A new survey from Gallup suggests that social media advertising isn't nearly as effective as industry giants like Facebook and Twitter would like to think it is.
According to the polling firm's latest "State of the American Consumer" report, released Monday, just 5% of Americans say social media advertising has a great deal of influence on which products they buy. In fact, 62% of the 18,000 people Gallup surveyed said social media advertising has no effect on their purchase decisions at all. 

The future is digital, of course - but in the present, the revenues generated by print are absolutely critical to supporting local newsrooms. So it makes sense to pay attention to print strategy.
I have to say, I find it funny to be called an apologist for the legacy news industry, as Clay Shirky suggested in an overnight post. 

You make an ad, you buy the media, and you track your metrics. But somewhere in that equation, you have to wonder if audiences are actually seeing your ad. Or more precisely, if the amount of human eyeballs that were supposed to see the ad is accurate or wildly inflated. That question, it turns out, actually encompasses several topics:
* There is the ever-popular question of banner blindness, a catchall for the ongoing concern that online audiences are ignoring ads at rates that are either frightening or terrifying.
* There's the question of click fraud, which presents a crisis for advertisers, perhaps to the tune of $6 billion. 

Depending on where you work and how old you are, trends in digital/social advertising may be either your stock in trade or the biggest thorn in your side.
According to the always-reliable Market Research, however, the loud victory march of the Ninjas and their allies the Gurus isn't quite as triumphant as one might think.
In fact, multi 

This past year, digital advertising online and via mobile crossed the $40 billion mark for the first time ever, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. Since 2004, the average growth rate has been 18 percent. And this year, digital ad revenues surpassed broadcast television for the first time.
Not shockingly, mobile is leading the charge. 

You may have heard that you can't compete with those huge, multinational enterprises online. You may have been told that they can throw so much money at their marketing campaign that there is simply no way you could ever break into the market when these big companies are already dominating every aspect of the internet.
You may have heard all this... but you may be wrong. 

Circulation revenue for U.S. newspapers recorded a second consecutive year of growth, rising 3.7% to $10.87 billion in 2013, according to preliminary data compiled by the Newspaper Association of America. 

A new study by Bank of America found 47 percent of U.S. mobile phone users wouldn't want to go a single day without their smartphones. The survey included 1,000 people who use smartphones and have Bank of America accounts. Large segments of the respondents said they'd rather go a day without coffee (60 percent) or alcohol (79 percent). 

There was a double dose of good news in eMarketer's mid-year ad forecast released today. Ad spending will grow more than 5 percent in 2014 for the first time in 10 years. And the mobile ad boom shows no sign of plateauing with 83 percent growth over 2013 expected.
The Newspaper Association of America's revenue report for 2013, released in April, found that mobile advertising had grown 77 percent for the year but still accounted for less than 1 percent of total revenue.