Ginny Marvin says, “Google’s A/B testing and content personalization solutions, Optimize and Optimize 360, are both out of beta. The free version, Google Optimize, is available in 180 countries.Optimize debuted in beta last fall, several months after Google introduced Optimize 360 last spring as part of the new a la carte Google Analytics 360 Suite.Optimize is designed for small to mid-sized businesses. It ties in with Google Analytics, and that data is used to inform website tests. A visual editor lets users drag and page drop elements and it’s also possible to edit raw HTML... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “For the millions of tourists who visit London each year, seeing a West End show is usually at the top of the ‘must-do’ list.Unsurprisingly, this poses a big challenge for small or more traditional theatres – those that lack the marketing budget behind bigger productions.How can theatres such as Shakespeare’s Globe compete for the attention of international tourists? This was the challenge for agency, Digital Willow, which recently worked with the Globe to put a decidedly modern spin on its marketing strategy.Here’s a bit more on the campaign, as well as... [...]

Kevin Lee says, “One age-old question that often comes up when I chat with new prospects or new clients is, “Should I bid on my brand terms or generic terms where I rank in the top three organically?”This question is hardly trivial. It matters a great deal because PPC search budgets are generally constrained — and now, with other enticing options available from Facebook and other programmatic channels, we need to demonstrate that our search advertising budgets are being allocated optimally.Six key questions to ask before you beginThe best way to answer this question is by using... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “As more and more ad dollars shift to mobile and more and more advertisers, including struggling retailers, seek to drive foot traffic to their brick-and-mortar locations, is the time right for a cost-per-visit ad model?Location-based adtech firm xAd thinks so. xAd, which uses a proprietary platform to “[automate] geo-boundaries around key places and points of interest” and says it delivers ads to 500m users each month, recently announced a new pay-per-visit ad offering in the US that will allow advertisers to pay for ads only when they drive consumers... [...]

Nate Dame says, “Last month, Google released a video detailing best practices for hiring an SEO company, and it is positioned to become the go-to guide for hiring an SEO. After all, who better to tell companies what they should look for in an SEO than the operators of the world’s most popular search engine?The advice in the video is useful, but it’s biased and incomplete — like so much of the information the company distributes. For example, Ohye states that valid recommendations from an SEO must be corroborated by official Google statements, but the search giant frequently declines... [...]

Hermas Ma says, “The breaking news came on March 7, 2017, that Baidu is now supporting Google’s mobile framework, AMP. The tech leader of Baidu MIP, Gao Lei, gave a speech at Google’s first AMP conference in New York. He confirmed that Baidu is working hand-in-hand with Google to accelerate the faster web globally.Baidu MIP, which stands for Mobile Instant Pages, is Baidu’s own version of Google’s AMP. The technologies of MIP are very similar to AMP. In fact, coding an MIP page is just like coding an AMP page, except MIP pages are more customized and optimized for the browsers... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google has been ramping its efforts to tie clicks on ads to store traffic. On Wednesday, the search giant said it has now captured over four million store visits after users have clicked on an ad, up from one billion a little less than a year ago, and is set to rapidly expand that number.In September, Google extended the now two-year old store visits measurement program to ads on the Display Network and said it had statistically significant visibility into visits to 200 million stores globally. The company says it is now positioned to make store visits data available... [...]

Mary Wallace says, “Marketing automation is on the rise. The reason? Marketing automation vendors are promising accelerated revenue and improved ROI (return on investment).How will it do this? With lead nurture campaigns that provide specific content aligned to the buyer’s needs and lead scoring models that deliver warmed leads to the sales team.Yet a majority of marketing organizations are not using their highly sophisticated marketing automation tools to their full potential. It’s mortifying to the marketers in the trenches trying to do what’s right.Worse, it’s beyond frustrating... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Local technology and expertise is the key to biddable media success in the APAC region.I recently spoke to Hannes Ben, EVP International at independent agency Forward3D, about the skills needed in APAC and the idiosyncracies of branded paid search.Strategy cannot be transferred from west to eastAccording to Ben, “brands fall down because you can’t automatically transfer your strategy in the west to these complex markets.”“By complex markets,” he continues, “I mean China, Korea and Japan. In China and Korea, nothing in those two markets... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Sistrix, an SEO toolset data collection company, published their analysis of the Google Fred update after reviewing “nearly 300 domains.” Their analysis describes the sites and pages that were hit like this:“…advertisement, outdated, thin and scraped content, as well as incomprehensible articles made up of 300 word ‘SEO texts’ pumped to the brim with main keyword mentions and void of any useful information or a sense of readability.”They have confirmed our analysis of Fred, where we said low value content sites were hit by this update.Juan Gonzalez from... [...]