Marketing in the Digital Age: news Round-Up (week ending Jul 20, 2018)

Possible hope to keep net neutrality alive, buying movie tickets on Facebook, music selling everything but music, and Netflix big brother eyes in this week's Marketing in the Digital Age. 

Hope to Keep Net Neutrality? 

Summary: Republican Rep Mike Coffman was the first House republican to sign his name on a petition to force a vote on keeping net neutrality.  

Opinion: Net neutrality shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but it has become one.  As a person who has made a living off the internet in digital marketing, repealing net neutrality is an act that harms the consumer.  It will throttle speeds when essentially the government has decided you’ve had enough access to the internet. 

Buying Movie Tickets on Facebook

Summary: Soon, you’ll be able to buy your movie tickets through Facebook via AMC, Fandango, and Atom Tickets.  Facebook’s product manager Swapna Joshi stated, “…This is another way we’re working to make going to the movies fun and easy.”

Opinion: Another way to keep people on Facebook longer, smart.  

Music as a Key Marketing Strategy for Marriott Hotels

Summary: Marriott has said that music has been a successful marketing strategy for them.  In 2016, they held a 3-day music festival called Wake Up Call at the W in Scottsdale.  The event was such a a success that they have decided to launch several more in the upcoming year, starting with the W Hollywood Sept 1.  

Opinion: I once heard someone say music sells everything, except music.  Another case of it here.  These music festivals will book up the W Hotel rooms, naturally, and expose people to their brand to book in the future.  

How Many Times Did you Watch A Christmas Prince? 

Summary: Netflix is facing backlash from its recent tweet stating that 53 people have watched A Christmas Prince everyday for 18 days.  Following with a “who hurt you?” to make it seem funny.  People were outraged at the creepiness of the big brother watching over you.  

Opinion: Uh, yeah, how do you think Netflix is as big as it is?  It’s not by guessing what you like, it’s by watching what you like and making content for just that.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Jul 13, 2018)

How many followers did you lose?  Twitter (and Facebook to an extent) purging of fake accounts, AR ads, and Instagram Stories question stickers in this week's Marketing in the Digital Age.   

Twitter Removing Fake Accounts

Summary: On Thursday, Twitter started purging fake accounts off the site.  The move aims at restoring trust to the embattled platform.  In part, this move came from threats of brand advertisers, like Unilever, who put pressure on Twitter to ensure the influencers they were paying actually had the influence they claimed.  Otherwise, they would be pulling funds out from advertising on Twitter.  

Opinion: The proliferation of fake accounts should not have gone on this long to begin with, but at least Twitter is working on rectifying the situation now.  

Facebook Augmented Reality Ads

Summary: Facebook has released ads which allow people to virtually try on products.  So instead of just imagining how that new chair would look in your living room, the AR in the Pottery Barn ad can allow you to use your camera to see how it would virtually look in your living room.  For now, the ads will only roll out on Facebook (not Messenger or Instagram, yet).  And also to come, you can buy the product directly too. 

Opinion: Having returned a couch that just didn't look right once it arrived at my place, something like an AR integration could have saved the poor delivery people the hassle and money on my part.  

Instagram Posts Sticker Questions 

Summary: Instagram will now allow users ask questions using a sticker with followers on Instagram Stories. 

Opinion: How are you? What should I have for lunch today?  Tell me something good (okay, technically not a question).  Endless interaction possibilities for brands with their followers! 

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending July 6, 2018)

Swedish beer, technology to cure measles, and a new kind of fame in this week's Marketing In The Digital Age.

Swedish Beer Company Wins Cannes Grand Prix

Summary:  Budweiser put together a Cannes-award campaign for searches with Budweiser to show its place in musical history.  After their win was announced earlier this week, Swedish beer company Norrlands Guld bought AdWords against those search results serving up paid ads getting people to put down their phones and actually drink beer.     

Opinion: Talk about using wit over $$$$!  Although I love the idea of using music to tie together a a product, this Swedish beer company takes it for being smart with small budgets to make an impact.  Now where can I find a Norrlands Guld?

Using Mobile Phones to Prevent Measles

Summary: Measles is still a global epidemic problem and is preventable with a simple vaccination.  The problem is awareness of the availability and what it does in certain parts of the world. To solve this, UNICEF is using a simple SMS based application to spread awareness about measles vaccination availability throughout C'ote D'Ivoire.  

Opinion: It's as simple as that.  Knowledge cures ignorance.  (If only this can be applied to more facets of life... )

Superstar Gamer Announces Uber Eats Partnership

Summary: Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced another non-gaming channel partnership with Uber Eats.  Uber Eats challenged him to eat one donut ordered via Uber Eats for every elimination from his Fortnite tournament in Chicago.  

Opinion: First off, Fortnite is a (virtual) survival game.  Red Bull announced a deal with Ninja last month around Fortnite and a gaming tournament which will be broadcast on his Twitch channel of 100k+ viewers.  The Uber Eats partnership represents yet another expansion of what is thought of as traditional sports and/or fame.  As marketers, it also represents a new type of influencer to consider and a potentially new audience to reach.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Jun 29, 2018)

Getting creative with music, ad transparency, and more consumer protection in this week's edition of Marketing in the Digital Age.  

Instagram Stories With Music

Summary: Not only did Instagram announce this week that Instagram Stories has 400m active users, it announced that Stories' users in the US and 5 other countries will be able to add music to videos and photos they shoot on the platform.  They did a deal with all major labels to include hits users can time their photos and videos to and post.  

The growth itself to 400m users, up from 300m in November, shows a growth rate of six times that of Snap's entire app.  

Opinion: Watch out, Music.ly, Facebook is coming for you next!  I could see there being some antitrust issues if this were a more regulated space, but social media is still a Wild West (which Cambridge Analytica exposed).  

Twitter Launches Transparency Ads

Summary: In response to their role in the spreading of misinformation, particularly with the 2016 presidential election, Twitter launched an Ads Transparency Center.  From this, anyone can view search any Twitter handle and see what ad campaigns the account has placed in the past seven days.  For political advertisers in the US, there will be added info like billing, ad spend, impressions per tweet, and demographic targeting. Facebook will be announcing a similar ad transparency initiative.  

Opinion: It still floors me that our presidential election was tampered with by people who were not within the confounds of Facebook.  This is a good step, and my guess is that there will be people who monitor these buys and report on them a-la-blog style to make a living out of it.  Wait, maybe I should be that person...

California Passes Historic Privacy Bill

Summary: California lawmakers unanimously signed a historic privacy bill into effect.  As reported in Wired, "The new legislation gives Californians the right to see what information businesses collect on them, request that it be deleted, get access to information on the types of companies their data has been sold to, and direct businesses to stop selling that information to third parties.... The ballot initiative would have prevented businesses from denying service to consumers if they opt out of having their data tracked and stored. The law contains similar language, though it creates what Hertzberg calls the "Spotify exception," which allows companies to offer different services or rates to consumers based on the information they provide—for instance, a free product based on advertising. But, the bill states, the difference must be 'reasonably related to the value provided to the consumer by the consumer’s data.'"

Opinion: First, something was finally done unanimously within the government!  That in and of itself seems to be a victory in our current political climate.  Second, this seems to be a great step in protecting consumers' data.  Third, I do wonder how this will indeed affect technology innovation.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending June 22, 2018)

Facebook charges subscription fees, Instagram will host video up to an hour, and Salesforce integrating Google Analytics in this week's news round-up.  

Facebook Lets Group Admins Charge for Access

Summary: As a test, Facebook is allowing some group admins to charge for access to their content. TechCrunch reported the fees will range from $4.99 to $29.99 per month.  

Opinion: Although I don't want to have to pay for access to another service, I can appreciate why this is happening as a way to monetize content and allow for creators to profit from their work.   Currently, Facebook has built its entire model on ad-support, and this is a way to diversify the revenue stream.  It also allows the people creating the content to share in some of the revenue, which currently doesn't happen. 

Instagram Announces Long-Form Video

Summary: Instagram announced IGTV, a platform that will allow users with 10K+ followers to post content up to an hour long.  Everyone else will get 10 min, which is up from the previous 60 second cap.  IG doesn't plan on producing its own content and is relying in its celebrity users to popularize the function.  It will launch without ads.  

Opinion:  At a billion active users of Instagram, that's a lot of video to be had! Once it's popularized, I can see this being another ad sales platform.  It's also a way for Instagram to steal views from YouTube.  

Salesforce-Google Analytics Integration and What it Means for Marketers

Summary: Instead of building its own web analytics, Salesforce will be integrating Google Analytics into its service offerings.  The partnership will allow for seamless (their words, not mine) integration of Google Analytics 360 through Salesforce Marketing Cloud.  It was doable before but not without cumbersome challenges.  Now, "A marketer from a consumer goods company can, for instance, view imported metrics from Analytics 360 on the Marketing Cloud dashboard. If they see certain products are getting frequently viewed, but not purchased, they can create an aggregated and anonymized audience of those users in Analytics 360, and then publish it to Marketing Cloud with a few clicks."

Opinion:  As a marketer, anything that consolidates info onto one platform would definitely make life easier.  This goes a step further in being able to analyze data from customers who take a certain action on a website and track for future improvements.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending June 15, 2018)

Now that AT&T and Time Warner's merger was approved by the department of justice, will confirmation bias slip even more into traditional advertising channels?   

AT&T-Time Warner- What It Means for Your Advertising

Summary: The DOJ approved AT&T's $85B takeover bid for Time Warner.  Over the past year, AT&T has been building out an ad and analytics units that they claim will do for automated advertising for premium video and advertising like how social media revolutionized digital advertising.  Their goal is to be more precise with targeted advertising. 

Opinion: I spoke about this a few months back when the merger was announced. While I like the idea of seeing ad content that is more relevant to me, my concern arose when thinking about confirmation bias in this setting.  For example, I lean left politically.  With this deal, I imagine I would be served more content that is left leaning.  However, I like to know how people who lean to the right politically are considering views to better educate myself.  With targeted traditional advertising, I would have make a concerted effort to seek out that info still.  It is that much more effort I (or anyone) would have to put into learning from an opposing view, which may further confirmation bias.  

Snap Announces SnapKit

Summary: Snapchat has launched a developer platform.  Using its APIs, developers can integrate Snap's login, create Bitmoji avatars into their keyboards, display public Our Stories and Snap Map content, and generate branded stickers with referral links users can share back inside Snapchat.  Initial partners include Tinder (allowing users to bring Bitmojis into chats) and others.  Their biggest selling point is privacy on the Kit, not allowing anyone to share social graphs with apps, to prevent a Cambridge Analytica mishap.  

Opinion:  Snap has a window of privacy advantage over Facebook right now, and it's good they are capitalizing on it.  User privacy, especially on this platform which originated based on stories disappearing within 24-hours (things you don't want others to see for long), is especially key.  

Google's Revamped Ad Settings

Summary: In an effort to be more transparent and educate people about data collection, Google has highlighted features of Why This Ad and Ad Settings, where users can turn off targeted ads to them.  These have existed for some time, but many people haven't seen how it exists. 

Opinion: Transparency and communication always help with user trust instead of people coming to their own conclusions on how their data is being used.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Jun 8, 2018)

In this week's Marketing in the Digital Age, several subjects of A.I. have come up and Facebook has a breach of data, again.  With A.I. rapidly progressing and coming into the forefront of media, what type of regulation needs to be in place to keep humanity protected? 

Facebook Breaches Data of its Users

Summary: New York Times reported this week that Facebook gave 60 device makers access to users' data and that of their friends without express permission.  Facebook denies this.  However, they have confirmed that a data-sharing partnership with Chinese firms including Huawei (a company flagged by US intelligence as a security threat).  Apparently the information transferred was stored only on a user's device, not Chinese company servers.  

Opinion: A lot of what has been happening in the social media space has gone unchecked, largely because it's a new arena and the implications from it haven't been planned for or  contemplated.  I imagine that will quickly change with the massive breaches Facebook has undergone the past several months.  

Google Won't Use A.I. for Evil

Summary:  Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced yesterday an emphasis of Alphabet's philosophy of "don't be evil" when he confirmed that Google won't use its A.I. tools for weapons or surveillance.- with some caveats.  It will work with the government and military on cybersecurity and surveillance but nothing that violates "internationally accepted norms".   

Opinion: What is one woman's/man's evil is not necessarily the other's.  A.I. is coming, but as you see from the Facebook breaches, a level of regulation also needs to be set here to ensure humanity's safety.  Using a vague avoidance of what violates "internationally accepted norms" could likely vary on more subtle points from one person to the next (or one country to the next country).

A.I. Training in the Dark Corners of Reddit

Summary: Researchers at MIT trained an artificial intelligence psychopath machine, Norman (as in Norman Bates), using Reddit.  The purpose was to show that the data used to train machine learning algorithms influences its behaviors.  “Norman suffered from extended exposure to the darkest corners of Reddit,” the researchers state, “and represents a case study on the dangers of artificial intelligence gone wrong when biased data is used in machine learning algorithms.” Example of what Norman responded with: 

Opinion: See opinion above.  Don't let it get to be a problem before potential solutions and regulations are explored! 

@tinycarebot vs. @infinite_scream

Summary: Two Twitter bots have been stuck on a seemingly endless loop of "conversation" for hours on Twitter.  @infinite_screeam will respond to any tweet with a poignant "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH" while @tinycarebot sends out uplifting, emoji-filled messages. So every uplifting tweet is met with virtual screams.  

Opinion:  Hah, just a stupid and fun way to go into the weekend before A.I. takes over writing these blogs for me.  

Marketing in the Digital Age: News Round-Up (week ending Jun 1, 2018)

Mary Meeker keeps PPT slides alive!  The highly anticipated internet trends report was released this week.  Given the depth of her knowledge and report, this Marketing in the Digital Age edition is solely dedicated to its findings.  

Highlights: 

• The smartphone penetration rate has slowed. (This comes as no surprise to me given the penetration rate of cell phones globally.  Literally, I was in Petra, Jordan, with kiosk vendors ready to sell me items using Square or its equivalent from their smartphones.)  
• Messaging services (like WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger) are growing exponentially.  (I sometimes forget even that I can call a person to make plans instead of trading confusing messages over messaging platforms.)
• New content types are emerging: Twitch (where you watch people play video games) has increased hours viewed YOY by millions
• Social media is driving product discovery.  Facebook 78%, Instagram 59%, Pinterest 59%, Twitter 34%, Snap 22%.
• Ad costs are increasing faster than reach on Facebook  (because of the volume of advertisers on the platform, you are paying more to reach less people)
• Commerce driver went from utility to personalization of a curated product discovery
• Many are moving from buying to subscribing (Netflix, Spotify, etc.)
• Many Americans view YouTube before purchasing products 
• Freelance workforce is growing 3x faster than total workforce (I am available for freelance projects 😉)
• There are 33M global lifelong learners, increasing YOY.  (I am elated to see this.  Continual education is important and not often emphasized in North American culture.)
• 56% of the most valued companies were founded by 1st or 2nd generation companies (Remember that when voting on immigration policies)