editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Video Marketing Statistics that’s Going to Rock 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]

November 10, 2020 No Comments

The rise of digital marketing is predicted to get fiercer in the year of 2020. As we are researching, we found that there are more people who tuned in surfing the internet through their mobile, desktop and even tablet to find information that they need but don’t necessarily have the energy to read articles.

Using video-based marketing can be the solution that they need.

Our dedicated team have researched tons of contributing statistics concerning the growing market of video marketing and how video marketing, if done correctly can help your company to prosper.

So, Where’s the Report?

This infographic contains digestible bits of what our team have researched on, including startling facts on how businesses are currently shifting, realizing the potential of video marketing for direct, yet efficient campaigns.

Turns out video marketing is a growing commodity that now becomes the most sought after tool. It works effectively attracting public’s interests in more interactive and fun way.

Embed code for this infographic can be found at the bottom of this page.

Video Marketing Strategies and Statistics for 2020

<div style="clear:both"><a

href="https://breadnbeyond.com/video-marketing/video-marketing-strategies-statistics/"

 target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img

src="https://breadnbeyond.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/video-marketing-strategy-800px.jpg"

 class="img-embed" title="Video Marketing Statistics that’s Going to

Rock 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]" alt="Video Marketing Statistics that’s Going to

 Rock 2020 [INFOGRAPHIC]"

border="0"/></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a

href="https://breadnbeyond.com" target="_blank"

rel="noopener">Breadnbeyond</a></div>

Based on the statistics shown above many platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Webinar, Linkedin, Instagram and many others have been leveraging video-based marketing strategy to gain recognition.

Youtube for an instance, is one of the major performing video channel for marketers to publish their video. It’s dominating the market with their 87% market share.

How to Own Those Traffic You Need

Ideally, digital marketers should start thinking of making their own explainer videos for marketing purposes. The incoming year of 2020 will be challenging for businesses across fields to compete, if they are unable to catch up to their users demand.

And the demand calls for a more highly interactive way of communicating their products to their segmented market.

As more and more people are now flocking in through various online platforms looking for pieces of information. The statistic shows, people won’t commit reading long articles and instead they prefer animated version of it, be it GIF or videos.

We have made a list of video marketing tools that can help you get the traffic that you needed.

The Upcoming Trends in 2020

The trend suggests that businesses start interacting with existing users and potential ones by adding videos in their website to maintain their current users attention, and most importantly spiking their likelihood on being discovered by perspective users by 53%.

Why Making Your Own Video Marketing?

In the last three years, video-marketing efforts have been proved fruitful. With an increased traffic of more than 100%, people now consumed more content in video format. The good thing is, 82% of businesses have now realized this fact.

Where to Start?

Start early. Grab some quick wins with your video marketing strategy in 2020.

Refine your video marketing campaigns with explainer videos! At Breadnbeyond, we offer a wide range of animated explainer video packages that are tailored to boost your company’s sales in the next campaign. Click on the banner below!

Sourced from breadnbeyond.

In News

Want More Traffic for Your Website? Try These Proven Content Marketing Strategies

November 9, 2020 No Comments

By Rooney Reeves.

In the highly-digitized world, we are living in, we often hear about content marketing. But what exactly is content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach, focused on building and distributing relevant, consistent, and valuable content to draw and retain a clearly defined audience, and the ultimate goal is to drive profitable customer action.

Content is king, and website development today entails building websites and web apps with high-quality content. The most experienced successful brands and marketers already are vouching for that by developing powerful and unique content marketing campaigns. Unlike traditional marketing, content marketing costs 62 percent less and provides as many results when it comes to leads and traffic.

Business organizations seeking services of web developers, such for instance a PHP web development company that builds web solutions using PHP are doing so to boost their marketing strategies and to stay on the competitive edge. Unquestionably, content promotion strategies are popular and insanely effective in today’s marketplace. Whatever business vertical you are in, you could leverage content to develop a robust brand reputation, boost brand awareness, and boost ROI.

There are content marketing strategies that help drive more traffic to your website. What are these? Let’s find out.

Proven Content Marketing Strategies to Drive More Traffic

Build Astounding Content for a Very Distinct Audience

A content marketing campaign to be successful demands a lot of things. The most critical, however, is you have to take into account the concerns of your target audience. Put simply, you should recognize and understand the characteristics, behavior, needs, mindset, desires, issues, and habits of your audience.

If you’re to deliver value, then you must certainly know that your content would bring something new, something that your audience could hardly find somewhere else. The most essential element of SEO is keyword research. Look for the keyword and phrases that your audience uses in search engine queries.

Build content around these phrases and words to boost your rankings. When researching a keyword, look for long-tail phrases and keywords to bring in more relevant traffic. It would also be helpful to include keywords that are semantically related.

These are words and phrases that conceptually relate to one another. Some free keywords to help you include:

Keyword Tool Dominator
Google Search Console
Keywords Everywhere
Rank Tracker
Google Ads Keyword Planner

There are also other on-page and off-page factors, which impact your SEO aside from your content, such as:

backlinks
inbound links
site architecture

Networking and Guest Posting

Aside from engaging in a web development company, one of the most reliable ways of boosting awareness of your brand and blog traffic is guest posting. Guest posting first off enables connecting with niche authorities who possess an established database of customers and followers already. Effective guest posting secondly generates direct traffic.

You nonetheless have to target the right blogs, which target a similar audience, you should share content that amazes your audience, and you also have to link back to your website properly so that readers would feel enticed to click on your CTAs or call-to-action buttons. Guest posting provides an opportunity for you to connect with other same-minded people. All kinds of fruitful relationships could arise since you could share links, knowledge, and opportunities with your network group.

Segment the Audience and Build Various Landing Pages

Intelligent content marketing isn’t done randomly. Effective marketers segment their audiences following their various needs, including product needs, solution needs, and more. Segmentation is necessary simply because some of the visitors to your site are not customers, but some of them are.

Your content thus couldn’t be relevant to all your visitors since they have various needs and are at different stages of the sales process. Thus, as an example, the content you develop to boost brand awareness is wasted basically on people who have purchased one of your products already. The easiest way of segmenting the audience is through developing particular buyer personas.

Q&A Marketing and Forum Marketing

Q&A platforms and industry forums, such as Quora are goldmine content marketing channels. These sources, if properly leveraged, could drive plenty of traffic back to your website. Depending on your industry and the target audience, you have to identify the most relevant boards, which people use in discussing different topics.

There are different discussion forums, depending on the products and services you are selling. Study these forums and make certain that your ideal customers spend time there. The next thing to do is to build a branded profile that features the name and logo of your brand.

Forum marketing is all about interacting and providing effective solutions to people’s problems. Provide relevant advice, engage in relevant discussions, and use your signature in sharing important links back to your landing pages. The more helpful you are, the more leads and traffic you will generate over time.

Master One Social Network yet be Present on all the Others

Billions of people on earth today are active social media users. If you think about it, nearly half the population is using social media for different reasons. This tells you that social media isn’t a should anymore, but has become a must for every kind of business, enterprise, or blog.

Social media and content marketing are interconnected. One completes the other and vice versa. The perfect place for you to develop brand exposure, build meaningful relationships, and gather relevant leads is social media.

Whether you’re promoting content on social channels, you need to identify the most preferred social network by your target audience. Determine what communications channels they use, where they hang out, and how do they spend their time on social media. Quality over quantity is always the best, thus decide on the social channel you should focus more on.

Repurpose, Update, and Link to Old Content

Do not forget old content, especially if it’s evergreen and qualitative. Rather, you should update it, repurpose it and remind it throughout your newest blog posts. Simply, updating your content means adding new visual content, information, and new twists to make it more extensive.

Content update often could boost your search engine rankings, since crawlers revisit the pages and detect changes, which have been modified. Linking back to your past blogs is another effective way of boosting traffic and reputation to your brand. By adding internal links, which resolve various problems and needs, your target audience gets to spend more time on your blog, become familiar with your value proposition, style, and products.

Content repurposing involves modification to its media type. You could turn text into slides, audio, videos, infographics, and the other way around. As soon as you have numerous versions of the same value and information, share it via the various content channels.

For Better Results, Leverage Professionals

Content marketing is demanding. If you want to stay ahead of the competition and overshadow your competition, then the quality of your content should be great all the time. Keep in mind that a great entrepreneur, webmaster, or marketer is not a good writer or editor all the time.

In these instances, considering partnering with professionals. Aside from saving time and money, the quality of your article would be consistently written and preserved. There are several platforms where you can find talented freelancers.

Before contacting them, however, make certain that you build the profile of an ideal writer. Mention knowledge, experience, and skills requirements, and allow these services to find the perfect match.

Conclusion

Although technology and the internet continue to evolve, the main principle remains the same. Develop a content marketing strategy based on reliable data for a satisfactory and seamless customer journey.

By Rooney Reeves.

In News

What Apple left out overshadows iPhone 12 launch

November 9, 2020 No Comments

By Toby Shapshak.

Accessory-gate: Loyal Apple fans’ long-standing gripe with new adaptors being required following a new launch.

First published in Daily Maverick 168

The biggest news from Apple’s usual hypefest announcement about this year’s latest iPhone 12 models was the removal of the charger and headphones from the box. The internet erupted, not just with rage, but with hilarious memes about it, pointing out the stark similarity to the iPhone 5 with its square, steel edges.

Apple says the lack of charger and headphones is a move to minimise its carbon footprint – a seemingly “woke” response to climate concerns but one that falls apart when scrutinised, quicker than an ANC integrity commission hearing.

Sure, it will reduce the footprint of the box for iPhone 512, as I’m calling it, but it won’t for the two new added accessories most users will now have to buy separately. Similarly, Apple announced that last year’s prices would remain unchanged, which appears correct, except that last year it included two items you now have to fork out for.

There goes any attempt to challenge the long-held belief by Macheads that there is always a cable or connector tax for Apple products.

This year the lack of charger is particularly problematic because Apple has abandoned (as it should) the old USB format for the new USB-C – which both charges and transfers data faster. Such chargers were distributed (in the box) with iPhone 11s and I have upgraded all our household chargers because of the quicker charging.

How much does a charger actually cost? Like just about every other iPhone user, I can’t tell you off the top of my head. Now, after a quick trip to the official Myistore.co.za website, I can tell you an 18W USB-C power adaptor costs R649 and another R499 for a 1m USB-C to Lightning cable. An extra R1,148.

People will grumble, but they will buy them anyway. “It’s always the way,” as an Irish friend liked to say in her lilting accent about perennial behaviour.

Apple critics like to point to this accessory tax as another reason the company profits off its customers. But … isn’t that what a company is supposed to do? Isn’t profit the whole bloody point? Can a case be made that many people buy additional headphones, anyway, given that they’re buying a more expensive iPhone in the first place? Is Apple trying to trim costs after a global pandemic?

Apple and Microsoft are the two exceptions to the Big Tech habit of mining our personal data for profit. Both sell you something, often on a monthly basis. I pay an annual licence for Microsoft 365, and I pay monthly for Apple’s iCloud offerings. It’s called business. I am happy to pay for these services because that’s what I am doing: paying for a service. Remember that immortal adage of the social media age: if the product is free, you are the product. Also, I know they won’t let anyone steal my credit card details. That’s their job.

What are the alternatives? Android as an operating system? Remember who owns it. And don’t think for one minute that Google doesn’t make all its services point back to the one thing that makes it the vast majority of its income and profit: search advertising.

Android is a free operating system, we’re still told. Free for whom?

Google effectively sells it to the handset manufacturers on condition they include all Google’s default apps, including search, Chrome, Gmail, Maps and the Google Play Store. Google locks you into its own form of the walled garden, a seemingly huge garden but walled nevertheless.

Apart from Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger (all from another global giant that gives its services away free as part of its surveillance capitalism), banking and streaming services, most people don’t instal other apps on their phones. Even if they do, the funnel always leads to Google advertising, either programmatic advertising in a browser or inside the apps themselves, which make money from … showing Google ads.

At least with Apple and Microsoft, I know the transaction is transparent.

I am paying for a service with my credit card, instead of paying for it with my personal data. An extra R1,148. Worth every cent. DM/DM168

Feature Image Credit: The Apple logo is illuminated at the company’s store in Hong Kong, China.

By Toby Shapshak

Toby Shapshak is publisher of Stuff (Stuff.co.za) and Scrolla.Africa.

Sourced from Business Maverick

In News

3 Ways Great Leaders Have Evolved in the Wake of Covid-19

November 9, 2020 No Comments

By Kelly Wing.

How leaders are recognizing this opportunity to open an entirely new trajectory in business.

Starting March 11, 2020, when the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global pandemic, we quickly experienced a flurry of events thereafter, witnessing drastic changes not only take place on a worldwide scale but also in our own personal lives at home and in business as we had to adapt quickly to the “new normal”.

As we conformed to the new rules and retreated to the safety of our homes, it gave entrepreneurs a chance to sit with their own stark reality of what they’d created up until that point – what was working, what wasn’t working, what our strengths are. Suddenly unable to escape the truth with nowhere to run, for some, this was a confronting yet powerful opportunity in opening up an entirely new trajectory in business and impact, in a much more future-focused way.

1. Greater levels of clarity and purpose

There are people who choose to react to situations around them, and those who seek to observe and understand. Those who chose to observe and understand in recent circumstances have found that they have unlocked greater levels of clarity, wisdom, and purpose. It is not uncommon to see business owners this year going through a complete rebrand and restructure as their belief and value systems go through a complete upgrade to realign with the new world.

It is also becoming increasingly clear as to what is no longer functioning in the world in ways that are beneficial to humanity. It has become clear which industries need to be reshaped and rewritten in a way that is going to serve humanity in this next shift. It has become clear how we can individually do our part in making the world and internet a more humane place with what we know. Our unique gifts have stood out more than ever, with many finding and tapping into their zone of genius. This happens when we remove ourselves from all the external noise that had us dazed and confused for so long.

2. Being future-focused with technological advancements in mind

It’s now important for us to pay attention to how we can fit within the advancements of technology so we can thrive instead of simply survive.

There are certain things in the world we can resist and fight with all of our will, but technology is not one of them, especially considering how much we have fuelled and used these advancements over the past decade. As long as we have a deep understanding of who we are on an inner-being level, we can integrate technology with business and our personal lives in a way that doesn’t jeopardize our mental and emotional well-being.

According to the World Economic Forum, we are now in our fourth industrial revolution. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, electric cars, and the scope of the internet is merging with the physical bodies and lives of humanity. We have seen this take place over the last decade, with fingerprint sensors, face recognition, and voice-activated assistants, all of which is data used to bring about the next phase of advancements and upgrades.

3. Business owners are adopting fresh new tactics

Many business owners are now deciding to build their own platforms to hold their communities and for educational purposes. With text-messaging platforms on the rise, we’re now seeing a rise in social messaging and closer one-to-one connections and customer relationships rather than a one-to-many connection like we’ve seen with social media over the past decade and a half.

With many people in recent times taking extended breaks from social platforms, we can expect to see new advancements in ways that will support the needs of both the consumers changing needs, as well as entrepreneurs.

Given that the most important part in creating success in business is tapping further and further into your zone of genius, this period has been a huge chance for many entrepreneurs to awaken to their gifts and talents, in ways they had never been aware of before. What we are now witnessing is all of the pieces of the puzzle come into play, with different entrepreneurs doing their individual part in creating a more stable, healthier and robust world, in ways that are all different to each other, but together cohesively as part of the bigger picture.

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: da-kuk | Getty Images

By Kelly Wing

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Carriers Preparing for Launch of iPhone 12 Models With 5G Support

November 6, 2020 No Comments

By Joe Rossignol.

With the launch of so-called iPhone 12 models inching closer, mobile carriers are in the process of preparing marketing materials for the devices, as evidenced by a placeholder email shared by reputable leaker Evan Blass today.

As widely rumoured, the email indicates that iPhone 12 models will support faster 5G cellular networks. The email also suggests that pre-orders will end on Tuesday, October 20, and while it does look like iPhone 12 models won’t be announced until next month, carriers are unlikely to be privy to any specific dates this far in advance.

Apple is expected to introduce four new smartphones, including the iPhone 12 in 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch sizes and the iPhone 12 Pro in 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes. Rumors suggest that all of the devices will feature OLED displays, 5G support, and a new flat-edged design, while the Pro models are said to feature a LiDAR Scanner and a new dark blue colour option.

In the meantime, Apple has announced that it will be holding a virtual event on Tuesday, September 15 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time that will reportedly be focused on new Apple Watch models and perhaps the rumoured iPad Air 4 with slimmer bezels.

By Joe Rossignol

Sourced from MacRumors

In News

Google might be forced to sell Chrome off if US government has its way

November 6, 2020 No Comments

By JC Torres

The US government is preparing to make its case in courts over Google’s alleged anti-competitive practices, particularly on the Internet. While it may already have its arguments prepared, the Justice Department may still be considering what steps it will require Google to take, presuming it wins its case. One of those may be to split up the company, which is already just a subsidiary of the bigger Alphabet, which includes selling off the most-used web browser in the market, Chrome.

The DOJ’s upcoming antitrust lawsuit against Google really revolves more around its alleged monopoly and unfair advantage in digital advertising, a position recently echoed by the House Judiciary Committee. As part of its preparations, it has asked feedback from rivals and third-parties on what fixes have to be made to curb Google’s immense power. One such step would be to split it up and Chrome’s name came up as one of those properties outside of advertising that needed to go.

While not directly involved in Google’s advertising business, it’s hard to deny that Chrome contributes immensely to Google’s position and influence on the Web. As the most-used browser today, websites have to pretty much play by the rules Google imposes through Chrome features as well as through “industry-wide” campaigns and coalitions. This, in turn, helps Google push its own advertising platform forward as the reference implementation of how ads should behave.

That said, the DOJ’s case, which is expected to be formally filed within the next few weeks, won’t be an easy one, especially if state attorneys general feel the government is still unprepared for a legal battle with the tech giant. The court of popular opinion, at least among regulators and lawmakers, does seem to at least side with the general view of how Big Tech may have overstepped their boundaries.

Google will also face an uphill battle, especially if the proposal to sell off Chrome comes up. It could, however, argue how disrupting this part of its operations could prove destructive to the Web, considering how many businesses, apps, and services have been tied not just to the Chrome web browser but to Chrome OS as well as its open source Chromium base.

By JC Torres

Sourced from SlashGear

In News

Why every brand should be anti-capitalist

November 6, 2020 No Comments

By Mordecai

Advertising is an expression of consumer capitalism. Yet to succeed in today’s marketplace, brands need to become more anti-capitalist, believes Innocean’s global head of innovation and partnerships, Mordecai.

Consumers want a better deal, and they deserve it, too. Not just better products and better services, but better advertising. To deliver on this, brands must break free from established tropes that define how they do business. Or to put it another way, they need to start thinking anti-capitalist to be more pro-consumer.

This might sound contradictory, but as a long-standing anti-capitalist and activist who works in advertising – the communications of capitalism – let me explain. By anti-capitalism I mean not believing you must participate in the capitalist structure in which you were raised. Instead, it about is believing there is an alternative.

I fell into advertising rather than entering by a conventional route. I was already a storyteller, though back then I was working in digital TV production. But the budgets were small, so I went to brands to get funding. Then those brands asked me to start telling their stories too, and things grew from there.

As a storyteller, people have always been my focus. To be pro-consumer is to be in support of consumers getting a better deal. And in advertising, that can only happen when humans are at the centre of what we do – especially storytelling.

Yet how many brands today communicate in a human-centric way? How often can you see people at their heart of their strategies. How many demonstrate they believe in their consumers as nuanced individuals capable of making their own choices? Far too few, in my opinion.

To be more anti-capitalist, a brand must think and act differently, and it can start to do so by challenging business and marketing’s pervasive tropes – of which let me give you three examples.

The first is the winner-takes-all approach to doing business that leads many companies to let competition shape their strategies. I’m not saying a brand owner’s rivals’ competing strategies should not be analysed and unpicked, far from it. My point is, brands’ competition should not be used as a template for what they do, how they do business or their point of view.

You can look to Away, a luggage brand that set out to turn a relatively boring necessity into an enviable statement at an affordable price without structuring itself around a mission to compete with Samsonite.

Or the brands that rewrote the purchase and delivery rule book, such as subscription toothbrush Quip. Meat alternatives are also leading the way, like the once-scrappy start-ups Beyond Meat and Impossible. Crypto-currencies are also not out to compete with cash, but provide an alternative to it.

The next trope to challenge is established systems that all too often act against inclusivity. One powerful example is Anomaly, which put its own money into the business ventures of clients, such as beauty line Eos.

AdQuick’s advances in the out-of-home market disrupted a narrowly controlled sector and broke the system by offering more opportunity for smaller brands to engage in a system that was previously only for big hitters.

We’re also seeing this with storied industries disrupted by the influx of VCs and collective ownership, with, for example, the likes of Serena Williams, Jessica Chastain and Eva Longoria investing in the US National Women’s Soccer League LA team.

The third trope concerns received wisdom and established practices around building affinity through targeting. This is about celebrating not just one aspect of a person as identified by traditional segmentation, but the whole individual.

We see calls to this through the increased encouragement to honour intersectionality with, for example, the added option of non-binary as distinction and removal of such self-disclosure boxes on job applications altogether. The generational push for acknowledgment of trans women at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement is another illustration of this.

This is about a brand recognising it can’t reach every audience, nor can it appeal to all – not least while audiences are fragmenting at pace and growing increasingly diverse.

And it’s about brands re-thinking how best to build affinity. On-screen inclusivity is essential and should be a given, but more is needed. I’m talking about creative concepts and projects that don’t so much build affinity through direct identification but that are open and welcoming everyone to the table.

Think MediaCom’s ‘Inclusive Planning’ initiative, a self-declared departure from the status quo where diverse audiences are only considered for specialist briefs.

Or Vice Media’s challenge to advertisers over blocklists – in particular, around blocking Black Lives Matter, Muslim, queer and related key lists which Vice has removed from brand blocklists.

To truly build affinity with their brands, the time has come for senior marketers to shift their focus from the more exclusive brand safe to the more inclusive brand suitable.

These are just some of the spaces in which brand owners can act more anti-capitalist.

In today’s world, if brands are to engage more effectively with the people they serve as individuals, the only way to behave is pro-consumer.

Feature Image Credit: The only way to behave is pro-consumer, says Mordecai, and brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are leading the way

By Mordecai

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Will YouTube Become Your Favourite Place to Shop Online?

November 5, 2020 No Comments

By Adam Levy

Everybody’s doing more online shopping these days, and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by tech leaders. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) have expanded their shopping features over the last few months to capitalize on the trend.

After Facebook’s early successes with social commerce, Google sees an opportunity to create similar features in YouTube. The push to get YouTube’s two billion monthly active users to shop directly from the video sharing app could present a significant change to its business, accelerating revenue growth.

Shopping tags on YouTube

Instagram introduced shopping tags way back in 2016. The feature gives creators a way to link to pages where their audience can learn more about products featured in their photos and videos. It’s since become a key piece of the FAANG stock‘s commerce strategy.

YouTube is testing a similar feature, asking some creators to use its software to tag and track products featured in their videos, according to a report from Bloomberg. YouTube can rely on the backbone established by its parent company though Google Shopping in order to funnel shoppers to product pages for checkout. That should enable the company to move quickly in building out a broad set of products creators can tag and monetize, catching up with Facebook.

Facebook has accelerated shopping efforts on Instagram as well as its flagship app. The introduction of Facebook Shops earlier this year opened the door for the company to take greater control over commerce on the platform, taking the user from discovery to purchase without leaving the app.

Likewise, Google started offering merchants free listings on Google Shopping and removed the fees for its “Buy on Google” checkout service. The move was designed to increase listings on the platform. YouTube’s shopping tags will integrate with those listings.

A shift in business

Shopping tags may present a new way for YouTube video creators to monetize their content. They could take a commission or sell their own goods by utilizing the feature. YouTube has historically drawn creators to the platform through the promise of ad revenue sharing.

Other social media platforms don’t offer much in the way of revenue sharing. Facebook is experimenting with the business model in IGTV, its YouTube competitor. TikTok offers a creator fund for top content producers. The ability to sell items on those platforms — a reason Walmart wants a piece of TikTok — offers one of the best paths forward for them to attract talent and monetize content.

But the opportunity appears big enough that YouTube thinks it can be a differentiator in terms of content and monetization. And broad adoption of forthcoming shopping features certainly could have a big impact on the business.

Currently, most YouTube ads are aimed at the top of the sales funnel — they’re all about introducing products and establishing brands. But facilitating the online shopping process all the way to the checkout page can be a lot more valuable for advertisers, who will likely pay more per ad impression if it leads to higher purchase rates, and those purchases are more easily linked to the YouTube ads.

Ultimately, shifting more ads to higher value placements lower in the sales funnel could accelerate revenue growth for YouTube. The service’s sales have grown in the mid-30% range over the last couple years before running into secular headwinds this year.

If it had more e-commerce focused ads, perhaps YouTube’s ad revenue would’ve increased more than the 5.8% it grew last quarter. Facebook’s revenue, for example, increased 10.2% last quarter. Management cited strength in e-commerce as what propped up its ad revenue while most advertisers pulled back on spending across all platforms.

It’s a big opportunity for Google to reinvigorate one of the biggest factors driving its revenue growth over the last few years. And with Facebook and other social media companies also pursuing this opportunity, it has a greater chance of working as people become more accustomed to social commerce.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY IMAGES.

By Adam Levy

Sourced from The Motley Fool

In News

What Will the Lincoln Project Do After Trump?

November 5, 2020 No Comments

By Alex Shephard

The group is thinking about becoming a media company. But can it succeed without its muse?

The Lincoln Project is betting that anti-Trumpism can outlast Donald Trump’s presidency. Axios reported that the group of ad-making former Republicans “is weighing offers from different television studios, podcast networks, and book publishers.” Everything, it seems, is on the table: The group is currently producing a documentary about the election while studios want the Lincoln Project’s help in developing “a House of Cards–like fiction series,” definitive proof that the Golden Age of Television is behind us.

Given its status as a viral ad hitmaker, it’s not surprising that eyeball-obsessed media executives are eyeing the Lincoln Project as a partner. “As a media business, we’re putting a pretty big bet on the idea that they know how to get audiences,” United Talent Agency’s Ra Kumar told Axios. Studios, networks, and publishers need big audiences like never before, and since it was founded last December, the Lincoln Project has shown it can deliver them in the millions.

In less than a week, however, it may lose its muse. Some of the groups that have sprung up in the last four years—Run for Something, Indivisible, the Sunrise Movement, Swing Left—should have little trouble adjusting to a post-Trump future: Left-leaning politicians will still be running for office, swing districts will need targeting, climate change will remain an existential threat. But the same may not be true of the Lincoln Project. There are still giant questions about what, exactly, this group of former Republican operatives believes. What’s the point of an anti-Trump group when Donald Trump is gone?

Earlier this month, 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl asked the founders of the Lincoln Project to respond to criticisms that, for all the online attention their attack ads had received, they weren’t accomplishing much of anything. “I think we have hurt him, we have cut him, we have defined him, we have provoked him,” Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, responded. “There was not a glove proverbially laid on him for a really long time. I think we’re amongst the first groups to effectively do that.”

The one thing you can say for certain is that the Lincoln Project is good at provoking Donald Trump and many of those close to him. He has tweeted about the group several times and ranted about it at rallies, calling its founders “real garbage” and “not smart people.” His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner have threatened to sue them over a Times Square billboard blaming them for the Trump administration’s disastrous Covid-19 response.

As for hurting, cutting, defining—that is much less clear. “Every time Donald Trump loses his mind and throws things at the wall because a Lincoln Project ad is up, that takes the whole campaign off track,” said Rick Wilson, who once made an ad tying disabled veteran (and Democrat) Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. “There’s one thing you never get back in a campaign. That’s a lost day.” But the idea that the Lincoln Project is throwing sand in the gears of a well-oiled machine simply doesn’t track. The Lincoln Project clearly makes Trump very mad, but so does everything else. It’s not evident that the group is moving voters, and particularly Republican voters—“independent-leaning men, those college-educated Republicans, the suburban Republican women,” as Wilson put it on 60 Minutes—into the anti-Trump camp, which has been the group’s stated purpose.

Making Trump mad has become a financial juggernaut. The Lincoln Project makes a simple promise to donors: Give us your money, and we will use it to make the president angry. Much of its spending—advertising on Fox News in Washington, D.C., (so the president can see it while he binge-watches), buying Times Square billboards in the famous battleground state of New York—is advertising for itself. These displays only bring in more money. (Representatives from the Lincoln Project did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Lincoln Project fills a void for liberals who are concerned that the Biden campaign too often goes high when Trump goes low and believe that it should more closely mimic Trump’s own tactics. The Lincoln Project’s founders argue that they get in the mud so Biden doesn’t have to, allowing him to run a positive campaign. It now sells merch and builds its audience by stealing memes from Twitter and Instagram users—an unethical practice made famous by the Instagram account FuckJerry of Fyre Festival fame.

There are few clues about what a post-Trump Lincoln Project would look like. The group excels at depicting the president as a deranged loser, but anti-Trumpism is not an ideology. The policies that the founders of the Lincoln Project have spent decades fighting for—traditional Republican stuff about small government and low taxes—are not particularly popular anywhere, but that’s especially the case among the group’s new base in the hashtag-resistance.

The comparison to Crooked Media is being made a lot, but it doesn’t make sense. That organization was also formed by former political flaks in opposition to Trump, sure. But Crooked Media positioned itself as a voice for those pining for the Obama years, and its founders were aligned with a large faction of Democrats. Crooked’s podcasts and articles and books and television show could tackle a wide range of topics: the president’s awfulness, yes, but also issues that liberal voters care about. The Lincoln Project has none of that built-in advantage. Its founders not only lack connections with the Democratic base, they have a wildly different set of beliefs from the vast majority of Democratic voters. If they did follow Crooked Media down the path of nostalgia, it would be for the presidency of George W. Bush.

The best-case scenario is that the Lincoln Project doesn’t try to square the circle. It has targeted a number of Republicans for their fealty to the president. It has decried the racist and authoritarian bent of the current GOP, while downplaying the role its founders played in the party’s transformation. It’s possible to imagine a Lincoln Project that keeps its place in liberals’ hearts by focusing on the rot at the core of the Republican Party.

It’s more likely, however, that the Lincoln Project will stake out a position as a fighting institution for the status quo, beating back the liberal left with one fist and right-wingers with the other. If the Biden administration drifts too far left—with a Green New Deal, say, or just loads of spending—we might see the Lincoln Project fighting it the way it fought Trump.

All of this is predicated on Trump losing, of course. The actual best-case scenario for the Lincoln Project, despite its own mission of defeating Trump, is for him to win.

Feature Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Alex Shephard

Alex Shephard @alex_shephard

Sourced from TNR

In News

EBay beats quarterly profit estimates, forecasts current-quarter sales above expectations

November 5, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from REUTERS

(Reuters) – EBay Inc’s EBAY.O quarterly profit topped Wall Street expectations on Wednesday and the e-commerce company forecast fourth-quarter sales above estimates, as people staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic took to online shopping.

EBay said it expects fourth-quarter revenue in the range of $2.64 billion to $2.71 billion, while analysts estimate $2.54 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

E-commerce firms and retailers with a strong online presence have witnessed a spike in demand as the COVID-19 pandemic has led more people to shop online.

The company raised its full-year sales outlook to between $10.04 billion and $10.11 billion. The forecast excludes the classifieds business, which eBay in July agreed to sell to Norway’s Adevinta ADEV.OL in a $9.2 billion deal.

EBay, which has made its platform simpler to use through grouped listings and personal recommendations, said active buyers grew 5% to 183 million in the third quarter.

Net income from continuing operations rose to $621 million, or 88 cents per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $210 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, eBay earned 85 cents per share, above estimates of 77 cents per share.

Revenue rose about 25% to $2.61 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $2.48 billion. However, the company missed its prior revenue forecast of $2.64 billion to $2.71 billion.

Shares of the company fell nearly 2% at $52.24 in extended trade.

Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi

Feature Image Credit: FILE PHOTO: The eBay logo is pictured on a screen in this photo illustration in New York, U.S., July 23, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Illustration/File Photo

Sourced from REUTERS