TikTok is launching new targeting and boosting features for Promote, a tool designed to drive traffic to a profile or brand home page. First launched in 2021, Promote is touted as a way to turn viewers into potential leads. TikTok says Promote improves audience targeting while letting small businesses and creators strengthen ties with communities by customizing how users interact with their ads. A recent study shows that positioning an “organic” TikTok video before a paid ad “increases aided brand recall by 27 percent” and holds attention to the ad “12 percent longer,” according to the social platform. Continue reading TikTok Adding New Traffic and Audience Targeting Features

LinkedIn announced last month that it would acquire business marketing startup Bizo for about $175 million. According to a recently unveiled internal document, the move is the latest step toward the company’s goal of entering the expanding B2B marketing space and turning its marketing solutions products into a $1 billion business by 2017. The Bizo acquisition is part of LinkedIn’s plans to become “the most effective online platform for marketers to engage with professionals.” Continue reading LinkedIn Sees Bizo Acquisition as Part of Larger B2B Picture

The partnership to allow musicians to sell directly to Spotify users through BandPage has gone live. BandPage, a platform that allows artists to easily promote themselves and make money online, will enable exclusive offers from the artists directly to the fans. The offers will transcend typical merchandise and instead include secret shows, meet-and-greets, soundcheck parties and more. The service went live on Wednesday, and offers are already available to the public. Continue reading Spotify and BandPage Enable Direct Artist-Fan Engagement

Last year, Ritz-Carlton Hotel experienced a different kind of disappointment with advertising campaigns. The company wanted to promote its brand page on Facebook but quickly stopped the campaign. Unhappy executives saw too much gain from these ads. Now, rather than trying to grow its fan base, Ritz-Carlton has focused on analyzing its social media conversations to better grasp the likes and dislikes of its guests. The plan highlights a shift in corporate social media strategies. Continue reading Corporate Shift in Social Media Seeks Quality Over Quantity

Consumers are bombarded with marketing schemes on their social media sites, and they are growing wary of fake reviews and Facebook likes. A new survey found that marketers are more relaxed about online marketing techniques than consumers are. About 67 percent of consumers believe that hiding negative search results of a business or product is unethical and 71 percent of consumers think it is misleading to create fake accounts to leave positive reviews for businesses. Continue reading Survey Finds Consumers Skeptical of Social Media Marketing

Social network Twitter is making video sharing easier than ever for advertisers and regular users alike. By typing a hashtag in a tweet, Twitter users can easily find related videos in the suggested hashtag results. Then users can attach those videos to their original tweets with just one click. The social network could sell businesses the opportunity to provide those searchable, embeddable videos. Recently, Twitter made one-click videos available in Promoted Tweets. Continue reading Twitter Offers New One-Click Video Embedding Capability

Music service Rdio is planning a free, ad-supported offering to launch later this year. The service is also expected to add more non-music content and morning shows from Cumulus, which became a significant investor in Rdio last year. Some of that may include sports and talk show content from WestWood One, which Cumulus recently acquired. Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey introduced the new ad-supported model during a Q1 earnings call earlier this week. Continue reading Rdio to Launch Free, Ad-Supported Music Service This Year

More than a dozen companies have joined the Core Infrastructure Initiative to provide funding to open source projects, starting with OpenSSL. The Linux Foundation, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, Qualcomm, and VMWare have each pledged $100,000 over the next three years to pay for full-time developers, security audits, computing and testing infrastructure, and more to help financially strapped open source projects. Continue reading New Initiative Gets Companies to Fund Open Source Projects

To promote the home entertainment release of Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Twentieth Century Fox has teamed up with Google Glass and YouTube personality, iJustine, for a new way to experience Mitty’s adventures. From April 8-15, iJustine is in Reykjavik, Iceland as part of a crowdsourced adventure, recording her endeavors with Google Glass, and posting them on YouTube and other social media platforms. The film comes to Blu-ray and DVD April 15. Continue reading Google Glass Brings Fans on Real “Walter Mitty” Adventures

BitTorrent is making efforts to appeal to Hollywood — and help generate legitimate revenue — by offering studios and artists the opportunity to sell and distribute their material in Bundles as a way to entice customers to buy the full content on iTunes or other similar services. BitTorrent Bundles has already teamed up with Lady Gaga, Madonna and Vice Media to launch promotional content including photos, trailers, videos, songs and other extras. Continue reading BitTorrent Offers Hollywood Bundle Options for Promo Content

While the distinction between paid advertising and editorial content online can sometimes seem blurred, it was recently suggested that Microsoft was paying Machinima partners to post videos featuring the Xbox One. Machinima’s UK community manager revealed in a tweet (that is now deleted) that video partners were receiving an additional $3 per thousand views for videos featuring the Xbox One. In a related story, Electronic Arts is said to be taking a similar approach with its Ronku program. Continue reading Some Question Stealth Marketing Approach for the Xbox One

Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has quickly transformed from a quirky website into a social media base used by one-fifth of American adults. To continue nurturing this growth, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann has announced a new business model that will finally start to generate revenue. Pinterest plans to charge advertisers for promoting their products on the site. An analyst at Wedbush Securities believes this has the potential to earn Pinterest more than $500 million in 2016.  Continue reading Pinterest CEO Unveils Revenue Growth Plan for the New Year

The annual Sundance Film Festival kicked off this week in Park City, but despite the buzz surrounding the event, the indie distribution landscape is changing. Filmmakers are not profiting from festival exposure like they were only a few years ago, and some are choosing to deliver movies directly to an audience on smaller screens. Many independent films, even those that get scooped up at festivals, run the risk of not making it to theatrical distribution. Continue reading Sundance: Some Indie Films are Opting for Smaller Screens

AT&T’s new service, Sponsored Data, allows developers and brands to deliver content — at their cost — to the mobile devices of their customers without eating into individual data plans. UnitedHealth Group, Aquto and Kony were the first three companies to sign up for the service at launch early last week. The telco’s intention is to allow companies to reach their target audience without costing consumers money in cell phone bills, but some say Sponsored Data is bad for the economy. Continue reading AT&T Service Enables Companies to Pay for Consumer Data

In a keynote address to the Annual Fitness Tech Summit, Reebok VP of Advanced Concepts Paul Litchfield showed off the company’s first consumer electronics wearable: the Reebok CheckLight. The result of more than four years of R&D, the CheckLight acts as a head impact indicator, in the form of a wearable skullcap with flexible electronics. “There’s been so much talk about head trauma and brain injury,” said Litchfield. “We identified a gap and, with MC10 as our electronics partner, created the CheckLight.” Continue reading Fitness Tech Summit: Reebok Carves Out a Space in Wearables