Advertising and marketing

Google's arty after-party New Year's Day doodle

Are you experiencing a slightly dry feeling in your mouth? Are your limbs offering involuntary jitters and twitches?

The fiscal cliff negotiations can do that to you.

However, Google would like to tell you that it understands the pain of entering 2013 without a sheet to the wind.

Having presented a charming doodle for New Year's Eve (below), featuring so many of the characters from the doodles of 2012 (you can see all Google's doodles here), today it presents the cleanup.

Reality has chimed. The cleaners have arrived. Robert Moog, Moby Dick, and Niels Bohr have all gone … Read more

Yahoo completes withdrawal from South Korean market

As it promised earlier this year, Yahoo has completed its exit from the South Korean market before the end of the year, according to a brief report by the Yonhap News Agency.

Yahoo announced its intention in October to withdraw from the country, saying that the move was a response to "efforts to streamline operations and focus our resources on building a stronger global business that's set up for long-term growth and success."

The South Korean unit, which had been in operation since 1997, consisted of about 200 employees, delivered editorial content and handled the company's … Read more

Social media: Five predictions for 2013

When you think of social media these days, you probably think primarily of Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps Instagram. But while those services have massive -- and growing -- user bases, they're of course not the only games in town.

The world of social media is filled with other services, and millions of people get a daily fix without ever going near Facebook or Twitter. There are big general networks like Tagged, and plenty of smaller, purpose-built ones like Path or celebrity-focused ones like Lady Gaga's Little Monsters. There's even a revamped MySpace.

So what does 2013 … Read more

Retail sites see 27 percent traffic jump on Christmas Day

Following suit with other major holiday shopping days, Christmas Day also saw a jump in online traffic this year.

According to marketing firm Experian, the top 500 U.S. retail sites had 27 percent more online traffic on this year's Christmas Day compared with last year. A total of 115.5 million people in the U.S. visited sites like Target, BestBuy, Sears, and Apple's online store.

Looking at the past seven-week period, online retail traffic went up 10 percent over 2011, and each major shopping holiday had traffic increases this year, according to Experian. Thanksgiving had a … Read more

Newsweek bids (advance) goodbye to print with final cover

Newsweek tweeted out an early version of what will be the cover of its final print edition as the 80-year-old news magazine moves entirely to a digital format.

The cover, a black and white photograph of the former Newsweek Building in New York, includes a hashtag next to "LastPrintIssue". The last print edition will be on newsstands Monday. Newsweek, which merged with the Daily Beast a couple of years ago, announced its intention to go all-digital in October.

In the spirit of holiday promos!

'Tis the season for holiday promos.

To spread the cheer and allow our shows and stars to make a special connection with viewers, each year we create a new holiday campaign. The 2012 CBS holiday promos feature some of our biggest stars showing their playful sides and wishing health and happiness to the people who tune in to CBS night after night.

This year we also adapted our on-air promos into images that can be viewed and shared online. You can view all of the images here and watch the video below. Take a look, happy holidays, and, as always, … Read more

Internet advertising revenue hits $9.2 billion in Q3 2012

Advertisers spent $9.26 billion on Internet ads during the third quarter of 2012, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

That's the most spent in a single quarter, according to the bureau's records. The IAB is a group of media and technology companies that sell 86 percent of online ads in the U.S. This latest revenue figure reflects a 6 percent increase from last quarter and a 18 percent increase from last year.

The executives at IAB said the increase is a reflection of how effective online advertising is for marketers (They don't … Read more

Don't blame Instagram users -- blame Instagram

After two days of increasingly loud arguments, the flap over Instagram's new terms of service has started to quiet down. Amid widespread concern the Facebook-owned company was about to start selling user photos to advertisers, the company yesterday said it "has no intention" of doing so, and would change its terms of service to reflect that intention.

At this point we should probably turn our attention to more pressing worldly concerns, of which there are plenty. And yet the fracas has revealed something ugly in the way that many in the tech press blame average people for … Read more

How to prevent and respond to a user revolt

The last thing you need as an entrepreneur is for your company to be engulfed in a public controversy. Just ask Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Path, Airbnb, Geeklist, and the countless other companies, big and small, that have been the target of press backlash and user vitriol.

It doesn't matter how careful you are: the more successful you become, the more likely it is that you'll make a mistake that ignites the blogosphere. There are ways to minimize the fallout and, more importantly, ways to prevent a large-scale user revolt in the first place.

Let's take Instagram's recent Terms of Service controversy … Read more