Oracle Cloud Infrastructure utilised by Microsoft for Bing conversational search

A telescope by a lake.

Oracle has signed a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to support the explosive growth of AI services.

Microsoft is using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) AI infrastructure, along with Microsoft Azure AI infrastructure, for inferencing of AI models that are being optimised to power Microsoft Bing conversational searches daily. Leveraging the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, Microsoft is able to use managed services like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to orchestrate OCI...

14 November 2023 | Organic Search

Digital marketing skills show positive growth but sector demands outpace professional development 

Core digital skills marketers rely on have improved but that the growing demands of new and evolving technologies are contributing to a skills gap across the majority of industries. 

This is according to research published by the training body Target Internet, in association with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

This year’s report analyses data from more than 10,000 marketing professionals, gathered between 2018 to 2023 and highlights key short and...

24 October 2023 | Advertising

MediaVision introduces ‘ground-breaking’ predictive SEO tool

A woman viewing website analytics data on a laptop.

MediaVision, the integrated digital performance agency, has unveiled a new tech stack giving advertisers the keys to predictive SEO, weekly share of search data, and digital demand tracking at a brand and product level.

The company claims the tech marks a significant development in the performance market’s capabilities, and is designed to fill the gaps left by major platforms by combining data sets and sources beyond their current means.

Including three products, whose...

20 May 2022 | Organic Search

Kevin the Carrot ranked most Googled Christmas advert character

Kevin the Carrot.

Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot is the most Googled Christmas advert character, according to data from Google trends.

The friendly little vegetable has been crowned the best Christmas advert character, after data comparing Google searches over the last five years revealed that Kevin the Carrot is the most Googled Christmas advert character.

The data as compiled based on the top six UK retailers, who release hotly anticipated Christmas adverts every year, including John Lewis,...

4 January 2022 | Advertising

The ‘cyber five’: Prepping search strategies for peak retail

Black Friday and Cyber Monday, previously competitor sale days, now look set to emerge as one event - a giant ecommerce extravaganza - thanks to increased ecommerce uptake among consumers. The five days from the American Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday 26th November through to the following Cyber Monday are now dubbed the ‘Cyber Five’. This year, it will bring a host of new elements for search marketers to consider. 

Gleaning as much insight as possible into your...

19 November 2020 | Advertising

Personalisation strategies analysed: Potent brand messages found – if not 100% hit rate

To personalise, or not to personalise? Even though it's phrased as a question, personalisation may seem more of a proclamation today - and while only half of consumers are actively signing up for a personalised experience right now, the numbers are only going to go up.

The latest study from Periscope By McKinsey, which polled more than 2000 consumers spread across France, Germany, the UK and the US, found brands who were already trusted by users were more likely to be given...

22 May 2019 | Customer Experience

Google slapped with €1.49bn EU fine for antitrust in advertising

Google has been fined €1.49 billion (£1.28bn) by the European Commission for breaching antitrust rules for its online advertising services.

The Commission concluded that the search giant had abused its market dominance – exceeding 85% for most of the analysed time period – for favouring its own price comparison results for searches through its AdSense for Search platform.

“Market dominance is not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However,...

20 March 2019 | Advertising

SEO ranking: The factors you need to focus on in 2018

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not what it used to be. No surprise there, just think of an industry that hasn’t changed over the years. The reason SEO isn’t the same, however, is because the rules and ethics keep changing and are pretty much rewritten every year. It’s not easy to keep up with this and Google like it that way. So, looking at your own website and the results you want to achieve, what gave you a positive return last year may not work at all in...

22 October 2018 | Organic Search

‘Project Dragonfly’: Google’s rumoured censor-friendly launch in China

It’s common knowledge that Google, as present as it is in our daily lives, does not enjoy the same ubiquity in China, and hasn’t done for eight years.

Leaked meeting minutes from the corporation, however, suggest that could be about to change.

Codenamed ‘Project Dragonfly’, the search giant is allegedly in the midst of a bid to launch in China in an iteration that would play ball with Beijing’s hardline censorship policies.

According to a...

10 October 2018 | Advertising Technology

Two-thirds of people don’t know difference between Google paid and organic search results

Nearly two-thirds (60%) of consumers don’t know the difference between paid and organic search results on Google, according to a new study by Varn.

The UK marketing agency approached over 1,000 internet users with the simple question; “Do you know which links on the Google search results page are paid adverts?”

A whole 59.7% of people surveyed claimed to be unaware of the differences between the two types of Google listings, implying that the...

6 September 2018 | Best Practice