Digital Marketing News: YouTube’s Robust Revenue, LinkedIn’s Record Engagement, Gen Z Brand Expectations, & Google’s Unified Messaging

YouTube is a $15 billion-a-year business, Google reveals for the first time
For the first time in nearly 15 years YouTube has released its advertising revenue information, showing that the video platform annually accounted for some 10 percent of Google-parent Alphabet’s revenue, heftily topping Wall Street expectations, while Google Search accounted for $98.1 billion in 2019, the firm revealed. The Verge

For the first time in its history, by 2021 the majority of U.S. marketers will use LinkedIn (client) for advertising, according to newly-released report data from eMarketer, which expects the Microsoft-owned professional social network to see a 49.6 percent marketer usage rate in 2020, up from 48.8 percent in 2019. eMarketer

Snapchat Publishes New Data on Brand Expectations Among Gen Z Consumers
Marketers looking to connect with Gen Z have a new array of insights from a recently-published Snapchat study, showing that 82 percent of the demographic want brands to act on customer feedback, among numerous other statistics of interest to digital marketers. Social Media Today

Marketers Expect Content-Driven Campaigns to Increase in 2020
Content marketing tops the list of most important digital media channels top CMOs have invested in, at 86 percent, ahead of digital display ads at 64 percent, and general search optimization and paid search, each at 59 percent, according to newly-released survey data, also showing that 79 percent expect content-led marketing campaigns to grow in the next two years. eMarketer

Google’s tenth messaging service will “unify” Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat
Google is working on a new more-unified communications app, according to a recently-released report suggesting that the search giant will unite some of its stand-alone mobile messaging services into an enterprise-level offering, which could eventually make it easier for marketers to reach Google audiences. Ars Technica

LinkedIn Reaches 675 Million Members, Continues to See ‘Record Levels of Engagement’
Microsoft’s latest quarterly report revealed that its LinkedIn professional social network had for the first time topped 675 million members, also showing strong session growth of 25 percent, and revenue that grew by 24 percent during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. Social Media Today

Facebook warns revenue growth slowing, costs remain high
Facebook reported its slowest fourth-quarter revenue growth ever, at 25 percent — the fourth straight quarter below 30 percent — and highlighted a rise in quarterly expenses that doubled analyst expectations, among other revelations. Reuters

Google has been developing a higher-performing chatbot model called Meena that it expects to deliver more human-like conversation, incorporating what the search giant calls a “2.6 billion parameter end-to-end trained neural conversational model,” Google recently revealed on its artificial intelligence blog. Social Media Today

Younger and Wordier: How Gen Z’s Search Behavior Is Different
Generational differences in how people search was the subject of a recently-released report of interest to digital marketers, showing that Gen Z is the most likely to use “how to,” “best,” and to include a year in their search queries. MarketingProfs

Here Are Some E-Commerce Traffic Source and Conversion Rate Stats
New report data about leading e-commerce traffic sources and which types of paid and organic efforts are seeing the highest conversion rates has been released, showing that search tops the list, while social has surpassed email, the report notes. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at Advertising in the Super Bowl by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

An Artist Used 99 Phones to Fake a Google Maps Traffic Jam — Wired

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

Do you have your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for joining us, and we hope you’ll come back again next week for another selection of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don’t miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.