Yahoo! Search Marketing

2015 may not be over yet, but it's already been a year of changes for advertising giants Yahoo and Google. With companies like Facebook amping up the competition in terms of advertising platforms, well-established players are continuing to innovate to stay at the forefront of the industry.

It's worth looking at aspects of your email program that drastically impact its performance. Specifically, I'm talking about the relationship between reliable data and dynamic content, how your emails are rendering, and deliverability.

Content marketers are probably now dealing with what I’ve contended with for years — content thieves. In general, they take my work

AdWords covers every paid search need, right? Wrong, says John Gagnon. That might hurt to hear on Tax Day—especially for the big three tax preparers who will spend more than $24 million on 3,819 search terms related to the event, according to the AdGooroo Blog.

Microvideo and social networks may be "cool," but marketers always need to ask themselves what diving in will mean for their audiences and what they will want to see from them in these channels. Testing can yield answers, but Forrester Research Analyst Erna Alfred Liousas provides information about what the latest developments in social media mean for marketers.

I'm not complaining. I'll say that right away. However, I was a bit surprised on Tuesday to see a notification on the page above my search engine results about a package delivery slated for Wednesday, while I was searching for information that was completely unrelated. Before I could click on "Lyris," I found out that my "Excursion II Rolling Duffle Bag, Medium" from LLBean was on its way to my home.

Well, well, well. It would seem that Yahoo's impulse-buy acquisition Tumblr is finally coming of age. After several years of turning a so-so profit—to the tune of $13 million in 2012—Tumblr has been stepping timidly into the waters of advertising. Just last week, however, they announced a big splash: The launch of their new Creatr Network.

Since 1939, Di Bruno Bros. has been a Mecca for Philadelphia foodies craving great cheeses, olives, condiments, deli meats, prepared foods and kitchen tchotchkes. With family coming for Christmas—folks who have pretty much everything—I decided to get them a gift box from Di Bruno delivered to my house. I settled on a gift box and emailed the order.

Swim boxers. During a recent conference call, a senior-level marketer who shall remain nameless tells a group of marketers and me that he's working next to the pool during his vacation. Therefore, he says, he's dressed for the role he'll be using during the majority of the day. This marketer isn't much different from his audience, which is filled with businesspeople and consumers who are no longer chained to offices and cubicles with desktop computers.

Marketers will spend $7.9 billion on native ads this year and $21 billion on them by 2018, predicts BI Intelligence. But why pay writers? A startup is offering marketers the opportunity to take reviews from independent sources, such as CNET, and use that content in Facebook and mobile banner ads. The startup charges marketers for the curation.