Michael Lewittes, a veteran entertainment journalist who worked at numerous large media outlets, started his entertainment news site Gossip Cop and later sold it to a private equity firm at the top of the site’s performance. We discussed how he did it and how he managed to work through numerous Google search algorithm updates —…
The problem of hijacked Google My Business listings (GMB) – where someone other than the business gains control of the local profile – appears to be growing. SterlingSky’s Joy Hawkins has reported on the trend and some of the methods used by spammers and scammers. GMB phishing. Unethical local marketers are effectively phishing, using the…
It’s the 2020 holiday shopping season and it’s different than previous shopping seasons, and retailers everywhere are going to need to manage things carefully. Let’s take a closer look. Shoppers will lean on digital A Google-commissioned Ipsos survey says that 74 percent of U.S. Shoppers are going to do more online shopping than they did previously this…
The American’s with Disabilities act has influenced the way businesses need to operate online. Now more than ever, providing the proper website accessibility is becoming undeniably more important, not only because it’s the right thing to do, to give all visitors an opportunity to get to your services or products, but also because costly lawsuits…
Last week California voters passed Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (CPRA). It builds upon the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which only went into effect this year. CPRA is slated to replace it in 2023. Among other things, CPRA expands the types of data covered (any data “shared” with third parties);…
Spotify is acquiring Megaphone, a leading podcast advertising and publishing platform, in an effort to expand advertising options for podcasters. Megaphone is used by over 20,000 podcast publishers and advertisers including The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Vox Media, ESPN, How Stuff Works, and more. In an announcement, Spotify says this acquisition represents the next step…
Coming at the end of a roughly two-year investigation, the European Commission (EC) has accused Amazon of violating EU competition law by unfairly using access to non-public data on its platform to undermine competition. Amazon’s behavior as a retailer and as a marketplace are in conflict, according to the antitrust enforcer. Predatory data and…
Automation and machine learning have tremendous potential to help all of us in marketing. But at the moment a lot of these tools are inaccessible to people who can’t code or who can code a bit but aren’t really that comfortable with it. What often happens is that there ends up being one or two…
Facebook Ads has earned a reputation for being particularly glitchy and unpredictable. Over the past 12 to 18 hours, many advertisers experienced issues with temporary ad disapprovals and accounts being disabled. I’m just sitting in front of the computer watching accounts be disabled one by one. — Ameet Khabra ✊✊?✊?✊?✊?✊? (@adwordsgirl) November 6, 2020 “This…
Competitive analysis should be a regular task for anyone involved in managing PPC campaigns. Keeping up with what messaging your competitors are using, what keywords they’re bidding on, and where they’re overlapping with you are important for keeping your own campaigns on point. The Auction Insights sections in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer a…