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Facebook decided to do the revision of the rules of advertising and to limit the use of targeting towards the "ethnic community". From now on companies will not be able to use this option in the ads on the topic of employment, credit services, as well as the sale or rental.
About two weeks ago the possibility of targeting by ethnicity on Facebook was actively critisized. In particular, it was noted that in this way the social network violates the users’ civil rights.
Therefore, Facebook decided to ban this option in the above areas. Bisedes, the company will also make changes in the advertising policy. Under the new rules, the brand companies will not be able to post "discriminatory advertisements."
Changes will take effect by the end of this year. Targeting option to ethnic communities will be moved from the demographic to behavioral category.
When the new system is fully launched, advertisers will receive a warning concerning the violation of service policy when buying the ads.
If the advertiser ignores the warnings and automatic announcements confirmation will not be able to recognize the action of violation, the users themselves will have to inform about the violations.
Later, Facebook will publish some recommendations on how to advertise housing, employment and credit services under the new rules.

Google AdWords interface added a feature that turns off unnecessary automatic extensions.
Please follow the instructions below to enable the feature:
• Sign in your AdWords account.
• Click the "Ad Extensions" tab.
• In the drop-down menu on the left above the table, select the report named "Automatic extension."
• Click "Automatic extensions options (optional)."
• Next to "Show all automatic extensions for this account” click "Edit."
• Select "Do not use separate automatic extensions for this account."
• Select the check boxes next to the required types of automatic extensions. • Click the "Save" button.

It should be also mentioned that Google has introduced the extensions to messages. Using this feature, you can create ads by SMS-click option. With these extensions, advertisers will need use tools to receive, process and send SMS.

China legislative body has approved the cybersecurity law which caused a lot of debates, according to Bloomberg.
The new law allows law enforcement authorities to freeze the accounts of foreign citizens and organizations with suspected sabotage of the China's information infrastructure. During the investigation, they will be required to provide the full access to data to the authorities.
The law also requires mandatory certification of computer equipment and personal data storage of Chinese users within the country. According to experts, the input of these requirements will give one more advantage to local market companies over foreign competitors such as Microsoft, Google, Cisco and others.
"This is a step backwards for Chinese innovations. The country's authorities are right in the aspect of ensuring the security of digital systems and information in the country; however, the law will not help to achieve the goal. Instead, it creates barriers to marketing and innovation,"- said James Zimmerman, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
The law will come into force in June.

Overall, U.S. marketers will spend more than $103 billion on search, display, social media, and email marketing by — growing at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) — but search will remain the largest share of interactive spend. (MediaPost)

The top challenges in SEO are link building (cited by 41% of corporate marketers) and keyword research (39%). (MediaPost)

In Q3, 727 million of Facebook’s 1.55 billion Million active users were mobile-only, equivalent to 47% of users who have never interacted with Facebook on a desktop computer.  (Source: eMarketer)