Black Friday is more than a sale for retailers, it’s the main event of the year. Weeks of preparation culminate in one rapid-fire sequence that can make or break annual goals. It’s no wonder that so many ecommerce teams are on lockdown this time of year.

After marketers got creative with their Back to the Future tie-ins last week, another marketing-friendly holiday is approaching quickly. Boo! It's almost Halloween already.

Paid search could be in for some big changes on Yahoo. After reaching a new search deal with Microsoft in April that afforded it more autonomy, Yahoo has now announced a separate deal with Google.

Mobile has been an industry buzzword for a while now. From the "Mo" in the eye-roll-inducing "SoLoMo" to articles heralding responsive design as the holy grail of websites, mobile has regularly been the rallying call for anyone who wanted to make marketers feel behind the times.

The Volkswagen emissions scandal is probably the biggest hit that a brand has taken since BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. The financial impact has the potential to be tremendous. Current estimates show that VW could be on the hook for $18 billion in EPA fines alone, plus legal fees and the cost of recalling 500,000 vehicles in the US.

As we've been finding in our Report on Branded Keywords, the typical brand is losing thousands of visitors per month to trademark bidders.

On July 1, Google officially migrated all accounts to Upgraded URLs. While Google’s descriptions of the new feature have primarily focused on the simplification of tracking templates and decrease in ad downtime, we were intrigued to see if the changes might spill over and affect affiliates’ ability to hijack paid search ads.

Since we’re still fresh off of a wonderful few days in San Francisco at AM Days, I wanted to take the opportunity to share the slides and recap the presentation I delivered at the event. I thought this could be a useful reference—whether you were able to attend the talk or not. For those of you that couldn’t be there, I’ve provided a synopsis of my points below (along with my slides). You can also feel free to connect with me over LinkedIn or send BrandVerity a note!

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend my first ever Affiliate Management Days conference in San Francisco. I was thrilled to be there—everything from the location (I don’t get to visit the bay area enough!) to the expert-level content created a positive atmosphere for networking and learning. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience, I wanted to share some of the key themes and moments that I remember. I hope this recap will prove useful for you—whether you were at the conference or not!

Did you know there’s a new digital marketing podcast in town? Digital Strategy Insights, a podcast hosted by Sarah Bundy and produced by All Inclusive Marketing, launched this February and is already doing exciting things. Sarah will be interviewing experts in the search, digital, and social marketing fields to provide insight and information regarding marketing strategy for brands, digital marketers, and affiliate managers.