Internet Marketing News

Flipboard encounters problems upon launch of iPhone application.
Flipboard, already popular with iPad users, launched a new app for iPhones in early December. Flipboard allows users to aggregate content from multiple formats into a customized, magazine-style format. Unfortunately, its popularity proved too much to handle, as Flipboard crashed soon after the launch of the new app. Flipboard is still available to users for free, and though the company has relationships with 60 different content providers, it has not yet settled on a profitable business model.
Search Engine Journal

Infographic shows the strengths and weaknesses of daily deals for advertisers.
A new infographic from BuySellAds breaks down some vital statistics on daily deal coupons. Among the strengths: 44% of online consumers use or search daily deals sites, and roughly 60% of subscribers to major deal sites use their coupons. The weaknesses center around being additive to business: only 17% of merchants were satisfied with the repeat business after running a deal on Groupon, and only 22% of consumers spend significantly more than the value of their coupons.
Search Engine Land

Cultivating bloggers is a growing aspect of brand strategy.
Brand managers understand that bloggers can influence the reputation of their products, so they are increasingly making an effort to actively develop relationships with those bloggers. Across several different categories of bloggers, the majority report commenting on specific brands in their blogs, and nearly half say they have positive relationships with brand representatives.
eMarketer

Look for apps to further proliferate, but not necessarily monetize, in 2012.
A survey by Millennial Media indicates that apps are still in the 'gold rush' stage of development, with more people rushing to the market than are thinking about how to make money in it. With 500,000 apps already available for Apple, and 300,000 for Android, 40% of app developers still put launching a new app as their top priority for 2012, vs. just 21% who are looking to maximize revenue.
Marketing Pilgrim

Studies find US Hispanic market to be promising in terms of both size and receptiveness to ads.
One study puts the buying power of the US Hispanic market at $1.02 trillion as of last year, and it is projected to grow to $1.48 trillion by 2015. What may not be as widely known is that this market is measurably more receptive to advertising. A separate study found that 35% of US Hispanics remember ads when shopping, compared to just 22% of the non-Hispanic population. Hispanics were shown to be more receptive to ads on several other metrics as well.
eMarketer

Google tweaks its algorithm to consider the importance of freshness to different searches.
Google has altered its search formula in an effort to distinguish between searches where fresh updates are important, and those where the results are more timeless (e.g., sports scores are more time-sensitive than recipes). An estimated 35% of Google searches are expected to be affected by the change.
SearchEngineWatch

Google switches from graphics to words to represent competition for keywords in AdWords.
An AdWords tool which shows advertisers how much competition there is for various keywords will now use the descriptors low, medium, and high, rather than the previous method of representing the level of competition with a horizontal bar graph. However, users will still be able to drill down and find the exact number that went into the rating.
Search Engine Land