8 Intriguing Digital Marketing Stats From the Past Week

1. Gilmore gumption
Netflix recently took over 200 local cafés to promote the revival of Gilmore Girls, and it got a major branding boost from Snapchat. On Oct. 5, Netflix recreated fictional café Luke's from Gilmore Girls, serving up free coffee to promote the four-part series that premieres on the video-streaming service in November.

Snapcodes—Snapchat's version of QR codes—were printed on 10,000 cups that were distributed at all of the pop-up cafés. People opened the Snapchat app and took a picture of the decal. Then, Snapchat prompted them to apply the sponsored filter to their photos for one hour.

Netflix's branded filter included an image of a toaster and a sign from Luke's and was viewed 880,000 times. What's more, Snapchat said the one-day marketing stunt reached more than 500,000 people.

2. Google sales continue to spike
Advertising revenue for Google during the third quarter totaled $19.8 billion, up 18 percent from $16.8 billion last year. Ad sales in the first two quarters of 2016 were up 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively, for the digital giant.

3. Dramatic cyber damage
Heather Daniels owns a small business, Lyon's Prints, that she has run primarily on Etsy since 2014. Etsy was among the websites that fell victim to three waves of cyberattacks that lasted hours and rocked the web last Friday, also affecting Twitter, Pinterest, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Reddit, Spotify and many others.

Underscoring how all kinds of players were negatively impacted, Daniels said she only received two orders on Friday, when she normally gets around 35. 

"I am self-employed, so losing an entire day of pay is financially devastating for me," Daniels told Adweek. "One of my customers ordered something that she needed to have printed [on Friday] for a party [on Saturday], and I was not able to get it to her."

4. Multimedia memes
Giphy on Thursday announced in a blog post that it's delivering more than 1 billion GIFs a day, while viewers spend more than two hours watching the endlessly looping video.

5. Golden age of audio, indeed
For NPR, podcasting is driving ad sales that are 10 times greater than those of two years ago. They were up 70 percent in 2016 compared to the prior year. NPR's fiscal year ended on Sept. 30.

6. Spain on the go
In Zenith's Mobile Advertising Forecast report, Spain ranked highest among 60 countries for mobile usage. The media-buying agency expects 85 percent of Spain's total internet usage to come from smartphones this year. Hong Kong was No. 2 on the list at 79 percent, while 76 percent of China's internet access is from mobile. The U.S. follows with 74 percent, and Italy and India each have 73 percent mobile usage.

7. When scorn goes Facebook
A CareerArc study says that 40 percent of all companies don't bother telling job applicants they've been declined. Here's why that's important, according to the company: Jilted applicants that have a negative experience are three times more likely to post negative comments on Facebook and Twitter about that prospective employer.

8. Low tech
Only 22 percent of merchants are using in-store, location-based technology, per a study from PointSource.

Bonus stat: consolidation strategy
A Manatt Digital study, which surveyed senior executives from around the globe, found that 50 percent of them planned to focus on mergers and acquisitions in digital media services this next year.