editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Adobe puts artificial intelligence tools into its marketing software

November 3, 2020 No Comments

Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Marguerita Choy

(Reuters) – Adobe Inc ADBE.O said on Monday that it has put a new set of artificial intelligence tools into its digital marketing software with the aim of helping companies sharpen their marketing campaigns.

Once known for applications like Photoshop, Adobe has become one of the biggest providers of software for running such campaigns, which businesses use to decide which of thousands of images and pieces of written to content to show to potential customers. Growth in its marketing software division has helped send shares up nearly 50% this year.

The artificial intelligence features released on Monday aid that effort by, for example, scanning and labelling thousand of product images by colour and shape, or using natural-language processing technology to read an article to determine its subject.

That makes it easier for marketing campaigns to make a recommendation, whether that means showing a person browsing an e-commerce site a pair of shoes similar to ones they have previously viewed or a news website suggesting a story on a similar subject to the one just read.

Such artificial intelligence technology has existed for several years, but using it generally required corporate marketing departments to export data from their systems and work with another division of the business to use, slowing the work down, Ali Bohra, director of strategy and product marketing for intelligence services at Adobe, said in an interview. Adobe has placed the technologies directly inside the marketing systems, reducing the need to export data.

“When you’re thinking about the need to be agile and work in real time, this is not a process that works very well,” Bohra said.

Feature Image Credit: An Adobe Systems Inc software box is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Marguerita Choy

Sourced from Reuters

In News

The Structure of Persuasive Copy

November 2, 2020 No Comments

By Brian Clark

We’re aware each element of copy is designed to get the first sentence read, and from there keep the reader engaged step by step to the conclusion.

We know to keep things clear, concise, and simple so that our writing communicates with ease.

And we definitely understand the make-or-break importance of an attention-grabbing headline.

So, how do we then structure our content to be persuasive?

Good content structure is never written in stone, but persuasive copy will do certain things and contain certain elements time and time again.

Whether you’re writing a sales page, blog post, or promotional ebook, the flow will determine effectiveness.

Here are some guidelines:

First of all, focus on the reader — make an important promise early on (with your headline and opening paragraphs) that tells the reader what’s in it for her. Never allow readers to question why they’re bothering to pay attention.

Each separate part of your narrative should have a main idea (something compelling) and a main purpose (to rile up the reader, to counter an opposing view, etc.) that supports your bigger point and promise. Don’t digress, and don’t ramble. Stay laser-focused.

Be ultra-specific in your assertions, and always give “reasons why.” General statements that are unsupported by specific facts cause a reader’s BS detector to go on high alert.

Demonstrate large amounts of credibility, using statistics, expert references, and testimonials as appropriate. You must be authoritative — if you’re not an existing expert on a subject, you had better have done your research.

After building your credibility and authority, get back to the most important person around — the reader. What’s still in it for him? Restate the hook and the promise that got readers engaged in the first place.

Make an offer. Whether you’re selling a product or selling an idea, you’ve got to explicitly present it for acceptance by the reader. Be bold and firm when you present your offer, and relieve the reader’s risk of acceptance by standing behind what you say.

Sum up everything, returning full circle to your original promise and demonstrate how you’ve fulfilled it.

These are some of the key elements of persuasive copy. Use them to provide a “roadmap” for your writing, and you’ll achieve better results.

Looking for more foundational copywriting tips?

Continue with our Copywriting 101 ebook.

By Brian Clark

Brian Clark is the founder of Copyblogger, host of 7-Figure Small, and curator of the Gen X lifestyle newsletter Further.

Sourced from Copyblogger

In News

Email Marketers, Focus on the Pre-Send Experience

November 2, 2020 No Comments

By ANDREW KORDEK

Over the last two decades, email marketing and its optimization have been written, talked and argued about—from the tactics of acquiring an email address to subscriber re-engagement and purging.

Personalization is one area of optimization that’s continuously addressed on blogs or at conferences. Each year, marketers gather more data, and have more tools and opportunities to ensure their emails allow the subscriber to feel more connected to the brand. Some brands have been able to leverage the data and the tools to become more relevant to the subscriber, having done so with diligence, testing, resilience and taking risks.

However, many brands have overlooked a key component to relevancy bliss at some point in time: the pre-send experience. This refers to anything that could impact the email program before the email is sent to the subscriber.

It’s not about a beautiful piece of creative, captivating copy and irresistible calls to action with hyper-personalization sent at the right time to subscribers. The optimization of the pre-send experience is sometimes put last on the list of things to do because it’s not sexy, takes time and requires patience.

Inception and administration

There are two equally weighted areas of the pre-send experience that marketers need to focus on: inception and administration.

Inception is tied to what a person goes through to sign up for the email program on a site or on another channel. In many organizations, the website and UX are owned by different groups, which often means that the email department is left out of the optimization discussion even though the objective of list growth is technically shared.

For example, brands like to play hide and seek with the email sign up and place it toward the footer of the site in a small font, because the notion of making it more prominent is often frowned upon by designers. The idea of making a pop-up banner to capture email addresses is too intrusive to the experience. Yet if done right and tested, it can be a stable and sustainable source of email list growth.

HOW SHOULD EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES EVOLVE IN A PANDEMIC?

A critical part of inception is the experience you provide on getting data, preferences or choices that people have around your email program. If you have 15 newsletters and capture 11 pieces of geographic and psychographic data points, is that too much for the subscriber to handle the first time they interact with your email program? While the goal is to provide choice, too much choice can overwhelm and turn people off.

As an email marketer for more than 21 years, I encourage clients to go through the sign-up experience at least twice a year with an unbiased group of people to see how easy or painful it was to get on the email list. As marketers, we understand our brand’s process on the site, but often overlook the things that could annoy or frustrate the typical site visitor who wants to sign up for your email program.

A great test to execute this is watching people navigate the front page and looking at the process they go through. After, you should ask the following questions:

Did you find the process to sign up for email easy or challenging?
Do you understand what our email program is about and what to expect?
Do you feel special or do you feel like a number?

The goal is to create an experience your customer can benefit from, rather than what your marketing department wants.

Administration is the ongoing experience your subscriber has during specific points of their email lifecycle with your brand. These things include a preference or subscription centre, cadence or frequency caps, opt-out or opt-down options, and the use or misuse of the data you have on each one of them.

If you have data, use it. But use it sparingly as not to raise the red flag of creepiness.

For example, if you have invested resources and budget into a preference or subscription centre and only leverage or promote it for the inception experience, you could be missing out on critical lifecycle points from the subscriber because things change in their lives.

A preference or subscription centre shouldn’t just capture data points at one point in time and be promoted at the bottom of every email next to the unsubscribe link. It should be publicized at various time stages for each subscriber to update as their life and preference changes.

Finally, if you have data, use it. But use it sparingly as not to raise the red flag of creepiness. Today’s sensitivity of subscribers is at an all-time high and, as brands, you need to be a good steward of privacy.

The optimization of the pre-send experience should be an ongoing project for any organization. It’s time for email marketers to help influence and take ownership of things that have long been assigned to other departments. The email program has long influenced attribution, and marketers today need to un-silo themselves from single-channel expertise.

Feature Image Credit: iStock

By ANDREW KORDEK

Andrew Kordek is vp of customer engagement at iPost, an email marketing and automation platform.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

Customer Data Platforms Take On Bigger Role As Cookies Disappear, Privacy Compliance Tightens

November 2, 2020 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

With the state of third-party cookies and identifiers in flux, as well as increasing regulations around consumer privacy, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that can combine first-, second- and third-party data have become the latest tool in the chest for marketers.

Research from Advertiser Perceptions shows marketers generally view CDPs as an important part of their privacy compliance efforts. A sample of 101 respondents were surveyed between July 27 and August 17 to determine their views on CDPs.

For the study, Advertiser Perceptions focused on marketers from U.S.-based companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue.

CDPs impact on success metrics varies. Some 45% of marketers said CDPs have the most significant impact on online sales, while 43% pointed to return on investments and return on ad spend, 41% cited engagement, 41% cited cross-selling, 39% cited cost per action, and 38% cited brand lift. Conversion rate, Customer acquisition, and reduced shopping cart abandonment also came in with a score of 38%.

Companies are using CDPs for a variety of reasons. Marketers are integrating their CDPs with other marketing technologies to personalize communications and improve customer experience and customer journeys. They also apply CDP insights to their ad campaigns to personalize advertising campaigns in real-time, or target specific customer segments.

Internally, marketers use CDPs to better understand various customer IDs and customer-specific insights across the organization that can be fed to other appropriate teams as needed.

While both house customer data, CPDs differ from CRMs.

CRMs can organize different types of customer data, but CDPs can activate that data across the marketing and advertising ecosystem, Stuart Schneiderman, SVP and business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, explains in an email to Search & Performance Marketing Daily.

“CDPs pull in CRM and transactional data,” he wrote. “They go beyond by integrating varied sources such as first- and third-party data, mobile, social, web site analytics and product usage data.”

Whereas CRMs limit the information to known data about customers, CDPs use known and anonymous data to create unified views of customers.

CRMs tend to be focused on managing sales and sales pipelines. CDPs go beyond that to implement, manage and optimize advertising and marketing programs that can be aligned to customer journeys.

When survey participants were asked to name the types of data they currently merge or unify with their CDP, 76% said they currently merge CRM data.

Some 65% cited transactional data, while 57% pointed to website visits, 49% cited customer support data, 47% cited first-party customer profile data, 46% use mobile and device-level data, 46% use product use data, and 45% use third-party data. Other types of data cited include social media, anonymized from cookies, app data, and offline data.

CDPs also have a major privacy compliance role, helping marketers as they address challenges and respond to regulations, according to the findings.

About 66% build GDPR and CCPA compliance marketing lists using the data, while 63% centralize and unify customer data, 55% manage compliance programs, 52% enforce opt-out policies, 52% increase transparency around data use, and 52% enforce data retention and use policies.

Other strategies include conducting data audits to validate the types of information collected, enforce the right to be forgotten, and restrict access and rights management to select areas of the organization.

By Laurie Sullivan

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Inside TV’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Upfront

October 30, 2020 No Comments

By Brian Steinberg

Depending on who is doing the talking, TV’s 2020 “upfront” market was absolutely horrendous or merely awful.

Advance advertising commitments for the next year of TV could be down as much as 15% to 20%, according to six media executives and ad buyers familiar with parts of the industry’s annual negotiations for commercial support for its next programming cycle. The projected shortfall takes place after a slew of regular TV sponsors were crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, and the TV networks’ ability to showcase original content was severely hurt by scuttled and delayed productions.

More concerning, perhaps: some of the drops in advertising outlays could become permanent, as advertisers scramble to get commercials in front of a viewing public that is turning increasingly to streaming, on-demand video. “Things we thought would happen in 18 months or two years are happening in real time,” says one media buying executive. “What may have been the right path six months ago will have to go out the window.” That could leave TV fighting harder to keep ad dollars at a time when the medium needs them more than ever.

The nation’s five English-language broadcast networks could have seen the volume of ad commitments they secured for their next cycle of primetime programming fall by at least 9.3% to 14.6%, according to Variety estimates. It is the first time since 2015 that upfront estimates have sagged. Based on conversations with media buyers and other executives, Variety estimates NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and the CW have secured between $8.2 billion and $9.8 billion for their 2020-2021 primetime schedules, compared with between $9.6 billion and $10.8 billion for primetime in the 2019-2020 season. Last year, upfront volume surged between 5.5% and 7.4% over 2018.

UPFRONT VOLUME

IN PRIMETIME, AMONG FIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING BROADCAST NETWORKS

2010 $8.1B to $8.7B

2011 $8.8B to $9.3B

2012 $8.8B to $9.3B

2013 $8.6B to $9.2B

2014 $8.17B to $8.94B

2015 $8.02B to $8.69B

2016 $8.41B to $9.25B

2017 $8.78B to $9.62B

2018 $9.1B to $10.06B

2019 $9.6B to $10.8B

2020 $8.2B to $9.8B

Source: Variety estimates

The numbers should be taken as directional indicators, not hard, cold cash. Upfront figures are typically built on fuzzy math and rarely have any correlation to the ad money big media owners like CBS, Walt Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox Corporation and WarnerMedia collect by the end of the year. Advertisers can pull orders at certain moments in the season or “re-express” advertising if specific programming is yanked off the schedule, changing the nature of their commitment to purchase inventory. But they still serve as a sort of guide as to where money is being sent. In recent years, the figures have lent ballast to the theory that the networks can still keep new money flowing despite ratings erosion and viewers moving to streaming options. This year, the numbers indicate tricky trajectory ahead.

As bad as the numbers are, media executives say they expected worse. Movie studios, some retailers, and restaurant chains and travel marketers had little visibility on their future business, and cut spending. Automotive advertising, long a staple of TV advertising, was mixed. The networks had to rely on insurance companies. pharmaceutical marketers and big consumer packaged goods giants – advertisers whose long association with TV has given them the ability over the years to command more favorable pricing rates year over year.

“The advertisers had aggressive expectations for rollbacks, because they all thought a lot of categories were on the side-lines, that the networks were going to get really nervous because they would not have enough of a base,” says one media executive. But the TV outlets resisted some of that pressure, pushing back against harsh demands until they could talk about the return of sports like the NBA, NHL, golf, and, most importantly, the National Football League.

The upfront showed “a mix of stronger demand than many people have estimated just a few months ago,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts at a recent investor conference, noting that the company sees “really good signs for both the third and fourth quarter. “

To be sure, the end results were not as robust as they have been in the recent past. Big TV networks in the last three upfront sessions have been able to snare double-digit percentage increases in the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers, a measure known as a CPM that is central to these annual discussions between U.S. media companies and Madison Avenue. Last year, NBCUniversal sought CPM increases of between 13% and 14% for primetime inventory, while CBS pressed for CPM hikes of between 14% and 16%. ABC sought 14%, Fox called for 12% to 13% and the CW pushed for 14% to 15%.

One year later, the rate increases are much more paltry, with ad buyers suggesting CPM rates rose just 3% to 4% for top inventory, with some media companies consenting to single-digit percentage rollbacks for less-desirable and less popular inventory. The media companies are also said to have offered rollbacks for digital inventory – even though some of it was in high demand from advertisers that were ready to spend.

Walt Disney, ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal and Fox declined to make executives available for comment.

If broadcast faced headwinds, cable squared off against a hurricane. Some media executives believe the volume of ad commitments at cable networks could be down by 20% or more.

To keep the dollars flowing, the networks had to be flexible. They offered compelling rates on digital inventory to stoke commitments to primetime. They gave sponsors more wiggle room to claw back dollars in case of a business downturn. And they made sure advertisers would be taken care of if certain big events, such as sports matches, never made it to air.

Even so, the upfront was beset by numerous obstacles that have not impeded it in the past. Consider that in May and June, when market haggling usually takes place, few executives knew when sports might return to the field, or when primetime favourites would start to film anew. NBCUniversal’s Olympics broadcast, slated for this past summer and often a massive spur to new ad talks, was postponed. A number of prominent advertisers – including Procter & Gamble and Unilever – called for the industry to shift the upfront to the fall or later in the year. And Nielsen rolled out a new measure of out-of-home viewing for entertainment programming that the networks had to convince some advertisers to accept.

The Madison Avenue manoeuvre to push back upfront talks may have backfired, according to one media buying executive. Advertisers seeking so-called “calendar-year” deals – agreements that start in 2021 rather than the beginning of new fall TV – found higher costs, says the buyer. “I do think if anybody tried to wait to do calendar deals, they really got hurt.”

Procter undercut its own efforts, not waiting for its calls to shift the upfront to take effect. Instead, the maker of Pampers and Crest did a direct deal with ABC, CBS and NBC, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, rather than working through its agencies. The pact was for broadcast inventory only, these people say, and did not focus on cable. In September, Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer, raised eyebrows when he said at an industry conference that “we’ve taken control of when we negotiate and buy TV media. To level the playing field, we negotiate directly with as many as possible.” Most large advertisers rely on one of the ad industry’s big media-buying firms to get such things done. The consumer-products giant declined to offer any details of its deal with the networks, noting in a statement that “we do not comment with regard to any supplier negotiations given they are proprietary to our business.”

There were still some bright spots. Ad buyers suggest NBCUniversal and Disney fared better than their competitors, buoyed to some degree by interest in on-demand hubs Peacock and Hulu. Ad money moved to streaming video across the board, with buyers looking at ViacomCBS’ Pluto and Fox’s Tubi, and even setting aside dollars for the ad-supported version of WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, which one ad executive expects to see debut in early 2021.

Some advertisers gravitated toward Discovery, which has maintained original unscripted programming at outlets like Food Network while the rollout of new comedies and dramas have slowed. Discovery said the number of clients joining its “Discovery Premiere” offer, which puts clients in a package of 30 of its best-known series, increased during the upfront to 75 from 25.

Many networks are looking to better times. Several held back upfront inventory so it can be sold in TV’s so-called “scatter” market, when inventory is purchased closer to the date it airs and is often sold at a premium. Speaking to investors recently, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the company had probably held back 5% more commercial inventory than usual in hopes of getting better prices for it later in the cycle.

The networks will need that money.

Based on Variety’s estimate of a 10% to 15% cut in volume, NBCUniversal may have seen primetime commitments fall to between $2.68 billion and $2.84 billion, compared with $3.15 billion in 2019. ABC may have seen primetime commitments fall to between $1.66 billion and $2.18 billion, compared with between $1.95 billion and $2.42 billion a year ago. And CBS may have seen primetime commitments fall to between $2.03 billion and $2.51 billion, according to Variety estimates, compared with between $2.39 billion and $2.79 billion in 2019.

The smaller networks were affected as well. Fox may have seen primetime commitments fall to between $1.36 billion and $1.64 billion, according to Variety estimates, compared with between $1.6 billion and $1.82 billion in 2019. And the CW may have seen primetime commitments fall to between $440.8 million and $$597.1 million, according to Variety estimates, compared with between $592.7 million and $663.4 million a year earlier.

The moves wipe out some the volume gains the networks have made since a three-year stretch in the middle of the decade, when the TV companies had to muscle through tougher upfront sessions in the aftermath of a large recession. They have been helped in recent years by advertiser concerns about offensive content on YouTube and other social-media outlets as well as an inability to get independent consumer data from many digital players.

Last year, Madison Avenue rushed to TV as if Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man were still in their prime. As more Americans move to stream their TV favorites, media companies seem to have good reason to worry about how closely advertisers will follow them.

By Brian Steinberg

Sourced from Variety

In News

Here’s how Covid-19 has changed media for publishers and consumers

October 30, 2020 No Comments

By HANAA’ TAMEEZ

Going into month eight of the coronavirus pandemic, we’re just beginning to understand the long-term impacts that the global event has had on news publishers and how they’re charting a sustainable path forward.

A new report at What’s New In Publishing, “The Publisher’s Guide to Navigating Covid-19,” looks at eight trends that have emerged globally, as well as strategies that publishers have implemented as a result of increased web traffic.

The report’s author, journalism professor Damian Radcliffe at the University of Oregon, notes that it’s difficult to make broad conclusions about Covid-19’s impact. The pandemic has forced some publications to lay off or furlough staff or shut down completely. Others publications, though, have been able to capitalize on increased reader attention and boost subscriptions.

Radcliffe looks at what we know now about the media industry so far, though even more could change in the United States as we inch closer to Election Day and watch President Donald Trump’s recovery from coronavirus. Here are some findings:

Smaller marketing budgets worldwide means advertising-dependent publications will have to pivot if they haven’t already. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report for 2020–2024, “global newspaper advertising (print and online) will fall from $49.2 billion in 2019 to $36 billion in 2024, a decline of more than a quarter (27%) over five years…[Alongside this] global circulation and subscriber revenue is expected to fall from $58.7 billion in 2019 to $50.4 billion in 2024,” Press Gazette reported in September.

People are spending a lot more time on their devices, but media consumption has fallen off after an initial surge. Smartphone usage is up 70%, laptop usage 47%, and tablet usage 23%, according to data from the Global Web Index’s Coronavirus Multi-Market study. For DataRePortal, Simon Kemp wrote, “many people say that they expect their new habits to continue after the Covid-19 outbreak passes too. One in five internet users say they expect to continue watching more content on streaming services, and one in seven (15%) say they expect to continue spending more time using social media.” All media, however, from internet surfing to TV watching, has declined since the initial surge in April. That means that news publishers have to get creative about gauging audience interest, and keeping it.

With more new readers, publishers are experimenting more with news products. At the beginning of March, we noticed that publishers were quick to launch coronavirus pop-up newsletters and drop their paywalls on pandemic stories. According to members of WAN-IFRA’s Global Media Trends Panel, more than half of the editorial executives they surveyed had launched new products as a result of the pandemic, Radcliffe writes. “Newsletters are the most common product, with some 55% saying they have launched them, followed by infographics (49%), and videos and live blogs (30%).”

Covid-19 has helped boost subscription numbers for a range of publishers. With advertising revenue down, publishers have leaned into reader revenue and membership programs to fill the gap. More and more publishers are explaining to readers why their journalism should be paid for and they’re doing so on various platforms, including YouTube and Facebook. Some success stories Radcliffe notes are:

The New York Times now has more than 6.5 million subscribers (print and digital), adding 669,000 digital subscribers in the second quarter of 2020. In March, nytimes.com had 240 million unique visitors and 2.5 billion pageviews, up from 101 million uniques in January.

CNBC’s website hit 1 billion page views for the first time in March 2020, more than doubling traffic from February. Subscriptions to CNBC Pro, a premium product costing $29.99 a month or $299.99 a year, were up 189% since January 2020.

Tribune Publishing experienced a 293% increase in new digital subscriptions between March and February 2020. This included an increased conversion rate, from users hitting the paywall, of 109%.

Radcliffe also looks at audience engagement strategies, building loyalty among readers, and the ways that publishers have tried to be more accommodating to advertising. Read the full report here.

By HANAA’ TAMEEZ

Sourced from NiemanLab

In News

Switching from Chrome to Firefox can supercharge your privacy in minutes

October 30, 2020 No Comments

BY SEAN CAPTAIN

Firefox offers the speed and convenience of Chrome—and protects you from prying eyes.

The web browser has become the central app on today’s computers. It’s where people check email and social media, message friends, read news, play videos and music, attend school, do office work, and have socially distanced online meetups. You can learn a lot about someone from what happens in their browser, and dozens of companies do just that with cookies and other tracking technology that build up advertising profiles. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Google’s Chrome browser is fast and efficient. But Chrome has conflicting loyalties between its users and a parent company that is the world’s largest advertising firm. That’s not to say that Google is standing still. The new Chrome 86 includes an impressive list of security upgrades around areas such as password management and preventing harmful downloads. But privacy reforms still lag. For instance, Chrome has yet to disable third-party tracking cookies, although Google says it intends to in coming years.

But you don’t have to wait for Google. Firefox, a privacy-focused browser from the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, already blocks third-party cookies and a wide range of other tracking technologies. Firefox also offers many bonus features, such as the Pocket web-clipping tool and the ability to reformat web pages, so they are easier to read.

Mozilla has demonstrated a years-long commitment to its users as an alternative to big tech that puts people’s privacy and security ahead of everything else. Those efforts have accelerated in the past few years with the development of aggressive but user-friendly anti-tracking technologies, which helped Mozilla earn a nod as one of Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies of 2019.

And Mozilla continues to innovate. Most recently, it became one of the first browser makers (Google isn’t one of them) to adopt a new version of the Do Not Track signal. This one sends a signal to automatically opt the user out of the sale of their data under the California Consumer Privacy Act.

While that tech is still in its infancy, Mozilla also just made some concrete privacy improvements by upgrading its Enhanced Tracking Protection to more aggressively block snoops on the desktop. And for Apple users, Firefox is now a better alternative on mobile devices. The new iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 now let you replace Safari as the primary browser, so that links from email or other apps can automatically open in mobile Firefox.

Yet for all the new features Firefox brings, the transition from Chrome (or another browser) is a cinch. In minutes, you can be up and running with a new browser that offers all the conveniences of Chrome, along with better privacy.

If you’ve been putting of switching browsers out of laziness, we’ve got a handy guide to help you get set up. We’ll take you through the process of switching to Firefox and discovering key new features, including all of Firefox’s security and privacy services. Some, such as Pocket, you will access by clicking icons that appear along the top of the browser. Others you’ll reach by clicking on the “hamburger” button of three horizontal lines in the right-hand corner of the browser window and clicking through the popup menu.

INSTALLING, IMPORTING, AND SYNCING

After you download and install Firefox, it’s time to import key information like bookmarks and website logins from Chrome. This is the deepest rabbit hole you’ll have to go down when setting up Firefox.

First, click the three-line hamburger button and select Library. Next, click Bookmarks, then scroll to the bottom of the window and click Show All Bookmarks to open the Library window. Now click the third button from the left at the top of the window (featuring up and down arrows) and click Import Data from Another Browser. Follow the instructions to import your choice of cookies, browsing history, saved logins, and/or bookmarks from your old browser. To get a fresh start, free of any trackers, uncheck Cookies before the import.

Tip: you can also press Ctrl+Shift+B (Windows) or Shift-Command-B (Mac) to open the Library window.

Looking just to the left of the hamburger button you’ll come to a circular icon representing a person’s head and shoulders. This takes you to your Firefox account. By signing up for Mozilla’s free cloud service, you can sync all aspects of your browsing—such as bookmarks and history, or even open tabs—over the internet to other computers or mobile devices running Firefox. This account also enables you to use some cloud-based security features I’ll describe in a moment.

You can select what information to sync through the cloud, such as bookmarks and open tabs.

FIREFOX’S KEY PRIVACY AND SECURITY ENHANCEMENTS

The top reason to switch to Firefox is for its enhanced privacy. Starting at the hamburger icon in the upper right of the browser, those features begin to emerge.

Encrypted DNS lookups
When you start using Firefox, you’ll see a popup pinned to the hamburger button that alerts you to the use of encrypted DNS lookups. Here’s what that means: Whenever you type in a site URL like “amazon.com,” your browser has to check something called the domain name system (DNS) to see what numerical IP address corresponds to the site name you’ve entered. Typically these lookups are unencrypted, potentially allowing an internet service provider (ISP) or hacker to retrieve a list of all the sites that you visit. Chrome encrypts DNS requests if your ISP offers the capability. Firefox is more aggressive, automatically routing all DNS requests to an encrypted service, regardless of the ISP you use.

Firefox automatically routes DNS requests to one of its carefully vetted encrypted service partners.

Protections Dashboard for privacy overview
Click the hamburger icon, and one of the first items you see is the Protections Dashboard. This takes you to the heart of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection, with a tally of all the trackers that the browser has blocked so far, and descriptions of how they work. This includes third-party (or cross-site) cookies: small files that reside in your browser and report the sites you visit back to marketers. Firefox also blocks tracking code in online ads, as well as “cryptominer” scripts that commandeer your computer to generate cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. Finally, the browser blocks fingerprinting, which collects specific computer and web browser settings, such as the plug-ins installed, to develop an identifier for advertisers. (Enhanced Tracking Protection is enabled by default on the Firefox Android and iOS apps, too.)

The Dashboard shows tallies and explains the different kinds of trackers that Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection automatically blocks.

To see what Firefox has blocked on the current web page, click the shied icon that appears just to the left of the address bar at the top of the browser window. (The icon turns from gray to purple when content is blocked.) A popup provides details on the specific trackers that have been blocked.

Click the shield icon to see what Enhanced Tracking Protection has blocked on a particular site.

Firefox Monitor for data breaches
Right below the Enhanced Tracking Protection summary, you will see an invitation to sign up for Firefox Monitor. It checks your email address against a database of emails that have been leaked (often along with passwords and other data) in security breaches over the years. If you sign up, a summary of breaches involving your email appears on the dashboard page. Now that you know what accounts have been compromised, you can change your login for the breached service, or shut down the account, to insure that hackers can no longer access it.

Firefox Monitor reports whether any online accounts tied to your email address have been compromised.

Lockwise password manager
The final element on the protections dashboard is Firefox’s password manager, Lockwise. By default, Firefox offers to save any username/password logins you enter on web sites. These go into Lockwise, along with any logins you may have imported from your previous browser when you set up Firefox. If you sign up for a new online account, Lockwise will offer to generate and remember a super-secure password when you right-click the password field on the website. Lockwise has Android and iOS/iPadOS apps, so you can sync logins through your Firefox account across all your devices.

Lockwise generates and remembers secure passwords that you can sync across devices via your Firefox account.

Facebook Container limits social network tracking
The hamburger icon menu has a lot more options, and one more is especially worth mentioning: Add-ons. Click on this, and search for the Facebook Container. This extension is designed to guard against the way that the social network tracks you across the web. For instance, those like and share buttons that appear on many web pages register that you visited the site featuring them, even if you never press the button. Facebook also places cookies to see if you visit the sites of its advertisers. The Facebook Container doesn’t affect your experience on Facebook itself, but it blocks Facebook’s tracking tools on all other sites.

The Facebook Container add-on prevents Facebook from seeing what other sites you are visiting in Firefox.

SWITCHING YOUR SEARCH ENGINE

Switching from Chrome to Firefox doesn’t completely free you from Google, as it’s the default search engine for Firefox. Even with Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection, Google can still track you through your IP address and through cookies that Google places when you use its search engine. (Firefox doesn’t block the “first-party cookies” placed by the web site you are visiting, only third-party cookies placed by outside advertisers.) But you can change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, which doesn’t track your activity over time to build advertising profiles.

Start by typing any term into the address bar. A dropdown menu previewing results appears. At the bottom right corner of the dropdown is a gear icon. Click it to reach Firefox’s search preferences page. Under “Default Search Engine,” click the down arrow to open the dropdown menu, and select DuckDuckGo from the choices.

You can change your search engine to DuckDuckGo for further protection from tracking.

FIREFOX’S HANDY FEATURES

The switch to Firefox rewards you not only with better privacy but with several handy usability features. Let’s take a tour of a few, beginning right in the address bar.

Reader View’s streamlined article mode
On certain pages, such as newspaper articles, an icon representing a printed page appears just to the right of the page URL. Click this to enter Reader View, which strips away ads, navigation menus, sidebars, and other extraneous elements to give you a clean page for easy reading or printing. A toolbar to the left provides several viewing options. Clicking the “Aa” icon allows you to change font style and size, paragraph and line spacing, and the page color. Click the headphones icon to hear the article read aloud. (Reader View, without dictation, is also available in the Firefox Android and iOS apps.)

Reader View provides a streamlined page in your choice of type and page style.

Pocket web clipping
To the right of the address bar you will see an icon of a shield with a chevron pattern. This activates Pocket. Just press the button to save a copy of the web page you are viewing to your Pocket account. You can tag each clipping with one or more keywords to organize your sources. It’s also a convenient way to save an article you want to read later, when you have more time (including on Pocket’s free mobile apps).

You can add keyword tags to web pages when you save them to Pocket.

Sending tabs to another device
If you use your Firefox account to sync multiple devices, you can use this handy feature to send the tab you are viewing to another device. For instance, you can start reading an article at your computer and finish it on your phone’s Firefox browser, or vice-versa. To send a tab from the desktop browser, click the Firefox Account button in the upper-right of the browser window and select Send Tab to Device.

Use your Firefox account to send the tab you are currently reading to another device.

Feature Image Credit: [Source photo: zoff-photo/iStock]

BY SEAN CAPTAIN

Sourced from FastCompany

In News

The Power of Persuasion

October 29, 2020 No Comments

By Chris Panteli

The age of ‘influencing’ is here and cemented itself as a social normality within society. If somethings is not endorsed by the ones we love and idolise, then is it worth buying? And does this ‘power of persuasion’ come with any sort of responsibility?

Consumption has now become the primary form of self-identity and self expression. This is a widely accepted fact of life especially among younger age groups.

There was a time when persuasion was easy to recognise – we used to call it advertising. However through social media we have now all become part of the very process of persuasion itself. Some form of commercial exchange is now often involved with the activities we engage in. The world works in such a way that the things we think we are using for free, are actually paid for by companies that we grant the privilege to advertise to us.

When someone gives us something, we often feel the need to give back. It’s part of our evolutionary make up and is a basic skill of our survival. The key lesson here is to provide information and advice that is helpful and positive to others. If we dispense unpleasant information our association with it creates a negative impact, often leaving us disliked. There is then little hope of us exerting any influence on others.

Having Authority

To employ influence yourself it helps to become a recognized authority on a certain subject. People respect others who are credible experts in their field. Influencing ability can now be seen all over social media – companies will pay these ‘influencers’ to advertise what they are selling. You will need an audience and be able to produce high quality content that will engage your followers. Who you are and how you are, as a person, will impact your message.

If you properly implement the strategies of maximum influence you’ll persuade others not only to want what you want but also to be eager to do what you want. There are many other opportunities to make money advertising companies’ products and services. It can be a really good way to make a nice side income and definitely worth investigating further. Companies are always keen for you to help them improve their brand awareness.

Having Power

Power increases your ability to persuade and influence others. We pay attention to powerful people because we know they can create change. This can be seen in people who possess knowledge and expertise. On the other hand, something may be persuasive simply because of who is saying it rather than what is being said. Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate your habits and behaviours. Develop a clear image of what your most powerful self is like and then fully embody that person.

Having Integrity

In the process of changing or reforming attitudes or behaviours, it is important to ensure that you are doing so in alignment with what you yourself value. This will help you to protect yourself from being swayed by what others are telling you. Having some knowledge of the principles needed to exert influence can help you to recognize when you are being influenced. We all want and need things from other people. We not only want to influence others to our way of thinking we also want them to follow, trust and accept us. We all want what we want – when we want it.

By Chris Panteli

Sourced from Thrive Global

In News

Reconsidering The 30-Second Ad Spot And Consumer Attention

October 29, 2020 No Comments

By Max Kalehoff

U.S. digital ad spending surpassed TV advertising several years ago. However, many of today’s brands still haven’t rebalanced their advertising strategies when it comes to creative optimization and audience understanding. Despite the continued ascent of digital ads as the workhorse of the advertising industry, an outsized investment is still pouring into crafting the long-revered 30-second spot.

Who are the leaders in embracing the workhorse ad format of the future? A good place to look is the Facebook Ad Library, where you can instantly view a single brand’s ads and find clues to their approach. A perusal of Facebook’s Ad Library can be a hugely enlightening glimpse into how the world’s most successful advertisers leverage consumer attention. For instance, one company might develop dozens of short-form video ads and memes to reflect the short attention and personalized preferences of their prospects and customers. While another company might serve made-for-TV ads directly onto Facebook, seemingly with little optimization for mobile or the Facebook context.

Attention is diminishing in the digital world. It is naive (if not arrogant) to assume that a 30-second spot will give you 30 seconds of audience attention. With multiple devices and numerous apps competing for attention, users are more likely to shift to a different screen or scroll to a new post before the 30 seconds are up.

The 30-second spot has long been the tentpole of advertising’s creative existence. For many brands, these ads — which shine brightest around major events like the Super Bowl — are treated like movie premieres. They are rigorously screened, vetted and refined prior to release, carefully launched and then distributed via paid media. The hope is to generate maximum buzz among consumers and within industry circles. How many marketing conferences have you been to where a chief marketing officer (CMO) celebrates and summarizes her company’s accomplishments by showcasing a 30-second spot?

When you take for granted audience attention, longer environments (like 30-second spots) offer more opportunity in which to tell stories and create emotional impact. Indeed, the emotional impact is what encodes branding into your consumers’ brains, so your advertising achieves impact, whether that’s acting in the moment or remembering and preferring to select your brand later on when shopping. Big ideas are foundational, and there is a place for tentpole creatives, even 30-second spots.

However, consider this: A Google-commissioned study by Ipsos determined that, while only “45% of TV advertising time actually receives attention,” paid YouTube mobile ads receive 83% viewer attention. Moreover, our own Realeyes attention data underscore that consumers rarely demonstrate attentive viewing behaviors with video ads beyond even 15 seconds, particularly in digital environments.

As brands embrace the reality of eyes on digital screens and increasing distraction — accelerated by a global pandemic — they face a creative challenge that no cookie-cutter playbook will solve: how to implement emotive storytelling that encodes your brand in the brain, without the prospect of 30 seconds of captive attention. What is the solution to that?

The massive effort that goes into today’s 30-second spots is often justified by the fact that flagship TV commercials provide the basis for countless iterations of digital ad creative within a campaign. The vast amount of impressions within a given campaign will not be on the full TV commercial, but rather the myriad trimmed-down and reformatted iterations that run across channels, platforms and devices. A standard 30-second spot becomes 15 seconds, 10 seconds, five seconds — you name it. That can be part of the strategy.

There’s more to be done, though. Understanding and leveraging consumer attention toward attention outcomes at the ad level represents one of the biggest challenges facing advertisers today. It’s not enough to ideate and execute a 30-second spot that tests well in focus groups and performs well on the annual awards circuit. Advertisers must understand how their storytelling translates across formats and be able to optimize, at a granular level, for maximum audience attention.

Advertisers need to rebalance their optimization efforts, and for smart ones, the project is ongoing. Understanding an audience’s attention, not to mention the emotional connection, becomes all the more important in today’s pandemic-impacted world, where budgets are tight and every media dollar is challenged to do more. A lean advertising landscape looks plausible in the future, and maximizing for the attention outcomes tied to the workhorse of ad inventory will surely be an essential part of the task ahead.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY