Tag Archives: Business and Economy

September 8, 2016 · 11:55 am

Why Apple Improving Privacy Has Marketers Upset

Apple announced a bunch of new stuff yesterday including the release date of the newest version of their mobile operating system, iOS10. You can read about all of the enhancements here (or just about any other place on the interweb) but one thing you probably won’t hear about piqued my interest because it gets to the question with respect to ad blocking that we’ve pondered before here on the screed.

First, a little tech talk. Apple has something called IDFA – Identifier For Advertising – that they use instead of a simple UDID (your device ID) or a cookie (which don’t work well in the mobile space). It’s used to track you, serve you ads, and also for privacy controls. What they’re doing in iOS10 will change how the IDFA behaves. When you opt in to limit ad tracking, the IDFA will return a string of zeros, effectively opting the user out of advertising. It will also prevent the previously permitted “frequency capping, attribution, conversion events, estimating the number of unique users, advertising fraud detection, and debugging” uses of this ID.

Needless to say, many in the ad world are very unhappy. “Ad blocking is stealing” according to the IAB. Pretty harsh, but I get that it’s a reflection of the disruption in the attention/value equation that underpins much of digital commerce. Here is the thing, though. Other media, many of which were built on the same equation, suffer from ad blocking and yet have figured out other business models. One blocks ads on TV either by watching on a delayed basis and skipping through the ads or by changing the channel until the program returns. Way back in the ’70’s, my fellow TV execs cringed at the thought of VCR‘s and felt they would irreparably harm the business. That thinking was repeated when DVR‘s (now at over 70% penetration) came out. Both lines of thinking were wrong.

The same is true of radio. No one is thinking about removing the buttons from your car that make it easy to change channels, nor is anyone thinking taking away your TV remotes would be a good thing. Ad blocking in print is as easy as turning the page. There is research that found people only fast-forward through about half of all ads during playback, and other research has found that even fast-forwarded ads make an impression on viewers. Even so, the business model for TV has changed a lot, and “ad blocking” was part of the impetus for that.

Maybe instead of worrying about Apple (or consumers, for that matter) doing what they can both to improve the web and mobile experience and to protect privacy, those of us involved in the digital marketing ecosystem need to keep refining our business models and whine a lot less? What do you think?

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Filed under digital media, Reality checks

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September 6, 2016 · 11:32 am

What I Learned From My Week Away

I’m back! After a week away from the screed, I’ve returned to this space refreshed and ready. You might wonder how a week of not writing could be helpful to my writing. Ask anyone who writes regularly and they’ll tell you that writing’s like a muscle: if you don’t exercise it regularly it will atrophy. I have a bit of an issue with that and the reason why is something that might help any of us who are in business.

Sagittal human brain with cortical regions del...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Writing is a habit. We all know that there are good habits and bad ones, but all of us have them. We might think of them as our daily routine and many of them we do without really thinking. If you’ve ever been driving a route you travel on a daily basis and gotten to your destination without remembering much about the trip, you know what I mean. As an article about a wonderful book called “The Power Of Habit” I read a few years ago said:

Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories, and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into a sleep mode of sorts.

I broke my writing habit for a week because I felt as if I had gone into that sleep mode. There have been a few times recently when I began a post only to realize that I’d written something similar a few years earlier. My brain was actually working less. I’m willing to bet that either you or people within your organization are behaving in exactly the same manner. They are following the same daily routine in how they perform their jobs. Maybe they’re doing the equivalent of what I found myself doing – rewriting the same things over and over without really thinking or maybe just doing their jobs they way they’d always done them.

So here is what I learned. I am going to post a bit less often with an eye toward not having the screed be a habit. Rather than getting up each day and spending time reading news feeds in order to do my habitual writing duty I’m going to focus on finding fewer topics that resonate more with me and, hopefully, with you. Maybe that’s something you can think about with respect to you or your business: do less and in so doing, do more. Make it less about quantity and more about quality. After all, those of you who read this are my customers (and hopefully on the road to being clients!). Fulfilling my habit might have just been cluttering up your inboxes or taking a couple of minutes of your time without offering real value. That was a bad habit. What are yours?

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Filed under Consulting, Thinking Aloud

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August 26, 2016 · 8:51 am

Meaningless Marketing

This Foodie Friday I want to talk about something I call “meaningless marketing” in the food industry although I think you’ll see that the principle behind the term holds true in any industry. Meaningless marketing is the use of words that really have no meaning. More importantly, in some cases, the words are used specifically because they might trick consumers into thinking they’re saying one thing when, in fact, they’re not.

Let’s use the term “natural” in the food business. One might read it on a package or a menu and think “this food is wholesome, healthy, and unadulterated.” Unlike many terms in marketing, “natural” isn’t regulated so in actuality the food in question can have artificial ingredients, preservatives, pesticides, and be made from GMOs. Not quite what the consumer is thinking, but exactly what the purveyor is hoping they will.

“Natural” isn’t the only meaningless phrase used in food marketing. “Delicious”, “Made With Whole Grains“, “A Good Source Of Fiber (or anything else)”, and “Low Sugar” or “Lightly Sweetened” are all other examples. As you might expect, I have issues with any form of deceptive marketing but I think when it’s done to induced people to consume unhealthy foods while the consumer thinks otherwise is pretty low.

The truth is that there is no “meaningless marketing.” It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. People see and hear things and act accordingly. I realize that there is a responsibility on the consumer’s part to read the labels or to garner information from other sources, but if companies aren’t honest about that labeling, thereby making the consumer’s research more difficult, how can any of us call ourselves a consumer-friendly brand that acts in the customer’s best interest?

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Filed under food, Huh?

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