GoMarketing has launched a division to help home service industry firms market their brands in all channels.

"In many cases time is serious money for these companies,” states Richard Uzelac, CEO of GoMarketing.

He continues: “A plumbing or (Heating & Air) company that still doesn't have a strong online marketing plan in place needs to play catch and quickly, especially if their competitors are completely dominating them online and getting all the leads and business.”

Uzelac adds that a “significant portion” of the firm’s clients are heating and Air (HVAC), plumbers, flooring, office maintenance, painters, furniture, home builders and home remodelers.

The Thousand Oaks, California company will provide website development, custom content creation, search engine optimization, link building, mobile marketing, software development, videos, ecommerce and other services, it says.

GoMarketing has served such brands as MetLife, ESPN, CBS and Fox Sports, helping them to grow online sales, the company says.

An email service provider in the middle of an ongoing investigation into its email practices.

Krebs on Security identifies Adconion as the company at the center of this probe.

The indictment charges that the defendants “engaged in a conspiracy to identify or pay to identify blocks of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that were registered to others but which were otherwise inactive,” Krebs writes.

In addition, the defendants sent “forged letters to an Internet hosting firm claiming they had been authorized by the registrants of the inactive IP addresses to use that space for their own purposes,” Krebs continues.

Krebs cites a memo filed jointly by four defendants, stating that “this case spun off from a larger ongoing investigation into the commercial email practices of Company A.” Krebs adds that the indictment issued last year is “just the opening salvo in a much larger, ongoing federal investigation into the company’s commercial email practice.”

A footnote in that document identifies Adconion as the company, Krebs says. That firm was acquired by Amobee -- a mobile ad provider -- in 2014 for $235 million, according to published reports.  

A request for comment or confirmation by Amobee had not been answered at deadline.

Four individuals have been indicted on conspiracy, wire fraud and electronic mail fraud: Jacob Bychak, Mark Manoogian, Mohammed Abdul Qayyum and Petr Pacas. The defendants deny all allegations against them, according to the memo cited by Krebs.

However, Krebs asserts that all four were employees of Adconion and identifies them as Mark Manoogian, an attorney whose LinkedIn profile states that he is director of legal and business affairs at Amobee, and formerly was senior business development manager at Adconion Direct; Jacob Bychak, listed as director of operations at Adconion Direct (Qayyum’s LinkedIn page says he is manager of technical operations at Adconion); and Petr Pacas, formerly director of operations at Company A (Adconion). Krebs cites a statement of facts filed by the government.

In addition, two other defendants were indicted separately: Daniel Dye and Vincent Tarney.

The defendants’ memo, which demands that the government produce documents in discovery and disclose the criminal record of an informant, frequently cites this document: ADCONION - DISC02 - REPORTS - 00 1001.

However, the indictment against the four defendants does not identify the company.

The indictment states that “the defendants concealed their use of the IP addresses to send ‘spam’ emails by using business names, post office boxes, and email address under different names.” The alleged activities took place from 2010 to 2014.

• by Chris Gil , Op-Ed Contributor, 19 seconds ago

According to eMarketer, ecommerce sales stemming from mobile devices is expected to rise 25.3% in 2020. This is after being up 28.8% in 2019. By 2020, nearly 50% of all ecommerce sales will be driven through mobile. Even if your client doesn’t sell their product or service online, these stats point to an undeniable trend of consumers being willing to take action on mobile that will impact every industry. 

As this trend plays out, brands will need to make a conscious effort to shift their mix to drive performance on mobile, or risk seeing response slowly deteriorate over time. It’s time to focus less on the new and more on the obvious. 

In this case, the obvious is social. Smart brands will reposition social as not just a brand driver, but also a performance driver. Here are three not-so-obvious reasons to help make the case. 

Time spent on mobile is time spent on social media. 

22% of all time spent on mobile occurs on social platforms, with audio being the only medium that takes a larger share at 33%. Video comes in third at 18% (eMarketer). Much of this audio and video time is spent in areas without ad-supported content making this true reachable audience much lower and more costly than social. Combine this with ad experiences that don’t exactly facilitate easy shopping, audio and video will remain brand building drivers in 2020. 

Meanwhile Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest are doing everything they can to make direct response advertising feel more native on their platform. Product feeds can now easily be uploaded and promoted through collection and carousel formats.  Ad experiences load quickly and auto-fill functionality makes it easier than ever to capture user information. 

There is untapped opportunity in social. 

Budgets have been flocking to Facebook and Instagram for some time now and rightfully so. They have the scale, compelling targeting, a variety of ad formats, and maybe most importantly; an incredibly intuitive UI. Meanwhile Pinterest and Snapchat have grown somewhat quietly to critical mass. 

Let’s look at US social network users by platform. Facebook is tops with 171.5M users. Second is Instagram with 106.7M, followed by Pinterest at 78.7M and then Snapchat at 77.5M (eMarketer, March 2019). 

Now let’s look at ARPU (Ad Revenue Per User) as a loose indication for where marketers are spending their money relative to the user base. Instagram is expected to collect $103.48 per user in 2020. By comparison, Pinterest and Snap are projected to have ARPUs of $11.99 and $10.57, respectively. Even factoring in brand safety concerns with Snap and skewed demographics with Pinterest, there is a clear imbalance of budgets here that should not be ignored. 

Not to say Instagram has reached saturation, but brands have a massive opportunity in Snap and Pinterest for less clutter, more attention and a higher share of voice. The secret is out too. Just open up with Snapchat and you’ll find a DTC brand waiting. Hello, Away. Hello, Purple. 

The decline of cookie-based targeting actually HELPS social channels. 

You can’t have an article on digital without discussing Apple’s ITP rollout and the impact of tracking crackdowns. These changes have all but killed third-party cookies; used commonly to fuel behavioral targeting across the web. No doubt these changes will have a broad impact across the industry but relatively speaking, the social networks have come out largely unscathed; especially in terms of targeting. After all, these platforms are built off actual people. 

In this new cookie-less age, brands will become forced to rely more on a combination of their own first-party data, a publisher’s second-party data and even old-school contextual targeting to deliver relevant messaging at the right time. Social platforms can check all three boxes: they can match and model off CRM data with high confidence. They have a data set built based on what individuals are spending time with on their platform. And lastly as a marketer, you know exactly the context in which the user is seeing your ad. No surprises. Cookies be damned. Social’s targeting advantages aren’t going anywhere. 

Sometimes the obvious choice is the right choice, for not-so-obvious reasons. 

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Retailers' branded mobile apps are proving effective in increasing customer engagement as well as boosting sales on multiple levels, according to a new study in the Informs Journal Marketing Science.

The apps are shown to be increasing sales on retailers’ websites as well as in their stores, the researchers from Texas A&M University found.

At the same time, apps are increasing the rate of returns, although the increase in sales outweighs the return rates, according to the study.

Over 18 months after app launch, the study's authors found that retail app users buy 33% more frequently, buy 34% more items, and spend 37% more than non-app user customers.

On the not-so-bright side, app users were also found to return products 35% more often, and return 35% more items at a 41% increase in dollar value.

At the end of the day, however, the researchers found that app users spend 36% more net of returns.

The research was conducted by Venkatesh Shankar, professor of marketing and Coleman Chair in Marketing and director of research, Center for Retailing Studies, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and Unnati Narang, a Ph.D. student in Business Administration-Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.

Shankar and Narang based their findings on data from a large US-based retailer of video games, consumer electronics and wireless services with 32 million customers.

“Overall, we found that retail app users are significantly more engaged at every level of the retail experience, from making purchases to returning items,” the research authors note.

“Interestingly, we also found that app users tend to purchase a more diverse set of items, including less popular products, than non-app users. This is particularly helpful for long-tail products, such as video games and music.”

For retailers, the lesson is that having a retail app will likely increase customer engagement and expand the range of products being sold online and in-store, the researchers suggest. 

They also found that some app users who make a purchase within 48 hours of actually using an app tend to use it when they are physically in proximity to the store of purchase.

“They are most likely to access the app for loyalty rewards, product details and notifications,” the researchers suggest.

Mall of America, located in Bloomington, Minnesota, outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolis, is 27 years old. A new one will open in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in October. Despite the dismal retail landscape, the Mall is an experiential property, Sara Johnson, Integrated Marketing Manager, Mall of America, told ...