B2B Marketing News: Omni-Channel B2B Sales Insight, Google & Microsoft’s Rising Ad Revenue, & Instagram’s Live-Stream Banners

How B2B Businesses Can Get Omnichannel Sales Right
B2B sellers now more often offer digital channels than in-person ones, and recent survey data shows that marketers also find digital channels more effective, and The Harvard Business Review recently examined the power of a more holistic and customer-centric approach to collaboration in B2B. Harvard Business Review

Google parent company Alphabet broke $200 billion in annual revenue for the first time
Google’s parent firm Alphabet topped the $200 billion revenue mark during 2021, a year-over-year rise of some 41 percent to $257 billion, with Google advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 totaling over $61 billion, Alphabet recently announced. The Verge

Microsoft’s ad revenue hit $10B, and it’s investing — is it a sleeping giant about to wake?
During 2021 Microsoft recorded more than $10 billion in advertising revenue, with its search and news services achieving strong growth of 32 percent over the year, while overall 2021 revenue at the firm rose by 20 percent to $51.7 billion, Microsoft recently announced. Digiday

Social Media Study Finds Only 18% Of Brands Understand What The Metaverse Means
39.5 percent of brand marketing and analytics executives said that Microsoft’s LinkedIn (client) was the most trusted social media platform, followed by Instagram with 14 percent, while just 18 percent said that they understood how the metaverse will effect their brand, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost

[bctt tweet=”“When the metaverse is mainstream, will you be like the person who held on to their AOL account and fax machine?” — A. Lee Judge @ALeeJudge” username=”toprank”]

Instagram rolls out a new profile banner to display users’ upcoming live streams
Meta’s Instagram platform has begun offering an expanded profile banner that can highlight future live-stream events on the platform, in a shift that could bring additional exposure opportunities to B2B marketers live-streaming on Instagram, the firm recently announced. TechCrunch

Google kills FLoC, introduces Topics API as its next-gen targeting tech
Google has introduced a new ad-targeting system proposal to replace its previous Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) effort, a system called Topics that will be centered around some 300 broad topics initially, as the search giant seeks to phase out its use of third-party cookies and implement an alternative method of ad-targeting. Search Engine Land

U.S. Podcast Ad Spend Spiked 21%, To $590M, In 2021
During 2021 podcast advertising spending increased by 21 percent, reaching $590 million, with technology, media, and finance as the top industries for podcast spending, and mid-roll ads being the most frequent, according to newly-released report report data of interest to online marketers. MediaPost

New Report Underlines the Importance of Social Media in Connecting with Gen Z Consumers
Members of the Gen Z demographic ranked a social media presence as a top way …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog