Stories by Seth Arenstein

Perhaps Google’s short explanations of why it has chosen a story for you will make the wall between Google and users less opaque. For the moment, however, neither Google nor any other social media powerhouse has explained exactly how it determines news story recommendations, search results or ad placements. The latter two, search and ads, as well as optimizing site content were among the topics discussed during PR News’ Boot Camp: Google for Communicators last week in NY. As such we asked several PR pros about navigating the frosted-glass barriers surrounding Google searches and AdWords, its online advertising service.

On Nov. 1 Instagram said it was testing a feature that will allow users to buy what they see in their feeds directly from brands. The beta involves 20 brands, including J.Crew, Macy’s and Levi’s. The user clicks on a button and up pops the product’s name and price. Another click provides a more in-depth description of the product. Then there’s the ever-popular “shop now” click, which takes the user to the retailer’s website. Seems simple, right? Actually, the implications could be enormous.

A roundup of the week’s stories in PR as well as personnel moves. This week includes notes about the presidential election and the good work two PR agencies did to teach kids about giving back.

M&A: W2O Group early today acquired Marketeching Solutions, LLC, a research and social listening consultancy specializing in healthcare and life sciences. Founded in 2008 by Kevin Johnson, Marketeching has offices in New Hope, PA, and Philadelphia. Johnson will remain, operating Marketeching as a subsidiary of W2O. Earlier this year, Mountaingate Capital secured an investment position in W20 to propel growth through acquisitions.

In case you’ve been studiously avoiding all forms of media surrounding the run-up to this week’s election, the atmosphere has become politically charged in the past few months. Brands are advised to raise their shields. As we noted a few weeks back, Bisquick attempted to inject gluten-laden levity into the second presidential debate, asking the Twitterverse innocuously if it would “vote” for a pancake or a waffle. Social media winced, urging Bisquick to back off on the funny stuff during such an important moment. “Get off my Twitter feed, Bisquick,” roared one disgruntled tweeter, representing the consensus.

A new quarterly survey of 100 PR agency firm leaders by the PR Council shows tight budgets and proving ROI top the list of concerns as the year winds down. The survey’s results were provided early exclusively to PR News Pro.

Get PR pros together to discuss Instagram and the topic moves to the Instagram Storiesfeature very quickly. That’s to be expected: What some call a Snapchat clone has gained popularity fast. Just weeks ago, barely two months after its introduction, Stories confirmed a TechCrunch report that it already has 100 million daily active users. And, yes, for those in the glass-half-full camp, that means 200 million daily active users of Instagram haven’t availed themselves of Stories. Still, brand communicators are taking advantage of Stories’ capabilities to show a montage-like sequence of photos on Instagram. In addition communicators are excited about Oct. 21 media reports that Instagram is testing live video.

An infographic illustrating how quickly crises can move, spread around the globe and ruin a brand’s reputation.

We’ve told you numerous times that video is booming on social, right? The data that Shareablee provides exclusively to PR News Pro shows video powering strong increases in consumer engagement. There are exceptions, however.

In part I of this story in our Oct. 17 edition we looked at how brands can strengthen their YouTube content without spending too much money. This week we’ll explore several best practices for measuring your YouTube efforts. Need an incentive to make sure your brand is engaged with YouTube? How’s the fact that 88% of all video searches result in a YouTube video? Or that after behemoth Google, YouTube is the largest search engine?