B2B Marketing News: B2B Ad Spending Soars, Google’s New Audio Ad Features, Facebook’s Partnership Group Ads, & Top B2B Buyer Challenges

B2B Buyers' Top Challenges With Their Current Vendors 51 percent of B2B buyers have changed their vendor preferences during the global health crisis, and they find that slow and inefficient inquiry responses from vendors is their biggest challenge — two of several findings of interest to B2B marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs Facebook Adds New Sponsored Post Options for Groups Facebook has launched a new option for digital marketers allowing paid partnership posts in Facebook Groups, giving admins new branded post advertising opportunities, the social media giant recently announced. Social Media Today eMarketer: US B2B digital ad spend soars 22.6% Bucking the overall pandemic ad spending trend, 2020 B2B digital ad spend in the U.S. is expected to rise over 22 percent from 2019 figures, a significantly better performance outlook than the 1.7 percent forecast increase in overall U.S. digital ad spend, according to newly-released B2B ad spending findings. The Drum Google Sees Big Potential in Audio for Marketers and Publishers Google has launched a new audio-specific area in its Google Ad Manager that offers marketers a variety of advertising options dedicated solely to digital audio ads, the search giant recently announced, as the digital audio market is poised to hit $1.3 billion by 2022 by some estimates. Adweek Black Gen-Zers Want To See More Joy On Social Media, Study Finds Almost 90 percent of black Gen-Z social media users would like to see more online content that celebrates joy, with the demographic also noting that the top emotions missing from content are excitement, joy, and comfort — some of the findings in recently-released Gen-Z social media survey data. Forbes YouTube Publishes New Data on Rising Trends During COVID-19 Social connection, self-care and identity-related video content were among the top rising pandemic trends among newly-released YouTube viewership data, the Google-owned firm announced recently. Social Media Today US Mobile Ad Spending Will Manage to Grow in 2020 As with the previously-mentioned B2B ad spending forecast, mobile ad spending in the U.S. is also forecast to buck the overall ad spend trend by climbing 4.8 percent this year, helping to keep total digital ad sales for the year on track for modest growth, according to recently-released report data. eMarketer Google extends lead forms to YouTube, Discovery campaigns Google has expanded its Google Ads platform to give digital marketers an array of new lead form extensions that allow advertisers to show forms directly in search, YouTube, and Discovery content, the search giant recently announced. Marketing Land YouTube will stop emailing subscribers about new videos next week YouTube has ceased sending the email notifications about newly-added content and live-stream events it has for years sent out to channel subscribers, noting that fewer than one percent of recipients typically opened the notification emails, parent company Google announced recently. 9to5Google B2B Buyers’ Engagement With Digital Content Has Grown During the Pandemic, With Some Behavior Changes B2B content engagement has risen by 40 percent during the pandemic, with the largest increases coming from executive summaries, landing pages, webinars, brochures, and briefs, while data sheets and presentations have seen decreased consumption, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “From Brand Safety to Brand Suitability” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Apple Brilliantly Imagines a Parallel Universe Where Hollywood Always Used Vertical Video — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Introducing AWeber’s New Email Marketing Podcast — The FWD: Thinking Show! — AWeber
• TopRank Marketing — 8 Types of B2B Influencer Marketing for You to Consider (with 18 Examples) — ExpertClick
• TopRank Marketing — Call for nominations: The Online Influence Awards 2020 — Vuelio
• TopRank Marketing — Will Unions Make or Break Influencer Marketing [Video] — Cornett
• TopRank Marketing — 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing (IM) Report from TopRank — Social Media Explorer
• TopRank Marketing — Influencer Marketing Believed To Improve CX, According To New TopRank Marketing Report — Demand Gen Report
• Lee Odden — Top 10 Social Media Marketing Podcasts You Should Listen To — PostBeyond

Have you found your own favorite marketing stories from the past week of news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thank you for joining us, and we hope that you'll return again next Friday for another collection 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.

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