Google Unveils Gaming Metrics, Features, Ad Units For Advertisers, Publishers
On Wednesday Google announced Rewarded Interstitials, a new ad format in AdMob, adding to formats such as Interstitials, Banner, Rewarded, and Native.
The new ad format combines Rewarded and Interstitials to provide the best of both types of ad units. They appear on the screen at ad breaks and players receive a reward for watching the full video.
The announcement for App campaigns and AdMob made Wednesday at the Think Games China event is geared toward helping mobile game developers connect with players worldwide.
Google has seen huge growth in gaming since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with searches for “best online game” between February and April 2020 rising more than 100% versus a year ago.
People are not only searching, but trying out new game titles.
Google Play data shows people spend more than 1.4 trillion minutes playing mobile games each month. The problem is that the majority of players will never make a purchase. In the average app, 96% of users will never make an in-app purchase, making ads an important element in monetizing games, Duke Dukellis, director of product management at AdMob and Ad Manager, said in a video.
Last year, Google announced a new full-screen ad format to monetize the loading screen. This year, key updates include standardizing publisher branding, clear ad content and simple user interface.
For publishers, Google announced Open Bidding, with plans to move to an open beta for all AdMob publishers this fall. Open Bidding lets each ad network, such as the beta partners Unruly, OpenX, Facebook’s Audience Network and PubMatic, bid on each impression in real time.
With Opening Bidding, the highest bid always wins in a real-time auction. Everything is handled in one place in this new format.
To determine performance, Google now allows developers to tie the revenue back to user acquisition campaigns through a new feature it calls LTV Pingback, which provides the lifetime value metric via the AdMob SDK.
Google also introduced a way to market the game before it launches with a tool in App Campaigns, called Preregistration Ads, which becomes available globally later this year. The preregistration feature gives users an alert when the game launches. Those who register also can have it automatically download when it becomes available.
This article first appeared here.
What Brands Mean by Brand Purpose
The combination of the pandemic and social unrest has spurred brands and organizations to think anew about what they truly stand for.
The idea of “brand purpose” seemed to be on a fairly steady, if uneven, track “BC” (Before Coronavirus), as brands and organizations devoted more and more time and thought to what they stand for beyond serving the top and bottom lines and/or shareholders — and how to convey the message.
However, the searing combination of the pandemic, the subsequent economic fallout, and nationwide calls for dramatic societal change following the death of George Floyd has left many companies gobsmacked, wondering if what they now refer to as brand purpose is still relevant for their employees, customers, and society at large.
The turmoil has spurred many companies to join the public discourse and voice their support — in addition to providing funding and other resources — to support racial equality and the Black Lives Matter movement.
But, in doing so, many firms may be conflating being a good corporate citizen with having a brand purpose, says Doug Ryan, president of marketing solutions at RR Donnelly & Sons (RRD). “If you’re reacting to events then, by definition, you’re not focusing on the things that are important to the brand and may not be doing much at all for your brand purpose,” he says.
Alice M. Tybout, Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, adds that responding to social issues is becoming de rigueur. “That has become table stakes,” she says. “You get in trouble if you don’t do it, but it’s not going to differentiate you if you do.”
Public statements may also lead consumers to ask what the brand is doing beyond simply issuing tweets, especially when compared to Nike, for example, which publicly lined up to support Colin Kaepernick after he began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality.
“If you post something on social on behalf of your brand, consumers are going to ask, ‘That’s great, why haven’t you been doing it before and what are you doing going forward?'” says Jay Russell, chief creative officer at GSD&M. “You can’t fake this one and the more you try to insert your brand into social conversations or causes, the less it rings true.”
Discovery Channel
A crisis may not be the best time for companies to stress check their brand purpose. However, for many organizations, the past few months have forced them to reexamine why their brand exists, or perhaps more important, what’s needed to better articulate their purpose.
“There are many companies that come to us with a good idea of why they’re here,” says Gary Kopervas, SVP brand strategy and innovation at brand consultancy 20nine. “But there are also a lot of clients we worked with that had been acquired or done an acquisition and now need to make sense of it.”
Kopervas says 20nine guides these companies through a discovery process so they have a tight handle on what distinguishes their brand and can then better align their business practices with a particular purpose. But this process to develop or improve brand purpose can’t be simply marketing-driven.
“If you don’t have buy-in at the top, it becomes more of a gimmick,” Tybout says. “And consumers can pick that up pretty readily.”
To be sure, there are various metrics used to provide companies with a general sense of whether a brand purpose resonates with consumers, including brand affinity, brand preference, brand loyalty and, to some degree, net promoter scores.
Tybout, who recently worked with Jim Stengel, the former CMO at Procter & Gamble who now runs think-tank/consultancy Jim Stengel Company, while editing a chapter in the book Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World, adds:
“Things will not look the same with brand affinity or net promoter score, though probably directionally they’ll be the same. No single indicator is going to be perfect, but if a consumer likes your brand purpose, they’re more likely to like the brand more and be more brand loyal.”
Role for Agencies
Most advocates stress that, for it to go beyond lip service and be truly effective, brand purpose has to originate with the CEO and the rest of the C-suite and then be incorporated throughout the company. But agencies insist they have a valuable role to play in the process.
“The agency’s role is to help brands that have drifted away from the original intent of the founders,” GSD&M’s Russell says. “A brand generally knows more about themselves than any agency is ever going to, so we work to usually get them back on track and explain their purpose can’t be just to make money.”
Kopervas adds an objective view from a third-party can be a valuable tool, but cautions that even after a brand purpose is fine-tuned, not every company will feel the need to attach the company to every last issue preoccupying the country. “Not every brand has a purpose that is all about corporate social responsibility,” he says.
“It may be around quality or craftsmanship and standing behind what you do. It’s not all going to change the world.”
Brand Purpose in Uncertain Times
For digital financial services company Ally Financial, which fine-tuned its brand purpose in 2016 under the tagline “Do It Right,” one of the major goals was to focus all of its businesses under one brand promise, says chief marketing and PR officer Andrea Brimmer.
“It was meant to demonstrate our relentless focus on customers and commitment to providing leading products and services,” Brimmer says. “We’ve adjusted since then, but it is all centered on our mission to provide the digital products, technology, and services to help everyone achieve their best future.”
The pandemic and the groundswell throughout the U.S. to legitimately address racial injustice have provided a path to put the company’s mission and brand promise to be a true ally to customers and communities into practice.
“Our relief program is the most comprehensive in the industry, focused on our consumer and auto-dealer customers,” Brimmer says. “Additionally, we are donating $3 million to respond to critical needs identified by our community partners, with a focus on our hometown locations of Detroit and Charlotte.”
Ally Financial is also donating to other causes focused on the economic mobility of Black Americans. “I believe that customers will remember the companies that were there for them during this crisis, offering support and advice to get through these unprecedented times,” Brimmer adds.
Ryan from RRD says that it doesn’t hurt to ponder how a company’s brand purpose aligns with current events, but adds that the internal role brand purpose plays is far more important.
“To me, the measure of effective brand purpose is if that purpose is impacting product selection or product development,” he says. “If it’s only being used for identification or as a new tagline, that’s a sign that you don’t really have brand purpose.”
Brand purpose should also guide how the company chooses to grow, especially if they’re in a category with a lot of competition. “Brands can sometimes get driven off their purpose by trying to match what competitors are doing,” Tybout says. “Your brand purpose should provide an umbrella for your entire range of products.”
And while every company wants to make the world a better place and improve lives, the idea of a “brand” can’t be a vague ideal or so aspirational that it fails to reflect consumers’ day-to-day experience with the brand.
“Make sure your brand purpose is specific and connected to your business,” Brimmer says. “You can’t drive meaning for your customers without those two components.”
This article first appeared here.
6 Brands Targeting Female Audiences on Digital
The numbers are staggering. Though women make up only 51% of the population, they make 90% of household purchase decisions.
Not only is this a massive amount of buying power held by only one gender, women are also more engaged with advertising overall than men are: gender-neutral ads perform 35% better with women than with men.
“Women can turn a brand into a market leader, and brands that can’t keep up are set to lose out on customer loyalty, and ultimately equity and sales,” concluded Ad Age in a 2016 article.
Yet branding and advertising specifically designed to attract women often backfires with embarrassing results. In 2018, McDonald’s flipped their iconic M into a W to commemorate International Women’s Day; this was criticized for generic “McFeminism” rather than seen as making an authentic attempt to connect to female consumers. In 2012, the internet was entertained with snarky, faux Amazon reviews for “Bic for Her,” an angry rejoinder to the disastrous attempt by the pen manufacturer to appeal to women through pastel-colored writing tools.
Earlier this month, PR Week lamented the predictability of brands that leverage International Women’s Day without actually supporting women: “It’s the time of year again, when brands tout their female staffers in photo ops and shout vague messaging about women being superheroes… It’s nice to acknowledge your female staff and consumers, but shouldn’t you be doing that all year round anyway?”
The good news is that there are brands who are doing that all year round. Here is a deep dive into Facebook data to uncover the advertisers targeting female audiences in 2019 and 2020.
1. Unilever
Out of the nearly 300 advertisers who allocated 70% or more of their 2020 Facebook advertising spend toward women, most of them are within the expected female-centric vertical markets such as women’s fashion brands, beauty, household goods, and baking products.
Unilever surprised us, though, with a brand we never guessed would be marketed to women: Axe Body Products. Out of their $1.2M 2019 Facebook spend, 68% of ads were targeted to women. This year they appear to have upped the ante with 71% of their ads targeted to women.
Though Axe does sell products for women, their top-performing creatives showcase men’s products. The catch? They’re men’s products marketed to teenage boys, whose mothers are more likely to be shopping for the household than their fathers.
“You can’t be a successful youth brand today if you’re not coed in your approach,” commented the head of strategy at Axe’s ad agency.
2. Nike
Nike has long been known for championing female empowerment through their branding and advertising. A video spot dedicated to this year’s International Women’s Day posed the simple idea “one day, we won’t need this day.”
Their three top-performing creatives across all devices and formats in 2019 were also videos and were all geared toward women. Two of them featured feminist icon Ilana Glazer touting their Joyride line, and one was an almost two-minute spot that highlighted some of the company’s actual female employees and the sophisticated process of developing a new Nike bra.
Their approach to Facebook advertising deviates slightly. There, creatives depict a blend of male and female athletes and models, but only 37% of Nike’s Facebook ads targeted women in 2019, down to 23% in 2020.
3. Northwestern Mutual
In a 2019 Digiday article, Northwestern Mutual CMO Aditi Gokhale remarked,
“In 51% of households, women are the financial decision-makers. The purchasing power of women, in general, will continue to skyrocket.”
This informed the decision of Northwestern Mutual to focus more of its marketing on “real women who are reaching their financial goals,” and the company spent 52% of its 2019 Facebook budget on female-targeted ads. Their sixth-ranked site for impressions was the wedding planning site TheKnot.com. So far, their 2020 ad spend shows that only 37% of their Facebook ads target women, so we’re interested to see how they finish out the year.
4. Royal Bank of Canada
Also in the finance category is the Royal Bank of Canada, which topped our list as the brand that has spent the most on targeting women on Facebook in both 2019 and 2020.
Though their Facebook spend was less than $1M in the US in 2019, 82% of their ads were targeted to women. In 2020 to date, 95% of their ads have been directed toward women. Their messaging in the US is based on “cross border banking”: financial services for Canadians who own homes in the US or who generally spend a lot of money here.
Royal Bank has high regional ad spend in Florida, New York, and California, states where expats are likely to live or invest in property, and prominently feature photos of women in their creatives.
5. Bumble
Bumble is a dating app designed by women to make app dating better for women. They launched their very first marketing campaign in 2015 with the slogan “the ball is in her court” and an image of pink tennis balls.
By 2019 they had an endorsement deal with Serena Williams, a 30-second ad during the 2019 Superbowl, and made headlines for backing a bill in Texas’ state legislature for criminalizing the sharing of unsolicited nude photos.
It makes complete sense that this brand would primarily advertise to women, but as a dating app, they need to build a broad consumer base of men as well. In 2019, 59% of their Facebook ads targeted female audiences, and this number has risen to 66% in 2020.
6. Pernod Ricard
Marketing decisions for The Glenlivet, a scotch brand owned by Pernod Ricard, are led by VP of Marketing Sona Barjaria. In November 2019 she described their media strategy as “trying to break traditions.”
A creative introduced that same month interpreted this rather literally, with a woman striding through a hole in a broken-down wall and the voiceover “’Whiskey’s a man’s drink, for men,’ they’d cry. Let them cry,” and “Some traditions are meant to be broken. That’s how we push things forward.”
While only 34% of The Glenlivet’s 2019 Facebook ads targeted female audiences, we’ve seen an uptick to 52% female targeting in 2020, indicating that they are indeed breaking traditions.
Summary
Target Women Year-Round: rather than waiting until Women’s History Month or International Women’s Day to reach female audiences, savvy brands can tap into this powerful market all year long.
This article first appeared here.
How the Third Party Cookie Crumbles
When Google announced on January 14th that they were ending support for third party cookies it shook the digital ad world.
The feedback was swift and pointed about how this change would put a nail into the proverbial coffin of programmatic advertising and targeting efforts – seemingly to Google’s advantage. The rationale behind removing this ability is centered on consumer privacy concerns and the growing chorus of data leaks over the past few years.
What will this mean for the industry at large? We suspect this move to eliminate third party cookies is going to push the digital ad market to innovate. In the long term, this will benefit all participants in the digital ad market.
How We Got Here
The origins of the digital marketing intelligence market go back to the early 2000’s when search engines and other research providers discovered that as they were indexing web pages, they were also gathering data on the digital ads present on those sites.
Fast forward a few years, and the rise of programmatic advertising drove continued innovation in the category to allow marketers, advertisers, and publishers to view and report on these ads.
Pathmatics patented an approach to indexing ads that not only captured the site that an ad appeared on, but also captured the Ad Path. This approach enabled partners to monitor each ad impression through the nearly infinite combination of transactions from publisher to SSP to ad networks and ad exchanges, through DSPs and trading desks, and ultimately to the advertiser.
What this means for marketing intelligence
A primary motivation for advertisers, agencies, publishers and platforms to leverage digital marketing intelligence was to put a spotlight on the activity in programmatic to review ad quality, placements and the competitive landscape. This continued through the early 2010’s, where we began to see three trends transforming the digital landscape.
- First, we saw the rise of Facebook and social advertising as a growing share of budget for all digital marketers.
- Second, there were technology shifts in programmatic and targeting that disabled the ability to capture data for many platforms through a crawler based approach.
- Third, eyeballs and budgets were shifting away from desktop and to mobile.
This article first appeared here.
Salesforce CMO’s New “MO”
How Salesforce’s Stephanie Buscemi Is Leading Through ‘Listening’.
The ancient slave turned Greek philosopher Epictetus reminds us that “we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” It’s refreshing to meet a company whose leaders embody this ideal, especially in these trying times.
This month I sat down with Stephanie Buscemi, the marketing leader for one of the most iconic brands in the digital age, Salesforce. It’s true that empathy is a key ingredient in leading others through a crisis, but what struck me most was what they did to gain empathy. Listen to employees. Listen to customers. Listen to partners.
The power of listening is central to Salesforce’s key value of “Equality,” which is defined by “ensuring that all voices are welcome and heard to increase our awareness of what is possible.” While others may miss the mark on living their values (a.k.a “The Inauthentics”), the practice of listening grounds Salesforce in their values while keeping them relevant for the future.
How is Salesforce responding to the set of crises that we’re facing right now?
Buscemi: You’re right. It’s plural, crises. The pandemic had already created so much pain, loss, and grief around the world, and now, that pain, loss, and grief is compounded and heightened with racial injustice and a spree of senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery among many others. Our Black community is grieving right now and rightfully so, after a reality of allowed systemic racism for hundreds of years. Now is the time to confront it by leading with empathy, open ears to listen deeply, and action, even though we are already so raw due to the pandemic. While I always try to find the silver lining, even in the worst situations, I believe that people are awake and ready to take action for change. There is simply no finish line when it comes to equality and we are far from done, but, I’m a firm believer that there is power in our storytelling, our communities, our partnerships, and ultimately unity.
At Salesforce, our CEO Marc Benioff says, and we believe this deeply, that business is a platform for change. We lead with brand values, in action, to better understand and connect with communities. That embodies the way we engage our community, our customers, our partners, everyone. We believe that it’s the responsibility of businesses to lean in and drive for a better world in the communities that we operate and societies in which we operate. We feel it’s our responsibility to look after our stakeholders, not just our shareholders and this is no exception to that. Recently, Mellody Hobson, president, and co-CEO of Ariel Investments joined one of our Leading Through Change episodes and encouraged us to focus on three areas that address the many intersecting crises, including people, purchasing, and philanthropy. That really resonated with us as a way to frame our actions, and we added one more area — policy. So we’ve established a Racial Equality and Justice Task Force to address these four areas.
- People: Our primary focus is standing with and supporting our Black employees in this time of incredible grieving, pain, and loss. We’re bringing together our Black community and allies to create conversations, to acknowledge the pain, to listen in silence, and to acknowledge and honor lost lives. Our Leading Through Change series started at the beginning of COVID-19 as a crisis response tool to help share best practices for navigating the pandemic. We talked with business owners, entrepreneurs, and experts in the medical field. Now, Leading Through Change has evolved as we stand alongside our Black community with focused episodes and topics that address our key areas of action. BOLDforce, our Black employee resource group, also offered immediate actions we can all take and hosted an Equality Circle for the Black community and allies to share their stories, experiences, and support for each other. We recently brought conversations to action, by merging recruiting and equality in Tony Prophet’s new role as our Chief Equality and Recruiting Officer to foster an inclusive lens at each step in our hiring process, reinforcing our effort to build a workplace that reflects the communities we serve.
- Philanthropy: We’re making philanthropic grants to combat racism, violence, and hate. People want to do more with a focused effort. We donated $1 million to the NAACP to support the fight for racial equality and justice in America. Last month, we partnered with the Black Entertainment Network and United Way on their relief fund, donating $500,000 to help Black American families that have been most impacted by the crisis. As part of our efforts to combat the COVID-19 crisis, we are continuing to do our part to deliver over $25 million of PPE to communities, including those underserved.
- Purchasing: How can we, as a platform for change, help influence purchasing power to support Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs? Our Head of Strategic Procurement, Craig Cuffie, is working with our supplier diversity team to shift our focus from “counting spend” to “counting impact” to create more opportunities in the communities where we do business. And, our Salesforce Ventures team will continue to invest in and empower, innovative Black founders through funding, guidance, sponsorships, and events. We believe in the power of the dollar and purchasing power that drives our supplier community and will make sure we’re putting money behind Black-owned and led businesses.
- Policy: While we take action internally we also need to be part of broader solutions across our society. We are working hard to ask ourselves what responsibility we have when it comes to our technology. The task force is assembling an advisory panel of experts from inside and outside of Salesforce to inform how best to support our employees and to advocate for public policy reforms on critical areas, such as policing, hate crimes, and criminal justice.
During these times of crisis, how has the brand DNA and specifically your values (trust, customer success, innovation, equality) helped guide you?
Buscemi: Our brand values are the compass that guides us in every decision, whether it’s a big decision or a small one. I like to think of it as a muscle. Those brand values were established when the company started 21 years ago and I can tell you with confidence that they’re not a hype thing at Salesforce. Those values are grounded in every conversation, and I don’t mean just as a marketing exercise, I mean across every single thing that we do: product decisions, investment decisions, people decisions, process decisions, across the board. Any time you have a crisis, any time you have a change, the trade-offs will be tested. We’ve had to look deeply at our values through the pandemic and realized that customer success was our focus from the early crisis phase, to stabilizing, reopening, and will continue to be when we ultimately get back to growth.
For example, we had this amazing innovation roadmap that defined our fiscal year based on deep listening from focus groups, customers and prospect insights, and had to pause for a moment to say, “The world pretty much changed almost overnight…are these still the right things? Is this what our engineers should wake up to every morning? Is this a priority for our product leaders?” We could have stayed the course, but instead, we looked at our values, and it became clear that we wanted our customers to remember us as a partner once we come out on the other side of this. We launched, in about six weeks after that, Work.com, a destination for best practices, advisory and consulting services, new products, and applications to help you reopen your business safely. If customer success was our focus, we knew our communities needed a fast, innovative roadmap through so much change. We set out to help our customers today, tomorrow, and next month to care for their employees and customers and protect the growth of their businesses. As a result, we’ve built an employee-response-management application, a contact-tracing application, and a shift-management application. All things I’m sure our engineers never believed they would be building. There is an intense pride and sense of purpose in our teams after coming together so quickly to pivot successfully.
During times of crisis, what do you think the CMO’s role is, both inside the organization and outside the organization?
Buscemi: I think our job is to galvanize and bring our community together. At Salesforce, our community, we call them Trailblazers, truly co-innovate with us. I see my role as a connector and driver behind an engaged community, especially through chaotic times. While each CMO’s community and therefore their specific needs may be different, the way you connect with the community is not. It’s all about storytelling. While our stories have changed a bit, people still need equal parts inspiration and very pragmatic, practical action. So much has worn on us over the recent weeks and months, that our audiences are craving inspiration to keep them going with very actionable, relevant, practical things they can do right now. It would be tone-deaf to start talking about a two-year roadmap to digital transformation. I like to focus on “base hits” or quick wins. Communities are looking for content that helps, inspires, teaches, etc. Marketers must understand that and change their storytelling accordingly. As marketers, we have a responsibility to elevate diverse voices, bring in new faces as role models, decrease cultural bias, and ultimately lead through positive change.
Over the past 20 years, Salesforce has created an iconic brand that is the standard-bearer for cloud-based CRM. How will the brand, and what makes it iconic, evolve over the next 10-20 years?
Buscemi: I think a lot remains unknown. I believe that human connection will persist and there will always be a need and longing for true connection with one another. This pandemic is a full demonstration of that. We just aren’t made for isolation. Even though we’re moving towards a more digital world, the human connection will always persist. As CMOs, you will have to figure out how to continue to build and strengthen those human elements of connection. A good example of this is the first event we held during the pandemic, Salesforce World Tour in Sydney, only 10 days in. We pivoted and reworked a live event with 10,000 people to retrofit it into a virtual event. While we successfully had over 80,000 people join, it was a retrofit. It wasn’t designed from the ground up for virtual engagement – and we learned a lot. Now, with more virtual events under our belt, I can say I strongly believe that we will lean into smaller engagements versus large events, because you have to be able, in a virtual setting, to pause and engage with each other. We see value in 10 to 12-person events that allow for unique opportunities to connect in fun ways and engage virtually. People are far more energized when they aren’t just sitting, staring at a screen all day. We used to have a two-hour Dreamforce keynote but now we are looking at how we cut that down to less than an hour virtually.
I truly think in the next 10-20 years human connection will still be the Holy Grail of how CMOs make meaningful campaigns and content. When the tactics, marketing playbook, and plans are out the window, all bets are off. Brands that stand out, truly listen and have meaningful conversations to co-create alongside their communities. I think we’ll see more brands leaning into true human connection and empathy to create and cultivate communities around shared values.
This article first appeared here.
YouTube’s Working on a New Analytics Overview Summary to Help Creators Maximize Performance
YouTube is working on a new video analytics display which is designed to help creators better understand where their views are coming from, and how they can maximize each video’s performance..
As explained by YouTube Creator Insider Conor Kavanagh:
This is a new analytics video overview that has smarter explanations about how your video is doing. It’s going to tell you more about how it’s doing fro the point of view of the YouTube home page and Watch Next suggestions.
As you can see here, the new analytics report highlights your video’s click-through rate and average view duration, while it also provides specific insight as to how much of your traffic is coming from ‘Home’ and ‘Suggested’.
YouTube also provides some pointers at the bottom of the listing:
When a video’s topic, title or thumbnail attracts more viewers, that video is more likely to be recommended to similar viewers on Home and ‘Up next’ suggestions.
YouTube been working to improve its analytics tools over the last few months, which has included the launch of a new, integrated channel performance chart in Creator Studio that displays views, subscriber count, watch time and revenue performance.
These new insights would come in addition to the existing reach and engagement stats on each individual video post, providing more specific information on CTR and how people are finding your content (the info on average view duration is already available, though it’s listed in a more basic format).
That could help you shape your YouTube strategy, in order to capitalize on attention. If, for example, you’re not seeing good traction from these surfaces, you could use that as a prompt to reassess your approach, and improve your presentation. The charts also provide a comparison between the video you’re looking at and your regular uploads for more context.
In addition to this, YouTube is also adding a new filter so you can view uploads marked as ‘Made for Kids’, which impacts data collection and monetization, while it’s also integrating Copyright strike notifications into Creator Studio.
This article first appeared here.
3 Critical Reasons to Focus Your Marketing Efforts on Search Engines
When anyone wants to know something, increasingly their first choice for finding answers is Google. We even say, ‘Google it’, turning the proper noun into a verb because looking up answers on Google is so common.
Sure, there are other search engines out there, but Google still accounts for nearly 90% of online searches worldwide according to data on Statista. As a business, understanding search, and how search engines work is critical as you focus your marketing efforts on awareness.
And, before you ask, yes, other search engines exist, for instance, Bing and Yahoo, but, because search is really Google’s game, we focus our search advice on Google. Plus, other search engines, in an homage to the dominance of Google, structure their search in many similar ways.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the reasons you should focus your marketing efforts on search engines:
68% of web traffic comes from search engines
There are some pretty alarming search engine stats, but this is the most significant one from a marketing standpoint. We know that billions of people use the internet every day. We know that billions of people use search engines. This stat shows us how powerful and valuable search engines are for businesses.
68% of trackable web traffic comes from either paid or organic search engine marketing. That’s a ridiculous figure when you stop and think about it. Let’s think about it from another perspective. If you ignore search engines, you’re missing out on 68% of your web traffic.
Search traffic, by its very nature, consists mainly of opportunities to create awareness among folks who don’t already know about your brand. A few users are reminded by seeing your brand show up in their search results (SERPs), but current customers most often simply enter your company into the Omnibox (the search box at the top of the screen) when looking for products like the ones you sell.
So many leads fall through a gaping hole when you don’t have a strong search presence. If that doesn’t convince you to start focusing on it, then nothing will.
Your chances of being seen dramatically increase
The fact that so many people use search engines means your chances of being seen increase exponentially when you effectively employ search engine marketing (SEM). Primarily, SEM consists of search engine optimization (SEO) and PPC (pay per click advertising through the Google Ads platform). SEO helps improve visibility by driving your website higher in SERPs. The higher up the rankings you go, the more visible you are and the more traffic comes to your site.
Here’s another stat to back this up, 91.5% of traffic goes to websites on the first page, mostly to results in the top 3 positions in SERPs.
Now, if you don’t focus your marketing effort on search engines, there’s every chance your website is on the second, third, maybe even fourth pages in the results for any search. As a result, you miss out on so much traffic and visibility that your business has a hard time succeeding, even with superior products and customer service.
Being on page one is crucial. Climbing the rankings on the first page is equally important. A whopping 32.5% of traffic goes to the top result!
In short, improve your SEO and gain more traffic and broaden your appeal to your target market to create a successful business online or off.
PPC advertising improves search results, as well, even though Google denies that PPC advertising impacts search rankings. PPC is paid search engine marketing. Paid results show up at the top of SERPs and are marked as ADS. Companies pay for these ads, competing based on a bid price, as well as a quality score. Google Ads involve a complex process both for creating ads and optimizing performance with high rankings on SERPs, but the gist is that you pay to increase your exposure in certain searches.
Search engines establish authority
Here’s a test for you to try. Search for something in Google and look at the results. What do you think about the companies at the top of the page compared to those down the bottom? If you dare to venture further than this, then look at the second-page results, as well.
Chances are you attribute more authority to companies whose links show higher in search results. You’re more likely to trust companies that show up first in results, which explains why you’re more likely to click links higher in results. Why do you trust them? Because they’re at the top of the rankings!
In essence, we’ve learned to trust Google’s assessment of a company and its products, abdicating a more complex analysis of the company to Google’s superior knowledge about the firm. Trusting Google’s assessment of a brand isn’t some trick of the mind, it’s common sense.
Of course, you trust a website at the top of the rankings because it must be authoritative to have made it all the way to the top. As consumers, we learning to trust Google not because someone told us Google is superior to other evaluative factors, but because we used Google search for many years and discovered the top results most often matched our needs.
Here Google and users have the same goal—to put top answers to your query first in the results. Users want to find information quickly while Google wants users to choose their search engine over its competition. Google only survives when users find results satisfactory, so Google works really hard to ensure results meet users’ expectations.
Google uses a complex algorithm composed of many indicators of value in determining where your link ranks on SERPs. The algorithm isn’t published and changes frequently, with major revisions happening every year or so as it learns (using AI) how to better satisfy users’ needs. Thus, when Google ranks websites, it quantifies various indicators of value to determine a score, showing links with the highest score highest in search results. Google wants you to see the best results in the top-ranking spots to make your life easier.
That’s right, you gain a professional reputation as an authoritative source within your domain when you focus your marketing efforts on optimizing performance against Google’s indicators.
For the business, the SEO process starts by determining keywords (actually key phrases that get longer as more folks use voice search) related to your brand. You then optimize content for these keywords by creating fresh content on a consistent basis. Other factors in the Google algorithm reflect evaluations by the community, such as visits to your site, referrals from social media platforms, and bounce rate.
Conclusion
All in all, the best way to understand the importance of search engines is to think about what would happen if you didn’t focus on them. Your website would miss out on lots of traffic, your business would have a complete lack of visibility, and you wouldn’t be deemed an authoritative source.
Most people start the buyer’s journey on a search engine or at least end up on one at some point. Focus your digital marketing efforts on this particular strategy, and you will see great improvement.
This article first appeared here.
(Friday Fun) Amazing Efficiency – Building the LEGO Minifigure
We all know about building with LEGO but have you ever wondered how the LEGO mini-figures themselves are manufactured? LEGO takes you down to its factory floor.
The COVID-19 recovery will be digital: A plan for the first 90 days
The rapid migration to digital technologies driven by the pandemic will continue into the recovery. Here’s how to accelerate your organization’s digital capabilities to keep pace.
By now, most C-suite executives have led their companies to digitize at least some part of their business to protect employees and serve customers facing mobility restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. As one CEO of a large tech company recently stated,
“We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.”
Indeed, recent data show that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks. Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages. Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business. Schools in many locales have pivoted to 100 percent online learning and digital classrooms. Doctors have begun delivering telemedicine, aided by more flexible regulation. Manufacturers are actively developing plans for “lights out” factories and supply chains. The list goes on.
As some regions begin reopening, businesses are considering how to return to some semblance of full speed in an unstable environment in which lockdowns will ease (and potentially be reinstated) in waves. In doing so, they will need to confront three structural changes that are playing out.
First, customer behaviors and preferred interactions have changed significantly, and while they will continue to shift, the uptick in the use of digital services is here to stay, at least to some degree (Exhibit 1). Fully 75 percent of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to “normal.”1 Companies will need to ensure that their digital channels are on par with or better than those of their competition to succeed in this new environment. If China offers us any lessons, digital laggards will be substantially disadvantaged during the recovery.
Second, as the economy lurches back, demand recovery will be unpredictable; uneven across geographies, sectors, product categories, and customer segments; and often slow to return to pre-crisis levels. While a few sectors will face unusually strong demand, leaders in many industries must deal with periods of structural overcapacity. Those companies face the painful need to rightsize the cost base and capital of their operations, supply chains, and organizations overall and to transition their fixed costs to variable costs aggressively wherever possible. Complicating matters for leaders as they grapple with ways to deal with an uneven recovery is that historical data and forecasting models will be of little use to predict where pockets of demand will emerge and where supply will be necessary. New data and completely rebuilt analytical models will be essential to steer operational decisions.
Finally, many organizations have shifted to remote-working models almost overnight. A remote-first setup allows companies to mobilize global expertise instantly, organize a project review with 20—or 200—people immediately, and respond to customer inquiries more rapidly by providing everything from product information to sales and after-sales support digitally. In effect, remote ways of working have, at least in part, driven the faster execution drumbeat that we’re all experiencing in our organizations. And this step change in remote adoption is now arguably substantial enough to reconsider current business models.
Quickly pivoting the business agenda to address these changes will be critical for a successful recovery. Digital will undoubtedly play a center-stage role. We offer suggestions for a 90-day plan to realign the digital agenda and implement the enablers for acceleration during the recovery and beyond.
The digital agenda for recovery
For many companies, customers have already migrated to digital. Employees are already working fully remotely and are agile to some degree. Companies have already launched analytics and artificial-intelligence (AI) initiatives in their operations. IT teams have already delivered at a pace they never have before. But for most companies, the changes to date represent only the first phase of the changes that will be necessary.
We have laid out an agenda that focuses on four efforts: refocusing and accelerating digital investments in response to evolving customer needs, using new data and AI to improve business operations, selectively modernizing technology capabilities to boost development velocity, and increasing organizational agility to deliver more quickly. For each one, we outline a practical 90-day plan to make it happen.
Refocus digital efforts toward changing customer expectations
Many companies are accelerating their shifts toward digital-first models—at warp speed. One European variety-store chain, for example, established a fully functioning e-commerce business in just three months. The online business was interconnected across all functions (warehousing, merchandising, marketing, customer support, etc) and improved basket size over physical stores by three times as well as delivering nearly 3 percent like-for-like revenue growth in its main market.
But it’s not just about digitizing. Companies must also reimagine customer journeys to reduce friction, accelerate the shift to digital channels, and provide for new safety requirements. For example, an automobile manufacturer now handles functions traditionally performed by dealers, such as trade-ins, financing, servicing, and home delivery of cars. Airlines are rapidly reinventing the passenger experience with contactless journeys focused on traveler health and safety to make customers feel comfortable flying again.
In the next 90 days. CEOs should ask their business leaders to assess how the needs and behaviors of their most important customers have changed and benchmark their digital channels against those of their competition. This information should form the basis of a renewed digital agenda that should take no longer than 30 days to establish.
Chief digital officers and chief information officers (CIOs) can then quickly stand up (or refocus) agile teams to execute the most urgent priorities. A consumer-electronics company, for example, recently launched an agile war room to improve conversion rates on its website traffic. That type of project can deliver meaningful results in weeks. Changes that require more fundamental work, like setting up a new e-commerce channel, will typically take longer. Continually measuring digital-channel performance during the 90 days will be critical so that companies can quickly adapt as they learn more. Consider setting up a weekly forum for senior business and technology leaders to process the learnings coming in and drive the full agenda at pace and in a coordinated fashion.
Use new data and artificial intelligence to improve business operations
Hundreds of operational decisions get made on daily, weekly, and monthly bases. Take an airline, for example, that must make many decisions: Which routes should we operate? What crew size is optimal for each flight? How many meals should we order? What staffing level is necessary in the contact center?
Modern businesses have several forecasting and planning models to guide such operational decisions. Organizations will need to validate these models. In the same way that many companies had to rebuild risk and financial models that failed during the 2008 financial collapse, models will similarly need to be replaced because of the massive economic and structural shifts caused by the pandemic. For example, models that use time-series, oil-price, or unemployment data will need to be rebuilt entirely. The data must be reevaluated as well.
As companies construct these models, analytics teams will likely need to bring together new data sets and use enhanced modeling techniques to forecast demand and manage assets successfully. One automotive-parts supplier, for example, developed a forecasting model that incorporated previously unused third-party data. The model will help the supplier spot potential issues with its own suppliers’ ability to deliver needed items, offering a chance to reach out to its suppliers to work out logistics or find another source.
Other business areas can benefit from more sophisticated modeling as well. A leading financial-services provider, for example, stood up an AI-powered solution to generate leads for its sales agents, with models calibrated to handle the current environment.
In the next 90 days. As a first step, the chief analytics officer (or equivalent) should mobilize an effort to inventory core models that support business operations and work with business leaders to prioritize them based on their impact on key operations and their efficacy drift. This assessment is urgent and should be completed as quickly as possible. It will essentially define a program of quick fixes that the data and analytics team can undertake, working hand in hand with business and functional leaders. Once the situation stabilizes, CEOs and business leaders should push their data and analytics teams to develop next-generation models that leverage new data sets and modeling techniques better suited for fast-changing environments. The more advanced companies are already creating synthetic data sets using advanced machine-learning techniques, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) to train new analytical models when historical data are of little use.
Selectively modernize technology capabilities
Successfully executing the described agenda requires investment capacity and development velocity. CIOs can contribute to both by rightsizing the IT cost structure to new demand levels and reinvesting the freed-up resources into customer-facing digital solutions and critical decision-support systems, first and foremost. Companies can also dedicate some of the savings to modernizing selectively the technology stack and software-development tooling.
Many companies have found they have the potential to free up as much as 45 percent of their IT costs over the course of a year. Our experience suggests that roughly two-thirds of this potential can be achieved through measures such as extending hardware- and software-refresh cycles, rapidly renegotiating vendor contracts, and restricting cloud workloads by turning off noncritical jobs. Additional cuts get deeper into the cost structure and risk hamstringing future growth. The right balance will vary by industry, but under any scenario, rightsizing should expose much needed investment capacity as quickly as possible to fund the 90-day plan.
As CIOs consider upgrading their tech stacks, two features of a modern technology environment are particularly important and can be rapidly implemented: a cloud-based data platform and an automated software-delivery pipeline (commonly called “continuous integration and continuous delivery”). Without these, development velocity stalls and becomes mired in complexity. The good news is that cloud technologies make it possible to deploy these quickly and at relatively low cost.
In the next 90 days. First, develop the plan to rightsize and create a more variable cost structure—the faster the better to free up resources for the digital agenda.
In the second 30-day sprint, choose your cloud partners. While speed is of the essence, CIOs should thoughtfully consider the contractual structures offered by technology providers. Carefully review those that appear too good to pass up to ensure that the providers aren’t capturing all the value. And remember to launch appropriate internal efforts to train and prepare teams to operate in the new environment. During this sprint, it’s also time to modernize the tech stack selectively—“selectively” being the operative word. Most companies won’t have the management bandwidth and resources to take on a full-scale modernization in the next 12 to 18 months. By focusing on setting up or enhancing a cloud-based data platform and equipping agile teams with automated software delivery, CIOs can double, or even triple, development velocity in the short term.
In the final sprint, it’s a no-brainer to launch the recruiting of additional digital talent and accelerate digital upskilling of the entire organization. These steps will prepare organizations well for a more substantive modernization of their application landscapes after recovery. Finally, continue to pay attention to cybersecurity. Much of the rapid IT work carried out during the COVID-19 crisis might have created new cyberrisk exposures.
Increase the organizational drumbeat
The current crisis has forced organizations to adapt rapidly to new realities, opening everyone’s eyes to new, faster ways of working with customers, suppliers, and colleagues. Many CEOs wonder what it will take to maintain the quickened organizational drumbeat.
Companies that have led the way in adopting flatter, fully agile organizational models have shown substantial improvements in both execution pace and productivity. This has held true during the crisis, as we see a direct correlation between pre-crisis agile maturity and the time it has taken companies to launch a first crisis-related product or service. While many companies have at least a few agile teams in place, few have successfully scaled to hundreds of teams staffed with many more “doers” than “checkers,” which is what’s needed to drive the accelerated organizational pace the crisis—and even the next normal—demands.
What can realistically be done in 90 days to increase the organizational drumbeat? Standing up a digital factory is largely the best approach right now because it can be constructed and scaled in three months or less. Many organizations, from banks to mining companies, have accelerated and scaled their digital delivery by establishing these internal factories, with interdisciplinary teams aligned to businesses’ digital priorities. One large global bank, for example, built five such factories to support several locations across the Americas.
As previously mentioned, remote working can also help organizations move at a faster clip as companies tap into new labor pools and specialized remote expertise. (And, yes, agile can be executed remotely.) Remote working can also enable new productivity opportunities, especially for companies with large field forces. One leading provider of residential solar services recently documented record sales using a more remote sales model.
Remote working can help organizations move at a faster clip as companies tap into new labor pools and specialized remote expertise. (And, yes, agile can be executed remotely.)
In the next 90 days. During the first sprint, identify the business areas where digital-execution velocity is needed and map out plans for digital factories to support them. In parallel, assess where remote work models could unleash productivity benefits. These two lenses should set the table for targeted changes to the operating model. In the second 30-day sprint, design the new models with consideration for staffing level, expertise mix, governance, and operating procedures. Finally, in the third month, implement and operationalise the new designs. We know from experience that three months is sufficient to implement and scale a digital factory. We have also seen banks, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies pivot entire field forces to a remote model in a few weeks.
In summary
Leaders who want to succeed in the digital-led recovery must quickly reset their digital agendas to meet new customer needs, shore up their decision-support systems, and tune their organizational models and tech stacks to operate at the highest effective speed. In other words, C-level executives must point their digital firepower at the right targets and quickly execute against them. It’s essential to set these targets at the outset and regularly measure progress against them. Achieving parity or better across digital channels to win the revenue race, rebuilding the most critical decision-support models, and doubling development velocity are goals that are all within reach. The 90-day plan will help organizations get there.
This article first appeared here.
Could COVID scale the four-day work week?
Here’s what Ted Bauer thinks…
You’re starting to hear more talk about it. I actually listened to one of Andrew Yang’s podcasts last night, because I like Jean Twenge, and he was “bullish” on the idea. New York Magazine has recently mentioned it, Gizmodo has mentioned the climate possibilities associated with it, and The National Post has said that, in terms of Canada’s economy, “everyone will love it” if it can be enacted.
Back when I was first-ever blogging, I wrote about this topic a lot. I’ve gotten away from it, in part because of some things we will discuss in a second, but if you want to check out some 2014 hot takes on four-day work weeks, here’s one and here’s something I wrote for a place I almost worked in Boston as opposed to moving to Texas. #SlidingDoors
Let’s embrace the obvious first
Consistent three-day weekends are awesome for general engagement, unless you’re a savage workaholic. I had a deal at ESPN around 2010 or so where I left at 4pm Thursdays, didn’t work Fridays, didn’t work Saturdays, and came in Sunday mornings to publish some stuff for about an hour. Usually I’d come in, go to lunch somewhere near the office and watch sports, then go home with a tepid buzz. That was the best work arrangement, hours-wise, I’ve maybe ever had. Not quite a four-day work week, but close. Monday feels a lot better when you know Thursday is the out and Sunday is 1 hour and then an embrace of selfish bullshit like eating fish and chips while watching a horrible NY Giants game.
Anyway. People would like it. Who doesn’t like three-day weekends, right?
Some of the cracks in the armor
Much like not everyone can work from home (37%, 50% in certain areas and roles), not everyone can work four-day weeks. Some industries just wouldn’t allow for it. That’s issue 1, and the biggest issue.
Then you come into the issues with management. The purpose of management, in the eyes of management, is typically “make the trains run” and “keep the clients/customers happy.” Ironically, in many places they barely do the first one — they muddy the waters with unclear priorities — and have no metrics around the second one except for a few survey scores, but we can ignore that for a second.
If you believe your job is “keeping clients happy” and “making the trains run,” and suddenly everyone on your team is completely MIA on a Friday, well, that’s going to cause friction. That’s a hard barrier to jump over in a lot of organizations.
The health aspect
It would allow for more spacing pre-vaccine, essentially. It would also, in a much more important sense, allow us to reduce our insane connections to work and resume ideas like human connection, hobbies, meetups, video games, reading, walking, playing with dogs, or whatever. People are not supposed to be KPI machines. The cavemen did not want that. So you’d assume this four-day concept can be good for both mental and physical health. That’s a win.
Use “coverage” pockets to make it work
Basically, you tell employees, look, you are off work, but can you check email every four hours or so — twice/three times across the day — just to make sure there are no major flareups?
OK, so that’s Tier 1.
Tier 2 is that you assign a “coverage” person, or 2-3 people (or more for bigger orgs) for every Friday. Those people deal with all incoming needs. If a client/customer sends something to a specific person who is not on coverage, they can either deal with it themselves (if they enjoy the work and the client) or forward it to the coverage person or have an out-of-office up directing the sender to the coverage person.
That way, someone is always “covering” Fridays — and we know “covering” things is very important at work (hint: asses).
You could also just shift to 4 x 10 (10 hour workdays, adding to 40), which some companies do, or 4 x 8, because I believe 32 hours is the lowest number of hours where someone can still receive health insurance.
You could also try “A Teams” and “B Teams” so that people are in the office at different physical times, and each team/group alternates having four-day work weeks. Two of them per month is better than zero.
What else might you say here? Think this could work at some places?
It already is, by the way: Treehouse, Beholder, and the state of Utah, among others. Treehouse’s CEO wrote a guest post for Quartz on this topic a little while ago, and noted this:
50% more time with our family and friends. I get to spend three days a week, instead of two, with my family. 50%. It’s insane. For those on the team without kids, they get to spend this extra 50% on their hobbies or loved ones.
Any takers?
This article first appeared here.