Online Advertising

Alternative Investment Management this weekend sent a letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, urging her to consider merging with SoftBank. That request came a few days after Starboard Value sent Mayer a missive recommending that Yahoo acquire AOL. The proposals are independent of one another, but the in...

Facebook may have garnered 1.3 billion users since its inception a decade or so ago, but today there's an upstart contender that has set its sights on much of that same social networking world. "Simple, beautiful and ad-free" is Ello's tagline, and the new social network is gaining considerable atte...

Facebook on Monday announced Atlas, a rebuilt ad platform that gives marketers access to its vast troves of user data and helps them direct highly targeted ads across the Web. "Atlas delivers people-based marketing, helping marketers reach real people across devices, platforms and publishers," expla...

Facebook on Thursday updated its ad policy with two changes. One gives users the option of explaining why they don't want to see a specific ad in their News Feed when they click to hide the ad. The second update takes this new policy a step further by giving more weight to the feedback provided from...

Twitter on Monday began testing a new Buy button with a small percentage of its users in the U.S. -- one of the first steps in a larger initiative to build purchase functionality into the service. A small group of brands, including Burberry, Home Depot, Keith Urban, the Nature Conservatory and Sound...

It is a given that a marketing campaign must include a social media element -- especially when a brand is rolling out a new product. What is less certain is on which channel the brand should focus its time and resources. An answer was provided last week by Aol Platforms, which released the results o...

Twitter this week announced that its analytics tool, first made available to advertisers, Twitter Card users and verified users, now can be used by everyone. Twitter's analytics tool lets users click on any tweet to see how people engage with it in real time. They can compare their tweet activity mo...

Clickbaiting may soon come to an end on Facebook, which has launched an effort to eradicate it. Posts with clickbait headlines get higher placement in News Feeds -- but 80 percent of the time, users prefer headlines that help them decide whether they want to read a full article before having to clic...

Amazon appears to be readying an advertising platform to compete with Google's AdWords. It reportedly has started talking up its new Amazon Sponsored Links platform with potential partners and is anticipating a launch later this year. Ads from the new platform would replace those from Google curre...

Amazon has announced an agreement to acquire Twitch Interactive, a real-time video platform for gamers. Prior to the disclosure, rumors had been building that it was on track to snatch Twitch from Google, which reportedly had been very close to buying it. The pending acquisition was rumored to be fo...