Photos of men appear twice as often as women in news stories

A new study by the folks at the Pew Research Center turned up an interesting finding: Men appears twice as often as women when it comes to being featured in news photos on Facebook. The research group analyzed posting from 17 national new outlets with at least 20 million unique visitors during Q3 of 2018.

Restaurants Are Spending Significantly More on Digital Ads

A new study shows that independent restaurants are dramatically increasing their spending on digital advertising.  Within the last year, 68 percent of those surveyed report they are spending more on digital ads than ever before to attract customers. The restaurant business has never been easy.  17 percent of new restaurants don’t last a full year. 

Study: Half the Business Listing Online Contain Inaccurate Information

It seems so simple.  How hard is it to get your name, address, phone number, and website URL right online? Apparently, it’s not so easy.  A new study by Uberall and reported in Search Engine Journal analyzed 73,000 online business location listings in the Boston metro area.  They found nearly half are inaccurate or missing

Basics in Sales & Marketing: Would You Hire a Milkshake?

The basic tenet of successful selling is to uncover a customer need and then find a way to fill that need.  Salespeople sometimes forget to find the need and rush straight to selling products or services.  Then, they wonder why people don’t buy what they’re selling. Clayton Christensen is a Harvard professor and author of

When It Comes to Digital, Consumers Say One Thing and Often Do Another

Consumers overwhelming say privacy concerns are starting to have them rethinking rethink how they interact online.  At the same time, however, their actions are telling a slightly less convincing story.  People say one thing to researchers, but their actions demonstrate something else. A third of those surveyed think digital is having a “negative effect on

Vast majority of video viewing still taking place on TV sets

Yes, there’s a fair amount of viewing these days on mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, but 70% of all viewing is still through the TV set. A survey of OTT consumers conducted for Nevion reports that 70% of those responsing still watch the majkority of programming on TV.  Only 20% regularly watch content

Advertisers have a problem, and it’s worse than they thought.

Quick Read:  Cord Cutting by Younger Consumers Making It Harder for Advertisers to Drive Conversation and Engagement with Their Brands, Especially in Tech, Telecom, Automotive SOURCE:  Engagement Labs Advertisers have a problem, and it’s worse than they thought. The decline of ad-supported television is driving down audience engagement with brands. A new analysis of consumer

Brands, Agencies say Lack of ROI Proof & Ad Fraud are Biggest Threats to Digital Budgets

Digital advertising was supposed to give us more transparency.  Better insight with a slew of metrics on clicks and conversions.  The ability to draw a straight line from campaign performance to ROI.  A way to stop wasting advertising dollars through micro-targeting and geo-targeting. Report after report show the incredible waste in digital advertising dollars when people

Study: 18% of all online ad traffic is fraudulent

Cybersecurity company CHEQ is led by Guy Tytunovich, a former Israeli military intelligence officer.  He says the amount of online advertising fraud is grossly underestimated.  A new study released by his company estimates that 18% of all online ad traffic is a fraudulent.  That cost cost advertisers as much as $50 billion in wasted ad

Long-form Content Results in 56% More Social Shares

Long-form content results in 56% more social shares than content shorter than 1,000 words, according to new research from BuzzSumo and Backlinko. The research, which analyzed over 900 million articles, also discovered that long-form content was correlated with better backlink performance. Specifically, posts weighing in at more than 3,000 words receive an average of 77.2% more referring

AI is changing the way we interact with brands

New advancements in AI-based search, including voice search, are fundamentally changing the way people interact with brands. Research from Yext Inc and Vanson Bourne shows marketers are struggling to evolve quickly enough for this new reality:   only 8% of marketers believe their organization’s brand management strategy is completely effective to manage emerging technology and changing

For Online Reviews, Recency Matters

Online reviews matter.  92% of consumers say they look at reviews.  68% say positive reviews increase their trust. In addition to looking for positive reviews, we now know that consumers also value recent reviews in far greater numbers.  85% of those surveyed say that reviews dated more than three months old are no longer relevant.