LinkedIn has disclosed algorithm changes designed to favor conversations catering to niche professional interests. The criteria for posts showing up in members' feeds can be summed up as "people you know, talking about things you care about," said LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Management Pete Davies. LinkedIn tested 100 variations of its feed models through online A/B testing last year.

I sometimes think personalization is the best thing that happened to humankind in terms of marketing. As a consumer, I love getting suggestions on what to buy, especially when it's exactly what I need. Sometimes I feel as though I'm under constant surveillance, however, so I turn on my ad blockers, I surf in private mode, and I report ads that are not relevant to me.

More than half the world's population -- 3.8 billion people -- have access to the Internet and that may not be a good thing for business, according to digital savant Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2019 report. Global Internet user growth has slowed to 6 percent year over year, down from 7 percent, noted the Bond Capital general partner. The Asia-Pacific region leads in both users and potential.

Fraudsters have been stealing online advertisers blind -- to the tune of $23 billion, based on a report from Cheq. Indirect economic and social costs might increase the total to $30 billion. Marketers have been wasting billions of dollars on digital ads that never reach buyers' eyes. Up to 30 percent of ads are impacted by fraud that affects 21 trillion online ads each year.

Mark Zuckerberg recently said that the future of Facebook is private. Interestingly, connecting the dots between all the announcements made at Facebook's 2019 developers conference draws a bright picture of what the future looks like for brands, small e-commerce stores, and new businesses using the Facebook family of apps. It includes a whole new world of opportunities.

The budding online cannabis industry has a long way to go before it delivers bumper crops. The market for both recreational and medicinal cannabis has been plowed and pre-seeded by the previous underground market and the impetus of state laws legalizing its use. Still, the cannabis industry is almost invisible online, cloaked as it is in a broad ad and search engine blackout.

Facebook has come under fire for its Ad Library API, which lets users perform customized keyword searches of all active and inactive ads related to politics or issues of national importance stored there. Released in beta last summer, the archive became available to everyone in March, following pressure from Mozilla ahead of the EU's upcoming parliamentary elections.

Google wants to become your digital shopping catalog through shoppable ads. The company on Tuesday said it is testing a new format on a small percentage of traffic with select retailers. Merchants can highlight multiple products available for sale within a sponsored ad among Google Images results. Google is testing this approach on broad queries surfacing on searches like "home office ideas," "shower tile designs" and "abstract art."

Facebook has undermined privacy on its network by exposing mobile phone numbers provided to secure user accounts through two-factor authentication. That's because anyone can use the numbers to look up a user's account. One doesn't even have to be a Facebook member to do so. Moreover, there's no way to opt out of the setting, although it can be limited to "friends" only.

Walmart's e-commerce sales were up 43 percent for Q4 FY 2019. Sam's Club e-commerce sales grew 21 percent. Customers "continue to respond to our increasingly omnichannel offerings. We're executing against our strategy and it's working," said Walmart spokesperson Robyn Babbitt. Walmart's e-commerce focus "remains on earning repeat visits and strengthening our assortment of merchandise."

Google has unveiled its game plan for fighting disinformation on its search, news, YouTube and advertising platforms in a 30-page document presented at a security conference in Europe. "Providing useful and trusted information at the scale that the Internet has reached is enormously complex and an important responsibility," noted Google Vice President for Trust and Safety Kristie Canegallo.

Musing about Facebook's first 15 years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg positioned it as a David confronting a Goliath composed of hierarchical institutions. Facebook gives the masses a voice, he wrote. It brings communities together and provides businesses with low-cost outreach. Progress has been made in addressing the new social and ethical issues raised, including protection of privacy, he said.

The social media model has come under increased scrutiny following revelations of data misuse and news of executives reneging on some security commitments. People expecting to change the situation will need to address how social media works. This means changing not just the business model, which describes how a social media business makes money, but the fundamental technology model too.

There's one competitor we underestimated this year. It's slowly draining the attention of every human on the planet. It plays into almost all human needs -- as they are defined by the Maslow Hierarchy. It's the rectangular status-seeking device in your hands. That's right. It's your smartphone. Maslow's needs start with the basics. Starting at the bottom of the pyramid, we all need food and water.

The DoJ has revealed an unsealed indictment of eight defendants for crimes related to their involvement in widespread digital advertising fraud. The DoJ alleges the eight individuals were behind two global schemes, 3ve and Methbot, which stole tens of millions of dollars through a scam that used fake Web traffic and fake websites to reap ad view revenue from unwitting advertisers.

From big companies to small-town mom-and-pop shops to "mompreneurs" working from home, e-commerce is the key to keeping revenue streams flowing and businesses afloat. In fact, e-commerce is really the only way for you to ensure your business' longevity these days, especially if you are a small retailer. Why? Because your customers don't always live in your neighborhood.

Video has risen in recent years to the forefront of any marketing campaign, recognized as the optimum medium to elevate brand awareness and share a company's latest product buzz with an increasingly diverse and sophisticated audience. It's so easy to work with; platforms are readily available, simple to learn, and hyper affordable. High-quality results can be achieved on a budget.

The holiday season presents a significant opportunity for sellers to capture unprecedented sales on Amazon. Cyber Week alone, the seven-day period beginning the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving and running through Cyber Monday, is expected to account for 40 percent of all e-commerce sales during the holidays. The bulk of those holiday sales are likely to occur in one place: Amazon.com.

Among the myriad of tactics that e-commerce businesses can use to pump up sales, preorders might be the most overlooked strategy. Yet preorder sales are a highly effective way to generate early buzz to gin up demand for new products. A "preorder" by definition is the sale of a product that is not immediately available to the consumer but will be sometime soon.

The level of effort devoted to manipulating our opinions is unprecedented. Granted, a lot of this has to do with the fact that most of the "free" online services we use aren't free at all. They are trading our ability to make measured opinions for advertisers' money, and some of these "advertisers" are foreign governments. There is one question we should be asking of any inflammatory story: Why?

Google has announced new steps to combat the placement of fraudulent tech support ads on its platform. The company will roll out a verification program in the next few months to ensure that only legitimate third-party tech support providers can place Google ads. There are many legitimate providers that offer local or regional services, or affordable support for out-of-warranty products.

Google has announced the availability of Google One as a storage upgrade option for people in the United States. The option will become available in other countries within the next few weeks. Users with paid Google Drive storage plans automatically were upgraded to Google One in the past few months, noted Pavni Diwanji, VP of Google One. Google One plans begin at $1.99 for 100 GB.

The line between journalism and public relations can be fuzzy, and news organizations have wrestled with that problem for some time. However, that line recently has become more blurred than ever, with some publications enlisting armies of nonprofessional scribes to satisfy an insatiable appetite for content. It's easy to understand why the problem has mushroomed.

Sonobi and LiveRamp have partnered to help marketers improve targeting. The partnership will let brands and agencies build media packages using the Sonobi JetStream multichannel ad platform and LiveRamp's identity resolution system. "Sonobi has a forecasting and planning engine that understands the visitation patterns of an individual user across the open Web," said CEO Michael Connolly.

Video is often how stories get told in the 21st century, so it's a good idea for e-commerce business owners to consider ways they can use this trend to their advantage. "Today we are constantly bombarded by content, and video is one of the best ways to cut through that noise," said Chris Lueck, CEO of FastSpring. "It pays to take the extra time and effort to incorporate video into your strategy."

Four trade groups representing 4,000 publishers have blasted Google's approach to compliance with Europe's upcoming GDPR. The new rules are set to take effect at the end of the month. Under its new GDPR-compliant policy, Google, as a provider of digital advertising services to publishers, will have sole control over data sent to it by publishers or collected from publishers' websites.

Two new initiatives -- a concerted effort by Apple and a massive educational effort called the "Pro-Truth Pledge" -- could help eliminate much of the fake news BS that is really messing up the U.S. at the moment. On another front, President Donald Trump's plan to meet with Kim Jong-un reminds me of a pivotal meeting between former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and then Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Facebook reportedly has developed a new advertising service designed to predict the future behavior of consumers. The service uses FBLearner Flow, an artificial intelligence prediction engine the company introduced in 2016. The technology enables companies to target people based on decisions they haven't yet made. The data the new service taps is aggregated and anonymized.

Mozilla has launched the first full edition of its Internet Health Report. The report is "an open source effort to explore the state of human life on the Internet," said Mozilla Executive Director Mark Surman. It consists of research and analysis about the Internet compiled by researchers, engineers, data scientists, policy analysts and artists in Mozilla's extended community.

YouTube intends to ramp up its efforts to combat conspiracy mongers, perhaps in response to the rash of conspiracy videos that trended following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month. Among other things, YouTube will supply links to relevant Wikipedia pages and other credible websites to provide viewers with a counter narrative, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.