Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Cookie-based ad targeting that doesn’t work in a mobile-dominant world is being replaced by people-based advertising. The Washington Post is trying to get ahead of the trend with a new ad product, FeedBuilder, that creates multiple versions of an ad and then contextually targets them to people based on what they’re reading. The tech favors…
This is an excerpt of a talk that I gave at the CMO Network in England on February 25, 2019.The marketing industry had so many expectations of the digital world. For example, everything would be real, measured, and trackable. But so many of those expectations turned out to be wrong. In short, much of what…
Photo: Moises Saman/Magnum Photos There’s a famous Ursula K. Le Guin short story called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” about a fantasy city called Omelas, a joyous metropolis without guilt or violence, populated by “mature, intelligent, passionate” people who celebrate beautiful festivals and shop at (duh) a “magnificent Farmer’s Market.” Le Guin is…
Facebook Inc. has spent the better part of a year telling its users, Congress and the readers of this paper that we’re in charge of our personal data and the ads we see. The network has streamlined its privacy settings, shared more details about how data is used and highlighted how its ad controls work. If we take advantage of all these privacy controls, it shouldn’t still feel as…
As a number of major brands, including Disney, Nestle, McDonald’s, AT&T and Epic Games, are pulling their ads from YouTube due to its latest brand-safety “crisis,” media buyers are largely reacting with a collective shrug. In a poll conducted by Digiday Research on Thursday, Feb. 21, only 14 percent of 100 buyers said they expect…
“Data is the new oil” is one of those deceptively simple mantras for the modern world. Whether in The New York Times, The Economist, or WIRED, the wildcatting nature of oil exploration, plus the extractive exploitation of a trapped asset, seems like an apt metaphor for the boom in monetized data. Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm)…
[if (mso)|(IE)]> [if (mso)|(IE)]> It’s me again — Mr. Sunshine — with more wretched news about the rotting carcass of our once adequate industry. 1. Digital GangstersWe begin in Jolly Ol’ England where a committee of Parliament denounced Facebook and its leadership as “digital gangsters.” According to The New York Times… “…After 18 months investigating Facebook and…
Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP You know who got a hefty pay increase between 2017 and 2018? The banks! According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s 2018 Q4 report, more than 5,400 federally insured banks made $236.7 billion in profits last year, and saw a $72.4 billion increase in profits from 2017. Per the Hill, $28.8…
Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is…
Image: Pinterest The anti-vaccination movement has become so widespread that the World Health Organization added it to its list of the top threats to global health in 2019. Social media companies are drawing criticism for not doing more to prevent the spread of misinformation about vaccines and Pinterest has come up with a novel solution:…