Well, as with all good things there will be a next generation and this updated version of this very helpful bit of data was put together by the folks at Tent Social and shared my MediaBistro.

This effort is even a bit more comprehensive in that there are some tips in the various image size boxes to help you maneuver whatever hidden ‘gotchas’ might exist. So click continue reading to see the full infographic and be sure to bookmark it since it might come in handy in about 5 minutes.

Running your own business used to be the American dream. It was your ticket to an independent lifestyle. A way out of the 9-5 madness. Or maybe that’s what we all hoped it would be.

The truth is, running your own business is tough, especially when you’ve grown large enough to have a couple of employees on the payroll. I’m a company of one. If I have a bad week, it’s not fun but at least I don’t have to consider laying off an employee.

When asked why things have taken a downturn:

• 55% said the economy has hit their business hard.
• 49%  said it’s harder to keep pace with technology.
• 40% said there’s more direct competition.

Economic times are tough, no doubt. And competition! I don’t know how online niche stores compete with Amazon or how a local cafe competes with the fast food chain on the corner. But the answer that really intrigues me is the middle one. Nearly half of all respondents said it’s harder to keep pace with technology. Wow.

Let me take a moment to remind myself that I’m more technically savvy than most people my age.

Okay. Done.

For the family business that started out using a cigar box as a cash register switching to a touchscreen POS system and accepting digital payments can be a huge, terrifying change. Online biz owners may have a leg up on technology but now you have to think about mobile and cookies and shopping cart security.

And then there’s social media!

87% of small businesses use social media marketing now versus only 10% five years ago. That’s an incredible jump. 84% said that the use of online marketing was the biggest change they’ve faced in the last five year.

Look at that chart. Huge grown in all areas of online marketing but here’s the thing – even with all of these outlets, 35% said it was harder than ever to find new customers. Half say customers simply aren’t paying attention to marketing the way they used to. 45% blame it on increased competition.

Don’t count these small business folks out yet. Even though they’re not happy with where they are now, only 8% said they might have to close up shop in the next five years. 58% said they expect to be thriving by 2018. Many say that local support has been their saving grace. There’s a renewed interest in shopping small and close to home.

Others credit social media as a low-cost marketing tool.

“We’ve found that social media and email marketing has made it easier to run our business today, especially around the holidays,” said Mary Jennifer Russell, owner of Sugaree’s Bakery in New Albany, Mississippi, which has a storefront, as well as a growing online mail order and wholesale business. “We’ll post a special on Facebook or through email, and people start ordering immediately online, and also start coming into the store right away.”

This report comes from Constant Contact, an email marketing company, but I think that quote is genuine. Think about the time and money difference between an old-school coupon mailer and a coupon email blast to all of your current customers. Which one is more likely to bring people into your business right away when you’re having a bad week?

You can download the full report from Constant Contact right now. Click for the press release and drop to the bottom for the PDF link.

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The pitch that caught my eye today was the Millward Brown / SessionM study called “Exploring the Role of Value in Mobile Advertising.” I decided to cover the story because of this graphic:

Any company that uses a vampire bat to make their point is full of win. In this case, they asked mobile users to express how they feel about mobile advertising. Many people feel that its nothing but a time suck. On the other hand, they’re okay with ads as long as the content makes them happier, enriches their life or introduces them to a product that will do either of the aforementioned.

If they can’t have that, they want a reward.

• Rewarded audiences are over twice as likely to interact with brands. After seeing an in-app ad, 34 percent of rewarded users clicked or interacted with an ad, compared with only 15 percent of mobile users who had not participated in reward-based advertising.
• Receiving a reward expands a consumer’s consideration set. After seeing an in-app ad, 26 percent of rewarded users considered purchasing a brand, compared with 18 percent of mobile users who had not participated in reward-based advertising.
• Not all reward-based advertising is created equal. When using a reward-based advertising strategy, there are some things to keep in mind. Ninety-two percent of mobile users report it’s important they choose the reward they receive, and 68 percent of users prefer to know for certain they will get a reward, rather than be surprised. Users also prefer rewards that are tangible and have an element of choice in how they’re spent.

Wow. They not only want it free, they want a choice! These mobile users are hard to please.

Oh, and don’t even think about asking for their email address in return for the freebie; survey respondents said that was like the old bait and switch.

You may not like the idea of bribing customers to interact with your ads, but you may not have a choice. Attitudes toward mobile in general are improving but it’s still way down on the chart (this chart):

Opt-in emails remain king of the mountain with ad reaction actually improving since last year. Mobile and Non-Opt-In Emails are the only other categories that showed improvement but Mobile still comes in only at 9% on the favorable scale.

The bottom line of this lengthy, but informative report is this: consumers know there is potential value in mobile advertising but right now, they’re not seeing it. Ads are disruptive, deceptive and they’re more often than not, a waste of time. It’s now up to marketers to change that impression by paying more attention to the kind of ads we put on mobile and how they’re delivered. A well-timed, properly targeted ad is all that separates a happy future customer from a bad brand experience.

TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook will announce that it is introducing a video element of the service later this week.

We’ve been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week. Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely. On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine effect.

We are still looking for more information because we understand that Facebook has not wanted the details of June 20 to leak out — so this could be an intentional blind alley. But if the Instagram video report is true, you could say the event invite itself — sent by snail mail, coffee cup stain charmingly in one corner — is a red herring of its own.

So let’s play along and say that Instagram is indeed adding video to its offering. The logical conclusion is that Vine is in the head of the folks at Facebook enough that they feel a response to the Twitter video offering is necessary.

Right now though it’s a rumor. But doesn’t it make sense for Instagram to be headed in this direction, if not now in the very near future? The last thing Facebook can afford is to have the 11th hour before their IPO deal that was cut by Mark Zuckerberg last year languish behind a relative newcomer.

Will Instagram be even more attractive to end users if video were part of the offering? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

The idea behind the effort is to bring Internet connectivity to remote parts of the world using a series of balloons and bunch of other stuff. How can that happen? We get this from the Official Google Blog

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that’s part of the reason we’re calling it Project Loon—but there’s solid science behind it.

Want to see some more? Check out this video

Some will call Project Loon ‘looney’ while others already decry the possibility of more clutter in the atmosphere but the idea of giving Internet connectivity to more people is certainly an altruistic pursuit. Maybe we should just let it float around for a while to see how it really works before we shoot it down?

As for the marketing pitch behind this Google endeavor you can watch this video as well.

So is this looney or will this idea fly?

Next, you have to think mobile. Yesterday, I desperately wanted a cheesesteak but an errand took me to the other side of town from my local Philly’s Best. I knew it was a franchise, so I took out my phone and looked it up. Sure enough, there was another location just a few blocks away. I got my cheesesteak and that franchise owner got a new customer.

But it almost didn’t happen because the website I hit wasn’t optimized for mobile. I had to navigate through the website. The buttons were too small and too close together and I kept accidentally resizing the map. I almost gave up but I didn’t because I really, really wanted a cheesesteak. Not every customer would be so forgiving.

TransFirst and ControlScan just released a new report called “Small Merchants and Mobile Payments: 2013 Survey on Technology Awareness and Adoption.” They found that only 31% of multichannel (online and offline) businesses have a mobile-optimized website. It can be hard to wrap your brain around it, I know, but here’s the number that really slays me:

49% of ecommerce merchants know their websites are not currently optimized for mobile devices and an additional 17% say they don’t know or are unsure about their site’s current status.

These are people who make their living through a virtual business but they’re not optimized for mobile. That hurts.

When asked why they haven’t optimized, 43% said it was because their customers haven’t asked for the service.

Next question: how many of your customers access your website with a mobile device? Only 18% of ecommerce owners were able to answer that question. More than half of those who do track, can’t say if their shopping cart abandonment rate is higher on mobile than on the PC.

Statistics say that “challenges during the payment process caused two-thirds of prospective mobile purchasers to abandon their online purchase.” So yes, your mobile abandonment rate is probably higher. The sad thing is there’s something you can do about it.

Even knowing that mobile optimization is important and can impact their bottom line, a large portion of small business owners still aren’t planning to make it so.

Look, there are plenty of things in this world that we can’t control, but this is one you can. In a few years, having a responsive mobile website will be the same as having a website that reads on a PC – an essential part of doing business.

Are you optimized?

Not so helpful. Then I tried to search one of my usual TV topics and the light bulb went on. I searched “Life on Mars.”

This bar appears above the image results. It’s a line of choices with a side-scroller (but you can’t go one by one so I had to cut off the first response. . .sorry). Am I looking for “Life on Mars” the Bowie song? Proof that there’s life on Mars? Or the TV show “Life on Mars?” Now that’s what I’m talking about.

I often search movie and TV titles that have other meanings and would save me a lot of messing around. Here’s another. I want to learn more about the new TV series Graceland.

I get options for Graceland the place and the show.

Getting nitpicky, I wish Google would use the same keyword every time. In these examples, Graceland is “Show” and Life on Mars is “Tv Show.” They also need to correct the capitalization. Another Life on Mars result was labeled Bbc. I guess the tool is set to capitalize the first letter of the word and lower case the rest, regardless.

When you choose a topic, your results don’t change immediately. First, the screen splits to give you a closer look your choice.

You can click through for more detail on any of those options and you’ll find another set of “related” pics. If you don’t like those, click the 100+ more box and that’s when the full screen changes over to the more refined search.

With some practice, this will be my preferred method of narrowing down results. Right now, I’m still having trouble remembering to re-click the smaller photo to shut the detail screens. I want to press the “back” button, which is how you get out of the extreme detail mode and that throws me out of search completely. They really need to make the navigation the same from level to level.

As for this new search style, I’m learning to like it. It also points up the importance of properly labeling your photos. I don’t know exactly how Google catalogs images but I’m sure it will do better with life-on-mars-us-tv-cast.jpg vs 2849skl39.jpg.

Fun Friday Game: find words and phrases with multiple meanings to put in the new Google Image search to see if you can stump the engine. Pink – it’s a color and a person.

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Today is the day! Go to your success by starting to look for that new job. The Marketing Pilgrim Internet Marketing Job Board is a great place to start. You can find the full listings here.

If you are looking for that perfect hire you would be hard pressed to find a better audience than ours for just $27 / per month per listing as well. Find out how to list your June openings here.

Have you seen the new listings this week (as of June 13, 2013)? Here is a sampling:

Search Marketing Specialist / SEO - Volusion – Austin, TX

Account Manager – Eleventh Hour – Los Angeles, CA

First, if you are younger you may be wondering who (or what) is Pink Floyd. Let’s just say that their album (yes, it was released in 1973 as an album, which is 40 years ago for those struggling with the math) “The Dark Side of the Moon” was maybe THE seminal moment in rock and roll history. That is obviously a very subjective statement so if you feel the need to argue go right ahead.

But back to the point at hand. Spotify, the leading music streaming service, has had a bit of a gap in its offerings for those who are more inclined to listen to what is considered ‘classic rock’. That gap is that they do not have the Pink Floyd catalog like their competitor Rdio. It is actually something that might make someone go with one service over the other. It’s a competitive weak spot.

Well, Spotify has placed a carrot in front of its users who are wanting the Pink Floyd catalog as part of the offering. It appears as if they may have been asked to prove their worth because the service is saying that once it hits 1,000,000 streams of another Pink Floyd classic “Wish You Were Here” then the full catalog will follow. Spotify is making it a feature of its Twitter feed as of late to get the ball rolling.

So what’s the point? I wondered that myself from a marketing perspective so all I could do is take a look at it from my own personal reaction to the offer. It’s a Friday morning and I stumble across the information from a post as I go through the’news of the day’. As a Spotify subscriber, and one who switches to Rdio just to listen to Pink Floyd when the mood hits, I immediately act. So my morning goes from ‘the usual’ to taking a small detour to take an action that will hopefully result in something I will benefit from.

Sounds trivial, right? Do you think I would survive if Pink Floyd’s catalog doesn’t come to Spotify? Sure I would but I would still seek what I wanted from a competitor and that is bad in Spotify’s view. Instead now I am spreading the word about this deal (and hoping something happens in a similar fashion regarding Led Zeppelin’s catalog but that’s another story) and giving attention to Spotify. Spotify is making me act because they struck an emotional chord.

The lesson? People react out of passion. That’s why it’s difficult for some companies to move the needle in the social space. Or so they may think. They are not creating a passion for their offering. They are simply not doing anything to disrupt a person’s day in a way that benefits both them and the brand. Then they piss and moan about the ineffectiveness of social media etc etc.

Of course, music is a passionate thing and if you are a widget maker you won’t have the same opportunity to capitalize on a passion, or will you? Have you simply not tried based on the assumption that there would be no passion around what you do? That’s a dangerous way to think. In fact, it shows that maybe you haven’t thought enough about your customers and you are not being a truly aware marketer in today’s marketplace.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning this would be a different post but I am realizing as well that maybe this is what we need here at Marketing Pilgrim so we don’t just plod along day to day and not be passionate about what we do.

What say you?

Essentially, advertisers would pay a rate based on a group’s ‘social authority’ if they wished to advertise to a group that is more influential. The article says

A patent published by the company details how advertisers may be able to target audiences deemed an authority on specific topic matters, as well as by region, using social media scoring APIs such as Klout.com across multiple social networks. Advertisers would then be charged more to serve ads to more influential people.

The patent reads: “The social authority score may be determined, for example, based upon the number of contacts that the user has on LinkedIn, how influential the user’s followers and/or contacts are, and/or the title of the user.”

The system may also identify products or brands that the user clicked as “Likes” within one or more social networks, according to the filing.

It’s an interesting idea that brings up the increasingly vexing concept of social scoring. Many are very hesitant to accept things such as Klout scores to measure a person’s social impact or influence. While it may be something that a social media purist bristles at it could be a valuable market segmentation tool for companies like Yahoo! which could set their offerings apart from the competition. Of course, until it is being used and results can be watched it will be difficult to say just how powerful this model can be.

The article gives some insight about other potential uses by Yahoo!

Although the patent was filed in 2011, Yahoo published it yesterday (June 13) with the document further suggesting advertisers may be able to serve ads to their desired social media audiences after a bidding process, similar to a Google AdWords auction or an online ad exchange.

Yahoo also proposes advertisers may be able to specify the number of impressions they want for their particular advertisement, plus the demographic characteristics of their desired audience, as well as a “range of acceptable social authority scores” in order to target their messaging.

If you would like to view the patent you can here.

Would this kind of definition of a potential market be of interest to you in your marketing campaigns? Would you pay more to reach a supposed social influencer?

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

It’s hard to read, I know. I’ll have some close-ups in a minute.

At the top is a timeline showing Mentions, Follows and UnFollows. What I got was a section of data from May 14 through June 11. You can’t change this. It’s just a representative piece of the pie. I had 94 mentions in that time period. Since I have nothing to compare it to, I’d say that’s a nice number. I also picked up 108 follows. But I lost 46 people. That surprised me. Not that I think I’m so wonderful that no one ever leaves me, but it was a big reality check to see that I lose several followers on most days.

I unfollow people all the time because they Tweet too much, the same things over and over or I’m just no longer interested in what they have to say. I don’t Tweet that much and I don’t repeat myself that often, so I have to assume the people who left did it because I’m no longer interesting. That hurts a little, but it’s the way of the world. We’re human. We change. We grow apart.

Moving on.

The bottom half of the page is a long scroll of my Tweets. This goes back and back and back. . . I stopped looking when I hit last September. At a glance, I can see that I do send out a lot of Tweets promoting my articles. I’m a writer, can’t help it. The second batch is all TV related. No surprise to anyone who knows me. After that, it’s up for grabs.

You can sort your Tweets to see the “Best” or “Good” ones based on response. If you did really well, you get a blue sticker that tells you how you’ve surpassed your normal reach. My “reTweet” (from one of my own blogs – don’t tell) about the new Warner Instant program came out on top with 22 clicks, 23+ normal reach, 2 Faves, 2 reTweets and 1 “Replies” – that’s a good day’s work.

In addition to this tool, there’s a Follower page that is supposed to give you more insight into who follows you and who left you. When I click, it says there’s not enough data.

A quick look around the web tells me that this open analytics page is just a test. Not everyone has it and the information is far from complete. However, even as it stands now, I learned more about my Twitter account than I knew before.

One note: if you run several Twitter accounts, this tool is very IP stubborn. After logging in on one account, I had to close out Firefox and clear my cache before it would allow me to log-in to one of my other accounts. Simply logging out of Twitter wasn’t enough.

Have a minute? Go to: https://ads.twitter.com and see what you can see.

Needless to say. . . okay, I’m going to say it anyway. . . people are not happy. You can read it all on a thread called “Where is all of my old Myspace stuff.”

The responses talk about years of poems and personal notes, photos of friends who passed away, private messages between loved ones and money and time invested in games that are gone.

Everyone posting is passionate and all things considered, the comments are reasonable and clean (perhaps MySpace is moderating them?). Their biggest complaint boils down to this:

None. What company deletes years of user data without giving anyone a chance to remove their stuff? Some users are talking about hiring a lawyer to recover their personal information but I’m not sure MySpace had a legal obligation to give users a way out. From a PR standpoint, they should have offered zipped downloads but apparently they don’t care about the angry masses who used to hang out on use-to-be-cool street. Now they have the music crowd, they don’t need those poets and gamers anymore.

MySpace just locked the thread with the complaints but people are starting new ones. This is a fire they won’t be able to put out until they come up with a solution. I find it hard to believe that the data is actually gone. I’m sure it’s on a backup server somewhere. I can only hope that at this moment MySpace techs are building out a solution. It’ll be worth the effort in the long run. Not that they’re going to buy much good will with this afterthought, but it would stop the rush of complaints.

Here’s the original message from MySpace which was posted to the thread.

Upsetting? Oh, they’re not even talking about the deleted stuff. They’re saying they know people will be upset at the lack of features going forward!

And here’s from the new press release:

“The magic of Myspace has always been at the intersection of creative expression, community, promotion, and discovery,” said Myspace CEO Tim Vanderhook. “Myspace aims to power a new ecosystem catering directly to the creative community, enabling artists to manage their digital presence, build an audience, upload and distribute their content, and learn from data all on a single platform.”

Yep, sounds like they’ve moved on to a new audience. It’s sad and the worst move I’ve seen a company in transition make in a long time.

Lesson to be learned: we don’t own our space in social media, we’re only renting. Make sure you have backups of everything important even if it means taking screengrabs. This is Facebook ten years from now.

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However, a recent study from The Economist Intelligence Unit (which was sponsored by Lyris and repackaged in the chart below by Marketing Charts) makes it clear that big data is a top priority amongst all the things a marketer could know. Of course, just acquiring big data means nothing. It’s the ability to utilize data analysis skills to extract predictive findings that is at the top of marketers’ list of skills they feel are critical.

What might surprise some, especially those who are in the ‘latest and greatest done by the cool kids’ school of marketing which assumes social media skills is on the top of every marketers’ wish list’ camp, is that there is real desire to fully understand e-mail best practices.

E-mail? Really? Yes and the reason is that it is effective. People pay less attention to things that sound cool but don’t produce. They pay greater attention to techniques that work. So while it is not the sexiest form of marketing, e-mail marketing is important and smart marketers recognize it as such. They recognize it so much so that they are willing to admit that even with e-mail marketing being almost an ‘old school’ technique there is much to learn about best practices especially in a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Were you surprised at all by these results? Why or why not?

The chart comes from reports the research company has put together and if this is trending, Google looks to continue to take even more moving forward.

Facebook is also trending well, at least according to this research. Of course, Facebook investors might be relieved to see this considering they are not all too happy with Mark Z. and his band of merry social networkers at the moment.

If you are Google you have to be looking at this as a double edged sword. It’s always good to have great market share. But with Google and the audacious share numbers it tends to put up in certain areas of the Internet space (2/3 of the search traffic in the US and even more in other areas of the world as the prime example) this kind of dominance simply opens the door for more cries of monopoly or some other negative business impact.

But regardless of that likely scenario, who is out there to compete? Who can provide the services that Google does the way that Google does especially in an mobile environment? Few, if any.

Do you see Google’s dominance in this category continuing to grow or will there be someone else who can come along and grab some of the mobile money that is showing up in increasing volume?

Hopefully, that’s what we’ll all find when we log on to the next generation of Google Analytics which they call “dramatically streamlined.”

When you go into the Admin tab, this is what you’ll see going forward. Google provided several screengrabs on their blog but what they don’t show are the options under the drop-downs and this is where I’m confused.

Everything has been moved into three columns. That seems simple enough. Accounts and Properties are the same as before but they’ve changed Profiles to View. I always thought the word Profiles was misleading, so I understand the switch but View doesn’t really do it for me either. Here’s Google’s explanation:

We are also renaming profiles to views to most closely match the present and future meaning of what this object represents: a view of the data Analytics collected for your property.

To match the present and future meaning? Does that mean there are more changes ahead?

As for those drop-downs, the first two are obvious. I’m not sure what all goes under the last tab.

When you go to load a new website, the admin tool is cleaner and more intuitive. Here’s the new look (on top) versus the old look (on the bottom.)

It’s not a huge change but we’re all so used to sidebar on the left with info on the right, it just feels better.

The main difference is that what used to take you three clicks now only takes one. Less clicks works for me, as long as I hit the right “one” on the first try.

Apple’s about to make that happen. Venture Beat just published a copy of an email that explains the whole procedure to developers but it’s pretty simple. The entire transaction happens with a couple of clicks through their iTunes Connect account. The beauty of the deal is that the app details remain the same, only the ownership changes. Leaderboard rankings, reviews, ratings – they all carry over to the new owner.

Previously, you couldn’t buy an app from a developer without taking it down from iTunes and starting over. This is huge.

• Now brands can buy a successful app to rebrand as their own.
• App companies can buy up competitors or apps that compliment ones they’ve created.
• Developers can buy languishing apps that are in need of a update. Little tweaking on the back end, a fresh date in the app store and it’s a money-maker.

Given the huge number of apps in iTunes, the ability to buy and sell could benefit the consumer by reducing the number of fading apps. When I look for a download, I always look at the updated date. If it hasn’t been touched in over a year, I move on. From a tech standpoint, I don’t know if there’s a difference between apps that were created a year ago and apps that came out last week. I simply prefer downloading an app that is still being supported by someone. If the developer gave up on it in 2011, it’s no good to me in 2013.

What’s really nice about this system is that it allows the developer to do what he does best – develop. Then, instead of having to constantly market and maintain his creation, he can sell it and move on to the next brilliant idea. I’m like that with websites. I love to build them, but I’m notoriously bad at keeping them up. Only thing, I haven’t mastered the “sell it” part, yet but I’m working on it.

Well, Facebook has joined the hashtag fray.

The Facebook newsroom article tells us

Starting today, hashtags will be clickable on Facebook. Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion. When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you’ll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic.

I could go on about this but you get it, right? #herestoanevenmoreclutteredfacebook

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“WTF Is Waze And Why Did Google Just Pay A Billion+ For It?”

Good question. The reports have been swirling for about a week and Waze was being courted by all the big boys including Apple and Facebook. Google, however, won out with money and this from its CEO Noam Bardin which was posted on the Waze blog after the big win.

We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world,” he said, before revealing that “nothing practical will change” after the acquisition, and that Waze “will maintain [its] community, brand, service and organization.

Essentially Waze is a crowdsourced traffic monitor that helps its users find out where the traffic trouble spots are then routes them around the problem. The TechCrunch article says

Amidst a flood of third-party mobile mapping apps that have emerged since, Waze is today pushing 50 million users (up from 30 million in October) and has managed to find a steady growth curve thanks to its crowdsourcing formula. Rather than assiduously map out every single road, lane and byway, Waze relies on its millions of users to act as traffic cops, field ops and cartographers, allowing them to flag and record updates on accidents, bottlenecks and traffic in realtime. It pulls in information from your phone on your speed, location and so on to calculate the best routes and build out its own maps.

That’s pretty cool. But is it $1 billion cool? Well, considering who was looking to buy it (in particular Apple who announced a new and improved Apple maps at the WWDC earlier this week but still suffers in mapping credibility after the initial train wreck that was introduced to replace Google Maps last year) this company is certainly on to something.

As you might guess,that something is more than just good traffic. It’s the potential for advertising which it is already selling.

While it’s always working to be seen as some sort of next-gen digital utility provider, Google is first and foremost an advertising company. Really, many of its services’ main function is to help their customers get their ads in front of their users. Google advertising can be a key asset to Waze going forward as it looks to expand its own revenue potential and advertising platform.

Up until recently, Waze had put monetization on the backburner, focusing on growth and product. But, late last year, Waze rolled out its own Ad product, which is essentially a “location-guided ad platform for local business owners and big brands that want to attract the attention of nearby drivers.”

For now the service is going to be operating independently as is noted here when the Waze CEO tells his rather loyal following

Nothing practical will change here at Waze. We will maintain our community, brand, service and organization – the community hierarchy, responsibilities and processes will remain the same. The same Waze people will continue to collaborate with you, and we will continue to innovate our product and services, making them more social, functional and helpful for everyday drivers. Our employees, managers, founders and I are all committed to our vision for many years to come.

Two words on that one: yeah right. It reads nice and it’s a very cool thing for a CEO of a community driven service to say but how often has Google purchased something then left it alone to its own devices? If it is not going to be integrated then why would they buy it? Just to keep it from Apple? That’s good for Google but there has to be more and with the new Google Maps sitting on the horizon this might be a pretty nifty way to not only make maps look nicer but much more practical.

In the end a billion bucks isn’t much to Google so the price tag isn’t the real story here. The real story is that Google is protecting its position as king of the mapping hill and it realizes that it can’t stand still and effectively do that. That’s bad news for the competition.

What’s your take?

The numbers come from the latest Pew Internet and American Life Project post and they’re even more impressive when you look at them graphically.

Look at that climb! In three years, we went from 3% to 34% and it’s likely that the line will continue on an upward swing for the next few years.

Why is this important to you, the marketer? Because it’s a sign of things to come. We’ve barely figured out how to monetize smartphones and now we have tablets in the mix. The good news is that tablets are actually easier to monetize because of the wider screen and the way we use them. Smartphones are what we turn to when we’re on the go. It’s a quick fix but that means that in most cases, the user doesn’t have time to waste.

The tablet is just the opposite – it’s all about laid back browsing on the couch, in front of the TV. Tablet users have time to watch that video ad or interact with a piece of content. Tablets are going to save our mobile monetization hides.

There are a few other differences to note.

Demographics

According to Pew, tablet ownership is pretty equal between men and women and folks of different races. Smartphone ownership leans slightly toward black males but it’s still a close call.

Where we see a significant difference is in age. Smartphones are for the young (18-34) but tablet ownership skews toward the fortysomethings. 49% of adults 35-44 own a tablet. Every other age group falls below that with the over 65 crowd coming in last at only 18%.

Tablet owners also tend to have college degrees and higher incomes.

Here are a few other interesting trends:

• Among parents with minor children living at home, tablet ownership rose from 26% in April 2012 to 50% in May 2013 (an increase of 24 percentage points).
• Tablet ownership among adults living in households making at least $75,000 per year rose from 34% to 56% (22 percentage points).
• Tablet ownership among college graduates rose from 28% to 49% (21 percentage points).

The takeaway: If you’re looking to reach middle-aged professionals with your next ad campaign, the tablet is the way to go.

Sounds like something you’d find in a Ben Affleck movie but the UK paper The Guardian says it’s real and they have the proof; a 41-page PowerPoint presentation created to train operatives on the program.

I’m telling you, just looking at those documents online makes me nervous. The news broke several days ago and since then the parties involved have been in damage control mode.

Google was the first to respond with a post appropriately titled “What the …?”

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

The conspiracy theorist in me feels it necessary to point out that if Google did know about PRISM, they’d be required to disavow any knowledge of the program because that’s how these things work. A secret program isn’t much good if people don’t keep it a secret.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg went so far as to call the claim “outrageous” in his post:

I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

Google, Facebook and probably all of the other parties involved, have asked the US Government to be more transparent in their information requests. Google even went so far as to publicly publish its letter to the FBI asking for the okay to post data about NSA requests.

For these companies, privacy and security are the keys to staying in business. The public has to trust that their secrets are safe inside the digital walls. But it’s hard not to believe the documentation. The only thing that makes the PRISM slides unbelievable is that they’re so ridiculously cliche.  If you wanted to create a secret internet spying project for a cartoon, this is what it would look like.

As I understand it, only a few slides from the deck have been released to the public. Why? Are the others so bad that it would jeopardize national security? Or maybe there’s a final slide that says, “this is how we’d like to collect data if Google and the others would let us.” Then there wouldn’t be much of a story, would there?

At the end of all of this is again that question – how much of our privacy are we willing to sacrifice in the name of national security? If combing through my TV-heavy Twitter posts will help the FBI stop an attack, then I’m all for it.

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