Digital

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment

In two decades of driving digital analytics programs, I’ve seen all sorts of walls, including digital programs that have been hung up, ground to a halt or failed outright. These are the key transition points you need to get right to take your program to the next level.  By Gary Angel – CEO at Digital Mortar

Third-party verification can’t come too soon to digital media, as the combination of bot fraud, fake news and audience restatements has 50% of marketers saying they will no longer place advertising on a platform they consider risky

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has released new research on how the overall ANA member community is conducting e-commerce initiatives. E-commerce (also referred to as electronic commerce, EC, e-business, or e-tail) refers to a wide variety of internet-based business models.

What is becoming clear, despite some new entrants, is that economic value is coalescing around a very small number of companies with respect to digital advertisers.

Last week, the Doomsday Clock was moved from 3 minutes to midnight to 2.5 minutes to 12. Scientists believe that the chance of the world going up in a thermonuclear puff of smoke is the highest it’s been since 1953. This in the same week that Marc Pritchard, the global brand building officer from P&G, made waves by announcing that P&G, in effect, had moved the hand of the ad-spend doomsday clock to 12. High noon!

Marketers, media buyers, publishers, and digital advertising technology executives say that “better reporting, measurement or attribution” will be the top industry issue this year—a shift from 2016, when “cross-device audience recognition” took the lead position, according to “The Outlook for Data 2017: A Snapshot into the Evolving Role of Audience Insight.”

The theme of this year’s report, “Technology for People,” is a call to action for business and technology leaders to actively design and direct technology to augment and amplify human capabilities. The report states that we are beginning to see the emergence of technology for people, by people – technology that seamlessly anticipates our needs and delivers hyper-personalized experiences.

The grandfather of the digital video space is still looking pretty youthful. Despite an increasingly competitive digital video space that is packed with new (and successful) properties, usage of YouTube remains strong and the unit continues to be an important part of parent company Alphabet’s portfolio.

Over a few short decades, shopping options have expanded from local stores and cash transactions, to chain stores and credit cards, to anytime/anywhere shopping both on and offline, enabled by mobile apps and wallets. And not all shoppers are using every channel equally, especially when it comes to digital.

At Captura Group we are passionate about the Spanish language. Being a Hispanic digital agency, it’s in our DNA. On our Hispanic Online Marketing blog, we’ve talked about the importance of nuance, the benefit of a dual language strategy, and even when to use Spanglish to connect with U.S. Hispanics.  Our commitment to the Spanish language is why we were thrilled to learn about expanded text ads coming to Google Adwords. Expanded text ads essentially give advertisers more room to communicate, with 50 more characters in each ad.  By Shuree Jones, Captura Group

Shopping online has been the norm for years, but it is a more recent phenomenon for the consumer packaged goods industry. In fact, e-commerce is exploding and will account for 10 percent of all CPG sales by 2022.

The way we interact, the way we make decisions and the way we learn are all being shaped and influenced by the rapidly developing and increasingly accessible computing technology around us. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the use and adoption of AI.
 

Now that we have all of these digital touch-points and databases, marketers and their corporate information officers and finance officers are looking for models to organize and manage all of these marketing and advertising activities. And, quite naturally, they are looking for guidance to models that worked on other parts of their business. Not surprisingly, many have focused on what has worked for their supply chain and have tried to apply supply chain-oriented models to their “demand chain.”

It’s a new year, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau  is churning out the same old BS: “Digital Ad Market Soars 20% in Q3, Approaches $18 Billion”

Teenagers beware–mothers are finding new ways to share your baby pictures. Evolving technology is being adopted, consumed and leveraged in different ways by a variety of groups, including the women who serve as backbones for their families.

According to UBS Evidence Lab, 54% of 18- to 34-year-olds visit YouTube at least once per day, making it the third-most popular social media platform for daily usage among this age group.

Before turning the corner from 2016 to 2017, Telemundo accompanied the launch of El Chema, its latest 10 p.m. nightly attraction, with A 360 Escape, a virtual reality vignette about the series. By Simon Applebaum

As the recent rise in spending on influencer marketing suggests, the methods and sources consumers use to vet products online is undergoing a significant shift.

At the end of the 20th century, usage of the World Wide Web moved out of academia and grew at a breathtaking rate. By 2015, over one-third of the world’s population had logged on to the Internet at some point in the previous year; the Connected Revolution had arrived.  Now pundits say that we are on the verge of a fourth revolution: the Age of Smart Machines.  By Alessandro Zolla, Machine Learning Program Lead