Facebook announces New Video Metrics

Facebook announced this week that fresh video metrics in Page Insights and Facebook Ads Reporting are coming soon. Facebook’s goal is to help users better understand how people respond to videos.

Currently, Page owners are imperfect to seeing how many people started watching their videos. Facebook’s new new video metrics, which will be rolled out over the coming weeks, will display more complete information like video views, unique video views, the average duration of the video view and audience custody.

These new video metrics are designed to help Page owners understand which of their videos are clicking with people so they can better decide what kind of video content to create for their audience.

Detailed View Counts

Facebook’s metrics will show both the total number of video views and the number of being people people who watched a video. A “video view” is define as a view of three seconds or more and will emerge for all videos, including those that automatically play as people roll through News Feed. If a person clicks on the video while scrolling through the News Feed, that will be counted as  “clicks to play video.”

Viewers Retention

The viewer’s retention metrics will measure the level of interest in various sections of videos. An increase in the percentage of views at a certain point may indicate that people are re-playing exact sections, while a decrease in the percentage of views may indicate where people lost interest and stopped watching.

You will be able to exactly decide how many people watched your whole video, or just some of it. The new video metrics will count the number of views that reached certain points in a video — 25%, 50%, 75%, 95% and 100%. This information is helpful in helping you determine how a video is performing and give you an idea as to where to place key messages.

Demographics

If you’re running a video in an ad you will be able to take advantage of the the “data breakdowns” feature in Ads Reporting, where you will get contact to demographic information about people who viewed your video, such as age, gender, location, etc.

Coming Soon

Facebook’s announcement states that the new video metrics will be accessible for all paid and organic videos uploaded directly to Facebook Pages and will roll out slowly over the coming weeks.

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Guest Blogs crack

 The last couple of weeks have given rise to a lot of cussing and discussing, about penalties levied against sites on both ends of the guest-blog field. Both logic and emotions have run high, as people try to sort out what the fresh "acceptable" is, in Google's vision.

Stick a Fork in it

Matt Cutts' blog post in January raised a few eyebrows, as he made a point of saying "So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy."

At first, his post was titled "The decay and fall of guest blogging", but as the comments on the post started heating up, he went back and edited the title, adding "for SEO" at the end, then softened his carriage a little in the comments.

Cutting Deeply

Google has decided that the rude use of guest blogging needs to stop, and typically, they're giving the nod to the inevitable inclusion of innocent or marginal cases amongst the casualties. As usual, a general outcry has been raised, but if past history is any indication, there isn't likely to be any softening of their stance.

Avoiding the Axe

But guest blogging hasn't suddenly become a totally unlawful practice – it just requires a great deal of caution, now that Google is paying more attention. So I thought I'd share some things to watch out for and some ways to mitigate the risks.

1. The Ultra-Safe Approach

If you're a publisher, stricken by fear, doubt and doubt, you could simply add a nofollow attribute to any external links in a guest post, as well as links in the author bio. That will protect you from any accusations of link-scheming.

2. The Moderated Approach

If you're unwilling to nofollow all outbound links from the post, then you actually should check out the end site and page carefully. If there's any possibility that Google could see that site in a poor light, then linking to it isn't a good idea. Bear in mind, too, that the fact that the site may look noisy clean today won't protect you from a possible backlash if they get in problem a year or two down the road.

3. The Devil May Care Approach

We've already seen what this comes near is doing for a lot of folks... and it's only going to get worse. But if you have a stubborn streak or if you just don't care about suddenly fading from the top 100 or so SERPs, knock yourself out.

The Damage

The extent of penalization can vary. A manual penalty may be partial or sitewide, and can be tied to either abnormal outbound links or inbound links, depending upon which end of the food chain you're on.

Outbound Link Penalty

As a publisher, unless you simply don't care, because you get no traffic from Google, you'll need to clean up your act and submit a reconsideration request. If you have a lot of posts on your blog, this can be a tedious task.

Inbound Link Penalty

As a guest blogger on several sites, if your posts are linking back to your site, you may get an inbound link penalty. We haven't seen a lot of these yet, tied to the recent guest blogging purge, so I can't say if they're giving any fractional penalties or only sitewide.

Some Rules of Thumb

Here are a few things that should help keep you safe from a guest blogging-related penalty. Some of these may seem extreme, but with all the doubt that exists about what Google sees as acceptable, I'm proposing a safe approach.

•    Only accept guest posts from people you know are authentic, will give your readers with real value, and aren't guest posting all over the 'net like a lawn sprinkler.

•    Be very serious of any site you link out to from the body of a post. If in doubt, nofollow.

•    Unless you're 100 percent sure that Google will see your guest poster as a believable authority for that topic on your blog, either nofollow the links from the author bio or only link to their Google+ profile.

•    Quality and relevance are more significant than ever. Don't accept any guest posts just to fill a slot in your calendar. Every post you put on your blog should be high excellence... that means well-written, relevant, and of real interest to your readers. If you lower that bar, be prepared for Google to lower the boom.

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Google's latest hit on scraper sites

Scraper sites -those sites that copy content others have formed and post it on their own site or blog as their own – have been the irritation of webmasters for many, many years.

Even though, logically, the originating content should rank number one for the content since they are the originating source, often times you'll find scraper sites ranking over the content originator, typically in conjunction with other spam methods to get the content ranking.

Even worse, sometimes the novel source of content vanishes from the search results while a scraper site's version continues to rank well

Google today has released a new Scraper Report form where webmasters can submit scraper sites that has copied their own content by providing Google with the source URL, where the content was taken from, and the URL of the scraper site where the content is being republished or repurposed, and the keywords where the scraper site was ranking on.

Google is also asking webmasters to verify that their site follows the webmaster guidelines before submitting, although chances are pretty good that those webmasters who find the scraper report form are also alert of the Google webmaster guidelines and how to find penalties in their Google Webmaster accounts.

Does this mean that scraper sites are becoming more of a problem now than they have in the past? Not necessarily, however that could be part of the reason.

Sometimes scraper sites aren't essentially ranking for the top money keywords, but there prevalent enough cluttering up the search results after the top 10 or so, and can be a lot more prevalent on long-tail search results as well as when you go beyond Page 1 or 2 of Google. And the only way to get scraper content out of Google search results is by filing a DMCA.

Google isn't saying accurately what they're doing with this data. Is this being used as an easy way for webmasters to get the scraper sites out of the index without having to use the DMCA? Are they using it to recover their algorithms to try and determine where the originating content is versus the scraper content? Google doesn't say, although I think it is being used to recover the algorithm by seeing how and why scrapers are ranking.

This absolutely has the mark of projects that one spam team member is working on. Back in August, Cutts also asked for examples of small websites that weren't ranking as well, despite being high quality, although that one particularly had a disclaimer saying that those submissions wouldn't affect the rankings.

It's great that Google is choosing to again look at scraper sites, because it has been pretty annoying for webmasters for so many years, even if they aren't necessarily ranking high.

This isn't the first time Google has asked for help with scrapers, and Google also tried to reduce the number of scrapers algorithmically in 2011.

Hopefully we will see a restore on how scrapers are handled in a future update of Google's search algorithm.

Real-Time Bidding expectations in 2014

In the digital space, 2013 has been another enormous year. 2013 has been branded the year of mobile, the year of video, the year of enhanced campaigns , and the year of audience, etc.

perhaps 2013 could also be branded the year of real-time bidding. RTB has become the buzzword in display and digital marketing as a whole due to the advancement of opportunities for dynamically run biddable display campaigns.

This article, however, won't discuss all the remarkable RTB related excitement that has come out of 2013, but rather discuss what the future is for the biddable display arena.

1. Rich Media Ads

Ad formats are becoming more and more attractive and interactive. Dynamic creative allows advertisers to insert images and text based on combinations of variables, which isn’t just imperfect to e-commerce products.

In 2014, expect travel and publishing advertisers to use active capabilities more imaginatively to create highly targeted and flexible ad copy. In addition, the use of rich media and engagement ads will continue to grow.
Engagement metrics will be optimizable, meaning advertisers are able to judge performance of ads even when users don’t leave the publisher’s website. This means publishers and advertisers share the repayment of engagement ads.
Free products like Google Web Designer, which allows for free creation of rich media ads, will help advertisers make these ads quickly and professionally.
Expect more rich media and engagement formats which are easier to make and easily made dynamic.

2. Social Networks
 

The recent agreement between Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and Facebook is a huge step forward in the position of social websites and biddable display. DBM advertisers will be able to reach first party and third party audience lists on Facebook and aim them cross devices.
Expect more social networks to make their inventory available to exchanges in 2014.

3. Branding Metrics
 

Auditing the value of display campaigns has never been more important. Advertisers are becoming more aware of the optimization opportunities within biddable display and are understanding how direct conversions can be achieved through highly targeted and strategically run RTB campaigns.

DSPs will strive to provide new metrics to show the value not only of direct conversions from display campaigns, but also the impact of visibility of display ads on brand recognition and awareness.
Wait for more insights on viewability of ads and the impact on search to come in 2014.
 

4. Programmatic Video

DBM have recently created an option for in-stream video advertising via real-time bidding. This allows video ads to be served across a number of video exchanges, of course YouTube being the biggest.
Expect the CPM bidding model to be refined to allow for cheaper and more direct conversion options from biddable video. The number of video exchanges continues to grow, and it's in their best interest to make their list available in the biddable space. Note this isn't limited to just DoubleClick; video via confidential auctions on premium inventory is being discussed by a range of DSPs and publishers.
Expect expansion of biddable display throughout 2014.

5. Private Marketplace Deals

Similar to the addition of social networks allowing their inventory to be targeted via demand-side platforms like DBM, an increasing number of publishers will be using DSPs as a way to easily make their premium content obtainable to a larger number of advertisers. 

This helps bridge the gap between reservation display and exchange buying, meaning that advertisers can reach premium content which may have previously been only obtainable via direct reservation deals, and premium publishers still have a choice over the brands who have access to their highly valuable inventory.
wait for even larger volumes of premium inventory to become available via auctions.
 

RTB in 2014

These are just five predictions of the many expected advancements and changes that will unavoidably come to the RTB space in 2014. If 2013 wasn’t the year of RTB within our industry, 2014 has absolute potential to be the year advertisers and publishers alike get onboard and start using display inventory to its full presentation potential.

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Connected Glass

Connected Glass was rolled out in New York and did so well, it has nowadays been introduced in San Francisco.

 Connected Glass is a gigantic, moving window display in a mall with an interactive touch screen where you can walk up to the window and order, online from eBay, whatever is being advertised on the window.

 Visit the Westfield Shopping Mall to use it for yourself.  The Sony, Rebecca Minkoff, and Toms retail locations are each equipped with Connected Glass.

Here’s how it works: You are walking through the mall moreover look over and see an advertisement showing a purse that you really like. in its place of having to go in the store, look for the purse , walk up to the cash register, and perhaps stand in line to purchase the purse, you simply walk up to the Connected Glass window and touch the purse in the ad.  The window screen shows the purse you liked, along with a few other similar purses. You touch the window, choose the color you like and your purse is delivered to your home within the hour.

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100 Links Per Page rule dropped

 Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why Google no longer has that 100-links-per-page Webmaster rule.

In fact, the guideline was dropped well before 2008, but SEOs and webmasters still believe having over 100 links on a page is something that may lead to a penalty.

The truth is: no, it won’t. Sites like Techmeme likely has thousands of links on their home page, and they are not penalized by Google.

That being said, Google said if a site looks to be spammy and has way too many links on a particular page — Google reserves the right to take action on the site.

Matt also explained that your PageRank is divided by the number of links on a page. So if page A links to page B, C and D, that PageRank is split into three. If you have hundreds of links, it is divided by hundreds, and so forth.

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How Social Media Monitoring influence Reputation Management

It’s remarkable, bearing in mind that most of bloggers in which the financial company isn’t even offering a product. But this company is doing something really modern: It’s using social media  monitoring in order to decide a user’s credit scores. This could signal a huge change in the way reputation management, and social media attack, works in the future. Here’s what’s happening.

The crash of Friends 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Usually, banks rely on a few key indicators in order to calculate a person’s creditworthiness. The amount of money a person makes, the amount of money a person owes, and the person’s previous history of attending to financial obligations were the three key points banks took into thought when choosing to give or withhold money to a needy person.

A company like Lenddo, on the other hand, computes praise scores based on social media factors. The theory is that people who socialize together tend to have the same income and spending habits, so finding people who have friends who are responsible means finding people who are likely to pay back their loans on time.

In order to determine this social credit score, Lenddo asks applicants to offer information regarding their social media accounts, such as their screen names on:

•    LinkedIn

 •    Facebook

•    Twitter

•    Google+

The higher the social media presence, and the more high-quality friends a person has, the advanced score the person might receive. In addition, applicants are also asked to designate a few choice people as their “Trusted Connections.” Linking up with people who have already borrowed from Lenddo and paid back the loans on time is just one way to game the system and make sure that the loan is approved.

Broader Applications for Reputation Management

On the surface, it seems gratuitous to understand how a small bank works. After all, few Americans or Europeans will travel to the Philippines just to take out a loan, and those who do might want to work with a reputable bank rather than an online startup. But for those of us who 

 work in reputation management, this is a bit of an alarming trend.

Naturally, when clients ask for help with reputation management, experts look at the events that person has performed online. Snarky news articles, raunchy blog posts, nasty photographs, and unlucky press releases are typically the focus of the effort, and SEO techniques are used to either remove these disgusting items or drive them down in search results.

However, if the online industry as a whole is moving toward a more comprehensive view of a person’s reputation, this traditional method may not be effective. Specifically, if a person’s status is dependent, in part, on the other people a person knows, comprehensive reputation management might mean digging into the details of the connections a person makes in the online world.

At this point, ethics become a little sketchy. While clients might provide acquiescence for technicians to delve into their lives and amend details that aren’t quite ready for prime time, random friends may not be grateful for the added attention. It might also be difficult to determine how truthful or helpful a friend is without really digging too deep into that person’s life and crossing privacy lines.

Moreover, people with reputation difficulties might be astonished to find out how long such a cleanup might take, and the costs might be far too extensive for them to bear. People with hundreds of connections might need hundreds of hours of help, and that could be prohibitive for some.

Takeaway Points

As mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be a need for widespread panic at this point. The company given that  service only operates in a few choice countries, and the methods they use may never catch on in the wider world.

But, anyone who works with reputation issues should keep in mind that client connections may very well play a role in cleanup efforts in the future. It’s a message we can, and should, be 

 sharing widely, so our customers can make good choices now.

And we can also lead by example, by ensuring that our own social media associates are with real people we’ve met in real time in a real place. We should also feel free to split ties with people who are acting up (and acting out) in ways that might cast us in an unfavorable light. Just keeping tabs, and ensuring that our friends make us look good, could help us get ready to the next wave of social media monitoring that sites like Lenddo seem to be ushering in.

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Pinterest launches Place Pins Feature

Pinterest  launched a innovative category of pins for members to save places within its online scrapbooks.

The startup, based here, showed the new feature that will allow people to pin images of bars, cafes, restaurants and other destinations.

Place pins from Pinterest were shown as a way to plan vacations, outings and find where others are dining. Pinterest users can build these new place boards based on place of businesses or sights around them and visit other members boards to add to their own collections. Maps will give directions to these destination collections.

Pinterest's move into photo pinning and mapping of destinations marks a attack into businesses served by Yelp and Google, among others. Last week, a duo of developers launched Skedadel, an app that allows people to set aside favorite restaurants, bars, cafes and other spots where images are taken from Instagram and locations are provided with maps.

Last month, Pinterest landed $225 million in support from investors in a deal that valued the company at $3.8 billion.

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Matt Cutts about Meta Description

Matt Cutts, Google’s chief of search spam, answers a query about Meta descriptions in his latest video where a user writes in to ask:

Is it essential for each single page within my website to have a sole metatag description?

When it comes to metatag descriptions, Matt says there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have copy metatag descriptions.

A very easy way to stay away from having duplicate metatag descriptions is by registering and verifying your website with the free Google Webmaster Tools cheer up. Google will crawl your website and notify you if they find duplicate metatag descriptions.

Generally speaking, Matt says it’s probably not worth your time to write a unique metatag description for every single page on your website. Matt doesn’t even bother to do that on his own blog. 

Matt recommends doing this only on pages that in fact matter. Such as your home page or pages that have high ROI. If you observe that some of your pages have actually bad auto-generated snippets, you should consider writing a single metatag description for those as well.

To sum everything up, you should avoid having duplicate metatag descriptions on all pages. as a replacement for, write exclusive descriptions for some pages and just let Google auto-generate the rest.

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New Facebook Ad Features

Facebook HQ has been busy tinkering with the ads proposal to make improvements that offer Facebook advertisers more control, more organization, and streamlined ad creation. Read on for five features Facebook advertisers should be using now.

1. Campaign Labels

Finally Facebook has provided advertisers with a Littlemore campaign structure with the roll-out of Labels! This characteristic is Power Editor (PE) exclusive and incredibly handy for ad accounts that have had several campaigns for multiple marketing initiatives, or ad accounts that serve more than one division of a certain company.

2. Facebook Dark Page Posts

Not as chilling as the name suggests. Facebook officially calls these "Unpublished Posts," and they are essentially that: posts that advertisers can amplify, that look like Page Post Ads, but aren't published to the actual feed.

3. Manually Set CPM Bids for Desired Actions

Advertisers can find this sophisticated feature in PE when selecting Facebook-centric ads (not right-rail or News Feed ads that use a direct link to another website).

4. Audiences

Facebook Audiences are fundamentally saved targeting grids that can be applied to any ad in any campaign with just one click! Audiences must be created in PE, but can typically be accessed via Facebook's Create Flow. We say "typically" because this is the intended task, but it's sort of broken right now. The good news: Facebook HQ is aware of the issue and working toward a solution.

5. Controlling Placement/Wi-Fi Enabled Selection

Advertisers can control the post of Facebook-centric advertising (page post ads, page like ads, etc.) and if the ads are displayed using data or wifi on mobiles, which can be a extraordinary thing to test to improve CTR and (*cough*) quality scor

Summary

Hopefully this post will motivate advertisers to be more efficient with managing Facebook ads accounts, tell some regarding newer, slightly hidden features that are less talked about, and improve ad performance.

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