising against search ads is down to a few different factors Read more »