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 […]

If you’re in the business of generating leads and are in need of some encouragement, look no farther than Google and Yahoo, two of the Internet’s giants. Google launched Google Advisor earlier this year to monetize the personal finance vertical. It followed that up by launching a new lead-generation-style AdWords format and acquiring BeatThatQuote.com. Yahoo, […]

Yes, there’s still money in the deals industry: JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to acquire Bloomspot, a site connecting consumers to offers from local and national merchants, for a cool $35 million. The deal will give JPMorgan the ability to offer its credit card holders more discounts to local businesses. Most of Bloomspot’s 100-person […]

Earlier this week, we covered some of the basics of how marketers should create effective email marketing messages to generate leads and compel desired actions. To finish this two-part series, here are some more helpful pointers from experts regarding the crucial elements of all marketing emails. Clear call-to-action While marketers may want to stuff as […]

We’re continuing our series of profiles of local-commerce companies by featuring Clutch. The purpose of these Q&A interviews is to give merchants, marketers and others in the industry a look at what some companies out there are doing. These profiles are also meant to offer different takes on the future of the local-commerce industry. Clutch, […]

uberVU, a social media marketing automation platform, put together an infographic to offer a look at how brands’ use of social media compares with users’ use of social media. Here are some of the highlights: –

Facebook is moving its “Collections” feature into a second phase of testing. Collections allows retailers to share product photos on their pages, which users can “want,” “save,” “add,” “collect” or “wishlist.” The actions users can take will depend on the test group they end up in. Users can also hover their cursor over these Collections […]

Herb Greenberg at CNBC has yet another edition of his “Worst CEO List.” For 2012, he had a tough time choosing a “winner,” but after much deliberation and flip-flopping Greenberg landed on Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. The company’s mistake was keeping the software developer-turned-CEO on board after it went public. Mason’s ineptitude as Groupon’s chief […]

Oracle has announced its acquisition of Eloqua, a cloud-based marketing automation and revenue performance management software provider that was considered a competitor. The deal pegged Eloqua at $23.50 per share (a 31.1 percent premium over the stock’s close price Wednesday), which makes the deal worth approximately $871 million. Here’s what both companies’ press releases note: […]