Should we be worried about artificial intelligence?

These days, technology helps in ways I didn't even think I needed help. For example, when I step out of my apartment, my phone automatically shows me the weather, what time the next train will arrive, what the score is in my favorite team's game, and reminds me that a package has arrived from Amazon. Amazing efficiency - but can it be too much?

There are some people who believe that Artificial Intelligence - not far from what Google does for us today - could ultimately spin out of control. These worriers aren't just old-fashioned people, but include some of the most respected technological minds - such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates. This week, Gates voiced his fears in an interview and reported on by the Daily Mail...

‘First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well... A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.’

Bill Gates thinks we should be concerned about Artificial Intelligence

Although its tough to picture exactly how things could go awry, there are many possibilities. One such possibility, which also demonstrates that AI could get dangerous even if computers aren't deliberately trying to hard us, is from Philosophical Disquisitions....

THE DANGERS OF AI

'Suppose that the programmers decide that the AI should pursue the final goal of “making people smile”.

'To human beings, this might seem perfectly benevolent. Thanks to their natural biases and filters, they might imagine an AI telling us funny jokes or otherwise making us laugh.

'But there are other ways of making people smile, some of which are not-so benevolent. You could make everyone smile by paralsying their facial musculature so that it is permanently frozen in a beaming smile.

'Such a method might seem perverse to us, but not to an AI. It may decide that coming up with funny jokes was a laborious and inefficient way of making people smile. Facial paralysis is much more efficient.'

Source: Philosophical Disquisitions

Have the Machines Won? How Digital Assistants Will Affects Digital Marketing to 1 Billion + Mobile Users

Christian Lowe Blog Post 2 - 01/29/2015 "The world is home to more than a billion smartphone users.1 Internet platforms are bringing those billion people together to share ideas and cocreate millions of apps that entertain us, simplify our daily tasks, and nudge us toward healthier living. Through mobile devices—and soon, sensors and the Internet of Things—the crowd is becoming personal." With over 1 Bn mobile users currently and the advancements made in sourcing customer specific data on individual preferences, buying behaviors, etc. digital marketing is becoming much more tailored to the individual. There are expectations that further technological innovations will enhance the capacity that marketers have to reach individuals with tailored messaging in real-time to the individuals. While there is much apprehension currently ammong the general consumer about companies knowing too much about them, most people should, in time, find the immense benefits that tools like mobile assistants can have in enhancing individuals' lives through improving efficiencies, predicting needs and providing promotional opportunities otherwise not available. Research has concluded that those areas of our brains that compel us to buy products will also push us to begin offloading mundane decision making to digital assistants, which will make decisions for us based on a pre-defined set of filters (i.e. spending limits, demographic and psychographic details, monthly needs, etc.). These digital assistants will act like a human assistant would in that they would handle a lot of the tasks that we may not have time for (i.e. grocery shopping, back-to-school shopping, ordering office supplies) or do not feel inclined to waste our time doing. These digital assistants will employ complex algorithms that will predict our individual needs and respond accordingly. While this may scare people to invest so much trust into an app, especially with security breaches, in time, I believe that people will come to accept these digital assistants as much as they would with an actual human assistant, only that the digital assistant probably can be trusted more than an individual person who can forget to do things for you or is limited in his/her capacity to scour the internet for the best deals for you possible. It will be an interesting technological development as well as a development between the individual interacts with the digital market. As such, this will provide a wealth of opportunities for digital marketers to not just target people but to figure out the right messaging that would be accepted by these digital assistants as something that would be beneficial to individual. Promotional responses should become much more mathematical and therefore predictable if digital marketers are able to successfully crack how to reach these digital assistants in the near future. Should be very interesting how the industry develops! "Within the next two years, autonomous mobile assistant purchasing will reach $2 billion annually. That means about 2.5% of mobile users will trust their digital assistants with $50 per year. Digital assistants will be on multiple platforms; however, mobile will be the most accessible, adopted device for digital assistants and will be the “killer application” by the end of 2016." Good articles that discuss how customers are shopping and their expectations for mobile applications going forward: http://gartnernews.com/digital-assistants-go-shopping/ http://dupress.com/articles/personalizing-customer-experiences-analytics/

More Content Marketing

http://www.business2community.com/infographics/8-content-marketing-trends-watch-2015-infographic-01139640

I am piggybacking on AungMaw's post re: content marketing. I think it's fair to say most of us have become adept at avoiding/ignoring most types of advertisements. Traditional marketing techniques have become less relevant by the day and the importance of creating content that is valued by customers continues to grow more important with many marketing professionals claiming that 2015 will be the year of content marketing.

It's easy to see how this type of marketing can grab a customer. I think this raises the question, "How does this affect the cost of client acquisition?" Not all content marketing can be as clever as the campaign AungMaw cited. Large corporations will be spending great sums of money on writers and creative personnel to produce this product. The conversion from lead, to customer, to upsell may not be cheaper when we consider the costs associated with this type of marketing. Firms may gain new customers, but the increased cost structure may leave the bottom line flat.

A Case Study of Virality

About 10 days ago, a user called "mylifesuxnow" posted on Reddit about how he caught his wife cheating on him. He then proceeded to send updates to Reddit throughout the weekend as his scheme to collect proof developed. It involved private investigators, more cheating women, and the story went on. I personally believe it was fake but it did not matter. Reddit ate it all up as a juicy story full of twists and lies. By the end of the second day of updates, the story received almost 1 million unique views.

Now, my blog post is less about how real or well-written the story is and more about how the internet has changed the way information spreads. A completely anonymous person with just a free weekend and a laptop could have pulled this off with $0 budget. The beauty of virality is that the dollar spend and audience engagement are not necessarily correlated. But of course, the variance of success is much larger and you cannot easily procure virality. The very nature of it requires content going viral to be genuine. Some companies have attempted to game virality through procurement. In the name of learning, enjoy this somewhat successful virality stunt by Nissan:

Once you do achieve the viral status though, you can begin monetizing it. In the case of mylifesuxnow from Reddit, other people jumped right at the opportunity. Some started making movie posters based on his story and put it on sale for $5 a piece. Others turned the story into an eBook for sale. One made a website called www.mylifesuxnow.com after the original posts were deleted, presumably due to legality/maximum drama reasons. The site apparently received 260k visits in the past five days and the domain is now on sale to the highest bidder.

Make engaging content and count on the internet to make it spread. Quality trumps dollar spend in this age.

Snapchat Launches Discover

Snapchat isn't just for silly videos and photos anymore. They have officially launched Discover, a new way for media companies to publish content for Snapchat users. Discover will allow Snapchatters to access special content which will only be available for a limited amount of time, keeping in line with the app's general theme. Currently, content is available from media outlets like ESPN, National Geographic, People, and Cosmopolitan and features interactive articles and photos designed specifically for the app.

Snapchat Discover Media Platform

This is the first time outside media creators have been able to post content to the app, but it is not Snapchat's first attempt at monetizing its service. Already companies have begun to leverage the popularity of Snapchat by posting advertisements as "snaps" to users' apps alongside other user generated content.

It will be some time before we see whether Snapchat's new move is a win, but for the time being, it is one more digital door allowing media companies to deliver content (and thus market to) users.

Is the Superbowl the Next Christmas?

Christmas has outgrown the month of December and has consumed Thanksgiving with Christmas decorations starting to go up as soon as Halloween is over. Just like Christmas, the Superbowl is growing past the 3 hours on that last Sunday of the season. It started with ESPN and 24/7 access during the 2 weeks leading up to the game and now with us being connected 24/7 it is evolving into a month long, multi-channel experience.

According to Google people start searching for Superbowl related content way in advance of the game and that trend has grown rapidly in the last few years.

People are searching for everything from ads and highlights, to good recipes. So from an advertisement standpoint it isn't enough to create a funny 1 minute commercial anymore. One needs to craft an experience around the game that starts well before the kickoff and can be consumed in more ways than just the television set. Companies need to tease content ahead of time like Budweiser did last year and package related content together that their customers will be interested in. Like the perfect wings recipe to along with that ice cold Pepsi.

So while the game is guaranteed to excite this season with 2 pre-season favorites going head to head this week, it will be just as exciting to see which companies takes the Superbowl experience to the next level.

And now for the best Superbowl ad of all time... feel free to comment with your pick:

Source: goo.gl/BXW5aQ

Order your Beer/Wine/Alcohol Online.......(if you live in SF or LA...and then it still depends)

Hey folks, I came across this start-up while listening to Bloomberg radio and couldn't catch the name, so I watched it afterwards on Bloomberg.com (mm...mmm...does that kool-aid taste delish.)

Basically, the "Saucey" app allows you to order drinks from retailers online in a few neighborhoods in LA and SF and are expanding block by block.  In the process they collect a vig for being the intermediary.  

The interesting digital marketing aspect of Saucey is apparently some of the partnerships they are working on to allow consumers to better engage with brands like Budweiser.  Apparently, they plan to offer technology that allows a consumer to click on a display ad and order six-pack from the closest retailer, right from the cozy confines of their own home.

So, in the spirit of objective, empirical digital marketing research, I downloaded their app (available both on IOS and Android.)  Seemed a little slow, and based on my GPS position, I got blocked from trying to order some lovely "Liquid Sunshine" aka Whiskey.  

Otherwise, the reviews are mixed (primarily due to the lack of coverage, even within the city-limits), but the presentation is there.  Looking forward to the NY/NJ rollout.  Check out the interview below:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-01-27/saucey-the-business-of-liquor-delivery

GoodGoogle? No, BadGoogle

To paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous quote on democracy: Cost per Click (CPC) is the worst form of advertising, except for all of the others that have been tried.

CPC is a beautiful concept- instead of merely paying for impressions (as in the traditional CPM model), advertisers are paying for performance based on how many times people click on their ads. Advertisers can easily track campaign performance, optimize on the fly, and sleep soundly knowing that they won't exceed their marketing budget.

However, anytime there is a great idea worth billions of dollars, unscrupulous types will try to game the system. In the CPC market, the leading form of misconduct is known as click fraud.

One recent example of click fraud involves GoodGoogle, a hacker (or group of hackers) based in Russia who trolls online forums offering to make competitors' Google ads disappear. GoodGoogle achieves this by using a botnet (computers that have been hjacked to repeatedly perform simple actions, like clicking an ad), as well as advanced algorithms to enable the individual bots to fly under Google's anti-fraud radar.

GoodGoogle directs the bots at advertisements targeted by its client, repeatedly clicking on the ads. With Google AdWords, an advertiser specifies how much it will pay per click for a given keyword, as well as a total budget. Once that advertiser's budget is met, Google will begin displaying ads from the second highest-bidder. Hence, by rapidly exhausting the #1 bidder's AdWords budget, the #2 bidder can gain the top spot while paying a lower price.

Even after paying GoodGoogle its fee (in the form of BitCoin or other cryptocurrencies), a shady advertiser can lower their overall campaign cost with these tactics. It's a fair assumption that a number of people have done this, since the service has been around since 2011.

At the time of writing,it is unclear whether GoodGoogle still exists (the reference article is from ~six months ago)- but if it does, I can't imagine it will exist much longer. GoodGoogle has several Gmail addresses linked, and even advertised its services on YouTube, so Google should be able to identify and pursue the perpetrator(s). Further, the onus is on Google to preserve the integrity of the AdWords platform- if advertisers don't trust that the clicks they are paying for are legitimate, the CPC model will collapse.


Sources: http://pando.com/2014/07/25/meet-the-russian-hacker-that-helps-advertisers-defraud-their-adwords-competitors/

http://www.google.com/ads/adtrafficquality/

Wait, there's also a game this Sunday?

As an avid (some would say fanatical) football fan, Sunday afternoons from August to the first week of February are sacred. They are reserved for friends, camaraderie, beer and food as my friends and I visit a multitude of watering holes to fill our football craving. However, as this Sunday approaches, this Sunday is not like other Sundays through the Fall, as this one is "Super". 

Superbowl Sunday has reached epic status in terms of the two-week build-up to what will undoubtedly be the most watch television program of the year. This year, as Russell Wilson and the Seahawks and Tom Brady and the Patriots battle it out on the field to see who can crown themselves champions of the National Football League, there will be an equal amount of competition off the field. Despite the magnitude of the game itself, there will be many more people paying attention to the TV during the stoppages of play, as companies try to battle each other with their Superbowl ads. The commercials that air on Superbowl Sunday are just as big, if not a bigger event than the game itself. The cost of just a 30 second ad costs millions of dollars ($4.5M to be exact) and can catapult an unknown company from obscurity to mainstream. 

As Laura O'Rielly hi-lights in her article for Business Insider entitled "Here Is Everything We Know About The 2015 Super Bowl Ads" , you have the usual players just as Budweiser and Doritos having multiple ads airing during the game. However, what I found interesting is that nearly every ad has a Hashtag to allow customers to follow up on the ad via social media. What I also find particularly interesting was just a few short years ago, it was always a mystery as to which ads/companies will shell out the money for an ad and now nearly a week before the big game, all of the ads are readily available to us on Youtube. This allows consumers additional opportunities to interact with the company and hope their ad is that one that goes viral. However, the key for companies is to leverage their captive audience into actual business to ensure their sizable investment doesn't go to waste.  

Another growing trend is companies reaching out to their customers to further engage with key customers for their input and involvement. Companies such as Doritos has given the camera over to their consumers and will show an ad that was produced by asking people to send in their own submissions for the chance to win a $1 million prize. Even new entrants to the Superbowl commercial game, Carnival Corp, sourced their commercial "from its "World's Leading Cruise Lines Marketing Challenge," which gave North American consumers the chance to "join" the company's marketing team and vote on their favorite creative concepts." From the companies perspective, they have the option to use the best ad from multiple sources and it is cheaper than hiring an ad agency. It also has the potential to be seen by others as a company that truly values its customers and serves as positive PR. 

The Chief Marketing Officer from Esurance explained the importance of having an ad on Superbowl Sunday: "Esurance is a major brand in the insurance category, but we’re not as well known as our major competitors who spend far more than we do. So, maximizing awareness of our innovative offering for customers is important. The Super Bowl is the biggest media event of the year and it offers us the opportunity to efficiently reach a very large audience while making them aware that, because of our innovative options, Esurance is the smarter choice for insurance in today’s modern world." The platform of the Superbowl is unlike any other and CMO's fully recognize the importance a Superbowl add can have on business. 

For companies to really get a ROI on their Superbowl commercial investment, it is absolutely critical that their investment goes beyond what is on TV for 30 seconds. Their website needs to be able to handle the increased traffic, customers should be able to quickly find the company online and the digital presence you have must have the potential to be quickly realized with the ultimate goal of converting new business and reconnecting with current customers. 

Teaching the New Frontier in Marketing

Pretty interesting article in Fast Company that made me think about how far marketing has really come vs. when I was in college.  The basic gist of the article is that there are three skills that college students are not learning today to best equip themselves for the world of digital marketing (content marketing/SEO, social media and lead nurturing/technical skills).

Now I don't pretend to know what is in the modern liberal arts college marketing curriculum but what I think this article highlights is that there is hole that needs to be filled.  Digital marketing has really only sprung up as a going concern within the Marketing field within the last few years and I would assume that most colleges were hesitant to adapt this to their curriculums.  However, with the continued growth in the industry and its increasing importance to corporate marketing strategies, this will evolve which I think will in turn lead to a more educated entry-level marketing employee and further advancements in the field itself.

Not to date myself but I wish they offered something like this when I was in college but it didn't exist yet (Facebook only really came about when I was a Junior, haha).

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3041253/3-key-digital-marketing-skills-students-dont-learn-in-college

My ad got 1 million views - or did it?

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about ComScore, a new company that wants to "clean up" online advertising, but in a way that I hadn't ever considered. Apparently, quite often marketers buy ads, but humans never see them. Either the websites are "viewed" by bots instead of by real people, or the ads are displayed somewhere that real users never actually see. ComScore's business is ranking ad merchants by trust-ability, so that if you buy from one of them, you have some idea of how trustworthy they are. Presumably, if they are trustworthy, you can buy confidently and not worry that bots and hidden deep pages will be the only things that see your ads.

Now, for one thing I really admire ComScore's business model and their mission. But this has really made me think about just how vulnerable digital marketers are. Like Stevenson's cow, they are "Blown by all the winds that pass/And wet with all the showers." Whether it's Google changing their algorithms, or your ads only being seen by bots, or negative SEO from a competitor. Digital marketing seems like a constant struggle against unpredictable external forces. This must be extremely frustrating - you spend time developing an ad campaign and deploying over the web, only to doubt whether anyone is actually watching. All of those useful metrics that come from Digital Marketing are now suspect, and then how are you supposed to use the data if you can't trust it? What is worse, you will never even know how much of your "viewers" were (and are) real, and what is even worse than that is that you cannot know, no matter what happens. That knowledge is simply inaccessible. It's vitally important to keep the bots and fake pages at bay, because they have the potential in Market for Lemons style to drive out all of the good ad traffic; they therefore pose a huge threat to the legitimate Digital Marketing industry as a whole. It's not just a nuisance, and it's good that ComScore is opening up a counterattack.

In response to “Training, Tanning, and Branding with the Bikini Bodybuilding Stars of Instagram”:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashapiro009/training-tanning-and-branding-with-the-bikini-bodybuilding-s#.hu5gq7Ypk

Somewhat recently I posted on Instagram that I was looking for inspirational fitness/running/health accounts (people) to follow.  A few of my friends, some close and some Internet acquaintances, responded offering up accounts. Among the first to  reply sent through the following names:

@massy.arias

@cuchira

@annephung

@leanna_carr

@fitalicious_me

About a year prior, someone had mentioned to me that I should follow @followthelita, a woman named Lita Lewis who trains relentlessly, shares healthy recipes, and posts a ton of the type of selfies that make me wanna put down my double-fisted string cheese.  With her 298,000 followers, Lita has also given the hashtag #ThickFIT a face.  She is beautiful, and also looks like she might be capable of straight-lifting a midsize sedan or two.  Although it is outside of the realm of possibility that I will ever look like or train like Lita, hers quickly became one of my absolute favorite IG accounts to show up in my feed.

When I asked my friends which fitness accounts were their favorites, I fully expected to get back some more-fashion-than-fitness, cool, ultra stylish, influencer types. Because don’t get me wrong, posts from chicks like @adrianneho definitely have me slowing down the scroll to stop and admire.  But this was not quite what I received back, no.  Out of the list mentioned above, I was surprised to see that most were powerlifting, figure competition, wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-on-an-elliptical types.  Most of them seem like they train to be strong rather than slim, far beyond what years ago would have been expected or acceptable for a lady.  (The one who doesn’t fit this true powerlifting category power lifts her own weight as an awesome, androgynous yogi.)

The article mentions that the National Powerlifting and Bodybuilding competitions now prominently feature the bikini category, in an effort to re-introduce female bodybuilding as NOT freakish and juiced up. The athletes that are featured in the article have built not only their bodies, but huge Instagram followings in the process.  These massive IG communities have gotten them sponsorships and endorsement deals, and not all due to simply posting selfies for young girls to gawk at.  The all-access nature of Instagram and other social media channels allows their followings to get inspired, ask questions, and then “do try this at home."

Between the IGers that were sent my way and the ones this article mentions, I noticed a few things that might be changing the way digital marketers seek out brand ambassadors and endorsement relationships:

1.  The 'ideal female body’ was invented by a male.  Not so much the shape of the body itself, but the idea that there is one ideal type that resonates with women themselves simply does not resonate.

2.  The best endorsements in this space are positioned as advice, how-to’s, workout plans, eating plans, and “fitspo” (fit inspiration) - NOT just a great image or video.

3.  Androgyny might be making a play in the near future. We’ll see...

Augmented Reality Is Changing the game for Advertisers

Where virtual reality exists to create rich computer-generated environments, augmented reality (AR) has the ability to project layers of graphics, animation, sounds and smell, https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&v=si32CRVEvi4 ,  yes smell, onto real physical objects such as billboards, clothes, packaging etc.

While much of the technology is still in the early stages of commercial use, there are several AR products already in the marketplace with advertisers from luxury jewelry to beverage producers to musicians leveraging the technology to enhance their marketing campaigns.  As such, advertisers have the ability to engage with customers on a level previously not possible; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6irc0jwKC8

The AR industry has been evolving for several years now and has shifted towards a more segmented structure.  Companies have the ability to leverage out of the box applications to create one-off campaigns, or decide to fully develop custom apps and solutions for their customers, such as the below furniture app; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV8lo-OxZQ#t=80

Forward looking, as applications for AR continue to evolve, where reality stops, advertisers have virtually unlimited options at their disposal to market their products in a digitally enhanced world.  Further, the benefits of AR go beyond the marketing budget, as AR will help marketers to not only better track advertising spend, but will also help companies become smaller in the brick and mortar sense, while expanding online.

Digital content meets digital marketing

It is challenging to apply modern digital marketing tools and tactics to copyright content with digital rights management (DRM). A good example of this type of content is digital books (more commonly referred to as eBooks). There are more than 3 million eBooks available through various retailers the majority of which are protected by DRM technology. The goal of DRM technology is to prevent unauthorized replication but the added implication is that this content is locked up and therefore insulated from being indexed by search engines (and therefore excluded from search marketing as one example). Most publishers and authors may acknowledge this shortcoming but are rightfully cautious about negative impact to their print revenues. Ultimately this is a business model problem to solve rather than a technology problem. Once publishers and authors adopt a business model that allows them to safely monetize their digital content (ad monetization, freemium subscription models etc) there may be an appetite to drop digital rights management and open up the treasure trove of quality eBook content to search engines and marketing. Digital music went through a journey of its own before it dropped DRM. However, most industry experts agree that music and the written word are quite different when it comes to digital distribution and consumption.

While publishers, authors, and retailers ponder how to evolve their business models, technology companies are already knocking at the door. Or more accurately, starting to nibble at the corners. Google has been scanning print books for many years now and launched a program called snippets:

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/common.html

They talk about how snippets of copyright books can be surfaced in search queries so users can see the context within the book before making a purchase decision. It is a short distance from this capability to surfacing ads related to that content. As with most things, technology advancement will prove to be an unstoppable force. The question is what the business and consumer landscape looks like on the other side.

Exploring the Online Advertising Value Chain

http://www.atkearney.com/documents/10192/178350/internet-value-chain-economics.pdf/bd910b2c-bdae-4d6f-8903-f5edad6784eb

According to the article “Internet Value Chain Economics” published in 2010 by ATKearney, online advertising industry is part of a general category considered part of the enabling technology services, which is one of the five main segments in the internet value chain. Within this large segment, there are 4 different but related industry players. These players consist of Advertising Agencies, Dedicated Online Advertising Networks and Exchanges, 3^rd Party Ad Serving Providers, and Ratings and Analytics Service Providers. These providers are fundamental to revenue generation for most online service providers.

Advertising Agencies provide a wide range of marketing services including media campaign planning, ad inventory acquisition for online ad campaigns, and creative design services for online ad production. These agencies charge commissions based on the total volume of advertising spend. Agencies can service online advertising exclusively, or are sometimes part of larger multi-service companies that offer online advertising services as part of their portfolio.

Dedicated Online Advertising Networks and Exchanges are technical and payment clearing houses for online advertising space. Examples include Doubleclick (owned by Google), and Advertising.com (owned by AOL). Such companies purchase online advertising space on behalf of advertisers and sell advertising inventory on behalf of content providers and websites. They typically provide the technical platforms that facilitate the placement of display ads such as banners and sidebars on websites. These companies typically acquire inventory and resell them with a mark-up.

3^rd Party Ad Serving Providers are entities that host and distribute online ads. Oftentimes, ad agencies that provide creative design services will also provide the hosting and distribution services.

Ratings and Analytics Service Providers aggregate and sell web traffic, click-stream data, and usage metrics. Players include Google Analytics and Alexa.

It is interesting to note that according to this 2010 estimate, as a percentage of total advertising spend, online advertising in Germany increased from 5% in 2000 to 29% by 2010, and is forecast to increase to 42% by 2015. This study noted that this trend is expected to be observed in other western European countries.