My gosh, Google and Facebook have been busy lately…

PPC

• Here’s What Google’s New “Circulars” Ad Format Looks Like – Google is testing a new kind of ad unit called “Circulars,” designed to mimic the full-page inserts traditionally found in newspapers.
• Facebook Introduces Expandable Ad Unit – Right-side ads (not to be confused with Sponsored Stories) will now be augmented with Friends’ Likes & Comments.  Here’s bonus commentary on their evolving ad strategy.
• Learn to Predict the Present With Google Think Quarterly – As part of Google’s quarterly, interdepartmental publication, Hal Varian, Google’s in-house economist, teaches us how to extract marketing insights from Google searches.
• Google Just Answers – New site from Google offers a nice overview of the myriad new search ad formats.
• What f8 Means for Advertisers – The annoucements made at f8, including more robust actions beyond just the “like” button means that advertisers might be able to target audiences much more precisely based on media consumption.

SEO

• Google Analytics Webmaster Tools SEO Reports Now Available – You can find the new reports under the “traffic sources” > “search engine optimization” section of the new Google Analytics. The new reports there include: queries, landing pages and a geographical summary – all of which include organic CTR data. See also this more in depth review on SEOMoz.
• Introducing: Rich Snippets for Apps – You can see application snippets from several marketplaces and review sites, including Android Market, Apple iTunes, and CNET.

Analytics

• Google Analytics Premium announced – More data, advanced features and dedicated support available at a price.
• Real Time Reports coming to GA – Data will cover geography, traffic sources & content and will only get the following stats: visitors, % of new/returning visitors, pageviews, traffic sources, active pages. Most useful for publishers, e-commerce campaigns and sites holding an off-line event.

Social Media

• Does Facebook Fan-Gating Hurt Facebook Engagement – The overuse of gated content is driving the value of a fan down and causing “like fatigue”. Be sure you think about your Facebook goals and how you want to accomplish them before you gate all your content.
• Changes Coming to LinkedIn Company Pages, Get More Followers Now – An AdWeek article late last week hints at changes coming to LinkedIn’s Follow feature for company pages, making it much more important to build your followers now.

Local Search Engine Optimization

• Will Siri Change the Face of Local Search? –  The new iPhone voice recognition system will read back texts, allow you to schedule an appointment AND do local search.
• Introducing A New Support Feature For Google Places For Business – “Fix An Issue” now available. Google has updated the help section for Google Places and made it easier to report problems. Help Section.
• Groupon Releases Loyalty Deals – Finally closing the daily-deal loop, Groupon has released Rewards. Any merchant that’s run a regular deal in the past now has the option to rewards customers with greater deals after reaching a certain spending threshold.

B2C

• Google Trusted Stores – Google has launched Trusted Stores Program, offering ecommerce sites a “Trusted Store” badge to place on their site. The badge will consist of a report card including a grade for reliable shipping and customer service. The program is also offering customer service for customers if they have any issues with purchases made on a Trusted Store site. There are only a few sites involved in the program currently, as Google is piloting the program, but here’s an example of the badge on BeachAudio.com. If you are interested in participating please fill out this form.
• 5 Ways Facebook’s New Features will Fuel Social Shopping – Facebook’s changes to the Open Graph give businesses hope for more diverse and interactive social shopping experiences.

B2B

• Five Great Ways to Segment Your Leads – Overview of unique ways to segment the leads in your marketing funnel, including separating leads by level of social engagement and types of content they like to consume.
• 6 Tactics for Awesome ROI on LinkedIn Ads – Best practices for effective LinkedIn ad campaigns, including going for soft-sells over hard-sells and properly cropping pictures so that they’re clear.
• The Trouble with Marketing Automation – Interesting point of view warning B2B marketers to remember that “leads” are real people and automation can tend to leads marketers to forget that at some point, each person must be sold to/messaged to differently.

Web Design

• 22 Essential User Testing Tools – A website’s usability is important in keeping visitors happy and helping them complete tasks. This post from Mashable talks about why and gives some great tools to test a site’s ease of use.
• IE10’s HTML5 Preview – An early look at Microsoft’s inclusion of HTML5 in their upcoming release of Internet Explorer.

Mobile

• Mobile impressions bigger than TV in the U.S. – Mobile Apps reach 20 million consumers each hour from 7am to 11pm, the equivalent audience of 17 American Idol finales each day.
• Mobile and Tablet Usage Increases after Work – Both mobile and tablet users increase their search queries after work or school. Make sure if you’re running mobile PPC campaigns that you are optimizing for this search curve.