When the Ad:tech advertising technology conference hits New York next week, marketers, advertising agencies and recruiters may spend less time listening to the panelists and more time working the floor to find new employees.

A talent gap is growing between the skills that many new advertising jobs require and the number of people who have those skills. The dilemma, one familiar to many industries across the country, is particularly acute for jobs that require hard-core quantitative, mathematical and technical skills.

The talent pool, advertising technology company executives say, is not a deep one. And those who have the skills are in high demand, often fetching annual salaries that can reach $100,000.

“There is pain for hiring in digital at all levels,” said John Ebbert, managing editor of AdExchanger.com, a Web site dedicated to advertising technology.

“The marketers, the publishers, the ad tech companies, the agencies, data management companies — they’re all going for the same type of employee.”

Read More: NY Times

64% of Digital Ad Spend Controlled by 5 Companies

I was doing some calculations for my own purposes and wanted to find out what percentage of the digital media ad spend (search, display, mobile, etc) is controlled by Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and Microsoft.  Well, after searching through their 10K’s, it’s about $40.1B, or roughly 64% of the worlds digital media ad spend.

According to a ZenithOptimedia press release on October 3, 2011, worldwide digital advertising accounted for about $64.03B.

Google generates approximately 364% more revenue from advertising than it’s next closest rival, Yahoo!.

With Facebook at $1.86B in advertising revenue (excluding virtual currencies/goods) for 2010, it puts them at right behind Microsoft but ahead of AOL.  With Facebook only now starting to monetize their platform, you can start to see how big an impact they could have on the dominance of the digital advertising landscape.

And of course, you can really see how dominant Google is.

Read More: Darren Herman

 had the opportunity to attend a conference on target marketing last month. There was the usual slate of vendors offering up solutions that cater to various aspects of ad serving, data management, campaign analytics, and other resources. However, what grabbed my attention was some of the suggestions that had less to do with the bells and whistles surrounding the technologies being used to find and track audiences online and instead had more to do with the fundamental philosophies behind why these solutions even exist to begin with.

If, as a marketer, you were asked to answer the question “why should you target audiences?” coming up with a suitable answer is pretty easy. At the core of any effective marketing campaign, online or off, the ultimate goal of any campaign is to get the right message (offer) to the right person at the right time. Good targeting allows marketers to better control campaign outcomes to make sure that they reach their goals.

Understanding the “why” is a no-brainer. What’s a lot harder to broach is the “how” associated with audience targeting.

The following best practices will hopefully help you to gain a better understanding of the targeting landscape if you’re currently unfamiliar with it. This is by no means a complete list of what digital marketers should know in order to most effectively run their digital campaigns. But this is a good starting point or foundation to better understand how these technologies can be approached and understood so that marketers can take advantage of many of the tools being offered today.

Read More: ClickZ

LinkedIn Adds Job Button

Facebook in the last year has used a set of social plug-ins, including the “Like” button, to extend its reach across the Web. Now, LinkedIn is planning to introduce a professional plug-in to let people apply for jobs on third-party sites with information from their LinkedIn profiles.

Expected to launch later this month, the “Apply With LinkedIn” button would streamline the application process by letting LinkedIn members use profiles as resumes, according to a GigaOM article today, citing an unnamed source briefed on the feature. LinkedIn declined to comment on the report.

The story explained that after clicking the “Apply” button and logging in, a user can edit parts of their profile and contact information and might be asked to answer questions from a prospective employer. Once an application is submitted, a confirmation message is displayed.

For their part, employers would be able to add up to five questions from a template, including whether a job candidate is willing to relocate, eligible to work in the U.S., or wants to add a cover letter. Companies can also add questions specific to a particular position and have applications sent to an email address or Web site, among other options.

Read More: MediaPost

SAN FRANCISCO — Some 20 recruiters sized up Scott Mersy as they would a star high school running back. But instead of timing his 40-yard dash or checking his percentage of body fat, they were interested in his stats in cloud computing and online marketing.

Prospective employers from Silicon Valley to New York lined up for the 5-foot-11 225-pound Mersy, who weighed offers from several of them before settling on Service-now.com, a cloud-computing company in San Diego.

“It’s as close as I’ll ever get to feeling like an athlete of any sort,” Mersy, 40, says, laughing. He joined as senior director of customer acquisition and industry marketing in February.

Tech workers like Mersy are coveted commodities as the high-tech industry undergoes its biggest hiring binge in more than a decade. Not since the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s has competition been so fierce. Would-be employees are being enticed with fat contracts, hefty bonuses and such freebies as iPads, meals, sporting events and shuttle services. These and other perks are in play to hook top talent in engineering, social media, website development, product design and management.

Read More: USA Today

Ad Industry: The Year Of The IPO

The advertising industry likes to think 2011 will be the year of mobile, but with improving economic conditions and a crop of companies bringing in new clients and better-than-expected earnings, they will likely look back to see a solid stream of initial public offerings.

Expect to see an influx of companies go public this year, including those supporting online advertising, according to venture capitalists. Positive economic conditions pave the road for everything from rising stock prices to returning appetites for investors willing to take risks, says one VC.

Conversely, eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman says the growth and trends promoting digital ad companies to go public point to a crowded market for vendors and other Internet players needing to raise more money to be competitive. And because it’s a crowded market, the original investors see now this as a good time to cash out before some companies die.

When Responsys’ stock begins trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, it will trade under the ticker “MKTG.” Earlier this week, the company set the pricing of its IPO at $12 per share of common stock, selling 6,619,654 shares.

Read More: MediaPost

Despite continued difficulties in the wider employment market, companies in the digital advertising sphere are aggressively recruiting talent. A plethora of vacancies across the market -on both the sales and agency side – this January suggests the slowdown of the past two years is officially over, and the market is once again returning to a healthy rate of growth.

“The market is definitely picking up again for us. Even in the worst times digital was quite active, but the trend is certainly on an upward trajectory,” commented Tim Cecere, human resources director for WPP-owned agency conglomerate GroupM. “This year compared to last year we are more aggressive, and much more aggressive than two years ago,” he added.

Digital agency R/GA lists over 60 vacancies for its New York office, 13 for its San Francisco office, and nine for its base in Chicago. Rival agency ZenithOptimedia says it chose to hire last year in an attempt to beat its competition to the talent. “We took advantage of the market and hired around 35 staff on the digital side,” said John Nitti, the company’s SVP and Managing Director of integrated planning. “We have about 12 or 15 vacancies open right now, and we’re also focusing on staff retention.”

Read More: ClickZ

DSPs and real-time bidding: six trends to keep an eye on

Econsultancy’s Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) Buyer’s Guide has been published this week, which contains a detailed analysis of how real-time bidding (RTB) and DSPs are revolutionising the online advertising sector.

The 133-page report, which has a global focus and profiles of 16 DSPs, describes developments in the industry, with information about the main players and advice about how to find the right platform.

Here, I’ve tried to summarise some of the main points in the report into six key trends.

Static algorithms and transactions, bundle-purchasing of impressions and pre-negotiated prices will soon become a thing of the past.

Much of the display advertising market growth is driven by the recent developments in auction-based media and the increasing number of platforms facilitating real-time bidding transactions.

Impression-level bidding, predictive targeting and dynamic inventory allocation are just some of the hottest buzz phrases in the display advertising ecosystem as interest in demand-side platforms has intensified.

Read More: Econsultancy

There appears to be good momentum in digital advertising for ad verification solutions, but where does it all end up?   Can a “point solution” evolve into a sustainable, long-term business within the ad technology stack?

I’d argue more “points” will need to be added – especially if these companies want to “exit.” But first, let us review…

A Brief History

When pure-play ad verification companies arrived on the scene nearly two years ago, ad networks and publishers rejoiced.

[Record scratch sound here!]

Hardly.  Agencies have been the happy ones.

As you may know, ideally with third-party ad verification solutions, agencies get to verify what they’re buying from ad networks and publishers as it’s stated on their insertion order (I.O.) agreements. For example, ad verification might confirm that a particular geographic requirement has been met (“target U.S. users only”) or that the context of the content in which an ad runs is deemed in or out of context.

Another benefit for agencies is that it allows them to say to their marketer client that they are insuring brand safety for the marketer’s campaign. With marketer’s hesitant to put their ad spend into digital, ad verification helps overcome the traditional mindset.

To date, it appears challenges still remain around ad verification being reactive rather than proactive. Rather than preventing an ad from being served before it hits a page, the technology may find out after the ad is served that it was an inappropriate placement. No doubt agencies want to prevent the phone call from the marketer: “I just saw my cell phone ad in a Gawker story about Brett Favre’s latest misstep.”

Read More: AdExchanger

AdMeld On Data

Close the blinds, publishers, as the AV club nerd sets up the film projector (wheezing the whole time): today’s educational film comes from revenue optimizer AdMeld and is called, “Data Is the New Black.” There’s a lot of confused and fearful chatter in the hallways these days about data, but do you actually know the many things that comprise user data? Or what collectors do once they get data? The video talks about real dilemmas such as data leakage, but also offers smart ways to make data selling work for you, including conversing with data buyers to learn more about your audience – all to a hip soundtrack made on space-age synthesizers. We hope everyone is mature enough to watch this video because, no, you don’t need a permission slip from your parents to view it on YouTube.

Read More: AdExchanger

Do You Have What — and Whom — It Takes to Compete in a Digital World?

We live in a world that’s increasingly connected, digital and mobile, and influenced by social networks. The shopping and media-consumption patterns of consumers are evolving at a dizzying clip. Entire industries such as travel and music have been largely reshaped almost overnight. Multibillion-dollar, digitally enabled companies evolve in a few short years.

All of this has the management teams of all sorts of companies asking a key question: “Are we prepared to operate in an increasingly technology-driven world?”

Companies that have the right leaders in place will be able to answer with a confident “Yes.” Spencer Stuart recently completed a global and multisector study to provide insights into this very issue. Through 50 interviews with top-level executives in nine industry sectors across North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region, we honed in on a series of best practices for companies building their organization’s digital capabilities. Here are the top four pillars for solving the digital-leadership challenge:

Senior-level buy-in. Investments in digital require the appropriate buy-in and support of the board, CEO and top leadership because of the breadth of digital’s impact on the company. Digital is about more than simply a new approach to marketing campaigns; success ultimately will be measured by the seamless integration of technologies across advertising, direct response marketing, sales, supply chain, public relations, employee communications, and supplier and vendor relationships.

Read More: AdAge

Yahoo’s outspoken CEO Carol Bartz unloaded on Apple’s new “iAds” advertising product, with which Apple is now trying to disrupt the media business.

Carol says iAds “will fall apart” because of Steve Jobs is way too much of a control freak:

“That’s going to fall apart for them,” Reuters quotes Bartz as saying. “Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads.”

We agree. And if it’s not the control issue, it will be the production costs and the 40% cut.

In any event, iAds are off to a slow start.  The WSJ reported last month that of the 17 big brands Apple touted at launch, only a handful have actually run campaigns.

Read More: BusinessInsider 

Bing’s Latest Attack On Google: Use Facebook Data To Make A Better Search Engine

Bing is working on expanding its partnership with Facebook to provide users with search results based on Facebook “likes,” Kara Swisher reports.

Facebook has like buttons sprinkled across webpages. As more people click on what they like, Facebook can build a rudimentary search engine tracking people’s interests.

If Bing gets exclusive access to that data, and it proves to be useful, then Bing could have a minor advantage over Google.

That’s a big “if,” and a big “could.” We’ll see if any of this matters in the long run. For now, Google is still crushing Bing.

Read More: BusinessInsider 

BranchOut — A New Facebook App That Will Kick Start Your Job Search

The guys at Superfan, made up primarily of former Tickle founders and employees (which was acquired by Monster for a gazillion bucks), have launched an interesting Facebook app that I like.  It’s called BranchOut and if it catches on among the FB masses I think it could really be useful. Similar to LinkedIn, BranchOut is a business networking tool. It basically allows you to figure out what companies your FB friends work for so that you can network. If your friends are using the app, then you can also see who their friends work for, and so on.  So, to put it simply, if you are interested in potentially getting a job working for widgets.com, you can do a search and find out which of your friends work there and then reach out to them directly to try and network your way in.

I downloaded the app this morning. The interface is clean and easy to navigate.  I was immediately prompted to put my employment history in – just my job titles, company names and years of employment.  When I go to my BranchOut profile, there is a complete list of all the companies where my friends work.  The number of friends I have that are employed at each company are listed below.  If you click on each of the company names, you get a list of jobs that are open as well as a list of my friends who currently work or have worked for the company in the past. (If the friend was a past employee, their dates of employment with that company are listed.)  So, for example, I have one friend who works at Apple (sad, I know). When I click on Apple, I get five pages of of job listings that the company is advertising.  It’s well organized and intuitive.

Read More: LetsTalkTurkeyBlog.com

You might dub these last few months the Summer of IBM.

On July 21, IBM announced its launch of an analytics suite for marketers and advertisers. Just over two weeks later, on Aug. 3, IBM announced its completed acquisition of Web site analytics company Coremetrics. On Aug. 13, IBM announced plans to acquire marketing technology company Unica for $480 million.

We’re currently living through a complete transformation of the media buying landscape. Not just IBM, but a slew of major IT and intelligence companies are entering the media planning business. If I were a CEO of a Madison Avenue media buying business, I’d be losing sleep. I’d also take a page from Adobe’s playbook (which I’ll explain later).

With media buying increasingly an area that relies on precise analytics, rich data and sophisticated technology, it was only a matter of time before IT and intelligence businesses joined the media-buying field. And it isn’t just IBM that’s joining the fray. In early January, Cisco led the $27.5 million series C funding of Quantcast, an online audience targeting technology. Meanwhile, Accenture participated in last October’s $31 million funding for advertising optimization technology Adchemy, and purchased assets from consumer buying behavior technology CadenceQuest.

Far from a shift of focus of one company alone, we’re seeing the IT and business intelligence communities enter media buying en masse. You get a sense of how serious this challenge is when you compare war chests. With IBM’s market cap around $160 billion, Cisco’s close to $120 billion, and Accenture’s around $27 billion, each of these companies dwarf even the largest advertising holding company. Omnicom’s market cap holds around $11 billion, for instance; IPG stands around $4.4 billion. The media holding companies are the David’s to the challengers’ Goliath.

But capital is only part of the issue. What’s more critical is the issue of DNA. Media buying came of age when most media plans incorporated relatively few buys across a limited number of distinct, disconnected media channels. The concept of cross-platform analytics was completely foreign, the chief skills media buyers needed were strategic planning and price negotiation — and media planning largely played second fiddle to the advertising businesses’ creative shops.

Today, that’s all changed. Media buys are extremely fragmented, deeply intertwined and highly accountable-making it increasingly critical to apply sophisticated analytics to every media plan. Meanwhile, between DSPs and new platforms launching every day, coders are becoming as critical to the media-buying landscape as media buyers and even creatives.

And in an era when media buying revolves around analytics and technology, Cisco and Big Blue have huge advantages over Omnicom and WPP. Which is why Madison Avenue CEOs have real reason for concern.
 
How should Madison Avenue face the current challenge? My suggestion is to take a page from the Adobe playbook-and to think seriously about Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture last October.

Read More: AdWeek

DSP + RTB: A Breakable Bond

The concept of a demand-side platform (DSP) I understand and the concept of real-time bidding (RTB) I also understand. What I do not understand is the unbreakable bond between the two.

It seems to me that the idea of a DSP was not powerful enough, nor was it innovative enough to stand alone, and so DSPers had to link them together to make a “powerful,” “new” technology and service. This enabled them to proclaim the “death” of the ad exchange (and maybe the ad network as well) and allowed them to create a buzz that will occupy us all (the online advertising industry) for a long time to come.

DSP + RTB is far from being a game-changer in the online advertising industry. A DSP service can be achieved without having to use RTB, and RTB can be used by ad exchanges and networks with equal success for the right media. I will strengthen this theory through a broken down analysis of the basic offerings and characteristics of a DSP.

Read More: Adotas

AdMeld Names Jason Kelly Chief Media Officer

Ad optimization technology provider AdMeld on Tuesday named Jason Kelly as chief media officer.

Most recently, Kelly served as VP of strategy and revenue management at Time Inc. Digital. At AdMeld, Kelly will oversee global relationships with demand and data partners, as well as lead strategic publisher projects.

AdMeld is one of many startups competing to help publishers better manage all the ad networks they can now choose from to sell leftover ad impressions. As Kelly sees it, AdMeld is in the business of helping publishers “manage and sell their inventory programmatically, analyze and package their audiences, and optimize impressions across the Web and mobile.”

For a share of earned ad revenue, AdMeld — along with rivals like The Rubicon Project, Pubmatic — factor in pricing data, available inventory, and publisher guidelines to determine which ad network is sent an ad impression.

Late last year, AdMeld reported doubling the size of its client base since June. More recent additions include AccuWeather.com, Answers. com, Billboard.com, Daily Kos, Hearst Television, The New York Post and Time Out New York.

Read More: MediaPost

NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Collective, a full service provider of audience driven media and technology solutions for brand-conscious advertisers, today announced executives from Yahoo!, Comcast, Turn, and Adap.tv have joined the company’s rapidly growing senior management team.

“The combined experience of this additional talent ensures each of our solutions are front and center among brand advertisers,” said Todd Taplin, CRO of Collective. “The expanded senior management team will support our growth at this critical stage in our business.”

Christopher Alan Smith, Vice President, Video

Christopher will lead the expansion of the Collective targeted in-stream video business. At Adap.tv, Smith led the growth of the leading online video monetization platform, OneSource, through strategic partnerships with comScore Top 400 Video Metrix properties, online video platforms, and ad networks.

Kris Thoren, Vice President, Strategic Account Sales

Joining Collective from Yahoo!, Kris will focus on high level client partnerships, bringing additional market insights and custom audience targeting solutions to key clients.  At Yahoo! Thoren most recently built out the America’s Division of the Global Sales team where he increased revenue tenfold in three years. Prior to that, he built out the sales channel for the Yahoo Sports Property which quickly became one of the most successful properties at Yahoo.

Andrew Horlick, NY Sales Director

Andrew Horlick brings more than ten years of agency and publisher experience to Collective where he joins the Company from Comcast. At Comcast he spent the majority of his time selling for properties including Fandango, E! and Fancast.  He has also held posts at MSN and Mediacom.

Jason Lohr, Midwest Managing Director

Jason Lohr joins Collective from Turn, where he served as the Midwest Director. One of the first 15 employees at Unicast and first 3 at Centro, he has also held positions at Foote, Cone and Belding and Discovery.  Jason has spent more than 15 years working in advertising, 11 of which have been in online ad sales.

Read More: PRNewswire.com

Facebook Doubles Down on Social Actions

Facebook has long insisted that its ad products mimic how its 500 million users act on the site. Now, the company is emphasizing that point by introducing a new ad measurement based on social actions.
 
Advertisers will be able to see the performance of ads that include references to users’ friends. A new tab in the Facebook Ads Manager carries ads with social actions’ click-through rates, total clicks and impressions.
 
Facebook is banking on the data showing that users are far more likely to interact with ads that carry social actions than those without. It touts a Nielsen study from April that found people are 68 percent more likely to remember an ad when they see that a friend has interacted with it.
 
Facebook ads carry a variety of social actions. Placements may include references to friends who have liked a brand or voted in a poll. It uses the same approach to promote its own features, running placements that name friends who have tried products such as its Friend Finder application.
 
Social actions are a key differentiator for Facebook. They allow brands to attain added reach by having those actions appear in the stream of updates that users’ see. Those appearances often drive further social actions for the brand.
 
Facebook does not charge differently for ads that carry social actions compared to those that do not.

Read More: AdWeek

After months of beta testing, SocialVibe Inc. Tuesday launched the SVnetwork, a brand advertising network claiming to reach 80 million unique users each month, making it one of the largest on the Internet. The network, which includes its owned-and-operated SocialVibe.com, is affiliated with both Zynga, one the massive social gaming network, and Causes, the largest non-gaming application on Facebook.

“We’ve quietly been testing this for around eight months,” says SocialVibe Founder Joe Marchese, adding that more than 100 brand advertising campaigns already have been executed across the network, mainly on Zynga.

Among the marketers that have used the platform to date are Microsoft, Visa, Disney, Toyota, and Procter & Gamble.

Effective with the launch of the SVnetwork, Marchese says brand campaigns running via third-party social apps will be identified as being “powered by SVnetwork.”

The network’s roots began with SocialVibe.com, a cause-marketing social media platform that enables users to endorse brands in exchange for support of social causes.  Read More: MediaPost

How to Discuss Stock Options with Your Team

I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “mobile first, web second” product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic).

I resisted the temptation to jump in with a response because I knew it was too complicated of a topic to discuss on Twitter.  But I thought I should do a quick post on the topic.

Read More: BothSidesOfTheTable.com

Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Jason Miller, Group Product Manager, Google Display Network discussed the display media space as well as DoubleClick Ad Exchange enhancements with AdExchanger.com today.

AdExchanger.com: What is Google announcing today?

SCOTT SPENCER: Basically, we’re going to be rolling out a few more tools to help DoubleClick Ad Exchange buyers buy quality inventory, and to check their campaigns.

Taking a quick step back; when we launched the exchange about a year ago, we engineered it with best-in-market buyer and publishers controls, as well as extensive crawl-and-verify inventory screening. Together with the real time bidder, these were the biggest upgrades we made.

As part of a long line of improvements in this area over the past year, we’re taking the wraps off a couple of additional features to give buyers even more control, quality and transparency.

The first is “Site Packs” – these are manually crafted collections of like sites based on DoubleClick Ad Planner and internal classifications, vetted for quality. These allow buyers to get a set of high quality sites for their particular campaigns, covering anonymous and branded inventory.

Second, we’re making some changes to our Real-time Bidder (in beta). The biggest change here is for Ad Exchange clients who work with DSPs. Historically, Ad Exchange buyers were hidden from publishers behind their DSP. By introducing a way to segment out each individual client’s ad calls, inventory can be sent exclusively to an Ad Exchange buyer even when that buyer uses a DSP. It increases transparency for publishers and potentially give buyers more access to the highest quality inventory, like “exclusive ad slots” – high quality inventory offered to only a few, select buyers as determined by the publisher.

Thirdly, we’re soon going to be rolling out a beta of what we call “Data Transfer” – this is a report of every transaction bought or sold by a client on the Ad Exchange. Effectively, it’s a daily log file of everything that happened. Clients can then review every branded URL that they purchased to ensure everything was what they expected.

Read More: AdExchanger

Seven Reasons Tech Start-Ups Are Setting Up Shop In New York

When Carter Cleveland, the CEO of the art-trading website Art.sy, moved his fledgling company from Palo Alto, Calif., to New York City he left behind arguably the best place to start a tech business in the U.S.

Home to giants like Facebook, Google, Apple, Intel and eBay, Silicon Valley is well known as the Mecca for high-tech companies – and entrepreneurs hoping to start one. One third of US-based venture capital investment happens in the Valley, according to PriceWaterhouse Coopers and the National Venture Capital Association. By Cleveland’s own admission, he “couldn’t go into a cafe without hearing pitches” in San Francisco.

So why go east? A recent Princeton grad, Cleveland said he left primarily because of his customers. Art.sy is an online trading post for fine art and, according to Cleveland, over half of his market is in New York City. But Cleveland added that location isn’t everything. New York’s tech scene is booming, and Cleveland wanted to join the party.

“Palo Alto is like Google,” he explained. “Big and established. New York City is like Foursquare. Not as big but tons of hype. It’s going through a growth period and very exciting.”

Read More: Blogs.WSJ.com

Appolicious Adds New Yahoo, Android Sites, Expands Search

After entering into a partnership with Yahoo in April, social-flavored app directory Appolicious is building on the alliance with a new property dedicated to Yahoo apps. And highlighting the rapid rise of Google Android’s platform, the startup has also revamped its site for Android apps and introduced its own Android app.

The new co-branded yap.appolicious.com and AndroidApps.com sites feature original text and videos, user-curated app lists, personalized recommendations, ratings and reviews. Links to original articles from the sites will be featured in relevant content across key Yahoo properties including news, sports and finance.

As with the main site, the words “in association with Yahoo” appear at the top of each page on the new Yahoo and Android app sites. The properties are linked to Appolicious.com via tabs that appear prominently on the home page alongside a third for iPad and iPhone apps. Yahoo users will be able to join the sites automatically using their Yahoo log-in information.

Appolicious has also taken steps to upgrade search. The search box is centered at the top of each page and functionality has been broadened to encompass the Yahoo and Android app sites. Besides returning relevant apps, the new results page now features related user app lists and staff articles as well as a list of apps generated by the site’s recommendation engine.

Read More: MediaPost