Twitter to Launch Promoted Tweets in the next 2 months
Google facing US antitrust probe - reports
Google are being charged with anti trust probes by US federal regulators. The US Fed’s are getting ready to issue court orders to Google as part of an investigation into practices in Google’s search engine business, US media has reported.
Google deals with roughly 2 out of 3 online searches and its competitors naturally agree with this move and back the arguement that the search giant has used its dominant standing to unfairly promote its other products, like maps, shopping as well as travel sites.
Apparently, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is planning to launch a formal inquiry within the next couple of days and according to the Wall Street Journal they want to find out if Google are infact manipulating their search results and point users in the direction of their products and services. Google has not commented on the matter thus far.
FairSearch.org, an organization representing many of the Anti-Google Party, like Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak and Microsoft, have said: “Google’s practices are deserving of full-scale investigations by US antitrust authorities.”
This is not the first time Google are in a similar position. Over the past couple of years there have been similar anti trust inquiries run on Google but this doesn’t change the fact that they continue to be the largest search engine used.
Consumers are spending more time on mobile apps than on the web
Flurry compared its mobile data to statistics from comScore and Alexa, and found that in June, for the first time ever consumers are spending more time on mobile apps over the time spent browsing the web. The actual stats show consumers spent 81 minutes a day on mobile apps, compared to lesser amount of 74 minutes spent web surfing.
Flurry studies revealed consumers spend 9% more time, on average, using mobile apps as oppose to surfing the net. The report indicates growth in mobile app usage came mostly from more sessions per user, rather than longer sessions overall.
The majority of those sessions are consumed by games and social media apps, which took 47% and 32% of the total amount of time used these apps. What are your predictions - do you think we will continue to see this pattern?
Twitter to Put Promoted Tweets in your timeline in the Next 2 Months
We’ve known for a while that Twitter is preparing to up its ad game by placing paid-for tweets right in the middle of your Twitter stream. Now we know when: Promoted Tweets will start showing up as quickly as within the next 8 weeks!
Twitter has been on the hunt for advertisers in the last few weeks, reassuring them that Promoted Tweets are no experiment. They won’t just appear in Twitter search or HootSuite, as they have been this last year. They will also not be unnoticeable within Twitter. They’re going to be rolled out very soon, and they’re here to stay. According to Mashable, Twitter is looking into ways to make sure we’ll see them — such as making the promoted tweets “sticky,” so even if you scroll to the bottom of the page - they are still visible.
The next step is to see whether advertisers will buy into the idea and continue to make Twitter profitable. They are expected to gross $100 million this year, far short of the $3.5 billion Facebook will be pulling in from display ads.
How do you think this will affect the industry? Have Twitter got anything on Facebook when it comes to advertising?
