Re/code team says, “Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Monday gave potential investors little new information about his Chinese e-commerce giant, but surprised them by addressing governance concerns, including a controversial 2010 spin-off of its online payment service.Ma made the remarks at a luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in front of hundreds of hedge funds, mutual funds and other institutional investors, as the company kicked off a two-week, multi-city marketing blitz for its initial public offering.Alibaba was expecting about 500 investors to attend the first stop... [...]

Re/code team says, “Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Friday filed to sell up to $24.3 billion in stock, making it the biggest U.S. initial public offering ever.Yahoo cut its stake in the company to 16.3 percent from 22.4 percent and Soft Bank cuts its stake to 32.4 percent from 34.1 percent earlier, Dow Jones reported.The company is expected set its initial share price at between $60 and $66, a source told CNBC on Friday”.Alibaba Files to Sell up to $24.3 Billion in StockRe/code [...]

Amy Schatz says, “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday that Americans don’t have enough choice when it comes to high-speed broadband providers and the government needs to do something about it.More than half of Americans have only one choice of providers that can offer 25 Mbps download speeds, adding, “[T]here is simply no competitive choice for most Americans.”Wheeler’s conclusion might seem like a no-brainer for most Americans who’ve shopped for lower-cost high-speed broadband service only to find they have just one pricy option. But it’s actually... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google has introduced a new ad extension in AdWords called callouts, which give advertisers more space to tout the benefits of their sites such as free shipping, sales, and other promotions.While many advertisers today use precious ad copy real estate to promote free shipping and sales, we’ll likely see advertisers adjust their ad copy as well as sitelink strategies with the advent of callouts”.Google AdWords’ New Callout Extensions Give Advertisers More Promotional RoomMarketing Land [...]

Peter Kafka says, “Another installment from the “Facebook Giveth, Facebook Taketh Away” story that all Web publishers are following with intense interest:Below is a chart of Gawker’s U.S. traffic, courtesy of editor Max Read. That first peak, from June, was the site’s third-best month. The peak on the right, from August, indicates that this month will be Gawker’s second-best month.But since you’ve already read the first sentence of this post, you know what happened to create that giant traffic valley in July”.Why Building a Web Business Built on Facebook Is So ScaryRe/code [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “Retargeting relies fundamentally on collecting user data and applying it intelligently to expedite conversions.This post looks at the case for retargeting, the working behind it, and how to design ads”.Display retargeting 101: a handy guide to the buzziest ads on the internet‘Econsultancy’ Blog [...]

Peter Kafka says, “The last time we checked in on Upworthy, the viral Web-sharing startup, we found that itstraffic was sagging. Not a big deal, said CEO Eli Pariser: The company was training more people to find stuff to share, so it hadn’t spent as much time sharing stuff.Three months later, Upworthy’s traffic is still headed down. After peaking in November, the site is now back to where it was a year ago. In July, it had about eight million visitors, down from a high of 18 million last fall, according to comScore”.Upworthy’s Traffic Goes Lower, but Revenue Is ClimbingRe/code [...]

Richard Joyce says, “The acquisition of [X+1] by Rocketfuel signals the beginning of the end for “programmatic” ad networks. Since the industry’s shift to programmatic, countless ad networks have changed how they market themselves, adjusting their sales language to mimic legitimate programmatic platforms. The “programmatic” ad network insertion order-based and flat-rate business model has prolonged the black box opacity that spurred the need for demand side platforms and exchange based media buying. It’s only fitting that one of the industry’s most successful “programmatic”... [...]

Laura Ramos says, “Phoenix in the summer. To say it’s “hot” is an understatement.Weather reports predict a rather balmy 92 degrees F for Thursday of this week. Mild compared to the last time I attended the Marketing Technology Summit, co-sponsored by the Phoenix chapter of the BMA and the Arizona Technology Council.This year’s hot topic is big data — one of the four market imperatives Forrester believes will help companies to thrive in this digital age where buyers, business-to-business included, control most aspects of the purchase process. I’m... [...]

Clement Teo says, “Every business must transform into a digital business. Digital businesses continuously exploit digital technologies to create new sources of value for their customers and increase their operational agility to serve those customers. In Asia Pacific, CIOs have had limited success in driving digital business transformation. Organizations taking an early lead in transforming their business include Commonwealth Bank of Australia, China’s Ping An Insurance Group, and DBS Bank in Singapore.A true digital business needs to integrate two sides of a digital strategy: digital... [...]