On Friday, Groupon announced its acquisition of CommerceInterface, a Web-based channel management technology provider. The daily-deals company has used CommerceInterface technology to streamline its Groupon Goods operations and automate interactions with vendors since April 2012. “The acquisition enables Groupon to leverage infrastructure provided by CommerceInterface to support and optimize the Groupon Goods business around the […]

Pagemodo, a company that helps small businesses to design and publish Facebook pages, has shared an infographic about how small-business marketers can use social media as a market research tool. Social media is “a great way to gain valuable insights about your customers behaviors and preferences without conducting expensive research studies,” the company says. Here […]

Experian Marketing Services recently released some insights from it analysis of Dec. 9. Among the findings is that more email campaigns mention offers in the subject line than last year, and fewer subject lines are touting flash sales than they were this time last year. According to Experian, 28.6 percent of email campaigns have offers […]

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $9.3 billion in the third quarter, making it the biggest quarter on record. This figure was also an 18 percent year-over-year improvement from the $7.8 billion in revenues in the third quarter of 2011, and a 6 percent increase from the […]

Webinars are an effective multipurpose tool for any marketer trying to generate leads. Running them might require mastering a slight learning curve, but once webinars are an established part of a company’s strategy, they can actually benefit and feed other lead-generation tactics. To get ideas for webinar topics, a marketer doesn’t need to look very […]

Now that we know the Mayans were wrong, we can safely proceed with all our plans for 2013. For marketers, the last few squares of this year’s calendar are a loud call to start thinking about next year. Ideally, they’ve already taken care of the logistical chores that will put them in a good spot […]

Solve Media, a performance-based advertising firm, put together an infographic to explain what “native advertising” actually is. The term is growing in popularity and was mentioned in recent reports from BIA/Kelsey and eMarketer regarding the future of mobile ads. “Native advertising is not advertorial,” according to Solve Media. “Instead, it contributes value to any page […]

According to a report from analyst firm Berg Insight, mobile ads will account for 4.4 percent of total global ad spend across all media in 2017. The company pegs the total value of the global mobile marketing and advertising market at approximately $5.0 billion in 2011. This figure is expected to grow at a compound […]

Eric Wheeler, CEO and co-founder of 33Across, offers his take on what online advertising will look like in 2013. He offers five predictions: 1) Companies will begin to leverage “dark social” to drive sales: “Dark social” is word-of-mouth marketing that happens via email and IM, and is a blind spot for publishers, brands and commerce […]

Facebook is testing a service that would charge users $1 to guarantee that a message sent to a non-friend will be visible in the recipient’s inbox and won’t be dumped into the dreaded “Other” folder, which is where most messages from people with whom you have no mutual friends end up. The test is being […]