Female consumers are a powerful force that shape how billions of marketing dollars are spent yearly, and among the most important brands for women are Wal-Mart, Target, and eBay, according to the Women at NBCU Brand Power Index, which measures the top 25 brands most important to women. more

Though search plays an important role in triggering a Facebook user to "like" a brand, fully three in four Facebook fans say they have joined a brand's Facebook page because of a brand invitation or advertising campaign, according to a study by DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research. more

In August, correction-tape brand Tippex launched an attention-grabbing YouTube campaign. Colorfully labeled "NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear!," it shows footage of a reluctant hunter faced with shooting a bear creeping up on his camping gear. At video's end, you're left with one of two buttons to push: should he shoot, ... more

The "gadgetoral" votes are in: The great state of California has the highest per capita ownership of iPhones in the US—casting 83 gadgetoral votes in favor of the device—whereas New Jersey has the highest ownership of Androids, according to a survey from Retrevo. more

For years, writes Stephanie Miller at the Deliverability blog, marketers have enjoyed the linear nature of the email inbox—your newsletters and offers sitting cheek-by-jowl with personal correspondence from a subscriber's friends. But you shouldn't get too comfortable with this privileged arrangement. "The world is changing," Miller says. "A new set of ... more

Far beyond the desktop, the digital world has expanded to an array of untethered devices: US consumers' adoption of laptop computers, cell phones, and other mobile gadgets continues to increase, while the ownership of desktop computers is gradually declining, according to Pew Research. more

Is the buzz around Facebook fading? That is just what a couple of recent studies suggest, so perhaps it's time to bring your fans home—back to your website. Marketers should give serious thought to supplementing their social-media strategies with a strong content-driven website. more

You might think that your small business—say, one with an annual Google AdWords budget of $50,000—has no chance when bidding against larger companies with much deeper pockets. Happily, that just isn't true. "Bidding for keywords on Google is not a straight auction," explains Minda Zetlin at Inc. "Instead, Google multiplies the top ... more

As small businesses continue to navigate the economic recession, their adoption of innovative marketing technologies such as social media has leveled off, while expectations among those who use social media have changed, according to a study by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business. Still, among ... more

You might think you've done your rendering homework, but that might not be the case. "Don't assume that the custom template you tested several months ago is still rendering correctly across all ISPs and Browsers on PCs, Macs, iPads," writes Kimbery Snyder at the Bronto blog. "ISPs are always changing ... more

Driven by increasing consumer adoption of mobile devices such as the smartphone and iPad, mobile proximity marketing is forecast to reach $760 million in 2011, and swell to nearly $6 billion by 2015, according to a report by Borrell Associates. more

Time is today's scarcest resource, and everyone is suffering from attention overload. Many marketers have therefore resorted to just getting louder (literally and figuratively). Rather than pushing (and annoying) customers, one way to break through the cacophony is via triggers that redirect customer behavior. more

Though the path toward recovery has been slower in the US than in most regional ad markets, the trend is positive: US advertisers spent an estimated $54 billion during the first half of 2010, up 3.8% from the same period a year earlier, driven by discretionary ad spending categories such ... more

"You have a great website. It has beautiful images, a compelling theme and intuitive navigation, all designed to take eager visitors to complete descriptions of your proprietary products and services," writes Tami Wessley at Whole Brain Marketing. "The only problem is your website shows up somewhere after page 10 on ... more

Regardless of age, roughly three-quarters of Americans (75%) say they have found a commercial on television confusing and 21% say they often find TV commercials confusing, according to a Harris Poll. more

More than one-third of US mobile subscribers (34.5%) browsed the mobile Web as of August 2010, up 2.6 percentage points (PPs) from the previous three-month average, while 22.5% accessed social networking sites or blogs, up 1.7 PPs, according to data from the comScore MobiLens service. more

When searching for products and services online, appearance matters: 48% of search engine users say they are more likely to click on a search result if it includes an image and 53% are more likely to click if a company name or brand appears multiple times on the search engine ... more

Seven categories of mobile applications are expected to dominate the mobile market over the next four years: email, games, social networking, instant messaging, mapping and directions, music and radio, and weather apps, together will account for an estimated 7 billion downloads worldwide by 2014, according to research from In-Stat. more

Worried that your website's inbound deep links—links to site pages other than your homepage or other top-level pages—are distracting visitors from your main advertising or branding page? Or that visitors following these links don't always realize they are on your site (as opposed to the site that linked to you)? Not ... more

You know you could benefit by adding one or another new technology to your branding efforts, but how exactly? Well, it helps to look at existing examples of the latest cool innovations. Case in point: augmented reality (where real-world views through a webcam or mobile device are augmented with techno features that ... more

In a recent post at the Content Marketing Institute, Elise Redlin-Cook asks the timeless question, "How do you find the best keywords for your audience?" Then she offers some timely advice. She recommends several online tools for novice and expert search marketers alike that can help simplify the process of researching keyword ... more

Most retailers say they are emerging from the recession better positioned for strong and sustainable revenue growth, with many planning to increase spending on Internet and mobile channels over the next 12 months, according to a survey from Forbes Insights. In addition, most retailers are planning to advertise more aggressively ... more

As our recessionary hangover drags on, you're probably thinking of evermore-creative ways to engage customers. But Drew McLellan of the Marketing Minute blog offers this caveat: "As you are crafting a new campaign or gimmick that you hope will go viral—always ask yourself, is the juice worth the squeeze for ... more

"Brand identifiability is under the advertiser's control and is a key consideration in ad design," note the authors of a recent research report on the effectiveness of visual ads. But because of rising "media noise" due to competing advertisements and "active ad avoidance by consumers," it has become challenging for ... more

Nearly eight in 10 of the nation's smallest companies (79%) say marketing is a major success factor for their business and nearly one-half (46%) of such firms, or microbusinesses, say they are using some type of social media for marketing, according to a survey from Vistaprint. more