This week in digital – Inbound Marketing for B2B startup growth, Instagram puts stories on its website but no story ads, Google launches AdSense User First beta & more customers prefer to buy directly from brands

Let’s look at the latest news that is prevalent in the digital world this week.

Inbound marketing plays a crucial role in bringing control to the dynamism of business.
Attracting potential customers through compelling content that is both relevant and valuable to the customer is a vital aspect of inbound marketing.
A strong positioning strategy gives a sharper and clearer direction to the business, which is essential for start-ups.
Building buyer personas for your startup business sets the foundation of your marketing campaigns, since they not only incorporate demographic data but also behavioural insights.
Outbound marketing gives you instant results but the shelf life is till budget ends; inbound marketing gives more value for the same buck.

With 250 million people checking out Stories in its app every day, Instagram is extending the product to its online audience that skews international.
Now, the Facebook-owned photo-and-video-sharing service has begun showing Stories to people who log into its website.
While the Stories feed in Instagram’s app features ads, for now Instagram will not insert ads within the online version.
People will eventually be able to post to their Stories through Instagram’s mobile site, but not the desktop version.

A small number of AdSense and AdMob publishers started receiving invitations to Google Adsense’s User First beta program this week.
The goal at this stage is to test new ways for publishers to make more revenue with fewer, (and hopefully more effective) ads.
The program is meant to reward publishers that provide a good user experience — measured by site speed, ad layouts that generate high quality-clicks and low rates of users muting ads on the site — with priority access to new features.
Google hopes to find the optimal formula for showing fewer, more targeted ads while driving more revenue.

A survey of 1,000 adults contains lots of findings and implied recommendations for both brands and traditional retailers.
Most millennials and Generation Z members are less likely to be loyal than previous generations — chiefly because there’s more transparency and information available to them.
There’s a strong argument to be made that brands and retailers that get the customer experience right will see greater loyalty.
While the survey responses vary by gender and age group, the majority of respondents expressed the general notion that brand/manufacturer websites offered better and more complete product information — and better prices.