#digiday Shift

[sportstaaza14]

Navigating Change: UM's Shift from Turbulence to Transformation with Erin Quintana

In the dynamic world of corporate leadership, change is the only constant. This sentiment rings particularly true for UM, as it recently underwent a significant transformation. "After rocky tenure, UM replaces U.S. CEO with chief client officer Erin Quintana," reads the headline that captured the attention of industry insiders and curious onlookers alike. In this blog post, we delve into the circumstances surrounding this change, exploring the impact of a rocky tenure and the appointment of Erin Quintana as the new chief client officer.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’ve been informally working with a co-worker answering questions about building out hybrid native applications and it’s been wonderful. I also had opportunity to work on more React Native to iOS code with another developer. Total blast. It hit all my happy buttons.

All that happiness was destroyed later Friday afternoon, but that’s a story for another day. Don’t worry, I’m fine, my family is fine, everything’s fine.

Gus Mueller

Without going into details (that’s what the technote is for), Acorn’s file format is a SQLite database, with a simple three-table schema, containing TIFF or PNG bitmaps to represent bitmap layers, and a plist to represent shape layers. Acorn has kept this simple format since version 2.0 back in 2009.

At some point I’d opened an Acorn file in Base, my database editing app of choice, and realized it was actually a SQLite database. Nifty!

Given Gus is the creator and maintainer of FMDB it kind of makes sense. 😃 (I use FMDB in Stream.)

The Onion

Warning that even the slightest dent, knick, or scratch would henceforth be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that Raymond Pratt, a 54-year-old resident of Chula Vista, CA who bumped a Tesla while parallel parking, had been sentenced to death.

The Onion’s articles, like this one, put a smile on my face.

Yahoo!Finance

Google lays off hundreds of employees in Android, Pixel group

I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more of this over the next handful of years.

I’m sure I’m living on borrowed time. Who knows, I may end up working at Starbucks?

I love being a software developer but the new world order is ready to trade craft for expediency. I hate that. I hope I can continue to be a software craftsman.

If I could retire today, I would. That would allow me to focus on Stream and [top secret project] all the time. 😀

Kate McCusker • The Guardian

Protective helmets were donned and sledgehammers wielded as Elon Musk Space Karen critics vented their frustration at the Tesla boss and billionaire by smashing up a disused Tesla bound for the scrapheap.

Oh, how much would you love to do this? I know I would.

Have you heard of the abandoned mall parking lots being used to store Tesla cars and trucks, weird, right? It would be a shame if a pack of drones flew over them and bombed them into oblivion, wouldn’t it?

[Ruben Cagnie • Toast Technology Blog]

At Toast, we believe that GraphQL is the right technology to build efficient web and mobile applications. This did not happen overnight. In this blogpost, we will cover the adoption of GraphQL at Toast, from its early days to the recent paradigm shift towards GraphQL Federation.

I love the Toast app! ❤️ It’s one of my favorite apps on my phone because it’s darned handy! There are four restaurants we love to eat at but sometimes we’d like to get takeout. That’s where Toast comes in. Their idea to build a generic ordering app was super smart. Love it! ❤️

It’s nice to see how folks build their infrastructure out. Reading articles like this is like reading about a motor rebuild. There’s always something new to learn.

I’ve always wanted to try GraphQL. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance at the day job? 😃

Alexander Lee • Digiday

Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue

Good! Nazistack needs a mass exodus of great writers.

I need to write a piece with a list of the wonderful writers I follow there, via RSS of course, so anyone who reads this can go encourage them to leave Substack. 🤬

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

This weekend, U.S. secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick went on CBS’s Face the Nation and pitched a fantasy world where iPhones are manufactured in the United States:

I’m sure Tim Cook would love to have a factory complete with worker accommodations that drives folks into the ground for pennies a day.

Maybe our new Administration plans to do away with the minimum wage too?

Mike Pearl • Mashable

It’s downright strange how little we know about the hacker or hackers who exposed the identities of over 30 million Ashley Madison users in 2015.

I watched a documentary on Netflix called [Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal(https://time.com/6977627/netflix-ashley-madison-documentary-true-story) a couple nights back and it was absolutely fascinating.

As far as I know the person or persons behind the hack have never been found! That is just amazing to me. Their saving grace is they did it for cultural reasons, not for money. After making their demand for the company to shut down they simply delivered on their threat to release the data they’d stolen. No money demand.

It’s worth a watch.🍿

Mitch Wagner

Mitchellaneous: Excellent protest signs

I threw this in here because I love seeing the interesting signs folks come up with for protests. There have been a lot of good ones since Marmalade Messiah took office.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Tapestry, a new app designed to organize the open social web, is adding a valuable feature to help people who are keeping up with multiple social networks: It will now remove duplicate posts from your feed. That means if you follow the same person across social networking services like Bluesky and Mastodon, you won’t have to see their post appear twice in your feed if they’ve shared it in multiple places.

I remember Craig Hockenberry being asked if Twitterrific — long live Ollie! — was coming to Mastodon. He said that The Iconfactory was exploring something different. Something more for the open web.

Well, Tapestry is that app and it was brilliantly executed.

I’m looking forward to what they do with the Mac version. 😍

Oh, one more thing! Hire The Iconfactory to do your design work, I did, and the results were brilliant!

The Iconfactory is one of those wonderful companies in my list of small companies I’d work for in a heartbeat! 🥰

Matthias Endler

I have met a lot of developers in my life. Lately, I asked myself: “What does it take to be one of the best? What do they all have in common?”

Great piece. I’ve met my share of absolutely incredible developers in my time. From so many developers at Visio, too many to name, to the many excellent developers at WillowTree, hi Nish!

I like Matthias’ take on the matter.

David Eaves, Hillary Hartley • Lawfare

In March, the U.S. government shut down 18F, the digital services team tasked with modernizing government technology and services. 18F was perhaps best known for helping the IRS create a free direct-file tax website that makes it fast and free for Americans to file taxes.

This group was full of kind, caring, compassionate, designers, developers, and project managers with the goal of making world class websites for the government.

Folks like Ethan Marcotte went to work there. Yes, that Ethan Marcotte, the guy who created Responsive Web Design. Now think of an entire engineering team like that!

Phil Windley

Cory’s right, using an RSS reader will make your digital life better. I’m wasting less time scrolling past stuff I don’t care about and more time reading things I enjoy. That’s a win.

Yep, yep, yep! There are plenty of excellent RSS readers on the market, but I think you should use Stream! 😁

Aria Desires • Faultlore

C is the lingua franca of programming. We must all speak C, and therefore C is not just a programming language anymore – it’s a protocol that every general-purpose programming language needs to speak.

This piece will take a little time to read but I really appreciated the technical detail and the authors take on so many things C. Nicely done! 🙏🏼

Ghost - Building ActivityPub

Last week we explored some Threads compatibility updates, how to find and follow people across the Fediverse, and the progress of the social web beta launch. This week, we’ve got more fixes and updates to share, as well as a painful and embarrassing story that we wish had never happened.

This is Ghosts place to talk about how they’re building ActivityPub support into Ghost. It’s nice to see other blogging tools support open standards.

To my knowledge, Micro.blog, WordPress, and Ghost support ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to seeing more!👻

Cory Dransfelt

All of Apple’s services are abysmal

I’ve heard this from so many people over the years. Creating web services is hard. Especially when you’re servicing millions and millions of people, but shops like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook manage to pull it off. Why can’t Apple?

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/5176/2024/f9fe101b00.png TMNT Robatello!

[mediaguides]

Unraveling the SaaS Proposals of Magnite and PubMatic

THE MEDIA GUIDES PRESENT Our Perspective Unraveling the SaaS Proposals of Magnite and PubMatic Digital advertising, a colossal industry projected to be worth over $630 billion, is witnessing a substantial shift in the sands of its landscape. In the face of an unpredictable future, the luminaries of independent ad tech are vying for a superior position. In this article, we unpack Digiday’s…

[iamskylerlogsdon]

Calling the right play when you need points fast

Today is September 21, 2020 - we’re currently in a global pandemic due to COVID-19. There’s fear, doubt, poor visibility into what the future holds, and sadness all around. Many have lost family members (including myself) and have loved ones who’s careers have been impacted (like both of my siblings) due to COVID. In times like these, there are many things that could put you in a rut as a sales leader, but the last thing your company needs is for you to be in poor form in this critical time. Poor form leads to doomsday; layoffs (which impacts your team), pay-cuts (which adds financial pressure to your team), missed projections (which stalls the companies trajectory), and of course, being in a rut would put your job security at risk too. 

Over the past 6 months, I have guided myself using some proven and successful tactics I learned in football.  It is a blueprint that has helped myself pull through these hard times, and for Tatari, kept our company in good health by driving growth when it mattered most. I hope you find it helpful. 

Act fast for short-term survival:

When COVID hit the US in March 2020, just like many, we were not sure how this would impact our business, Tatari. Our CEO, Philip Inghelbrecht, reacted fast and prepared the company for impact. He’s no newbie to operating in turbulence, as he started Shazam in 1999, the same year that music industry revenues collapsed from $30bn to $17bn. He led TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE) when Detroit’s automotive companies were filing for bankruptcy. As any strong operator would do, he made a few fast decisions to keep us on track for the immediate future. Forget 2020 projects, Philip took quick actions to keep us on track for the next few weeks. He communicated the health of the company every week with the team (naked and honest), so we understood where we were and what actions we need to take to not just survive, but to thrive.

For the sales department in particular, below are a few of the tactics that we deployed immediately to quickly put points on the board for the team.

We fired up the 2 minute offense: 

As a former quarterback, I’m trained to step-up in these moments when the game is on the line. This is why I’ve always loved being in growth / sales roles, because you’re at the frontline of survival. In football, we practice our “2 minute offense” every practice, which is executed only when you need points quickly (hopefully you’re not in this situation often). In a 2 minute offense, every play needs to be perfect by all 11 players on your team. The margin for error is zero. As a sales organization, this is exactly what we did. We quickly tied our boots, strategized a play, and deployed it, which led to a flood of brands wanting to fire up TV with Tatari. This play landed so well that it caught the eye of the media and was first covered by DigiDay, titled: “‘The efficiency was there’: Falling TV ad prices lure in DTC brands to shift spending away from digital”.

We played to our strengths: 

When thinking of what strategy to deploy to get more clients, as a team (all 100 of us), we leaned on the things that we knew we did better than anyone else (focus, data / analytics, and smarter media buying & strategy). We didn’t veer from our core strengths to try to become something we were not or attempt hail mary’s and trick plays to test our luck. We looked at our talent and tech, and deployed a strategy that we knew our competitors don’t have the prowess to pull off. In fact, the industry was quite standstill for months and didn’t know how to respond to the new reality. Speed kills. 

Momentum is the (twin) turbo to the sales vehicle: 

Just like football, when you complete that first pass of the two minute offense, morale rises for the team and the crowd gets on their feet. For us, this is exactly what happened. Our strategy was landing well and a few new clients quickly joined us. That momentum began to double every week. Fast forward to the present, that momentum has continued strong to on-boarding 50+ new clients over the past few months and we are crushing our original 2020 projections. What makes me the most happy, is that instead of laying people off, we’ve been hiring like crazy (see open roles here). Yes, we’re still in a global pandemic and there’s still a lot of sadness around us. But at least at work, things are insanely busy and the team is in a good place. Knowing this, makes me sleep well at night, because I know I played a part in that. 

Adversity is the stage upon which greatness dances on: 

As a hungry sales leader, it’s important to understand that sales comes with great pressure and responsibility to perform when it matters most - no matter what is going on in the world or in your personal life. Let the doomsday scenario drive you, but don’t forget to combine all of that drive with the ability to strategize quickly and deploy it even quicker. When the game is on the line, go grab the ball and lead your team to victory. Don’t forget, always play to your strengths and act fast. Speed kills. 

Stay in touch,

Skyler Logsdon

[claire-fication]

Bon Appetit’s shift to emphasizing video is paying off.

“Video revenue for Bon Appétit had increased 40% from last year, according to the company. “

Claire and Molly will be doing a project for the American Egg Board.

October 9, 2019

[hub-pub-bub]

Publishers can’t seem to catch a break. With the continuous stream of anti-ad-tracking updates from Apple, and reports that Google is developing its own version for Chrome, many are feeling frazzled.

The developments have been reason for concern specifically for ad ops teams at publishers. But gradually, the attitude has started shifting, with many now predicting a potentially positive outcome for publishers in the long term.

Naturally, there are some short-term worries. Although the Apple ITP 2.2 update, which diminishes companies’ abilities to monitor people’s browsing behavior when they visit external sites, is most likely to directly affect attribution marketing, some publishers fear they will be indirectly affected. If agencies know less about which sites are driving conversions, they’re more likely to either reduce budgets with specific publishers or cut them from the media plan.

For publishers that run a lot of direct-response campaigns, pressure from agencies to drive high conversions is nothing new. But it could intensify thanks to Apple ITP 2.2. “Publishers often get beaten with a stick for their conversions not being high enough,” said a publishing executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But with all these ITP regulations coming to the fore, it makes it very hard to know where to assign media budgets because agencies and clients won’t have the full picture. Publishers could lose out.”

However, ITP 2.2 is just the latest in a long string of Apple’s anti-tracking updates, which began in 2017. Publishers were hit hard at the start, but since then, they’ve found other ways to offset the losses such as finding new ways to more effectively monetize their first-party data. For instance, publishers like magazine group Immediate Media, have introduced next-gen DMPs to help drive up the scale of targetable audience inventory, while reducing reliance on third-party cookies.

It’s that, or they have written off the losses as minimal given Apple’s browser Safari has a far smaller share of the market, according to other publisher sources. Safari accounted for 4% of desktop sessions globally in April and 26% of browser sessions on mobile, according to NewMarketShare. Although Apple users are a highly desirable target market for many, the damage had already been done long before ITP 2.2. Firefox, which also has a version of ITP, accounted for 10% of desktop sessions and 1.5% on mobile in April, according to the same source.

The idea that Google could follow suit, however, is far more chilling, especially for publishers. Reports have circulated for the last few months over Google’s exploration of its own ITP version for Chrome.  After all, Chrome has a far higher share of the ad market than Safari. Chrome accounted for 66% of global desktop sessions in April, and 63% of impressions on mobile, according to NetMarketShare.

Google hasn’t publicly confirmed any intention on this front, but speculation is rife in both publisher and ad tech quarters as to what any development could mean for them. Most believe a Google ITP equivalent is just a matter of time, given the existing pressure on the third-party cookie, and the current data privacy focus from regulators too.

If Google was to green-light limiting third-party data collection within Chrome, it would likely be a very phased roll-out over a long period of time. It wouldn’t be the “earthquake” some ad ops executives fear since Google is unlikely to do anything that would damage its own ad revenue capabilities.

“ITP has already done a lot of damage when it comes to Safari and iOS. We can’t get away from that fact,” said an executive at a major publisher. “If it happens on Chrome, I can imagine seeing the same yields decreased in the short term, which means a definite revenue hit for us. But if you combine Chrome and Safari and the push down on the third-party cookie, the market would have to adapt to that change anyway.”

Others agree that it’s an inevitable evolution for the market, which has become more privacy-focused and wants to push away from the current reliance on third-party cookies within programmatic advertising.

“It’s an arms race. Apple ITP 2.2 has been released; 2.3 will be soon to follow,” said an exec at a major publisher. “At that point, Google and the ad tech community will come out with something that helps workarounds, up until the point where it becomes untenable to use cookies.”

Rather than bemoan any forthcoming changes, however, many regard the likelihood of Chrome adopting this route as a necessary impetus for publishers to drive forward their own identifier solutions. There are a variety of ID consortiums led by ad tech vendors or executives, and Apple’s and Google’s suspected intentions in this area should increase activity in these areas, according to publisher executives.

“The ID is where everyone wants to go” said an executive at a major publisher. “But the only way this works is if all the ecosystem gets together. If you want to buy shares in the ID consortiums, now is a good time to do it.”

[sarahmarshall3]

Lesson 1: The social, audience and growth roles within newsrooms

Not the modern journalism course timetable. Private Eye.

I’m about to meet my fourth cohort of  Interactive Journalism MA students at City University, London.

I step out of my role as head of audience growth at Vogue International for two hours a week to teach the practical element of the social media, community and multimedia management module; Adam Tinworth teaches the theoretical side.

Here are my notes from the first lesson. This covers:

What does a social media editor do?

What’s audience development?

What is a growth editor?

How have these roles changed within the past year?

What are news publishers looking for in entry level social journalism graduates?

What does a social media editor do?

News organisations started to introduce social media editors about a decade ago to gather and distribute news via social, predominantly using Facebook and Twitter. Here’s an interview from 2009 with Alex Gubbay, the first social media editor at the BBC, explaining what his role would be.

Asked in the Guardian interview if he would play a role in the distribution of news, he said: 

“Indeed, part of my work will be to extend the news and distribute them into the social networks, so that people can discuss them. We learn from the discussions that built on the stories themselves, pick up details we missed, or factor them into how we are approaching a story.”

The role was fairly similar – though needed less explaining to fellow journalists – when I joined The Wall Street Journal as a social media editor in December 2013.

I remember explaining back then that there were four areas to the role:

Engagement

Traffic

Reach / Brand awareness

Social newsgathering

Engagement

I first got interested in social media when, in 2007 and 2008, I was a broadcast journalist. The commercial radio station I worked for had fantastic community of people who would text in. This was the time that Facebook and Twitter started to gain traction and I enjoyed similar listener and engagement online. Ten years on and social provides a way for news brands to host communities of readers. This happens through commenting on site and social and Facebook groups, for example. A social media editor may respond to comments or take an action as simple as liking an Instagram post or Facebook comment, showing the reader the news brand is listening.

In 2014 I wrote how engagement is key to keeping people returning to a news site or brand.

Traffic

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and other social platforms have been an important source of traffic to news sites. News startups sprouted up as Facebook and other platforms provided millions of eyeballs to stories. And while Facebook traffic has dropped significantly over the past year (more on that later), it still provides 28% of traffic to the news publishers that use Parsely, an analytics tool.

Reach / brand awareness

A social media editor also plays a role in increasing the brand awareness of a publication. I remember hearing Buzzfeed UK editor in chief Janine Gibson speak at Hacks/Hackers in December 2015 when Buzzfeed traffic had exploded. She made the point that even though the site of course cared about on-platform engagement, it was equally as important for Buzzfeed to have brand reach, whether logo on a social card on Twitter or a native post on Facebook.

Social newsgathering

Social newsgathering has become a whole field in itself, with agencies such as Storyful and organisations like Bellingcat being the pioneering experts. But for many social media editors, their role extends to monitor trends, hot topics and news events via social.

What is audience development?

Audience development roles have developed over the past five years. As this 2014 Digiday article notes, “The New York Times’ Innovation Report pointed out the need for audience-development specialists to get Times content in front of more readers.”

This 2017 Digiday article explains the current climate – and how audience development a focus for both the newsroom and for the commercial side of the business.

“Audience development has become core to how publishers scale and make money. But now the question facing publishers is how to ensure it serves all sides of the business, whose interests often conflict.”

“Once a role that mainly focused on SEO, audience development has become more complicated because of the explosion of ways publishers can find and distribute content, from their own platforms such as newsletters and apps to external ones such as social media outlets and bots.”

“At the most fundamental level, both the business and edit sides want to reach new and existing audiences. But from there the interests can diverge. Whereas the newsroom wants to maximize the reach and impact of its journalism, the sales side is rewarded for growing ad revenue, which could lead it to prioritize certain audience segments over others. And then there is driving subscriptions and marketing other products like events and commerce.”

Blogging about an ONA conference on audience development in 2016, I offered this definition of audience development

“Audience development is about taking the overall goals of the news organisation, whether they be advertising revenue and/or a growth in the number of paying subscribers, and working backwards to develop a strategy to help the news organisation achieve those goals.”

I still agree with my definition from a couple of years ago and expand it to say the field involves identifying a target audience and reaching those people and keeping them engaged.

And, of course, audiences may be engaged off platform. For example, launching Vogue on Snapchat has delivered millions of new, loyal weekly readers. But our owned and operated sites get zero traffic from Snapchat. So what’s in it for the publisher? Brand reach, young audiences and revenue share from the Snap advertising.

What does an audience growth editor do?

Julia Haslanger wrote this Medium post in 2015 answering that question. She quotes Thomas McBee, Quartz’s inaugural director of growth. 

“McBee says that when there’s an obstacle to growth, it’s most often an editorial obstacle, such as a story not being framed or headlined in a way that will resonate with the audience.” 

That still holds true. As head of audience growth I spend a lot of time guiding headline changes.

Here are Haslanger’s points on the role of a growth editor:

Identifying potential new audiences

Reaching out to people who might be interested in a specific story or event.

Shaping stories — and particularly headlines — to resonate with readers

Following up with new readers to build a relationship

Pushing the organization to go beyond the regular sources for stories

Analytics. Analytics. Analytics.

Assigning and shaping stories on trending topics

Events

I manage an eight-person audience growth team and consider our function as supporting the audience growth of the network of Vogues and GQs.

I’m advertising for a maternity cover and state in the ad that the primary function of my role as "responsible for audience development strategy, guidelines and a consistent approach to headlines, content packaging and SEO and identifying editorial opportunities based on audience data.”

Audience growth, in my view, relies on a three-part strategy:

Content strategy

Distribution strategy

Community strategy

The content strategy part includes:

Shaping stories. It’s helpful to think that every digital story starts with an audience of zero and it is our job as audience growth editors to find the right audience for that story.

Thinking audience-first in how people will find stories. That might mean commissioning a story that plays into a Pinterest trend, for example.

Guiding a broad offering of stories that appeal to large numbers of people

That includes evergreen content that delivers long-tail audiences

Shepherding in-depth, quality reporting that delights and keeps readers returning

Developing series to attract loyal readers

The distribution strategy part of the role includes:

SEO, social, email newsletter, and off-platform strategies

Working with product to ensure sites and platforms are optimised for search

The community strategy part includes:

Ensuring the brands host conversations and communities to keep people engaged and connected

And all of the above are underpinned with data.

What’s changed in the past year?

As this is my fourth year of teaching and updating my slides, it’s apparent that this year the social, audience and growth roles have shifted due to the Facebook algorithm change.

The move by Facebook to prioritise friend and family posts over those from news organisations and brands was announced in January. But Facebook traffic had been dropping for several months.

Data from Chartbeat (the first chart) and Parsely (the second chart) shows Facebook traffic declined throughout the previous year.

This algorithm change particularly hit VC-funded, ad-supported news startups including Mashable, Vice and Buzzfeed. But there have been positive stories for some publishers this year. Chartbeat noted in May that mobile direct traffic started to eclipse Facebook traffic, suggesting readers were going direct to sites rather than accessing via Facebook.

And social, audience and growth roles have shifted with the algorithms. The editors’ roles still include Facebook but there’s renewed focus on the following:

Search / SEO. You will have noted the rise in Google traffic in the charts above

Email newsletters, which offer direct relationships with audiences

Diverse and distributed traffic, including Flipboard, Pinterest, Upday, for example

What are news publishers looking for in entry level social journalism graduates?

In the final part if lesson 1, I take the students through the skills that publishers are looking for by going through job ads (such as this one, this one, this one, this one and this one. 

I see my teaching role as equipping the trainee journalists with those skills so they are employable on graduating from the MA in 9 months’ time.

[kayjay63]

‘Extra self-ample’: The changing (all but again) and an increasing number of anxious role of the CMO

‘Extra self-ample’: The changing (all but again) and an increasing number of anxious role of the CMO

Welcome to the lifetime of a CMO where the demands of the job seem to shift each quarter and are across more disparate aspects of their companies than ever before.  The post ‘Extra self-ample’: The changing (all but again) and an increasing number of anxious role of the CMO appeared first on Digiday…Be taught Extra

[aofirs]

Is Google adjusting the FLoC strategy? Friday’s daily brief

Is FLoC switching from cohorts to topics? With the rollout of FLoC delayed until 2023, there may be an indication that Google is adjusting how the privacy-focused ad-targeting system may work. “A lead engineer helping guide Google’s Privacy Sandbox development has revealed signs of what may be next for the firm’s most advanced cookieless ad targeting method. The potential update of the Federated Learning of Cohorts targeting technique detailed at a recent engineering research event would involve assigning topic categories to websites and people rather than assigning opaque numerical cohort IDs to them,” wrote Kate Kaye with Digiday. This may be a response to evidence that the previous method of FLoC (which did not pass muster with GDPR) might enable fingerprinting, which means bad actors could still track individuals — something FLoC is expressly created to prohibit. “Topics have a number of advantages over cohorts. Users can see what’s being said about them and understand it,” said Josh Karlin, a tech lead manager of Google’s Privacy Sandbox team in its Chrome browser division at an Internet Engineering Task Force meeting. “We are always exploring options for how to make the Privacy Sandbox proposals more private while still supporting the free and open web. Nothing has been decided yet,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Why we care. While Google is buying itself more time (testing for the latest version of FLoC ended July 13 and it’s taking feedback from the advertiser community into consideration too), this pivot could potentially be better for everyone involved. “Adopting a topic-based approach could give advertisers, ad-tech firms, website publishers, and people a clearer understanding of how ads are targeted through the technique,” said Kaye. The SEO Periodic Table: HTML success factors These elements encompass the HTML tags you should use to send clues to search engines about your content and enable that content to render quickly. Are you describing movie showtimes? Do you have ratings and reviews on your e-commerce pages? What’s the headline of the article you’ve published? In every case, there’s a way to communicate this with HTML. Search engines look for familiar formatting elements like Titles (Tt) and Headings (Hd) to determine what your page’s content is about, figuring that these cues to human readers will work just as well for them. But search engines also utilize particular fields like Schema (Sc) markup and Meta Descriptions (Ds) as clues to the meaning and purpose of the page. As Google has removed the AMP requirement, we’ve gotten rid of that element and added two new ones: Image ALT (ALT) and Content Shift (CLS). ALT text for images improves accessibility and image SEO. Screen readers use ALT text to help those with visual disabilities understand the images on the page. ALT text for images can also help with image search — surfacing your site in image search results. Content Shift (CLS) focuses on the elements of visual stability. Cumulative Layout Shift, which is part of the Core Web Vitals and overall page experience update, refers to unexpected changes in a page’s layout as it loads — it’s annoying for users at a minimum and can cause real damage depending on the severity of the shift and content of the page. Read more about the HTML success factors or download the whole SEO Periodic Table. Search Shorts: Get more GMB photos, remote working SEOs and automation advice Google My Business ‘Photo Updates’: A new way to get customer pics. Another solid local SEO piece by one of our faves, Claire Carlile. “It is now possible to add a photo update without leaving a review if you click… on ‘Add a photo update.’” Remote forever? Kelvin Newman asked his SEO and digital marketing Twitter followers if they were back in the office yet. Over 60% said no (with 19% saying they’d always been remote). Many replies and QTs expect that trend to stay for a while. Source: AOFIRS

[internetassociationaofirs]

Is Google adjusting the FLoC strategy? Friday’s daily brief

Is FLoC switching from cohorts to topics?

With the rollout of FLoC delayed until 2023, there may be an indication that Google is adjusting how the privacy-focused ad-targeting system may work.

“A lead engineer helping guide Google’s Privacy Sandbox development has revealed signs of what may be next for the firm’s most advanced cookieless ad targeting method. The potential update of the Federated Learning of Cohorts targeting technique detailed at a recent engineering research event would involve assigning topic categories to websites and people rather than assigning opaque numerical cohort IDs to them,” wrote Kate Kaye with Digiday.

This may be a response to evidence that the previous method of FLoC (which did not pass muster with GDPR) might enable fingerprinting, which means bad actors could still track individuals — something FLoC is expressly created to prohibit. “Topics have a number of advantages over cohorts. Users can see what’s being said about them and understand it,” said Josh Karlin, a tech lead manager of Google’s Privacy Sandbox team in its Chrome browser division at an Internet Engineering Task Force meeting.

“We are always exploring options for how to make the Privacy Sandbox proposals more private while still supporting the free and open web. Nothing has been decided yet,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

Why we care. While Google is buying itself more time (testing for the latest version of FLoC ended July 13 and it’s taking feedback from the advertiser community into consideration too), this pivot could potentially be better for everyone involved. “Adopting a topic-based approach could give advertisers, ad-tech firms, website publishers, and people a clearer understanding of how ads are targeted through the technique,” said Kaye.

The SEO Periodic Table: HTML success factors

These elements encompass the HTML tags you should use to send clues to search engines about your content and enable that content to render quickly. Are you describing movie showtimes? Do you have ratings and reviews on your e-commerce pages? What’s the headline of the article you’ve published? In every case, there’s a way to communicate this with HTML.

Search engines look for familiar formatting elements like Titles (Tt) and Headings (Hd) to determine what your page’s content is about, figuring that these cues to human readers will work just as well for them. But search engines also utilize particular fields like Schema (Sc) markup and Meta Descriptions (Ds) as clues to the meaning and purpose of the page.

As Google has removed the AMP requirement, we’ve gotten rid of that element and added two new ones: Image ALT (ALT) and Content Shift (CLS). ALT text for images improves accessibility and image SEO. Screen readers use ALT text to help those with visual disabilities understand the images on the page. ALT text for images can also help with image search — surfacing your site in image search results. Content Shift (CLS) focuses on the elements of visual stability.

Cumulative Layout Shift, which is part of the Core Web Vitals and overall page experience update, refers to unexpected changes in a page’s layout as it loads — it’s annoying for users at a minimum and can cause real damage depending on the severity of the shift and content of the page.

Read more about the HTML success factors or download the whole SEO Periodic Table.

Search Shorts: Get more GMB photos, remote working SEOs and automation advice

Google My Business ‘Photo Updates’: A new way to get customer pics. Another solid local SEO piece by one of our faves, Claire Carlile. “It is now possible to add a photo update without leaving a review if you click… on ‘Add a photo update.’”

Remote forever? Kelvin Newman asked his SEO and digital marketing Twitter followers if they were back in the office yet. Over 60% said no (with 19% saying they’d always been remote). Many replies and QTs expect that trend to stay for a while.

Source: AOFIRS

[dannygronerportfolio]

10 Things I’m Most Proud of From 2020

This year didn’t go the way any of us had expected, to say the least. As we turn the corner into a new year, there’s reason to be hopeful for a better year on the horizon. Slowly, we will regain more control over our individual lives, and I’m excited for the possibility,  in the coming months, of going outdoors without a mask on and greeting peers with something other than apprehension and fear.

Over the course of the year, I’ve been privileged to keep my job. The day-to-day work shifted a good deal, though. I’m sharing below some of the work I accomplished along the way that I’m most proud of from the year gone by.

With so much uncertainty abound, I sprang into action to assist job seekers - recent grads to senior-level executives - however I could to encourage them to refocus and reframe their searches. I have spoken to over 100 people directly, staying in touch regularly with dozens of them. I’m please that seven of them to my knowledge have secured good landing spots, and while I didn’t make the introductions for any of them, I know I offered some counsel and support that enabled them to get where they were going. I continue to provide assistance wherever possible.

I told stories from my perspective. I kicked off the year with an essay in Business Insider. In April, I spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the mental health component of quarantine living. This fall, I told Salon about how strange it is to eat lunch at the workplace right now. And last week I was on Marketplace discussing holiday gifts. In between, I talked about my professional journey, my religious life, my vision for the future of my industry, and my chosen neighborhood.

On February 27, when our HR team advised we prepare to be home for an extended period of time, I recognized that this pandemic would impact businesses unlike we’ve seen before. I got early-pandemic mentions of us in the New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, New York Post, and CNBC. By the Spring, when everyone was working from home, we continued to see coverage in places like Axios, CBS News, San Jose Mercury News, Business Insider, ABC News, and Yahoo Finance. Both TechCrunch and Inc. took notice this Summer as offices reopened. Then, this Fall and into the Winter, the emphasis turned to what Covid-19 will mean for the future of office spaces, and Recode, The Real Deal, Fast Company, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal all followed. It’s a still unfolding story as we head into 2021.

In addition to telling the future-of-real-estate story, I spotted several chances to tell more innovative stories about how the pandemic was shifting our regular course of action. Colleagues were quoted about moving back in with their parents in publications like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times (x2), Protocol, and New York Post (x2). They also spoke candidly with the Times, The Washington Post (x2), Marketplace, Apartment Therapy, and Bisnow about everything from their evolving priorities to their home work setups.

During a May full team hackathon, I saw a project that I suspected would earn us some press: an office algorithm that would replicate the serendipity we all largely associate with offices. Our approach to tackling this new problem with a new-age solution led to coverage in Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC (x2), The Wall Street Journal, Digiday, Protocol, and Built In. This is a prime example, in my opinion, of how PRs can find better angles from being embedded into teams than on the outside looking in on a business.

In conversations with colleagues this past Summer, we realized that you can manage your ecosystem at home and your company can establish guidelines for the environment at work, but the ‘in-between’ spaces present issues. For example, the subway. Nowhere more in an office building is more affected by this shift in thinking than the elevators. So we pitched around that discomfort and uncertainty and secured coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, New York Business Journal, Protocol, HRReporter, and Dallas Business Journal.

I was asked this year to help some partners in an advisory role to get them thinking about Growth PR. I found one of them some creative opportunities in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, AdAge, Yahoo Finance, Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, and the San Francisco Chronicle. For the other, I helped get them into CNN, Recode, Curbed, Marketplace, PopSugar, and Delish. This assistance helped me see how far I can extend my view and my reach.

Company culture with WFH has been a hot topic this year, and all companies had the chance to get cited for their hard work to keep everyone active and engaged amid a different outlook. We saw coverage in this regard from Harvard Business Review (x2), Bloomberg, the Huffington Post, Bisnow, and Built In. Before the pandemic hit the U.S., we had had one-off pieces about our company book club and the evolving role of the Chief People Officer.

Outside of this executive sets of spokespeople, we chimed in a fair number of times this year about the way that businesses are changing the way they do things at the granular level. HubSpot, Crunchbase, The Muse, CMS Wire, and Business.com all featured colleagues shedding some light on how SquareFoot is thinking about both sales operations and career development in the modern era of real estate.

And, lastly, I worked closely with our CEO this year on a series of guest posts with original angles. Most prominently, he shared his thoughts this Fall about why CEOs like him need to stop pressuring employees about productivity during a pandemic. We employed the guest-posting strategy to get in front of new audiences in spots like The Next Web, Benefits Pro, Social Media Explorer, Human Resources Director, AllWork, JaxEnter, and CSQ magazine. We also placed guest posts to introduce a new market (LA) for the company and to welcome a new executive to our team.

(Here’s a link to the 2019 list.)

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How Are People Using Instagram Reels

In over 50 countries Instagram launched its TikTok clone Instagram Reels and the number doesn't count the US out. All the updates that took place on Instagram, reels caught the attention for it was supposedly brought against the short video monopoly holder TikTok. Not legally though but TikTok was the dominator in the short video domain until it’s ban lately. In the first quarter and in a part of the second quarter too, you must have been drawing your TikTok strategies which came to an abrupt end after the app went on to plummet down deep on the rank chart. 

Source: TechCrunch

However, before it could have been long enough, Instagram showed up with its produced cousin of TikTok (Reels) that made up for the void. Brands who were established on Instagram did well with Reels too right in time. People and brands shifted to Instagram Reel in no time. Below are the few things that came across on Reels well with the audience and worked both for companies and for influencers. 

Before we go ahead with that, a short introduction about Reels is that it is a platform that creates 15 sec long videos making short audio clips possible to be attached with it and the platform lets it users binge on to a ton of short videos, like, comment and interact with the favorite influencer.

Source: Digiday

Reusing TikToks It wasn’t easy to come up with fresh content for reels overnight. So what people did was to repost their old popular TikTok on the Instagram Reels and that too gave them a great deal of traction! That not only got the old audience identifying them on Reels but also caught the attention of some new pair of eyes.

New Challenge Online challenges catch fire like in the jungle and take months to end. Challenges hold immense potential to go viral and people used that to their benefit to declare that they shifted or are now also found on Reels. That’s an intelligent move that many made.

Souce : Time Magazine

Collaboration with Influencers It has worked before and so it did with Reels as well. When doing something new (in this case launching your brand name on Reel), it’s important to be more discoverable on social media. That is what influencers helped many people with.

Teasers People and brands who used TikTok to promote long detailed content used Reels to release teasers of their videos. Netflix made the best use of it. They released short clippings that generated curiosity in the audience for the content the brand wanted to promote. And despite their ads running already on different platforms, being on Reels made the traction better only.

Takeaway What does that tell us about the new platform? That it’s less about the platform and more about the content in this case. TikTok had no USP that couldn’t have been beaten. Instagram Reels landed right in time after the ban and took away all the attention that TikTok used to get before. It takes a while to re-establish, but that time is worth the results reaped. And you are also likely to get more followers as something that has become the talk of the town will for sure attract a new audience.

[kayjay63]

Esports orgs are constructing non-male teams to entice fresh advertising and marketing deals

Esports orgs are constructing non-male teams to entice fresh advertising and marketing deals

As women folk turn out to be extra and extra prominent in esports, producers are taking thought of the teams that are handiest taking earnings of this demographic shift. The post Esports orgs are constructing non-male teams to entice fresh advertising and marketing deals appeared first on Digiday…Learn Extra

[viditure]

Paywall strategies for the media – understanding your audience behaviour

As the online publishing world continues to evolve at an exponential rate, deciding which strategy to adopt for monetising your site is key to staying ahead of the game. Get up to speed on your paywall strategies and go a step further by downloading our Media Guide. Article originally published on 22nd May, 2019

Following the release of our digital analytics guide for the media industry, we are running a series of offshoot articles that focus on specific challenges in today’s rapidly evolving online publishing world. If you haven’t read them already, please check out our blogs on working with ad blockers and optimising your audience retention strategy. In the third instalment, we delve into the challenges faced by media publishers when they try to monetise their content via the use of paywalls.

Part 3: creating a paywall strategy

Consumers have enjoyed access to free online newspapers and magazines since the birth of the internet. However, over the last few years, an increasing number of online media publications have been shifting away from advertising-funded journalism and are charging for their content – and more people are ready to pay for what they read online. In this blog, we look at different approaches toward subscription and paywalls and how AT Internet can help you to optimise audience interaction with your online publications.

What is a paywall?

Paywalls are systems that prevent online users from accessing specific website content unless the user pays a fee. They can restrict access to a specific site, story or publication and there are varying levels of restriction.

Soft paywalls such as metered access provide readers with a number of free articles before asking them to become a member and subscribe in order to access more content. By adopting data walls, businesses can collect more detailed information about their audiences and develop their customer profiles. This personalises the reader experience as it shows them the type of content they can find on a site and whether it’s valuable for them. The effectiveness of metered paywalls has been repeatedly called into question.  ‘Metered’ business models can be off putting for readers who have a limitless range of other media sources at their disposal. They also cause user churn as they “reward future traffic rather than the authority and prestige that come from years of honest, serious reporting.”

The Telegraph abandoned its metered paywall for a freemium model in 2016 as it was impossible to differentiate between subscribers and those who were reading a story for free. They were therefore unable to target their content appropriately and were failing to retain their audience. They now run a payment system where free and premium coexist to fuel the subscription part of the business.

Nevertheless, metered paywalls can be effective revenue models. The New York Times reportedly spent $40 million over 14 months to build the infrastructure required to collect necessary data and present their readers with a metered paywall. Although it involved a large investment and significant marketing budget, the online publication reached 4.3 million subscribers at the end of 2018 and this continues to expand. COO Meredith Levien stated their main focus was the “breadth of reporting” and the goal was to improve their overall value by adding journalists and extending their product range.

Freemium content paywalls restrict access to select “premium” articles, while the reader can view all the available free articles. By subscribing, the reader pays a recurring monthly amount for unlimited access to all of the website’s content. Freemium allows content providers to maintain their advertising revenue while boosting conversion and retaining the most volatile readers. Although they can enhance audience loyalty to a particular website, they can lead consumers to change their habits and switch to alternative news sources, search for loopholes or other creative workarounds.

The Guardian operates a freemium model where visitors can access certain articles for free but have to view adverts. If they subscribe to the daily edition, the ads are removed, and the user can access premium articles. The publication also runs a support message at the bottom of each article – where it politely requests that users pay a monthly fee that will allow them to continue producing free articles. Online publisher Digiday has taken freemium paywalls a step further – as well as offering premium research articles, they provide their members with exclusive site access and a copy of their print and digital magazine.

Hard paywalls typically only display an article title and a few paragraphs before demanding that the reader pay. They are becoming increasingly common, particularly among professional and financial ‘niche’ publications. Although renowned for causing a sudden ‘drop off’ in the digital audience in the short term, they can be effective over the longer term – subscriptions have the effect of aligning a content provider’s goals with that of their readers. Creating accounts increases the connected user base and generates a higher average income per user.

The Times (London) introduced a hard paywall in 2010 and reportedly saw a 90% dip in visitors. It has since managed to recover a large proportion of its lost audience over time and through the quality of its reporting and reputation. It now boasts well over half a million daily readers and hails the success of its paywall strategy. Despite experimenting with alternative methods of gaining revenue from its online media, The Times is resolute in keeping its hard paywall. According to Digital Director Alan Hunter. “The [online audience] goes elsewhere to read news to be informed, but they come to us to get well informed. They can go deeper beyond the story to find out what’s really going on.”

The Financial Times will not allow readers to see anything other than the title and subheading of their articles and they have to choose from a range of subscription fees. However, their paywall model has worked as its 900,000 digital subscribers represent two-thirds of its total revenue (overtaking income from advertising). CEO John Ridding commented that “A lot of the industry was too quick to dismiss the ability to charge for content. If you have something that differentiates you, something that makes you special — it could be a brand identity, it could be a columnist, it could be a sector of coverage — you have the ability to charge.” The FT defends hard paywalls by saying that it wants to “achieve the habit in digital that people used to have in print” – and that metered models are counter-productive as they “ration” content.

Dynamic paywalls – the solution to monetising your online content

Dynamic paywalls address readers by customizing content and targeting users according to their level of commitment. With personalized segments, publishers can reach readers based on their specific profile. By collecting, interpreting and actioning data around each individual reader’s online behaviour, it’s possible to assess their likelihood to subscribe.

The Wall Street Journal implemented a dynamic paywall in 2018 based on a propensity score. It measures more than 60 signals such as whether the reader is visiting for the first time, the operating system they’re using, the device they’re reading on, what they chose to click on, and their location etc. They then used machine learning to create a flexible paywall that provides the user with precise targeted content and payment options. It has since introduced a new comments strategy that seems to be paying off – it has reduced the number of articles open for comments and put them all behind a paywall. This has resulted in a better quality of comments (from subscribers only), follow-up storied based on top comments and crucially, better Customer Lifetime Value.

Poool is a French startup specialising in intelligent paywall solutions. Founded in 2015 and an AT Internet partner, the company has brought a fresh approach to the paywall market. AT Internet’s digital analytics data can be combined with Poool’s paywalls to help you understand audience behaviour, identify key segments, determine the most effective paywall scenarios, and measure KPIs.

Read on to find out more about how you can benefit from advanced web analytics and dynamic paywalls with AT Internet and Poool.

Digital analytics: the key to understanding and segmenting your audience

When deciding which types of content and how much should go behind a paywall, it is important to understand your audience’s behaviour – and what drives them to purchase an article or subscribe to a site. By using digital analytics data, it is possible to segment your non-subscribers and offer them customised paywall options.

Reader visitors can essentially be grouped into three types:

‘Fly-by’ are one-off visitors that have viewed less than three pages on your site and are yet to engage with your brand. Allowing them to access your content for free, e.g. with a metered approach with complementary articles is a way you could convert them into occasional or regular visitors.

‘Occasionals’ are those that know your brand but don’t regularly consume your content. Depending on your site, one approach is to ask them to sign up for a free account to continue reading your articles.

More regular and loyal visitors are known as ‘regulars’ and they access your content on a frequent basis – they often already have an account. Using their data is useful to analysing what type and how much content they consume and set out a ‘pay-per-article’ approach or personalised paid subscription offer.

The profile of a likely subscriber can be summarised as follows:

Reads 5+ articles a month

Subscribes to a newsletter or has provided their email address

Follows your brand on social media

Lives in your market area and reads local news

Reads multiple categories of content

Accesses your content across multiple devices

Quality digital analytics can also give insights into visitor interactions, their multi-device usage, and frequency of visits, etc. It can give you more information on the categories of pages and types of articles viewed on a site – and help you to assess if your paywall is effective across your full range of articles, e.g. news, sport, or just one type.

Poool

Founded in 2015, Poool specialises in the implementation of intelligent paywalls for its customers to optimise revenue from access to online content.

The company’s mission is simple: to encourage teams to regain control of their paywall strategy. Then to enable them to rapidly test and optimise their approach, whether it’s for acquisition, engagement or monetisation.

Poool allows publishers to set up specific rules to access content and charge for it, depending on the profile of each reader. By being able to control content access rules, marketing teams can offer audiences more relevant experiences and by working on each lever, average revenue per user can be optimised – for subscriptions, ad impressions, one-off payments, or data collection.

The solution is highly accessible and adaptable according to customer needs. It is scalable and is implemented gradually via a ‘test and learn’ approach.

AT Internet’s digital analytics data can be combined with Poool’s paywall solution to help you understand audience behaviour, identify key segments, determine the most effective paywall scenarios, and measure KPIs.

Case study – Poool in partnership with Boursier.com

Boursier.com is French online publication that specialises in economic and financial news. The site had been operating with a freemium paywall model, reserving premium content for its subscribers, and were looking to optimise the way it interacted with its audience. Boursier.com’s main market advantage is its expert content that has a strong appeal to its audience. In terms of its monetisation process, it asked users to register on the site to become a ‘member’ before giving them subscription options.

By working with Poool, they developed a strategy to take advantage of their open content to boost the membership base. It also aimed to avoid any impact on the number of viewed pages which could disrupt the guaranteed advertising revenues.

After 3 months of testing, the results were highly positive and led Boursier.com to deploy Poool on 50%, and then 75% of the audience consuming free content. Their objective is to continue to increase account creation as well as developing new ideas: optimization of advertising revenues, anti-ad block monetization, and the differentiation of routes according to devices. With Poool, Boursier.com has increased its membership base by 25%.

Paywall trends

The perception of paywalls has changed significantly over the last few years. Back in 2015, many publishers were convinced that consumers were unlikely to ever pay for online content and were increasingly blocking ads. Fast forward to 2019, and all signals point to a future where considerably less revenue will come from advertising and the ad business model will be supplanted by subscription-based paid content. The editor of the Spectator went as far as to say “Paywalls are the only future for journalism: if the quality of writing is good enough, then people will pay”.

With more and more advertising revenue going to the tech giants who can offer advertisers unduplicated reach, targeted ads and low overheads, an increasing number of publishing companies have launched digital subscription models – including the New York Magazine, Bloomberg Media, The Atlantic and the Condé Nast magazines Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Wired.

This has also come about through a shift in the audience approach to consuming paid content – primarily thanks to subscription models on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Spotify. A recent Deloitte study predicted that by the end of 2020, revenue from subscription will be on an even par with advertising for digital publishers – as recently as 2012, revenue from ads covered about 90% of the market. These days audiences are not necessarily opposed to paying for the media they consume – they are often looking for accessible, reliable, centralised and credible content – with an eye on supporting local news and journalism.

There are also a range of other factors that have caused a shift in reader behaviour – the numerous fake news scandals that have called into question the trustworthiness of major social media platforms, and the overwhelming dominance of the tech giants in the digital advertising market. Audiences are increasingly inclined to pay for quality reporting from a source they are familiar with and trust. This has inevitably fuelled the growth of subscription paywall and premium offer financial models.

By using AT Internet’s digital analytics combined with Poool’s dynamic paywall solution, you can create an online ecosystem that’s as open and efficient as possible and implement the most effective monetisation strategies. 

If you’d like to learn more about orienting your paywall strategy, don’t hesitate to download our new comprehensive e-guide – “Winning the data game – Digital analytics tactics for media groups”.

Article Paywall strategies for the media – understanding your audience behaviour first appeared on Digital Analytics Blog.

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From reach to stress-tests: 10 ways advertisers are shifting strategies in a unique upfront season via Digiday