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A Maltese man was arrested in Libya a month ago and his partner has raised concerns about his wellbeing as she faces a bureaucratic wall of silence.

Jesmond Vella, aged 45, known as Il-Bulgaru, was arrested at Zuwarah on suspicion of human smuggling and drug trafficking on April 5.

The operation was carried out by the Rada Special Deterrence Forces, in what was initially feared to be a kidnapping. But it later transpired that the order of the arrest came from the Libyan Attorney General, sources told Times of Malta.

Vella, who has been living in the coastal city of Zuwarah with his Maltese wife for eight years, is also known to the Maltese police.

When contacted, the Maltese ambassador to Libya, Charles Saliba, who is closely following the case, said Vella has not yet been formally charged with the crime.

Lovin Malta reported that Vella, a mechanic, may have suffered a beating or torture in a country still reeling with unrest.

Vella's wife said he had been kidnapped and is currently being held by a militia outside of Tripoli and that bureaucracy and a breakdown in communication are proving troublesome for Maltese authorities and the family, who fear he is in grave danger and may never return home.

She recalled the day when her husband went missing on April 5, saying she returned home when she discovered her husband's car parked in the driveway. His keys were still in the ignition and his cigarettes were left on the driver seat.

The next day she raised the alarm with the Maltese authorities who believe Vella is being detained at Rada's headquarters at Mitiga airport.

Confronted by the claims, the ambassador said: There is a process we need to follow. We have nothing to back claims that he has been tortured. But we will give all the assistance we can.

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Wall of silence one month after Maltese man is arrested in Libya - Times of Malta

Its been quite a year, hasnt it? While some companies have flourished, others have fallen by the wayside, unable to compete in quickly changing (and unexpected) market conditions. So we wondered, what are companies doing to survive and thrive online in these difficult times?

Our research and experience with customers shows us that companies that benchmark their social advertising efforts against the competition are able to pivot quickly to address shifts in consumer behavior, customer demand, and competitive campaigns. But its not always easy.

Recent research published by BrandTotal gives us some indication of that. For example, in a recent survey of 500 U.S.-based CMOs conducted by Pollfish on behalf of BrandTotal in April 2021, 87% of respondents said that while they had a tool to measure the impact of their creative performance, only 37% of respondents actually benchmarked their creatives against rival brands advertising creative with a creative intelligence tool.

So, how can you know how your company is performing in social advertising, especially when it comes to brand metrics such as share of voice, consumer sentiment, consumer engagement, share of topic, and other data? Lets take a closer look at this important strategy, starting with key challenges.

Why Is So Hard to Optimize Media and Creative when Advertising on Social Media?

There are several reasons that make strategic social advertising so difficult:

How to Benchmark Against Rival Brands to Improve Your Social Advertising

We here at BrandTotal believe that to optimize your social advertising strategy, you must be able to directly address the key challenges listed above, and one way to do that is with competitive social advertising intelligence, which enables you to:

Tools like BrandTotal can act as the one stop for all competitive social ads paired with real (and real-time) consumer response on that ad or campaign. With unparalleled campaign granularity and 100% visibility into paid social dark advertising, you get third-party validation of your social performance benchmarked against the competition. Shorten the time to ad optimization from an average of 14 days to 24 hours. And no more relying on dubious stats from social channels that dont correlate to anything else. Moreover, such a tool helps you identify better creative so you can produce optimized content, faster and shorten time to creative by 50%.

Doesnt that sound like a smarter way to manage your brands social advertising? To see the power of BrandTotal, the company has recently released dozens of industry research reports based on the data we collect. In BrandTotals new monthly Social Competitive Intelligence Snapshots, we reveal key trends and benchmarks to help you outsmart the competition while optimizing your brand ROI. Get an in-depth review of the competitive marketing in your industry to understand whos winning at paid social across channels and which channels are most successful at driving SOV and engagement.

A Crystal Ball Looking Into the Future

While its been a rocky year, to say the least, we are heartened by the fact that many businesses have pivoted to a strategic approach to social advertising to help them stand up and stand out against their rival brands and better connect with their consumer audiences. As the world returns to a new, new normal, advertisers will continue to move toward social commerce and direct-to-consumer marketing to engage their potential customers and create loyal fans. And when they do, BrandTotal will be there to help those brands understand their competitions strategy and uncover whitespace opportunities to win. Heres to the future!

Link:
BrandTotal on the Importance of a Strategic Approach to Social Advertising - OCNJ Daily

While audio social may be the trending function of the moment, and copycat versions of TikTok continue to gain traction on YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram, the original has still held its ground in the download charts, coming in at number one, once again, on Sensor Tower's monthly app download listing for April 2021.

As you can see here, TikTok has held its ground at the top of the download charts for another month.

Despite being banned in India, its biggest user market at the time of its removal, and a steady flow of challengers rising up to steal its thunder over time, more and more users keep coming to the short video app, which is on track to become the next billion-user platform at some stage this year.

As explained by Sensor Tower:

"TikTokwas the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide for April 2021 with more than 59 million installs. The countries with the largest number of TikTok installs were from Brazil at 13%, followed by Douyin in China at 12 percent."

TikTok's growth is significant, particularly in the face of ongoing concerns and controversies, and as noted, more copycat functions being added to major social media apps. Indeed, YouTube recently reported that its TikTok clone 'Shorts' is now facilitating 6.5 billion views per month, a huge amount which you would assume would have to eat into TikTok's audience share somewhat.

We'll see if that becomes a bigger issue for TikTok with Shorts being launched to all US users over the next week, while Snapchat's Spotlight is also now up to 125 million monthly users, and Instagram Reels continues to gain traction.

Yet, even with short videos being made more readily available everywhere else, TikTok's momentum has held, which is a positive sign for the platform as it works to evolve to the next stage, which includes more business and revenue generation tools for creators.

Sensor Tower's top apps listing is largely unchanged from last month, with the only notable addition being Indian streaming app 'Hotstar'in the Google Play downloads top 10, largely due to cricket coverage.

Facebook, of course, still dominates the overall chart, with 4 of the top 10 apps in all categories, but the resilience of TikTok over time is truly amazing. No other trending app has had the staying power of the app, particularly in the face of competition. In fact, right now, we have the case study of Clubhouse as a comparative example -a trending app that saw huge traction, but is now seemingly on the decline as Facebook and Twitter advance their own competing audio social tools.

That largely mirrors the trajectory of most trending social apps, but TikTok has been able to maintain its position, and run with the big players, as more and more young people, in particular, find connective value in the app.

If you haven't taken TikTok seriously in the past, it may well be time to reassess, and to consider its evolving ad and promotional options within your social media marketing approach.

You can check out Sensor Tower's full monthly download listing for April 2021 here.

Continued here:
TikTok Maintains its Position at the Top of the Monthly App Download Chart, Despite Rising Competition - Social Media Today

The Company is the first among Chinese next-generation lifestyle brand platforms to go public. This offering heralds the capital market's continued bullishness on the new consumer sector and its recognition of the Company's growth potential based on its brand management model.

In recent years, the rise of new consumption patterns has become one of the focuses of the capital market. China's young urban generation, defined as the country's 284.8 million (as of the end of 2019) city dwellers aged between 18 and 35, has become the dominant force and the most influential consumer demographic in China's lifestyle brands market, with the proportion of total consumption by members of the demographic having reached 54.0% in 2019. Onion Global's brand management profolio for the demographic promises to reshape customer behavior in China, with the result that the firm fully expects to become a leader in influencing the trends guiding the consumption of quality life products and services.

Onion Global Limited is positioned as a dream factory of lifestyle brands for young people. With its distinctive strategic brand cooperation and incubation model, the Company has created a unique, global 3F (Fresh, Fashionable, Future) brand portfolio and built a closed ecosystem for management and operation of the brands in the portfolio destined for the young generation of consumers by building its own omni-channel marketing and distribution system.

The Prospectus shows that since inception in 2015, Onion Global Limited has maintained continuous and high growth in earnings. For 2020, the Company booked annual revenue in excess of 3.8 billion yuan yielding a net profit of over 200 million yuan, more than double that of 2019. Among firms globally specializing in brand management, the results are viewed as outstanding.

According to a report from China Investment Corp (CIC), for 2019, Onion Global Limited ranked among the top ten global lifestyle brand platforms of gross merchandise value (GMV) overall, and among the top five cross-border e-commerce platforms. Onion Global Limited placed fifth among the approximately 30 cross-border platforms in China that include quality lifestyle brand import/export businesses in their portfolios.

The core competency behind Onion Global Limited is its keen market insight and brand incubation capabilities. "Strategic affiliation, brand agency, investment control and innovative independent research are the four hallmarks that define the Company's mission, while the Company has, to date, concluded agreements with more than 4,000 brands in 43 countries and regions. Onion Global Limited's expanding independent research brand portfolio covers 23 major lifestyle product categories, with the team of portfolio managers constantly enhancing its awareness and understanding of the latest trends across market segments, quality supply chains and vendor resources through collaborative efforts. Meanwhile, Onion Global's unique and new traffic generator comprised of key opinion consumers (KOCs), who, in the aggregate, represent nearly 700,000 social media accounts, has replaced traditional marketing channels. The ability of the KOCs to talk directly to consumers has allowed Onion Global's brand management team to always be one step ahead of market trends, meeting the expectations of the young generation of consumers in terms of lifestyle brands while further and rapidly accumulating and consolidating brand incubation capabilities.

"Looking ahead, in an effort to acquire new customers, the Company plans to integrate the resources of upstream global manufacturing and processing facilities and product R&D labs, while aggressively expanding its own channels, in a move to give full play to the advantages of downstream omni-channel and other new marketing solutions, and empower more 3F brands with high growth potential," said Onion Global Limited CEO Cong (Kenny) Li.

As China's consumer market continues to evolve, new expectations among shoppers will create new areas for competition and opportunities for the firms that seek to engage. Onion Global Limited's mission is to be the dream factory of lifestyle brands for the country's burgeoning youth demographic. Will Onion Global be able to reshape China's lifestyle brand retail landscape with this offering? We believe that Onion Global's future performance will be something worth looking forward to.

SOURCE Onion Global Limited

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Dream factory of lifestyle brands Onion Global Limited lists on NYSE - PRNewswire

LinkedIn has shared a new overview of its various ad targeting options, along with some tips to help maximize your campaign performance, and reach the right consumers at just the right time via LinkedIn ads.

As explained by LinkedIn:

"Targeting is an essential element of any content marketing strategy and the right approach to targeting has never felt more important than it does right now. Growth over the next year will depend on inspiring those ready to do business and inspiring as many of them as possible."

With more businesses re-opening, and looking to return to growth in the wake of the pandemic, that could open up new opportunity, but in order to seize on such, you'll need to ensure the right people are aware of your products and services.

For the right offerings, LinkedIn could be a hugely valuable tool, and this overview could help provide a better understanding as to how you can use LinkedIn's ad platform to best effect.

And a key note: LinkedIn says that the ideal the audience size for your ad campaigns is between 60,000 and 400,000.

More info in the infographic below.

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LinkedIn Provides an Overview of Effective Ad Targeting [Infographic] - Social Media Today