Ad blocking conversations continue, people...people who don't need Peeple, Amazon locks out Apple and Google, trust in advertising, email matters to social platforms, Twitter's new CEO, Facebook is immune from ad blocking, why distribution is the future of marketing, regulatory forces come out in force against ride hailing apps, a new report on established companies in the collaborative economy, podcast recommendation of the week, using data to tell stories, cybersecurity awareness month already features two major breaches, good news for grammar Nazis, our weekly trivia question and more, it's The Week in Digital.
A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.
Each Monday we publish a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, business, digital communications and marketing in order to keep leaders up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in your job. A new issue is available every Monday morning. Please subscribe to keep up to date on developments.
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Posted by Scott Monty on Sunday, October 4, 2015
Industry
- The advertising world is still up in arms about ad blocking. It was a big topic at Advertising Week and a number of ad tech companies have been feeling the effects in their stock prices.
- Is the source of the problem advertisers and marketers, who should simply be making better products and experiences that customers actually want?
- Or perhaps the users are at fault, since they're the ones who are installing the ad blocking software?
- Whomever the culprit, everyone seems to agree on this conclusion: we need to reform the advertising model for the benefit of everyone. Ignoring this substantial issue at this critical time may affect the future of the very future of the Internet.
- But don't let news organizations die. Because News Is Different. For a very good reason. Don't miss this piece by Dave Pell.
- As we predicted, the Internet moved beyond Martin Shkreli and found its whipping subject of the week with the founders of Peeple — a yet-to-launch app that will rate people like Yelp rates businesses.
- If you think this sounds like a bad idea, you were in good company as people began to realize that you wouldn't be able to do anything about the negative things said about you, nor would you be able to remove your profile.
- It seems the founders of Peeple didn't appreciate the irony of people talking smack about them.
- Amazon is getting serious about competition: the retail giant is blocking the sale of Apple TV and Google Chromecast devices in order to protect Amazon Prime Video. Does this qualify as an antitrust issue? It's a unique situation in that Amazon owns the content and can determine which devices its content works on; but it's a retailer and has a duty to list items for sale as well. We'll be following the issue.
- When you're on your smartphone, where do you spend most of your time? It's likely that 80% of your time is spent within just three apps, according to comScore. Read through for some fascinating statistics on just where people are spending their time.
- Something to inspire: 80 powerful quotes from digital marketing pros. One of our favorites is from Frank Eliason: "Customers never wanted social service, they wanted to be treated right the first time." [TWEET THIS]
- Nielsen's global trust in advertising study surveyed 30,000 people in 60 countries and found that the top trusted sources are recommendations from people you trust and owned and earned media sites.
Trivia question: This week Edward Snowden started a Twitter account. Which account did he follow first?*
Platforms
- Google's new Customer Match will allow advertisers to upload email lists to AdWords and target users of search, Gmail and YouTube.
- If you're paying attention, this means that Google has joined the ranks of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that allow email address uploads for better ad targeting.
- Alphabet, now Google's parent company, is moving away from Google's mantra "Don't be evil," and is instead adopting the phrase "Do the right thing." Hopefully they'll run into the Peeple founders.
- Early in the week, reports indicated that there was momentum behind Jack Dorsey as Twitter's next CEO, while still holding his position as Square CEO. Not sure there was another candidate even close to being considered anyway. And that's the height of white male privilege — not only one CEO job, but two simultaneously. Clearly Twitter was at his mercy, as they weren't able to force him to give up the Square gig.
- Worth a read is an in-depth report from re/code on why Jack Dorsey is ready to save Twitter.
- The "Buy Now" button is available to any retailer on Twitter who uses Shopify, Bigcommerce or Demandware.
- The unthinkable may happen: Twitter may expand beyond 140 characters. This is part of its brand identity and quirky charm; but it's also a challenge that holds some users back. There's much to be said for the brevity and creative challenge that Twitter presents, but will making it more Facebook-like really solve Twitter's problems?
- If you aren't trying Twitter's six ad retargeting features for your business yet, you should look into it.
- Did you fall victim to the latest Facebook hoax? You know, the one that had you copy and paste a ridiculous update to claim your content and privacy? Well, it was indeed a hoax and here's why we keep falling for it.
- According to a survey in Indonesia, millions of respondents indicated they didn't use the Internet; but they did say they used Facebook. o_O Some people just shouldn't be on Facebook. Evidently, these are the same people who fell for the hoax above.
- If friends' profile images look a little different — as in, they're moving — there's a reason: Facebook is rolling out 7-second video profiles.
- Video ad buying on Facebook for brands will be markedly similar to how they purchase television advertising. And no doubt as expensive, although it will deliver more certainty about targeting.
- The social networking giant isn't worried at all about ad blocking. Primarily because you can't block what Facebook knows about you.
- Don't underestimate Medium. The platform has raised another $57 million in its effort to "make it easy to find stuff you want to see as well as stuff you didn’t know you wanted to see."
- One thing to keep in mind these days: it's not about how many followers you have, but about the distribution of the content and the network. Interesting take. This puts the influence squarely on the network rather than on influentials — something that Duncan Watts got at when he debunked Malcolm Gladwell's theory from The Tipping Point
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Collaborative Economy
- Crowd Companies and Vision Critical are releasing another annual report about opportunities in the collaborative economy for established companies. We'll be covering it tomorrow. Disclosure: I am an advisor for Crowd Companies.
- With more than half of collaborative economy funding going to the transportation sector, it's no wonder that there are at least 10 reasons investors love the shared transportation segment.
- Chinese ride-hailing app Didi Kuaidi has invested an undisclosed amount in Ola, India's leading ride-hailing company. These are two potentially huge markets; this could be huge play for the entire Asian market.
- The ride-hailing market is under attack by legal and regulatory forces across the U.S. The rapid changes are advancing beyond employment law, local regulations and the cozy relationship taxi commissions have with local authorities, and politicians are panicking. The typical response by regulators [see: France] is to block access, rather than to evolve.
- It's not just an American thing, either: in London, the transport body is cracking down by restricting actual features of the Uber app: a minimum five-minute wait time between ordering a vehicle and it arriving; banning operators from showing available cars within a smartphone app; and proposing that users book shared rides at least 7 days in advance, a measure to kill UberPool.
- Granted, London cabbies spend three years trying to amass The Knowledge and the powers-that-be want to protect the status quo. But even The Knowledge isn't vast enough to be able to determine where traffic is building up somewhere further down the route in real time.
- However, there are 70,000+ signatures to support Uber in London.
- GM is getting into the car sharing business, beginning with an effort in New York City. Partnerships on the effort may eventually extend to Google.
- Speaking of which, in order to simulate more realistic driving situations, Google is making its self-driving cars drive more like humans. Expect more accidents.
- Tesla revealed its Model X, an all-electric SUV with Falcon-wing doors and a post-apocalyptic bio-defense air system. Really? Has anyone seen how much electricity they have in The Walking Dead?
- While some have criticized the less-than-professional reveal event, others have looked beyond the "slightly awkward, endearing manner" of Elon Musk [read as: fanboys who think he walks on water] to the disparate developments that point to a larger potential strategy: that Tesla may be getting into the autonomous vehicle industry at scale.
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Audio
- Product Hunt is launching a podcast discovery channel where users can find and upvote shows, similar to Reddit.
- New feature: our Podcast Recommendation of the Week. This week, we suggest checking out UnPodcast, with Scott Stratten and Alison Kramer. Always a delight to listen to, this duo discusses current topics in marketing and business that are at turns frustrating and hilarious. Give them a listen and subscribe. Do you have a podcast recommendation for us? Leave a comment below.
Content
- We're only 3/4 of the way through 2015, but there are already lessons on the horizon regarding content marketing.
- Remember these 10 commandments of creating compelling content if you want to connect with customers. We hope we filled our 'C' quota with that last sentence.
What if you could put together a plan, a strategy, and a budget rooted in reality that gave you the resources you need to succeed? In less than one hour, you can build a data-driven customer journey and emerge with an actionable plan to prepare you for 2016.
Disclosure: affiliate link
Metrics / Measurement / Data
- If you're a savvy content marketer (see above) then these are the three marketing metrics you need to track to stay savvy.
- When determining what to measure, don't get caught up in the fantasy world of "reach." Particularly when an agency tells you that they achieved 7.8 billion unique visitors of print/online coverage for you. (Begins at 13:40)
- The customer lifecycle gives marketers the ability to have different touchpoints along the journey. Here are six ways to use data to tell stories throughout the lifecycle.
- Did you know that October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month? Fitting then that within the first two days, we learned:
- Scottrade revealed a breach of its system that affects 4.6 million customers and includes their Social Security numbers.
- Credit bureau Experian exposed 15 million Social Security numbers.
- This might be a good time to read our interview with the CEO of IDShield again.
- LinkedIn is paying $13 million into a class-action settlement fund for emails sent out as part of its Add Connections service.
- To overcome the kind of hoax perpetrated by Volkswagen, some think that we need more technology, not less. Is advanced technology making us feel more immune from consequences? Or perhaps more detached from ethics? Think about what's happened recently with Ashley Madison. It's a subject perhaps worth more exploration.
* Answer to the trivia question above:
- Edward Snowden (@Snowden) joined Twitter this week, quickly amassing 1.34 million followers. But he only follows one account back: the NSA. He also forgot to turn off email notifications from Twitter, resulting in 47 GB of emails from every follow, retweet, mention, listing and favorite.
When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading
- Good news, grammar Nazis: you're eminently more desireable than your less-than-eloquent online friends.
- You've undoubtedly heard managers say that they prefer to hire people who are smarter than them. That's a wise strategy, but once you've got them working for you, how do you manage people smarter than you?
- If you're like me, you're part of the last generation that remembers the world without the Internet — that is, the last ones to be able to speak both languages. If so, you might want to pick up Michael Harris' The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection
about how technology affects society.
- Lessons from a 6th grade social studies teacher that apply to many aspects of life, but in this case a public speaking engagement that almost crashed and burned.
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I advise agencies and brands to help them improve their corporate and digital acumen. Please get in touch if you'd like to put my experience and digital smarts to work on a project, to consult with your group, or to address an audience at your next corporate or industry event.
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