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The Internet Report has arrived; and to prove that visual are a thing, emoji are all the rage this week; Asia leads mobile ad-blocking; why agencies use technology that they know will fail; marketing for kids; how Mark Zuckerberg set out to crush Google+; non-video interaction has fallen sharply on Facebook; Jack is Twitter's final hope; Snapchat surpasses Twitter's DAUs; scaling in the 21st century is difficult; bots for better search, travel and art; how Disney's digital newsroom approaches its work; essential Google Analytics reports; why reading matters; plus, our weekly trivia challenge, podcast pick, and more.
The Internet Report has arrived; and to prove that visual are a thing, emoji are all the rage this week; Asia leads mobile ad-blocking; why agencies use technology that they know will fail; marketing for kids; how Mark Zuckerberg set out to crush Google+; non-video interaction has fallen sharply on Facebook; Jack is Twitter's final hope; Snapchat surpasses Twitter's DAUs; scaling in the 21st century is difficult; bots for better search, travel and art; how Disney's digital newsroom approaches its work; essential Google Analytics reports; why reading matters; plus, our weekly trivia challenge, podcast pick, and more.
Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and additional ones — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag. This week, we flipped our 6,000th article in this magazine since we began using the service.
If you're around at 9:30 pm ET on Sunday evenings, you can get a preview of a couple of topics from the week's via the live video on Facebook. If not, you can always catch the replay here:
Industry
- The most anticipated report of the year arrived: the Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers 2016 Internet Trends Report. Mary Meeker presented it at the Code conference and we've included the monstrosity of a deck for you to review. We'll be taking a look at certain elements of the report in the weeks ahead. Please subscribe to our full site feed for updates.
- The scariest chart in the deck is the same one as last year, showing that print vs. mobile advertising still has a major gap.
- It's not just the print/mobile ad slide that's horrific. The entire presentation is an eyesore.
- One of the sections of the report indicated that Gen Z is more prone to communicating with images than text. As if on queue, emoji seemed to be everywhere in the news this week:
- The Unicode Consortium is introducing 72 new emoji which will join the 1,601 already in existence, adding a number of long-requested symbols. Yes, ROFL and bacon have been granted emoji status. Glad to see bowties and bourbon have made the list as well. Frank Sinatra would feel right at home (along with me).
- Facebook has finally introduced racially and gender diverse emoji.
- And Walmart is bringing back Smiley — the original emoji. [Disclosure: Walmart is a client of Scott Monty Strategies.]
- Apps using an in-app messaging strategy retain 46% of users for at least 11 launches, compared to 36% of users for apps not using in-app messaging.
- Asia leads the world in mobile ad blocking adoption with over 36% of smartphone users opting to block ads; North America is relatively safe (for now) at 1.2%.
- This might explain why 60% of brand marketers but only 40% of media agencies are concerned about ad blocking. They're more focused on click fraud and viewability.
- CPG and consumer products manufacturers are among the biggest spenders in advertising overall, with digital advertising accounting for about $6 billion. Here are the overall numbers:
- Marketing automation company Marketo has been purchased by a private equity firm. Gone are the fears that an enterprise IT company would scoop them up to enter the marketing automation space and compete with IBM, Oracle and Adobe.
- Ad tech is ruining the web with questionable content and shell websites that can throw off major advertisers. It's a little-realized and extremely dirty way of boosting traffic numbers.
- From Digiday's "Confessions" series: ad agencies use technology even when they know it will fail. Why? To check boxes and win awards. Is this an a breach of ethics and of fiduciary duty to the client?
- You'll want to check out this eight-part series on Marketing for Kids, beginning with part 8 (links to the other seven parts are included — just work your way back from there). It's a valuable resource against which to benchmark your own marketing skill set.
- Sugar Land, Texas now has its own selfie statue. It's probably just a clever ruse to lure Kim Kardashian there.
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Platforms
- Alphabet
- Google has a new user-friendly tool for small business websites that will test your site's mobile readiness and mobile and desktop speed.
- While Google claimed that it didn't view Google+ as a competitor to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg certainly did. And here's the full story behind how Facebook set out to crush Google+ from Vanity Fair.
- The Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation issued a new report that shows approximately 44% of American adults now get news from Facebook.
- User interaction with non-video content on Facebook has fallen sharply, as Facebook shifts to focus on video. According to a NewsWhip study, there are fewer likes, comments and shares on links versus videos. It's 10 pm. Do you know where your video strategy is?
- If you switched to Facebook's web app to avoid Messenger, tough luck. Facebook is disabling messaging in its web app to force users to adopt Messenger. No worries; you can always use WhatsApp. Oh, wait.
- Twitter/Periscope/Vine
- Another long read from Vanity Fair: Twitter is betting everything on Jack Dorsey. Will it work? Two noteworthy details: Co-founder and board member Ev Williams tried (and failed) to get Twitter to buy his second startup, Medium, for $500 million, and Twitter's board does not have a Plan B should Dorsey's turnaround sputter and fail.
- Twitter's new Ad Carousel product allows brands to include multiple tweets and media types, and tweets of followers (with permission).
- Twitter has become the ultimate channel for digital diplomacy for world leaders and governments. It is the prime social network used by heads of state and government in 173 countries, representing 90 percent of all United Nations (UN) member states, according to Burson-Marsteller‘s latest Twiplomacy study. It works pretty well for corporate diplomacy via customer service too.
- Twitter temporarily removed a parody Vladimir Putin account and Russian social media users got enraged. That's ironic. Suddenly Russians object to censorship? At least they know Jack won't send them to Siberia for speaking out.
- Snapchat
- Snapchat now has more than 150 million daily active users (DAUs), making it more popular than Twitter. This certainly follows Mary Meeker's assertion that visuals are more important than text.
- Another reason might be that Snapchat's story structure and longer half life mean you're more likely to get noticed there than on Twitter.
- In an effort to make it more news-like, Snapchat is redesigning Discover to show off more content of publishers.
- Adding to its deal with the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, Snapchat has a three-year deal with Wimbeldon for live updates.
- Instagram is giving small businesses a data-rich dashboard with information about their posts. Free tools could serve as gateway to paid ads.
Trivia question: What new and enviable job did Time, Inc. post last week?*
Collaborative / Autonomous Economy
- Scaling in the 21st century is hard. Uber, Chipotle, Tesla and Facebook are examples of trip-ups that are happening as new companies try to scale to compete with incumbents.
- In new guidelines, the EU says that European Union governments should not ban services like home-rental site Airbnb or ride-hailing app Uber except as a last resort, taking into account the public interest.
- Transportation
- Walmart is partnering with Uber, Lyft and Deliv for grocery delivery starting in Denver and Phoenix.
- Uber and Didi are closer to profitbility in China. Didi is now profitable in more than 50% of the 400 Chinese cities in which it operates.
- Uber has raised $3.5 billion from a Saudi fund, making it the largest-ever US funding round for a venture-backed company. Uber is now imaginary-valued at $68 billion, some $20 billion more than General Motors.
- Think that makes no sense? Try this: even with such a rich (imaginary) valuation, Uber has still turned to Wall Street for $1 billion to support sub-prime auto loans for drivers. We all lived through the subprime housing loan-based financial disaster of 2008-09. How in God's name does this sound like a good idea?
- Autonomous Vehicles
- Connected cars means more wireless plans. In fact, a third of new cellular customers last quarter were cars. Let's hope they don't go over the data allotment like my kids.
- AI/Bots
- It's 2016. Isn't it time you started letting a bot control your travel? Super-cool app Pana gets a rave review by the New York Times and our friend Jay Baer.
- Artificial intelligence is changing SEO faster than you might think.
- Similarly, Facebook is using AI to become a better-powered search engine.
- While marketing automation may be under fire for de-humanizing the experience, there's a utility and scale question to be considered: IBM Watson is powering digital ads with AI that answer consumers' questions. [Disclosure: IBM is a client of Scott Monty Strategies.]
- As bots replace humans, do we need a guaranteed income for those who become unemployed? Swiss citizens disagree, to the tune of 78% against the idea. Isn't this just a tax on AI?
- While creating art might seem like a purely human pursuit, Google is allowing users to use AI to help create art.
- And just in case, Google is developing a kill switch on the off chance that there's a bot uprising. What? It could happen.
Audio
- According to Nielsen research podcast listeners tend to be an active bunch. Your advertising or sponsorship should probably reflect that - or, more appropriately, the specific interests of your audience.
- Program of the Week. This week's recommendation is Five Minutes of Rum, suggested by Steve Coulson. As you can imagine, it focuses on a particular spirit, a few minutes at at time. Perfect for the rum enthusiast, just as summer kicks off. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts
Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing
- Georgia-Pacific's CMO says many brands get it wrong: "Instead of embracing a conflict, many brands say, 'we need to avoid them because we don't like conflicts.'" And thus why he reimagined marketing communications through storytelling.
- Go inside Disney's digital newsroom and see what drives them to win the Internet every day.
Privacy / Security / Legal
- The founder of Gawker, currently under scrutiny for its role in releasing the Hulk Hogan sex tape, says that Facebook, Reddit, et al. should be held responsible for the content posted by others on their site.
- Remember that LinkedIn password breach we mentioned? Looks like some people were not immune. Some people like Mark Zuckerberg, whose Twitter and Pinterest accounts were hacked.
Measurement / Metrics / Data
- Here are the seven essential Google Analytics reports every marketer should know.
- Interested in learning about innovation from one of the most innovative in the marketing technology industry? Download a copy of Christopher Penn's Leading Innovation: Building a Scalable, Innovative Organization. [Disclosure: affiliate link]
- The ideal reasoner demonstrates how be to innovative:
* Answer to the trivia question above:
- On Wednesday, Time Inc. launched Extra Crispy, a breakfast-focused vertical run out of its Brooklyn-based “creative lab” The Foundry. Extra Crispy is hiring a bacon critic who will get a chance to report on bacon during a three-month freelance gig. Smart. If it was a full-time gig, Time would have to cover the healthcare expenses of the reporter. The freelancer gets to cover their own bacon-related maladies.
When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading
- We often think of Walt Whitman as a craggy bewhiskered old sage, but he actually wrote Leaves of Grass when he was only 36. Which makes it all the more amazing that he had such words of inspiration around living a vibrant and rewarding life at that age.
- It has become the norm for majot networks' late-night TV shows to have a solid social media presence. But it would seem that there's one thing missing from the online content of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert. Again proving why it's important that the biggest and most well-known brands still need a human element to allow fans to connect with them.
- If only more brands could insert some personality into what they do. A certain early master of persuasion had it right.
- The most effective strategy for succeeding in business? Business management guru Tom Peters says it's read, read and read some more. Even if it's just newsletters.
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I speak to groups and advise brands and agencies to help them embrace the fundamentals of human communication in the digital age. You can join these other top-notch clients by reaching out 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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