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Year: 2019

Latest News 

Amazon Cries Foul Over Microsoft’s $10 Billion Pentagon Contract

news

Microsoft made headlines several weeks ago when it beat out Amazon for a lucrative Pentagon contract worth some $10 billion. Now, according to ABC News, Amazon is protesting the decision, saying there was “unmistakable bias” in the selection process. Oracle and IBM were both eliminated during an earlier phase of the process, leaving only Microsoft and Amazon. Amazon was widely considered to be the front-runner to receive the Pentagon contract, in large part because of how far ahead it is in the overall cloud market. After President Trump, as well as its rivals,…

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google 

Google Bringing AI-Powered Smart Compose to Docs

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Smart Compose, one of Google’s more controversial features is making the jump from Gmail to Docs. Smart Compose is an AI-driven feature that Google unveiled last year. The feature was built on Smart Reply and uses machine learning to suggest words while composing an email. Many language generation models suggest words based on the preceding word. Smart Compose goes beyond that, looking at the email subject line and the preceding email, if you’re replying to one. Google is now beginning the process of integrating Smart Compose into Docs. Smart Compose for…

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Social 

How retailers can optimize Facebook ads for direct response vs. brand building

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Achieve your Facebook advertising goals by fine tuning four critical factors: audience, ad creative, budget allocation and measurement. Facebook advertising is increasingly playing multiple roles in the retail marketing funnel – not unlike advertising on Google, Amazon and other major platforms. For instance, some marketers opt for a direct response, or mid-funnel, approach with Facebook ads by encouraging users to take specific actions online, in-store, or in mobile apps. Other marketers operate earlier in the funnel and build awareness. Still, other marketers combine these methods to better influence the shopping…

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SEM 

How to use Shopping campaigns to increase enterprise leads for B2B

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Metric Theory’s SEM campaign for Recycle Away delivered highly-targeted leads and increased revenue by 54%, earning the agency top honors at this year’s Search Engine Land Awards Recycle Away, an SMB provider of recycling bins for businesses and home use, wanted to improve its targeting to businesses while reducing ad spend on residential buyers. The two audiences use the same search queries, so to meet the challenge, Metric Theory devised a five-point strategy using lead-to-revenue attribution tactics, geographic targeting, advanced segmentation for Shopping ads, call tracking technology and account-based marketing…

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Marketing 

AT&T Agrees to Pay $60 Million to Settle Legal Dispute Over Throttling Smartphone Plans

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While every major smartphone carrier advertises unlimited plans, the reality is that all of them come with restrictions. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), AT&T has just agreed to settle a case where it misled millions of customers about the practice. In most cases, “unlimited” plans come with a finite amount of high-speed 4G or LTE data. Once that data is used, the provider usually reserves the right to throttle, or reduce, a phone’s data speed to much slower 3G levels, especially when the phone is connected to a congested…

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Bing 

Bing Ads rebrands as Microsoft Advertising

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The new name reflects a broader focus on ad inventory, data and targeting capabilities First there was Microsoft adCenter. Then there was Bing Ads. Now there is Microsoft Advertising. Why we should care. The rebrand emphasizes a focus on personalization and AI. “In the next year, we’re introducing more advertising products with built-in AI, more connected to your data and your business,” Rik van der Kooi, corporate VP for Microsoft Advertising, said in a blog post Monday. It’s a bit of a back to the future move with a return to using the…

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Latest News 

Microsoft Announces All-In-One Office App For Mobile Devices

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Microsoft just announced a major redesign of its Office apps for mobile devices, combining them into a single application. For decades, Microsoft Office has been the gold standard for productivity software and is one of the main applications that has helped the iPad become a staple in the corporate world. Now, Microsoft is redesigning its suite of programs to combine them into a single app, improving productivity and integration between the individual components. “The new Office mobile app represents our vision for what a productivity solution would look like if first built…

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SEO 

Here’s how to leverage long-tail keywords for your SEO

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Thinking about long-tail keywords for local search, intent and conversational language can help your SEO efforts. When it comes to improving your SEO, you should be reaching for every opportunity you can. For most people, one of the first things they’ll think to do is to find keywords that have a high search volume. However, as most people know, this can make you a small fish in a very large pond. We’d all like to think that we’re able to compete with huge websites for high- or medium-volume keywords that…

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Social 

Facebook is changing how it measures organic Page impressions

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The company said it is shortening the time frame for how it filters out repeat impressions to align with how it measures paid impressions. Amy Gesenhues on October 22, 2019 at 11:41 am Facebook is updating how it filters repeat organic impressions for Pages. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the company is shortening the time-frame by which it calculates the metric. The initial announcement came via an update last week to a Facebook Business blog post published more than a year ago. The company said it is changing the way it measures Page…

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SEM 

PPC automation will disrupt your business, but automation layering will save the day

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Using automations from Google is inevitable, so if you want more control, you can regain it by layering in your own strategies. As a finalist for the Google Premier Partner awards, I recently had the chance to visit Google’s campus in NYC. There, I spoke to a Googler about the state of agencies and he lamented the fact that a large wave of PPC agencies that got their start during the last economic downturn in 2008 are still managing accounts like they did 10 years ago… hardly a strategy for…

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