Technology and social media are in driver’s seat for marketing in 2016

As technology and social media continue to evolve, companies are investing more in educating themselves on changes in the influential sector, a new locally conducted nationwide survey shows. AKHIA, a Hudson marketing and business integration firm, led an online survey in December to examine strategies, trends and considerations for U.S. companies of all sizes in different industries to begin planning for 2016.

The results showed a push to keep apace with technology and focus spending on newer media. Forty percent of survey respondents said they plan to invest in communication technologies such as marketing automation, customer relationship management or other analytics tools in the near future. The increase in technology budgeting doesn’t stop there. In fact, four out of the five areas in which companies plan to increase spending involve strictly technology, including web and digital strategy, search engine optimization and communication technologies.

The survey, conducted by TRIAD Research Group, an independent market research firm based in Cleveland, featured 225 marketing and communications professionals from different segments, including health care, manufacturing and financial services.

Ben Brugler, AKHIA’s president, said the results were more validating than surprising. “This is exactly in line with what we were talking about with our clients,” Brugler said. These results go hand-in-hand with barriers that industries are shown to face.

According to the survey, 37 percent of companies identified poor infrastructure for collecting and analyzing data as their greatest barrier to measuring success, which is partially related to a lack of proper technology.

“What’s most telling about these results is that implementing the right systems and having the right people in place to not only track, but analyze data will be critical in the next five years,” the AKHIA report concluded.

What’s more, three out of the five areas respondents planned to invest in training were centered on technology as well. The first and most prominent was social media strategy, while digital marketing strategy and digital paid media trailed behind.

"That was our thinking, that marketing was going to be investing a lot in technology and digital databases, things that would be affecting their job,” Brugler said. “We were seeing it even with our own clients." A new reality.

Also read: US Intelligence CIA Joins Twitter and Facebook

As technology becomes more of a normality for businesses, one specific facet is beginning to show its face, and it doesn’t look like the trend is going to slow down anytime soon.

In AKHIA’s survey, social media reigned as the biggest marketing trend affecting businesses. The survey found 41 percent of companies will definitely or probably increase spending for nontraditional advertising, such as social and banner ads.

At the same time, 28 percent of companies will definitely or probably decrease spending on traditional forms of advertising in the next five years, such as print, billboard and sponsorships. Social media was also the main thing businesses wanted to educate themselves on in the next one to two years to do their jobs more effectively.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 Marshmallow Beta Update In Photos

Samsung recently rolled out a beta Marshmallow update for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge for a limited crop of users in the U.K. Registration for the beta has ended with no word on a release date for the official update in the U.K. or anywhere else, or if there will be any changes between now and the final release. For the time being, the update has rolled out to everybody it’s going to roll out to. For those in other regions or who missed out on the beta, SamMobile has taken the time to put together a photo gallery showcasing the sweeping changes in the update.

As you can see in the absolutely colossal gallery below, TouchWiz has taken on a whole new look. Scaled back just a teensy bit more toward stock Android, it’s picked up a brand new white color scheme for the quick toggles and status bar, replacing the highly divisive teal that TouchWiz has sported since the KitKat days. Icons are now flat, more in line with Material Design guidelines, rather than the poppy 3d-ish effect seen previously. Some of Samsung’s own app icons have been redesigned from the ground up, as well. On top of some icon redesigns, the vertical app drawer from Marshmallow is now a part of the TouchWiz launcher. The power menu has been given a minimalist redesign, making it much simpler to use. In the theme store, you can now download themes based on overarching color scheme, so those in the mood for some pink, yellow or red menus and icons will no longer have to hunt around to get their fix. As a nice touch, the default camera app has been given a shutter speed option, but only in Pro Mode.

Samsung surprised us all by launching a beta for Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge last week. Samsung is no longer accepting new participants for the beta, but we’ve been running Android 6.0 on our S6 and S6 edge and have a lot of images to show you how the latest version of the operating system looks on the two devices.

Android 6.0 brings many changes to the interface. The status bar and quick toggles menus are now fully white instead of blue, the power menu has been redesigned (quite poorly, we might add), and a few app icons have been changed as well. If you like changing themes on your phone all the time, you can now download new ones based on their color palette, which is a nice touch that should help you narrow down the number of themes you have to go through when finding a new one.

In terms of features, the regular Marshmallow features like Google Now on Tap and more advanced app permissions are included. For photography buffs, the Pro mode now has a shutter speed option, which has been a long time coming for Galaxy S6 and S6 edge users. All in all, with the interface changes and the Android 6.0 features, this is turning out to be quite a notable update.

Well, enough talk! Check Marshmallow in action on the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge below, and let us know what you think down in the comments.

More images: SamMobile

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Surface Phone: Microsoft working on breakthrough Windows mobile

Microsoft CMO hints at development of breakthrough Surface Phone running Windows 10 mobile

Microsoft CMO Chris Capossella has confirmed development of breakthrough Surface handset from the company. At a podcast interview, Capossela spoke about Surface branded handset.

During the interview, Capossela hinted at the development of Surface branded phone and he calls it breakthrough device for Windows 10 Mobile ecosystem. He also called it the equivalent of the Windows Surface tablet, which could be a hint at more Continuum features.

Microsoft has been struggling in the mobile space since the launch Windows Phone 7. The addition of basic features have been slow and app developers have never been forthcoming about the OS. Till now, Instagram Beta on Windows Phone doesn’t even show verified profiles.

While Capossela has confirmed the development, the device doesn’t seem to be coming out anytime soon. Surface Phone has been leaked before too with Evan Blass revealing the slow development of mystery device earlier.

Also read: Microsoft Outlook hacked following Gmail block in China

Microsoft recently announced the launch of Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL in India at a price that were in line with the pricing of Google’s flagship Nexus 6P. With Surface business turning profitable, it makes more sense than ever before for Redmond to launch Surface-branded Windows 10 mobile device.

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Block traffic2cash.xyz referral spam in Google Analytics

Traffic2cash.xyz is a referrer spam URL associated with other referrer spam domain names including traffic2cash.org, traffic2cash.net, and propellerads.com. Traffic2cash.xyz referrer spam is designed to mix inappropriate web data into your Google Analytics account in order to aggressively gain your attention and provoke you to visit the website or search for it online. Traffic2cash.xyz referral traffic is not essentially harmful to your website and the way it appears in Google Search Results Pages, but it can ruin your website’s appropriate data measured in Google Analytics reports such as your bounce rate and time on site.

Traffic2cash.xyz referrer spam and referrer spam from other URLs such as googlemare.com is becoming a very big problem and hot topic for many webmasters, website owners, and anyone who values their website’s appropriate data. Unwanted traffic2cash.xyz referral traffic can ruin your website’s analytical data. For example, the spam URL usually appears to land on a single webpage on your website and leave from the same webpage which interfere with your appropriate bounce rate. This is not the only Google Analytics data that traffic2cash.xyz referral spam can ruin. It can essentially mix useless data into everything provided in Audience, Acquisition, and Behavior reports.

Fortunately, we have created a guide to block traffic2cash.xyz referral spam in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter that targets the Campaign Source. This will stop traffic2cash.xyz referral spam from interfering with your data measured by Google Analytics.

What is Traffic2cash.xyz?

Traffic2cash.xyz is an untrustworthy referrer spam URL that targets your Google Analytics data with deceptive and eye-catching referral traffic. The website promotes a service which it claims is a “New lucrative opportunity to monetize your website” and will ask visitors for their name and email address. Do not sign up for this service. It is merely a phishing scheme designed to acquire your email address and full name for a variety of marketing purposes. The content on the traffic2cash.xyz webpage is used to promote propellerads.com; an untrustworthy advertising platform notorious for referrer spamming.

If you sign up for this deceptive marketing ploy you will receive numerous emails. One of them will be from a representative from traffic2cash.xyz named Jeff Bridges, which is a red flag because that is also the name of a very famous actor. Traffic2cash.xyz will also claim to be located at 416 Lincoln Rd Mall,

Miami Beach, FL, 33139, in the emails. This is actually the address of a Starbucks coffee shop in Miami Beach.

source:botcrawl.com

The downside to unwanted traffic2cash.xyz referral traffic for website owners is that it can mess up the appropriate Google Analytics data.

Spammers target the referral traffic of your website for several reasons:

-- Referrer spammers want to promote a website and want you to visit the webpage or search for it online through Google search engine results pages.

-- Referrer spammers want to boost their rank on Google search engine results pages by creating backlinks. They do this by logging requests into your website’s access log, which is then crawled by Google’s indexing bots and seen as a backlink to the spam site.

Traffic2cash.xyz referrer spam is not entirely dangerous to your website. It will most likely not cause any trouble with how your website is accessed by your visitors or ranked by Google. However, in some cases referrer spam may use up your website’s bandwidth and CPU by creating multiple site requests to your website. In other cases, the spam URL is served to your analytical data by traffic bots which create ghost hits and never actually land on your website, which happens to be the case with this URL. They often target your GA ID number.

How to block Traffic2cash.xyz referral spam in Google Analytics ?

This guide shows you how to block traffic2cash.xyz referral spam in Google Analytics by creating an exclude filter to stop traffic2cash.xyz referral traffic at the source.

1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab and click All Filters.

2. Click the ADD FILTER button to create a new exclude filter.

3. Add Traffic2cash.xyz or something you can easily remember as the Filter Name.

4. Select the Custom Filter Type.

5. In Filter Field, find and select Campaign Source in the list. In the Filter Pattern text box, add traffic2cash.xyz and click the blue Save button on the bottom of the webpage. To add multiple address you can make a Filter Pattern like this: example.com | traffic2cash.org | traffic2cash.xyz | traffic2cash.net

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Amazon Drone to fly soon for delivery

In December 2013, Amazon announced with great fanfare a radical concept for delivery: drones, on autopilot, carrying small packages right to customer’s doorsteps. While the idea was not without its critics, it looked like a tangible future for commercial drones. Yesterday, the FAA announced that they are finally willing to let Amazon test their drones within the United States, provided that Amazon doesn’t test anything meaningful or innovative about the drone delivery concept at all.

The experimental airworthiness certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) won't let Amazon start shipping books and other small packages to every customer's door via drone today, but it is a step in that direction. The FAA on Thursday said Amazon can fly its drones only during the day, within 400 feet of the ground and within sight of an operator who has a traditional pilot’s license.

Amazon isn't the only company that can start experimenting with drones. The FAA has issued over 40 commercial waivers already. But, the certificate given to Amazon is broader in scope the waivers issued to other companies. Amazon is one step closer to launching its drone delivery service. The Federal Aviation Administration recently approved the retail company to fly its unmanned aircraft on a trial basis.

They’re light, fast and sturdy enough to inspect bridges, monitor crops and assist in rescue missions. Now add Amazon’s ambitious “Prime Air” drone service to that list. The Federal Aviation Administration just approved the retail company’s unmanned aircraft to take flight.

In a written statement, one of the company’s vice presidents said, “We are committed to realizing our vision for Prime Air and are prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need.”

Also read: Early investors in Indian e-commerce book huge profits

But the online retailer’s license is only on a trial basis. FAA regulations allow commercial drones under 55 pounds flown up to 100 miles per hour. They can only hit the skies in daylight hours and the operator has to be at least 17 years old with what the FAA is calling an “Unmanned Aircraft Operation Certificate.”

This all comes as a recreational drone crash-landed on the White House lawn back in January, putting Secret Service agents on edge.

“Like any new technology, the technology can also be misused so we just have to make sure that as we’re enabling the technology to be used, such as unmanned aircraft systems, we’re also looking at how they can be misused,” said UMD UAS test site director Matt Scassero.

Now with Amazon’s drone service greenlighted, the FAA has approved licenses for nearly 50 other purposes, like movie-making, inspections and aerial photography.

Amazon first ignited interest in its drone delivery service back in 2013. Since then, the company has been a main supporter of faster regulatory action in support of drones.

Back in 2012, Congress ordered the FAA to integrate drones into the skies with passenger planes by September of this year. Experts say the agency is on track to meet that deadline.

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Flipboard launches desktop version of its news reader app

Elegantly designed and a joy to use, Flipboard seemed such a perfect fit for tablets and smartphones that the team behind it appeared content with holding back from rolling out a desktop version. Till now, that is. Announcing it as “a major new frontier on our quest to build the world’s best personal magazine,” the Palo Alto-based company on Tuesday introduced Flipboard for desktop.

A beautiful version of Flipboard for the desktop and a major new frontier on quest to build the world’s best personal magazine. The Web evolved, too, with things like responsive design making for easier (and prettier) reading and navigation. The vision of Flipboard founders—to bring a print-like aesthetic to digital content—could finally be realized.

As with developing for iPhone, Android and Windows, the team builds on a platform’s unique attributes while still retaining the heart and soul of Flipboard. With Flipboard everywhere, millions more people can experience it for the first time while current readers can catch up on the news they care about and collect stories into magazines anytime, anywhere.

It seems like the decision to finally launch a Web version came down to factors such as improvements in responsive Web design, which, as the team says, “makes for easier (and prettier) reading and navigation.”

While different in feel to the cross-platform tablet and smartphone versions, Flipboard’s desktop effort still features its familiar clean and uncluttered design, with a mix of text and images that should look great on any screen size.

If you already have a Flipboard account, you can sign in to reach your personalized sections, with articles and display-filling images just a mouse click away.

The team says that to create “optimal layouts and a pacing that feels natural for Web browsing,” it computes “the relevancy of stories and photos and analyze the type of content – such as images or text – that’s on a page.”

It also uses algorithms based on your interests to pull up recommend topics and magazines, hopefully leading you to additional engaging content.

Although you’ll likely prefer using Flipboard on your tablet or smartphone considering the wonderfully fluid interface the mobile versions offer, the new Web-based alternative presents users with an additional viewing option, and for those without a mobile device it offers a first chance to explore a piece of software enjoyed by many and used by millions over the four years since it launched.

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Microsoft Outlook hacked following Gmail block in China

Online censorship watchdog Greatfire says that Microsoft was attacked over the weekend, causing havoc for Chinese users.

Microsoft's Outlook email service was subject to a cyberattack over the weekend, just weeks after Google's Gmail service was blocked in China.

On Monday, online censorship watchdog Greatfire.org said the organization received reports that Outlook was subject to a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack in China. A MITM attack intrudes on online connections in order to monitor and control a channel, and may also be used to push connections into other areas -- for example, turning a user towards a malicious rather than legitimate website.

After testing, Greatfire says that IMAP and SMTP for Outlook were under a MITM attack, while the email service's web interfaces were not affected.

The attack, dubbed "especially devious" by Greatfire, involved a pop-up warning message in the email client. Unlike in the case of browser warnings, users are more likely to quickly click the "continue" button on the message without actually reading the message or considering risk factors -- potentially attributing the warning to a network issue instead and therefore nothing to be concerned about.

Once clicked upon, the user's emails, contacts and passwords could then be logged by the cyberattackers. According to Greatfire, the attack lasted for approximately a day and has stopped -- at least, for now.

According to a report in ZDNet, The cyberattack on Microsoft systems comes after recent MITM attacks which reportedly have taken place against Google, Yahoo and Apple in China. It is only weeks since Google's email client, Gmail, was blocked in the country well-known for its tough censorship laws. Since 26 December, Gmail users in China have been unable to access the service, even if they use a third-party service -- such as Outlook -- to access their messages. Currently, VPN circumvention of the block is the only way to use Gmail.

Due to similarities between other reported MITM attacks, Greatfire has accused Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) of orchestrating the attack, or having "willingly allowed the attack to happen."

"If our accusation is correct, this new attack signals that the Chinese authorities are intent on further cracking down on communication methods that they cannot readily monitor," the watchdog says.

Greatfire believes that as the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is directly governed by CAC, the organization should not be trusted by software providers such as Microsoft and Apple, and the firms in question should immediately revoke trust for the CNNIC certificate authority.

Also read:Surface Phone: Microsoft working on breakthrough Windows mobile

Blocks on foreign services have become increasingly common in China over the past few years. The "Great Firewall of China," as China's censorship mechanism is colloquially known, aims to shut down anyone who seeks freedom of speech to criticize the ruling Communist Party. Users of foreign services, such as Microsoft's Outlook or Gmail, are being forced to use local services instead -- which the Chinese government can monitor to weed out signs of dissent.

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Another 72-hour Great Online Shopping Festival

Even as the likes of Flipkart clocked sales of $100 million in under 10 hours thanks to its amazing discounts on the Big Billion day sale, the Google-promoted Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF), which kicked off on intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, promises to be another mega show. More than 5 million potential shoppers have already visited the site gosf.in to register themselves for the 72-hour online shopping festival that has 450 vendors this time, up from 250 last year and just 90 in 2012 when the festival was for just 24 hours.

Last year, 2 million users had visited the site and the merchants registered twice the growth on their daily average sales and this year most partners are expecting three times the sales.

Nitin Bawankule, director for e-commerce and online classifieds at Google India, told FE he saw the GOSF as a trend line for what is going to happen in the e-commerce industry the following year. For instance at last year’s GOSF, “we saw 45% of the users coming from mobile phones. At that time the e-commerce players were getting less than 20% of the transactions through mobile phones. So we told the merchants to develop their mobile platforms like apps,” he said. Most e-commerce firms now see roughly 45% of users coming on mobile platforms.

While the country’s largest e-commerce player Flipkart will not be part of GOSF, Google has managed to ensure its flagship Nexus 6 phone will be available at GOSF. Under the arrangement Google has, the Nexus 6 was to be sold in India only through Flipkart.

“The big boys might have grown indifferent but for most of the smaller players and offline players this still generates a lot of traffic and revenues. This has been working very well for them,” eTailing India founder Ashish Jhalani told FE.

However, other big e-commerce players such as Amazon.in, Snapdeal.com, Shopclues.com and Jabong.com are all geared up for the Google-promoted event. Google itself on Tuesday announced the launch of Google Chromecast in India at R2,999, to be sold on Snapdeal.com and select Airtel stores across India from Wednesday.

A continuing trend is that mobile phones still contribute 20% of e-commerce sales even if the price cuts have eased. Last year both mobile phones and laptops saw discounts of 6% on average during GOSF. According to Bawankule, discounts have ceased to be the reason for shoppers to buy online; rather, it is convenience and choice.

Also read: Early investors in Indian e-commerce book huge profits

Google also has a special section offering products at Rs 299 with free shipping and cash on delivery to attract first-time buyers, who comprised over 30% of customers last year. And that should net more customers.

“During the three-day GOSF period, we are expecting a 400% increase in traffic and 300% increase in revenues,” said Rohan Bhargava, co-founder, CashKaro.com, one of the participating merchants.

TheElectronicStore.in, part of India’s brick-and-mortar retailer The Mobile Store, believes that if you can’t beat them, join them. After earlier protesting against the discounts offered by online players, The Mobile Store is participating this year. It would be hoping to get results similar to Shopclues.com, which reported a triple-digit increase in sales and nearly 1.5 lakh new customers in the event. The company is expecting traffic to surge by 120% and 180-200% rise in sales over GOSF 2013.

According to Bawankule, last year GOSF saw women’s participation of around 40%. In a recent study conducted by Google, it found that by 2016, of the 100 million shoppers that it is expecting online, 40% will be women.

http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/google-72-hour-sale-set-to-be-another-mega-online-shopping-fest/17449/

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Early investors in Indian e-commerce book huge profits

MUMBAI: Amid all the cash burn and eye-popping valuations, early investors in India's burgeoning e-commerce sector are beginning to book profits. TOI has learnt that Bengaluru-based venture fund Kalaari Capital may be in the process of executing a secondary sale of shares worth $100 million (Rs 610 crore) in Delhi-based Snapdeal.

The e-tailer's bigger rival, Flipkart, saw a similar secondary transaction a few months back, revealed sources. Early backers of the country's largest e-commerce player like Accel Partners part-sold their shares in a $150 million (Rs 910 crore) round. This round also saw some investors and employees in Myntra, which was bought out by Flipkart earlier this year and became its shareholders, selling their shares.

A secondary sale is when an existing investor sells shares to a new one or the promoter at the company's current valuation. The money does not come into the company's coffers. Secondary deals have been common among private equity funds in India, but are comparatively rare for venture capitalists.

Vani Kola, MD at Kalaari Capital -- which is now a shareholder in Flipkart as an early Myntra investor -- did not respond to a query from TOI regarding the secondary transaction at Snapdeal. Accel Partners also did not offer any comments till the time of going to press about selling shares in Flipkart.

One of the first investors in Flipkart back in 2009, Accel had put in a million dollars in the company, which is now valued at over $10 billion. Kalaari, which first invested in the e-tailer as IndoUS Ventures, has in all put $25 million (Rs 150 crore) in Snapdeal over the past five years and holds around 14% stake in the online commerce player.

"Exits of early investors via secondary transactions is a very healthy trend and fills the last mile of the investing ecosystem. Exits are the lifeblood of venture capital and have been an issue in India. So this is an encouraging development and shows maturation of the process,' said Avnish Bajaj, MD at early-stage VC fund Matrix Partners India.

Sources privy to the matter told TOI that Kalaari, an early-stage $160 million fund, was likely to shed a small single digit stake, giving it a windfall return nearly the size of its current fund. Sources said the secondary deal was being done at a higher valuation to the SoftBank round which valued Snapdeal at around $2 billion. The Japanese telecom and internet giant, which pumped $627 million into the company, owns about 32% in Snapdeal.

Also read: Amazon Drone to fly soon for delivery

The exact size of these secondary deals at Snapdeal, Flipkart and Myntra and the identity of the buyers could not be ascertained immediately.

Silicon Valley fund Bessemer Venture Partners, another early investor in Snapdeal, part liquidated its shareholding in the company, booking gains on its investment during the SoftBank round itself.

The country's top online commerce players including Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have been bleeding on account of their frenetic growth and discounting to lure customers on to their platforms. TOI carried a report last week stating that almost a billion dollars in investor money was being guzzled up by the larger e-tailers collectively on account of advertising, discounting and increasing their employee strength. Flipkart and Snapdeal alone have raised about $3 billion this year from investors.

Also read: Another 72-hour Great Online Shopping Festival

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Job Applications Fell Down in US

WASHINGTON — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits slipped below 300,000 last week, after having spiked above that level in the prior week for the first time in nearly three months.

According to report, Weekly applications fell 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 4,750 to 299,000.

Applications are a proxy for layoffs. As fewer people seek unemployment benefits, it suggests that employers are holding onto more workers and potentially looking to bolster their hiring.

Applications have been under 300,000 for 11 of the past 12 weeks, an unusually low level that suggests employers are anticipating stronger economic growth. The four week average for jobless claims has plummeted 9 percent over the past 12 months.

Such sharp declines in applications are unlikely to continue, analysts said. But at sub-300,000 levels, they point to better job gains in the Labor Department’s employment report, said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“The trend probably has now flattened off, but at an extraordinarily low level, consistent with very strong payroll numbers,” Shepherdson said.

The decline in application for unemployment benefits has been matched by a surge in hiring.

Employers have added an average of 228,500 jobs a month this year, putting 2014 on pace to be strongest year for hiring since 1999. That’s up from an average of 194,000 last year. The unemployment rate has fallen to a six-year low of 5.8 percent, down from 7.2 percent just a year ago.

The November jobs report being released Friday is expected to show gains of 225,000 last month, according to the data firm FactSet.

The payroll processer ADP said Wednesday that private companies added 208,000 jobs in November.

Even with gains this year and five years removed from the end of the recession, nearly 9 million people are out of work. Before the recession began in 2007, there were 7.6 million unemployed Americans. Less than a quarter of the people counted as jobless by the Labor Department are collecting unemployment benefits.

The recent job gains have not lifted wages by much, stifling the potential for the economy to grow more quickly. Average hourly pay rose 3 cents in October to $24.57. That’s just 2 percent above the average wage 12 months earlier and barely ahead of a 1.7 percent inflation rate.

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