Weekly Digital Roundup (12.16.13)

We've got updates on campaigns from both Starbucks and rival Dunkin' Donuts, as well as the big Instagram upgrade and more. Without further ado, here’s what we found to be the biggest news, so you may comfortably remain snuggled under a rock.

Making Mobile Better

Webmaster Tools is working to improve website functionality on smartphones by displaying smartphone crawl errors that, in turn, us web whizzes can address for a better user experience. Learn more about this update here, and show mobile some love!

Twitter Ad Targeting Touch-up

Twitter wants to help marketers reach their key audiences through ads on Twitter by now expanding targeted keyword results to include synonyms, alternate spellings, and lingo. For example, if you select the words “love” and "coffee,” the system would also match a tweet that said “I really luv this latte” and “I really adore coffee,” without having to specify these variations. This shouldn’t boost the frequency of ads seen by users, however, so no panties are bunching.

Starbucks in Your Flipboard

This Christmas, Starbucks will be living in your Flipboard app, having created sponsored content and full-page holiday-themed ads. The campaign living within this popular content curation mobile app drives users to a 33-page “Happy Holiday Handbook” to help users find their perfect holiday drink. That’s a lot of flippin’ and sippin’.

Guest Blogging Spam

This week’s Matt Cutts video talks about how guest blogging is quickly on its way to becoming a new form spam. In the video, Cutts talks about the growing skepticism of low quality content and spinning articles simply to acquire links, positing that Google will surely begin to take the necessary measures to handle it accordingly. If that’s you, take cover!

A Delicious Double-Team

Dunkin' Donuts and Top Chef have joined forces and jumped onto Google+ last week in a culinary contest culmination. The two-brand partnership hosted a Hangout where the doughnut chain’s executive chef announced the results of a contest that debuted in November, as well as showed attendees the test kitchen. Being an interactive chat, this tactic allowed users to ask questions and see how the test kitchen operates in real time, in addition to tying in the contest results.

Image-Caching Chaos

Gmail caused quite a stir this week for email marketers when they changed up their image caching procedure. Email marketers have been using the "Display Image" option when you open an email to track how many people are opening and reading their email. The new system Google is implementing puts a wrench in many email marketing tracking systems. Luckily, MailChimp knows what’s up.

Instagram Does It Again

As predicted, but exciting nevertheless, Instagram introduced its latest feature, Instagram Direct. This allows users to send private photo messages within the app. Users will now have the option to select if they’d like to post their photos publicly or send them directly to up to 15 users. This feature offers a new level of engagement for the platform, and poses quite a threat to our reprobate buddy, Snapchat.

Time for coffee. Happy Monday!