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How Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon became the most manipulative advertisers on TV

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The biggest ads from the biggest brands in big TV moments used to be dominated by cars, candy, and beer. Now—like everything else—it’s Big Tech.

For 32 years, USA Today’s Ad Meter has measured the popularity of Super Bowl ads, and this year’s list looked different than ever before.

Google nabbed the No. 3 spot, Amazon No. 7, and Microsoft No. 9. Even Facebook, which ranked much lower at No. 39, was airing its first-ever Super Bowl spot but still managed to beat out such TV ad stalwarts as GMC, Audi, Coke, and Pepsi.

Seemingly out of nowhere (although after years of building up to it), Big Tech has finally become the kind of major TV-advertiser class that used to be the sole domain of legacy brands—those TV ad staples in such popular categories as autos, beer, and candy. For most of their history, these companies scoffed at traditional media. Can’t measure it, can’t convert viewers into customers, not enough real-time data. Yet here are the 21st century’s most dominant brands behaving like their counterparts of the late 20th, using TV as a key tool to build image and consumer loyalty. Taking a half-step back, this development is a bit rich given that other than Microsoft, these are companies whose businesses are working, through digital advertising dominance and streaming content, essentially to destroy the modern TV industry.

The Super Bowl and most other high-profile TV opportunities like the Oscars and Grammys are now where the biggest tech companies go to forge the kind of emotional relationship with consumers that helps prevent us from becoming too critical, too nervous, and too creeped out by their actions.

It could not have been scripted better.

Big spenders

Microsoft was one of the biggest TV ad spenders in tech last year, shelling out half a billion dollars. On its Surface brand alone, the company boosted ad spending by almost 20%, to an estimated $219.1 million, according to measurement firm iSpot.

Amazon spent more than $1.25 billion overall in 2019, boosting TV ad spending for Prime, for example, by a massive 487% to hit about $210 million. Also notable for Amazon, it more than doubled TV ad spending on its home security system Ring, hitting about $79 million in 2019, compared with $32 million in 2018. Given that the company was recently accused of providing user data to Facebook and other companies without making Ring users aware that their data was being shared, adding to its other privacy scandals, it’s going to need all the brand loyalty it can muster.

Facebook is the smallest of the big tech companies, and it correspondingly spent just $300 million on TV marketing last year, with more than half of it, according to iSpot, going to burnish Facebook’s brand.

The ads, the strategies

After Google ran its Super Bowl ad on Sunday night, Twitter lit up with posts about its emotional effectiveness.

Microsoft received similar kudos for its ad profiling 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers, which hit the perfect balance of product, brand, and a message of female empowerment that Secret and Olay, both of which have been marketing to women for as long as they’ve existed, couldn’t manage to find.

Amazon was back at its goofy celebrity best, this time teaming with Ellen DeGeneres to wonder what life was like before Alexa.

And then Facebook dropped in with an homage to eclectic Groups, with a side dish of Sly Stallone and Chris Rock.

All the game needed to have a Big Tech full house was Apple, but even Cupertino managed to launch a new spot yesterday for its Arcade video game subscription service.

Anyone wondering why the planet’s biggest and most successful tech and digital media companies are increasingly turning to good old-fashioned TV ads need look no further for a reason than what comedian and talk-show host Desus of Desus and Mero had to say:

As I wrote on Sunday, Facebook made its users the focus of its Super Bowl ad to draw as much attention as possible away from its myriad of corporate issues. Each of the companies chose the largest advertising stage and its most strategic products—Facebook Groups, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft Surface, Google Search—as the device with which to build a narrative and emotional connection with users.

Back in 2018, Google CMO Lorraine Twohill heralded the brand’s ads “Parisian Love” (which became Google’s first-ever Super Bowl ad) and “Dear Sophie” as the spark for what’s become the company’s strategy around humanizing its products and itself. When she joined the company in 2009, the marketing formula was more tech nerd than Mad Men and went something like this: We have to launch a new product, here’s a blog post, and here is a video of the product manager explaining its features. Please watch the video.

“In the early days, we had a Chrome digital-only campaign, which was about three things: safety, simplicity, and speed. Very rational,” said Twohill. “That did get us so far, but no one gets out of bed in the morning and says, ‘I need a new browser.’ What changed the game for us was to go out and create ‘The web is what you make of it,’ which is essentially a brand campaign about people using the web to make their lives better.”

Replace “web” with soap, cars, beer, insurance, or burgers and it becomes pretty clear that these companies we see as among the most innovative in the world still rely upon some of the most hardy advertising tropes in existence. Amazon’s humor is no different than VW in 2011’s “The Force” that charmed us all just before the company’s reputation imploded under the emissions scandal. Or how Snickers uses it to avoid us looking too closely at the sustainability and labor challenges of the chocolate industry. Facebook’s Groups spot is the direct descendant of any commercial gleefully celebrating human gathering, from McDonald’s “You Deserve A Break Today” back in the ’80s, to the longstanding idea of Miller Time.

Microsoft’s Super Bowl ad was fantastic, but let’s face it, the point was Sowers’s story and her accomplishment, not a tablet computer, and could’ve easily been a spot for paper towels. Kind of like P&G’s long-running “Thank You, Mom” Olympic campaign. And while Google’s “Loretta” expertly uses its own products to make those human connections, it hinges on tying human connection and emotion to the brand, a tactic perfected in spots like Coke’s classic “Hilltop” and Budweiser’s “Puppy Love.”

Back then, we were being charmed by companies that we knew—or had some sense—that they were connected to such serious problems as obesity, pollution, addiction, and more. Those, of course, still remain, but say what you want about beer or fast-food burgers, they don’t lead to issues of data privacy and misinformation, among others.

The emotional connections forged by these ads seek to paper over all of that, at least for 30 seconds at a time.

Oh, and add in a CEO tweet for good measure.

What’s next

These challenges—and Big Tech’s need to cultivate as much goodwill as possible—aren’t going anywhere, so expect this type of TV ad spending to continue to grow, at least until they actually do kill broadcast TV. This will be most acute during major events like the Super Bowl, Oscars, World Series, and anywhere else our fragmented media culture manages to come together in anything even remotely resembling a collective cultural experience. The more we love their ads, the more likely we’ll be to buy and use their products, and therefore less likely to address potential concerns, vote to have monopolies broken up, or otherwise question their motives.

On the bright side, though, at least Big Tech didn’t try to sell us a baby peanut.

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Facebook boosts parental control in Messenger Kids

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By Yanitsa Boyadzhieva.

Facebook announced new tools and features for parents to control their childrens’ experiences in the Messenger Kids app, in an effort to increase online safety on the service.

Parents will be able to see recent contacts and chat history of their children, along with a log of photos and videos in their inbox which they can delete if deemed inappropriate.

Other features will provide parents with access to a list of reports logged by children, along with details on any blocks they imposed. There are also options to remotely log children out of the app and to access information the service stores about users.

Another amendment hands control over blocking and unblocking contacts to children, though parents will have oversight of any communications in the case of the latter.

Facebook said it developed an in-app activity tracker to inform children about the types of information others can see about them, including messaging content which only parents can delete.

The company updated its privacy policy “to include additional information about our data collection, use, sharing, retention and deletion practices”.

“We don’t use children’s data from Messenger Kids for advertising. There continue to be no ads in Messenger Kids and no in-app purchases. And as the updated privacy policy reaffirms, we don’t sell any of your or your child’s information to anyone, and we never will”, Facebook stated.

The company faced scrutiny from governments related to online safety after plans to add end-to-end encryption to the service.

In early 2018, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) called for the app to be discontinued due to concerns about the use of social media by children.

Messenger Kids launched in December 2017 targeting children aged six years to 12 years-old, initially in the US, and expanded globally in June 2018.

By Yanitsa Boyadzhieva

Yanitsa joins Mobile World Live as a Reporter based in London. She has more than 5 years’ experience at various media outlets in her home country Bulgaria. She started her career as a political reporter, followed by taking editor roles…Read more

Sourced from Mobile World Live

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Political ad monitoring: Facebook makes right call not to act as moderator

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Sourced from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It is through the free exchange of ideas that the best rise to the top.

Facebook is right to continue its policy of not moderating political advertising. It is wisely leaving the act of fact-checking such ads to its customers.

The online media giant has provided mixed signals, however, regarding the principle that drove its decision to stick with its generally hands-off approach to political campaigns’ communications.

“We don’t fact-check political ads,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in an October speech at Georgetown University. “We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”

In the same speech Mr. Zuckerberg also sensibly addressed the accusation that in failing to pick and choose between ads, Facebook was open to permitting false advertising.

“Even when there is a common set of facts, different media outlets tell very different stories emphasizing different angles,” he said. “… And while I worry about an erosion of truth, I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true.”

At odds with the First Amendment-friendly theme of Mr. Zuckerberg’s speech was a recent blog post by the official who oversees the company’s advertising integrity division.

“In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, said in the post.

That seems like an invitation to just the sort of regulation Mr. Zuckerberg’s stance demands be resisted.

Just as no American would want Mr. Zuckerberg refereeing a dinnertime political discussion, the government also has no place at that table.

It is through the free exchange of ideas that the best rise to the top. The Founders adopted the First Amendment to deny Congress the power to regulate speech, political or otherwise. It’s a principle worthy of respect on all fronts.

Sourced from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Why marketers must look beyond cookies and rethink data in the 2020s

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By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers must stop prioritising strategies built around cookie data if they’re to succeed in the 2020s. Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event at Sea Containers this week, Andy Chandler, Adjust’s VP for UK and Ireland, called for brands to evolve in the post-cookie world and start to work out whether they’re truly adding value to their customers’ lives.

“With Google Chrome getting rid of third party cookies, brands need to start looking at data differently or they’re going to very quickly get left behind,” he explained. “We are moving into a cookie-less world, where consumers are interacting more with apps than browsers, so the way we measure data needs to truly reflect that. We need to keep evolving and keep up with where people are, ensuring we add real value to their lives.”

A recent feature by The Drum explored the impact of Google’s plans to “render third-party cookies obsolete” and how brands must now respond. According to Ed Preedy, chief revenue office at Cavai, one solution could be for brands to use online messenger apps to speak directly to their consumers. He says messenger apps can ensure more tailored advertising and better conversion rates when it comes to making a purchase.

He added: “In 2019, there were 73 trillion posts across all messaging apps. And in markets like APAC and Latin America, something like 63% of consumers purchased over a messaging app or spoke directly to a business. These are becoming hotbeds for commercial opportunity and it will only grow in the decade ahead in the UK too.

“Messaging apps allow for a genuine two-way interaction. They qualify what users want and who they are almost instantly, so therefore the advertising that runs is contextually relevant. They will become so much more important as cookies start to dissipate. I think there will be a wider move to more personalised platforms, where advertising is less random.”

It was a frank assessment that Tanzil Bukhari, managing director for EMEA at DoubleVerify, very much agreed with. He insisted consumers now want to see more relevant advertising and that getting rid of cookies will ensure this happens more consistently. “The Google Chrome announcement will mean publishers have to offer much richer and directional content, and that’s only a good thing.”

Using data in the right way

But there was also a message of caution in the air, with Vodafone’s brand director Maria Koutsoudakis warning that brands and agencies who prioritise data too heavily risk becoming irrelevant, on a panel earlier that morning alongside Ogilvy CEO UK, Michael Frolich. Koutsoudakis asked the audience: “When was the last time you spoke to a customer? If you stood back from click attributions and A/V testing then what do you really know about your customers now?

“By only really focusing on data, there’s a risk we create a generation of marketers who don’t understand brand, consumers or behavioural change and aren’t agile enough to cope with it. There needs to be more of a blend of people being on the ground, really speaking to their customers, as well as having a good data strategy. If marketers only care about digital metrics then there’s a risk they become irrelevant in marketing in the 2020s.”

With consumer data obviously so important to the UK mobile network’s business, she admitted it has taken a back step to ensure it’s precious about protecting it. “We don’t sell this data as we can’t afford to lose our consumers’ trust,” she admitted. “Being so cautious might mean we get left behind, but I think it’s worth it as we can’t take any chances.”

Frolich agreed with Koutsoudakis’ sentiment. In the 2020s, he said ad agencies shouldn’t be using client and third party data unless they can absolutely prove it has a positive impact on creativity and this in turn enriches the lives of their customers.

“We aren’t a data company, we are a creative agency,” he insisted. “We use client data and third party data to feed our creativity and build better work that consumers then enjoy. If you’re using this data and it isn’t creating better human insights then you’re using it incorrectly.

“Agencies have bought big data companies and it isn’t working because they’re not using the information to create better marketing. If we can work with a client like Vodafone and use their data to feed better creativity then we’re winning.”

The sentiments around trust were picked on another panel, where Courtney Wylie, VP of product & marketing, Mention Me had a word of caution: “We’re going to continue to see this evolving trend of lack of trust. A declining trust in influencers, brands, marketing channels.”

However, the way the relationship between agencies and brands works will become a lot more adaptable over the coming years, with a one-size-fits-all approach now completely redundant. John Readman, CEO & Founder, Modo25, explained: “In past there were only two options: work with an agency or do something in-house, but we will see these lines blurring more and more. There’s no reason why a combination of both won’t be the best way forward.”

Talking about the way forward, Andrew Challier, chief client officer, Ebiquity predicted that the industry will finally see “the rebirth of creativity and the importance of creativity in engaging people and reaching people in a meaningful way.”

A more ethical way of thinking could impact Facebook and Amazon

As we move further into the 2020s, some of the event’s panellists warned that established retailers and social media brands could start to fall short, as consumers switch to a more ethical way of thinking.

“Yes, lot’s of people still buy off Amazon, but the fact Brits also want to become more engaged with their local community means independent retailers should be confident heading into this new decade,” predicted Hero Brown, founder of Muddy Stilettos.

She explained further: “We’ve noticed a real shift in our readers wanting to support the high street more and more, and there’s this ethical thinking coming through, which could be detrimental to an Amazon. Shoppers want real-life experiences, even from online brands. They’re starting to get tired of faceless fast transactions and want to see brands brought to life in a more physical way. This trend will only intensify in 2020.”

Meanwhile, Darren Savage, chief strategy officer at Tribal, would like to see Facebook’s dominancy recede in the social media space. “I think major firms who consistently lie will come unstuck in the 2020s as people won’t put up with it anymore,” he said. “An immoral toxic cess-pit like Facebook will come tumbling down.

“The blatant lies they tell around consumer data will mean people will leave the platform in much bigger numbers. Truth is more important than ever before and just being a big business isn’t going to protect you if you mislead consumers.”

Proving you’re making a difference

This ethical way of thinking also extends to a brand’s commitment to sustainability, and Misha Sokolov, co-founder of MNFST, believes this will only rise in importance over the coming years.

“I spoke recently to someone at the Volkswagen Group and he was telling me how they calculated they were responsible for 1% of all global emissions, and that’s why they now want to be carbon neutral within 10 years,” he said. “The smartest brands won’t just put a nice message on their packaging, but do something that has a provable positive impact on the environment and helping reduce climate change. It must happen automatically as brands will lose market share if consumers don’t think their being ethical enough. There’s no excuse in the 2020s.”

And businesses shouldn’t just think of sustainability in environmental terms either, with it also being just as wrapped up in how a brand and business treats its employees. Stéphanie Genin, global VP of enterprise marketing at Hootsuite, says employee advocacy will be a huge trend moving forward, as consumer want to ensure their favourite brands treat their staff good before supporting them with a purchase.

She added: “Employee advocacy and employee generated content will become so so important. When you empower employees to be the communicator of what your business stands for it really adds to brand value and boosts sales. I think marketers are missing a trick by not prioritising this more heavily.”

However, Readman, added none of this will work unless it’s part of a global governance policy. “It’s all good being sustainable and doing good things for employees in one market, but if it’s not something you’re doing consistently across the board then consumers will work it out and there will be a backlash.”

Meanwhile, for John Young, executive creative director and co-founder, M-is, as brands start to really understand the consumers through personal engagagement, “the advertising budgets will transfer into experiential budgets.”

Be as safe as possible

Another topic of conversation that came up throughout the day was brands ensuring the data they keep on consumers remains safe, especially as more and more of their ads are traded programmatically.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, said that 13% of global ads are currently fraudulent and that while major brands know it’s a “big issue”, they’re not necessarily doing enough to prevent it. “We acquired a publishing guard to protect publishers, but I find a lot of people aren’t thinking seriously enough about this issue. It won’t go away!”

Dan Lowden, chief strategy officer at Whiteops, added how he recently worked with a major brand who believed bots were accounting for up to 5% of fake views of its £10m campaign, but says his team worked out they were actually accounting for 36% of traffic.

Looking ahead, he concluded: “The bad guys aren’t going to let up and will keep on persisting with cyber crime in the 2020s. We all need to be serious about tackling this problem and do more to collaborate as an industry to ensure that marketing dollars are genuinely being spent on human engagement and not just robots.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

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Facebook pulls Conservative Party adverts for breaching rules

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By Neil Shaw.

“Good. My thoughts on this kind of stunt are unprintable.”

Facebook has taken down Conservative Party adverts which used edited versions of BBC content.

The corporation told the social network that the adverts infringed on its intellectual property rights, after claiming they could “damage perceptions of our impartiality”.

“We have removed this content following a valid intellectual property claim from the rights holder, the BBC,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

“Whenever we receive valid IP claims against content on the platform, in advertising or elsewhere, we act in accordance with our policies and take action as required.”

One of the adverts the BBC was concerned about included an edited clip of BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg saying “pointless delay to Brexit”, followed by newsreader Huw Edwards stating “another Brexit delay”.

It also used a caption, saying: “A hung parliament = gridlock. Stop the chaos. Vote Conservative.”

Mr Edwards welcomed the move, tweeting: “Good. My thoughts on this kind of stunt are unprintable.”

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said last week that it was “clear” the footage was “not edited in a manner that misleads or changes the reporting”, adding that viewers can “judge for themselves”.

The move comes at a challenging time for Facebook, as the tech giant faces pressure to ban political adverts altogether in the midst of a General Election.

It’s rival, Twitter, has banned political advertising on its platform, while Google has said it will no longer allow voters to be targeted by advertisers based on their political affiliation.

Last month, the Conservatives edited a video of Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer to make him appear unable to answer a question on Brexit.

In the minute-long video which was posted on the party’s Twitter account, Sir Keir was questioned on ITV’s Good Morning Britain by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid over Labour’s Brexit policy.

The video ends with Sir Keir staring at the camera after being asked by Mr Morgan: “Why would the EU give you a good deal if they know you are going to actively campaign against it?”

However, in the original interview Sir Keir replied to the host.

Feature Image Credit: Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at a press conference in Millbank Tower, London, while on the General Election campaign trail.

By Neil Shaw

Sourced from WalesOnline

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Ex-Facebook head says company ‘profits partly by amplifying lies’

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By Matt Binder.

Facebook’s former head of Global Elections Integrity Ops left after six months on the job — and now she’s speaking out about the problems she faced when trying to fix the company’s political ad problems.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday, Yaël Eisenstat, who joined Facebook after working with the CIA and the White House, says she tried to sound the alarm at the company leading up to the 2016 election. Recently, Facebook said it would let politicians lie in ads in the name of “free expression.”

“I didn’t think I was going to change the company,” wrote Eisenstat. “But I wanted to help Facebook think through the very challenging questions of what role it plays in politics, in the United States and around the world, and the best way to ensure that it is not harming democracy.”

Eisenstat explained that while employed at Facebook, she saw firsthand how ad tools and features were misunderstood by users and how the company pushed back on any suggested moves to fix the problem.

She said that she believes that when the company approves political advertisers, and provides them with a checkmark and a “paid for” label, it adds credibility to the posts. In reality, Facebook and its partners don’t fact-check any of this content.

“The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools…” “The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare. Its business model exploits our data to let advertisers custom-target people, show us each a different version of the truth and manipulate us with hyper-customized ads — ads that, as of two weeks ago, can contain blatantly false and debunked information if they’re run by a political campaign,” she continued. “As long as Facebook prioritizes profit over healthy discourse, they can’t avoid damaging democracies.”

According to Eisenstat, many of her Facebook colleagues agreed with her push to fix some of these political advertising issues. They still do, according to a recent letter signed by hundreds of Facebook employees.

Facebook’s leadership, however, did not agree.

“Ultimately, I was not empowered to do the job I was hired to do, and I left within six months,” she says.

In addition to sharing her own experience at the company, Eisenstat makes the case as to why Facebook’s ad transparency tools don’t cut it.

“True transparency would include information about the tools that differentiate advertising on Facebook from traditional print and television, and in fact make it more dangerous: Can I see if a political advertiser used the custom audience tool, and if so, if my email address was uploaded? Can I see what look-alike audience advertisers are seeking? Can I see a true, verified name of the advertiser in the disclaimer? Can I see if and how your algorithms amplified the ad?” she writes. “If not, the claim that Facebook is simply providing a level playing field for free expression is a myth.”

Eisenstat doesn’t believe in an outright ban on political advertising, as companies like Twitter have instituted. However, she believes the time for the government to step in and regulate the social media platform is well overdue.

Feature Image Credit:Facebook’s former head of Global Elections Integrity Ops is speaking out about her time at the company. Image: chesnot / Getty Images

By Matt Binder

Sourced from Mashable

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Facebook Isn’t Just Allowing Lies, It’s Prioritizing Them

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How platforms abandon their homegrown creators

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By Simon Owens

Facebook is currently rolling out what it’s calling a “News tab,” a dedicated section on its platform that aggregates news story links from about 200 publishers, and for reasons that I can’t fathom it’s actually paying some of these publishers upward of $3 million a year for the privilege of linking to them (most agree that this is a PR stunt that will help Facebook’s efforts to wave off antitrust probes).

As with most Facebook actions, this one has generated its fair share of controversies, especially in its decision to include racist hate site Breitbart among the publishers. But lost within this debate is the persistent throughline of how large platforms discriminate against independent publishers in their efforts to court mainstream media companies.

There are currently tens of thousands of publishers that try to leverage Facebook’s enormous reach to drive eyeballs to their content, and every time Facebook carves out prime real estate for select publishers it hand picks, it’s depriving these smaller publishers of attention, making it that much harder for them to surface their content in front of audiences.

It’s not just Facebook that engages in this type of behaviour. In fact, it should be considered a law of the internet that any sufficiently large platform will eventually abandon its homegrown creators in order to court mainstream media and celebrities.

YouTube is a prime example of this law in action. Few platforms can lay claim to a more cohesive and vibrant community, one that has spawned some of the most creative filmmaking of the 21st century. Yet in YouTube’s quest to scale its advertising revenue to tens of billions of dollars a year, it’s slowly shifted its priorities away from this community in favour of promoting traditional media companies and celebrities.

I’ve written in the past about how YouTube’s done this with its trending video tab, lowering the bar for mainstream television networks while making it nearly impossible for organic YouTubers to be featured. But this week we’ve seen some new data on how YouTube is funnelling advertising money away from independent creators and toward their mainstream counterparts.

Back in 2017, YouTube came under fire for running advertisements next to what some considered extremist content. The outrage that emerged in the wake of these revelations resulted in what many have termed the “adpocalypse.” Essentially, creators saw their advertising revenue crater virtually overnight as an opaque algorithm determined whether their content was “brand unsafe.”

YouTube also launched a program called “Google Preferred,” a category that brands could opt into. In exchange for paying higher advertising rates, brands could ensure their ads would run against the most premium, brand-safe content the platform had to offer.

To calculate whether a video qualified for Google Preferred, YouTube assigned it a “P Score,” a number that, when it reached a certain threshold, allowed the video access to this more lucrative advertising inventory. The P Score was meant to be hidden from creators, but some enterprising coders discovered the P Score hidden in YouTube’s source code. They then examined the score across thousands of the most popular channels to see what kind of content qualified for Google Preferred.

And you won’t be shocked to learn that the channels that generated the highest P Scores all hailed from mainstream TV shows: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; Late Night with Seth Meyers; The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Virtually no homegrown channels made the top 10. Just as YouTube has been lowering the bar for its Trending tab, it’s also done the same for Google Preferred. “I think this confirms our long time suspicions that ‘homegrown talent’ is being pushed aside in favour of ‘advertiser friendly’ late night TV hosts,” YouTuber Nicholas DeOrio told FFWD.

I wrote a recent column about how we often leave out the independent creator community when assessing the health of the media industry, and that this community now comprises hundreds of thousands of content producers who collectively generate somewhere north of $10 billion in revenue. But because they often operate on the edges of media, they’re the ones most likely to be negatively affected when a major platform shells out $3 million to a mainstream content company to aggregate its content. As an independent creator, you can spend years building up an audience and a solid revenue base, but it only requires a single tweak to a platform’s algorithm to take it all away.

By Simon Owens

Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at [email protected]. For a full bio, go here.

Sourced from WNIP What’s New in Publishing

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Organic Reach in a Free Fall? Here’s Exactly Where You Should Spend Your Social Media Budget

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By Amanda Pressner Kreuser

Customers are dramatically more likely to engage with ads on Instagram than Twitter or Facebook. If you choose to place your bets–and your budget–on IG stories, here’s how to ensure a bigger payoff.

In case you hadn’t heard, consumers love Instagram Stories. And because of that, brands do too.

There are over 500 million daily active Stories users worldwide. Younger users are particularly active on the platform: 59 percent of millennials and 70 percent of Gen Z watch stories, and many engage with brands by swiping up on content and clicking through to shop.

For those new to the platform, Instagram Stories are images and videos located at the top of the Instagram app that last for 24-hours then disappear. When users finish a story, the next one starts playing immediately.

The nature of IG stories–one image or clip appearing on your screen right after the other, makes the medium ideal for advertising. Since the ads flow along with the organic content, some users don’t even realize they are watching them at all. Others actually welcome the interaction from brands that they like. A recent study reveals that a quarter of millennials and Gen Z check out IG Stories for the products and services they may want to buy.

That level of brand integration and user engagement can be huge for brands–particularly those that make the most of their advertising opportunities while the platform is still fresh and consumers are open to messaging.

As you plan your IG Stories strategy and budget for 2020, here are three recommendations to keep in mind.

Engage Your Target Audience

Here’s an eye-opening stat for marketers and brands: consumers are 58 times more likely to interact with branded content on Instagram than on Facebook.

But consumers don’t stop to engage with just any type of advertisement. To grab users’ attention, you need a combination of powerful images, clear content, and a persuasive call-to-action (CTA). If your CTA effectively communicates where the user should go next, they will be more likely to swipe up on your advertisement and head to your linked content (this could be a landing page, product page, blog, etc.).

There are seven objectives that companies can select from for their Instagram story ads: brand awareness, reach, video views, conversions, app installs, lead generation, and traffic.

Be sure to choose the objective that best falls in line with your business goals, and build your content around that.

Make Your Ads Memorable

With a quick swipe of the finger, users can disregard your advertisement and move into the next story. For this reason, your advertising needs to command their attention right away.

One way to create memorable ads is by using storytelling that plays to consumers’ emotions. You can make your advertisement funny, interesting, nostalgic, or educational. Making users feel something builds a connection between them and your brand.

Use high-quality, eye-catching videos and images. Make sure you include your brand name and use clear wording so that users understand what your business does and how you can solve their problems in a matter of seconds.

Be aware: captivating videos and photos can come at a cost so you should set aside some real marketing dollars for creative (an intern with an iPhone probably isn’t going to get the job done).

Go for Videos

Advertising with videos instead of images on Instagram Stories is more effective for a simple reason: you have more time to capture users’ attention. With videos, you get one whole minute to sell to consumers whereas images only are featured for five seconds.

Your videos must communicate what your company does and focus on how your products can fix users’ pain points. They should be short, sweet, and most importantly, entertaining. Remember, users can click out of your ad at any time. Think about what you can do to make them want to watch your video until the very last moment.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Amanda Pressner Kreuser

Sourced from Inc.

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The Claim That Facebook’s Libra Is A Cryptocurrency Is False Advertising

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By David B. Black

“Everyone” says that Facebook’s Libra is a cryptocurrency. Long before Libra had been imagined, Bitcoin pioneered and established the brand new world of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin created the category, and has always been its leading exemplar. The white paper by the still-unknown Bitcoin creator and inventor spelled out his design goals and the main aspects of Bitcoin that supported those goals. Once you read and understand what cryptocurrency is, it becomes very clear that, whatever Libra may be, it is NOT a cryptocurrency. To claim that it’s a cryptocurrency is like claiming that a locked desk drawer is a bank vault—yes, they both have keys and are supposed to keep things safe, but other than that…

Satoshi, the brilliant creator of Bitcoin, designed a currency that involves cryptography. If you want to be extremely loose, you could say that Libra is the same thing, because it’s also a currency that somehow involves cryptography. But that’s like saying that the thing you use to “buy” properties and hotels in the board game Monopoly is “money.” Try depositing some of it at an ATM and see how far you get.  Let’s explore the basics of what makes a cryptocurrency the way Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.

First and foremost, there’s the concept that in Bitcoin, no one is in charge. How can you possibly make a computer system that works, does lots of computing, keeping lots of financial transactions and makes sure everyone’s account balance is correct … without anyone being in charge?? These things are hard to do when someone IS in charge! There’s quite a bit involved in making this happen, as I illustrate here, but here are some of the key points:

  • Anyone who wants to can sign up to be a “miner,” who are the folks that make Bitcoin work.
  • A miner has to put money into buying fast computers, running the mining software, and connecting with all the other miners to share work.
  • Miners get new transactions that Bitcoin users want to perform and “make them happen.”
  • This means that miners race each other to solve complex problems involving cryptography, the net result of which is a new page (block) of transactions that have been vetted, and “locked” by crypto-key.
  • Every piece of work a miner does is paid for by newly-minted Bitcoin – the miners are paid with Bitcoin!
  • Miners are highly incented to do the work and do it right, because they want to get lots of Bitcoin, and they want Bitcoin to continue to be viable.
  • Miners come and go as they see fit – no one “approves” them, literally no one’s in charge.
  • Miners can be anywhere, in any country.

Big corporations and regulators don’t like the unsupervised free-for-all of Bitcoin. They like to control things. And that’s exactly why Bitcoin was invented – to escape the control of a central authority but still have a system that works. It’s a brilliant concept, and Bitcoin’s success shows that it works.

Along comes Facebook and Libra. Facebook is ambitious. They keep trying to invent new things. They mostly fail when they build things themselves, so they buy companies instead. Facebook would LOVE to buy Bitcoin – but it’s not for sale, because no one owns it – darn! They’re forced to try to build it. But being a big corporation, they just can’t stop themselves from building their version of Bitcoin in a style that makes them comfortable – violating every single core principle of Bitcoin – the original cryptocurrency – along the way!

Here’s what Facebook is doing with Libra:

  • In Bitcoin, literally no one is in charge. With Libra, Facebook is designing and building it. Facebook is in charge and owns it.
  • Facebook has gone to considerable lengths to create the illusion that it’s not in charge with this fake Swiss-based consortium of prestigious companies that supposedly control things. Either way, some combination of big name-brand companies are in charge, which is pretty far from Bitcoin’s really-truly NO ONE is in charge.
  • Just like Facebook owns and controls all the computers that run Facebook, Libra will own and control all the computers that run Libra in a private data center. To all the corporate computer types, this is a good thing, but it totally and completely violates a core principle of Bitcoin, leaving it open to the same kind of insider corruption that all such places are rife with. It’s also a silly idea, as explained here. Microsoft and Intel explain the issues here.
  • One of the less pleasant side effects of Bitcoin’s miners and what they do with cryptography is the fact that “proof of work” takes time. It’s a cornerstone of getting all these strangers to play nice and do good things, but it takes a number of minutes to complete a transaction. To Facebook, this is unacceptable. So they’ve blithely discarded the key cryptographic cornerstone of Bitcoin, and replaced it with some light-weight encryption, so they can still say they’re a “cryptocurrency,” even though they’re not.

There’s more to be said, but that should be sufficient to make the basic point that Libra is a cryptocurrency the same way my cousin, who is sometimes allowed to sing in bars, is an opera singer. My cousin likes to think she is, and I’m nice to her. But she’s never so much as attended a performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, much less appeared on stage in front of an audience. Similarly, Facebook’s Libra likes to think it’s a cryptocurrency even better than the original, Bitcoin, but it swore off the core principles of Bitcoin from the start, and doesn’t deserve to be called by the same terminology.

Feature Image Credit: INDIA – 2019/08/30: In this photo illustration a popular decentralised digital currency Bitcoin –Libra logo seen displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

By David B. Black

I started programming computers in high school. Before graduating with honors from Harvard College, I wrote code for oil refinery optimization and the ARPA-net. I then wrote code for compilers, composition systems, operating systems, DBMS internals and applications, large scale financial transaction processing, document processing, workflow and more. The card software I led now handles half a billion cards. I started in venture capital in the early 1990s, investing in the whole stack, from hardware to media. I now concentrate on health care and financial technology investments as tech partner at Oak HC/FT. I blog, and I’ve published five books on software-based innovation.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

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