Year: 2018 (Page 2 of 3)

CMS ❤ CRM – it’s nice to see two acronyms make friends

As we know, there are thousands of martech products in dozens of categories. Some categories are candidates for a being a center of gravity around which you can focus to build a stack or architecture.

Sometimes there are competing centers of gravity. Paul Ford takes happy look at how two of these, CMS and CRM, can now more easily work together. Read More

Laying the pipes of a post-advertising world

In this excellent post Andre Redelinghuys makes a compelling case that “The shift from brands and advertising to pipes and subscriptions is inevitable — and well underway.” Read More

GDPR helping a contextual targeting comeback

Jessica Davies reports some advertisers and agencies are shifting budgets away from personalization to contextual targeting. Not just because of GDPR, but because it’s value was underestimated. From Carat:

Sophisticated semantic analysis tools, exclusive access to premium environments and high quality content creation and distribution opportunities with publishers and influencers arm us with the toolkit to serve digital advertising that doesn’t require personal data yet is relevant and will resonate with its audience… Read More

AI, radiology and the future of work

Image analysis is perhaps the most obvious example of the power of deep learning, and even Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Ng have commented on its potential to effect the future careers of radiologists. Using radiology as an example, this short piece by the Economist offers three reasons to temper worries of AI taking over the workplace. Read More

Also…

• Lots of detail yet accessible description of today’s tracking… Field guide to tag hunting: The hidden world of Internet data collection via Data-driven SaaS
• Dear Publishers, if you want my subscription dollars (or euros), here is what I expect…   Me too! via Monday Note
• For those of you already working with deep learning… Why you need to improve your training data, and how to do it via Pete Warden’s blog
• For the few of you who missed this… Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report. via KPCB

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

Our privacy policy & GDPR

Since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect today we lead with our own privacy policy, and our progress in incorporating GDPR requirements. We encourage you to read it. TL;DR: We do not yet claim complete compliance. But because we don’t depend on advertising, and don’t buy, sell, or share personal data to help others advertise, complying with GDPR is less daunting than it is for many others. Our privacy policy will be updated as we continue to add support for GDPR. Read More

How will the GDPR impact machine learning?

Since GDPR is bigger than Queen Bey, we’re all being bombarded by emails and articles about GDPR, ranging from the click-baity to the ill-informed to the wishful-thinking to the doomsday-wailing to the we-can-help, to the technically-bureaucratic, to the thoughtfully-analytical, und so weiter. We expect most of you by now have waded through enough to find a favorite or two to get a handle on the basics, so we’ve chosen two posts that deserve a careful read that you might have missed. First up, Andrew Burt, digs into the details and complexity of what GDPR means for machine learning. There is no simple answer, but Burt’s article is a good place to learn why. Read More

GDPR will pop the adtech bubble

It could happen. Note that Doc Searls is not talking about advertising in general, just adtech. But adtech is, shall we, say well-funded. Read More

And now a break from GDPR!​…

Martech simultaneous consolidation & expansion

How is this possible?…

… a more accurate view of martech consolidation cycles is that they are indeed happening  but they are happening on top of a wave of underlying software expansion… That underlying wave of software expansion seems to be overtaking

the natural business consolidation dynamics that are absolutely still happening at the same time. Read More

Also…

• More useful than Duplex… Maps walking navigation is Google’s most compelling use for AR yet via Techcrunch
• It’s not only about unstructured data… An Introduction to Deep Learning for Tabular Data via fast.ai
• Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today. Probably not for long. via Recode
• ‘A fun adventure, not a business’… The Weather Channel stopped publishing video on Facebook via Digiday

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

Annoying online ads do cost business

Nielsen Norman Group reports on a new research study involving 35 million Pandora users over 21 months. The study showed increased advertising caused a 2.8% reduction in use. As they point out, this is not a huge amount, and your mileage may vary.

What is significant is the convincing quantification. Nobody wants to have to defend a drop in customer activity. Read More

Predicting content attention and behavior

Content strategist Michael Andrews argues that “The biggest weakness in content strategy today is that it lacks predictive explanatory power. … To provide predictive explanatory power, content strategy guidelines should be based on empirical data that can be reproduced by others.”. Andrews summarizes, and points to, a new study presented at the 2018 World Wide Web Conference by Nir Grinberg of Northeastern University that provides some data and interesting analysis. The summary and Grinberg’s paper are both worthy of your time, and a must read if you’re a content strategist. Read More

How Axel Springer is getting consent for GDPR

They’ve been running some tests and are kindly sharing the results.

So far, the publisher’s readers are far more likely to give consent when they receive a fact-based static message, rather than a video message or one written in a tone that requests the readers’ support. Read More

Speech recognition systems vulnerable to adversarial attacks

Nicholas Carlini and David Wagner invented a novel attack against speech recognition AI. With the addition of an imperceptible amount of noise, the attack can trick speech-recognition systems into producing any output the attacker wants.

The Gradient’s Hugh Zhang points out that this kind of

attack is also a problem for other deep learning algorithms, for example in image recognition. Read More

Also…

• Philosophers Rule!… Ludwig Wittgenstein invented the emoji in 1938 via Quartz
• A relevant contemporary syllabus with links to excellent resources for corporations or others… Ethics in data science via University of Utah
• B2B marketers and content management: what’s working and what’s not via Digital Clarity Group
• 8 tentacles… Behind the curtain: How Google got media companies addicted via Axios

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

Notes from the AI frontier: Applications and value of deep learning

In 2011 as the excitement about Big Data was becoming mainstream, McKinsey published what was the most useful early report for executives. Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, took a smart and measured look at use cases and value across industries. Given the symbiotic relationship between data and AI / machine learning, companies who were paying attention and invested in Big Data then are likely positioned well ahead of others to benefit from today’s advances in machine learning technologies and techniques.

McKinsey’s new report provides a knowledgeable overview using accurate terminology in their “… analysis of more than 400 use cases across 19 industries and nine business functions highlights the broad use and significant economic potential of advanced AI techniques.” Highly recommended. Read More

A flaw-by-flaw guide to Facebook’s new GDPR privacy changes

Josh Constine provides a useful take on the changes rolling out now to European users illustrated with screen shots. But I think it’s safe to say that whether they are meeting the “letter of the GDPR law” is still a matter for debate.

Overall, it seems like Facebook is complying with the letter of GDPR law, but with questionable spirit…Facebook struck the right balance in some places here. But the subtly pushy designs seem intended to steer people away from changing their defaults. Read More

Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2018)

Scott Brinker has just released the latest update to his famous “Supergraphic”. The number of marketing technology vendors continues to grow. As Scott puts it, “Water continues to flow into the martech tub faster than it’s draining out.” Check out his post on what it all means and to see/download the graphic and a spreadsheet. Read More

Uh oh, click counts count less

Click quality and measurement has always been a bit iffy. But the biggest challenge to click value yet may come from a combination of mobile trends and Google’s strategy of reducing the need to click away from the search results page. Rand Fishkin’s post, New Data: How Google’s Organic & Paid CTRs Have Changed 2015-2018, looks at some interesting numbers. Back to brand marketing banners?

Ultimately, I think this data shows us that the future of SEO will have to account for influencing searchers without earning a click, or even knowing that a search happened. That’s going to be very frustrating for a lot of organizations. Read More

Also…

• Ignoring ads is a learned behavior… Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop via Nielsen Norman Group
• 25 years ago the Mosaic Browser Lights Up Web With Color, Creativity via Wired
• Disturbing… “I Just Google It”: Folk Theories of Distributed Discovery via Oxford University Press
• Basic, but good… A glossary of blockchain jargon via Technology Review

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

GDPR – a big deal for small publishers

“… think about this in relation to a new visitor. Someone that you have no prior relationship with… What data can you actually collect and use for that person? The answer is … nothing! … a first time visitor hasn’t done anything that could be considered consent, so you have nothing to work with.”

And you can’t use third-party plugins like ad partner scripts or social widgets that collect data. GDPR is complicated and how much of it will be interpreted is unknown.

Thomas Baekdal explains why, and how, all publishers need to get started. Read More

The top 25 AI use cases for content management

What we used to call “unstructured data” is the raw material of content management, and this same raw material is where machine learning will have the largest impact. Kashyap Kompella has put together a list of use cases you’ll want to look at. Read More

Chrome’s Articles for You a major new referral source

Google Chrome’s Articles for You is an under-publicized feature of Chrome on both Android and iOS that is now the fourth most prominent referrer in the Chartbeat network (behind Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter). Even though Chartbeat is currently only tracking Articles for You referrals from Android and not from iOS, its Android referrals alone are now about two-thirds the size of all of Twitter (desktop, Android, iOS) in terms of the volume of traffic sent… Articles for You traffic grew a shocking 2,100 percent in 2017 — from driving 15 million visits per month to publishers using Chartbeat to 341 million visits per month.

There are lots of questions about how this works. Josh Schwartz reports on what he’s been able to find out. Read More

It’s time to rebuild the web

Most of what is written about this topic assumes radical decentralization and blockchain. But this won’t happen quickly even though there are lots of blockchain applications already popping up. The general problem is just too big, the user experience changes alone are daunting, and there are still technical challenges. Mike Loukides takes a thoughtful look at a simpler path. Read More

Also…

• You probably didn’t see this coming… Chrome and Firefox will support a new standard for password-free logins via The Verge
• Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here with iOS 11. 3 – what does it mean? via Medium
• Beyond PWAs, there’s WebAssembly and Houdini… Web apps are only getting better via The Verge
• Enough With the Trolley Problem. Yes. It’s not sufficient – ethics is more complicated… via The Atlantic

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

This is so much bigger than Facebook

The Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal is Facebook’s most serious crisis so far because it exposes the particular weakness of their business model at a time, and in a way, that can no longer be ignored by those who understood it, namely, investors and paying customers. There is no obvious fix that does not reduce Facebook’s value. And then there are the Facebook users paying with ‘only’ personal data – how many of these will now become woke? And what will they do? As Ethan Zuckerman, points out though, and the reason I singled out his excellent article, the problem is much bigger.

… Zuck didn’t mention that Facebook’s business model is based on collecting this demographic and psychographic information and selling the ability to target ads to people using this data about them… This is a known bug not just for Facebook and other social networks, but for the vast majority of the contemporary web. Read More

Duopoly not all-powerful?

eMarketer estimates that the combined Google and Facebook share of the digital ad market will shrink from last year’s 58.5% to 56.8% in 2018 “as smaller players such as Amazon and Snapchat are experiencing faster-than-expected growth.” Also, Google and Facebook’s share of new digital ad dollars is declining… This year, they will garner nearly 48% of new expenditures.” Down from almost 73% in 2016. Read More

Google News Initiative

Google has been more successful than Facebook in working with publishers. And of course they need to be, for all the same reasons they need to support the Open Web. This week they launched the Google News Initiative to pull together all the relevant projects and partnerships into a coordinated effort and are committing $300m to fund the activity over the next three years. Self-interested of course, but lots to applaud here. Read More

Eager to sell your personal data?

Should marketers pay consumers directly to access their personal data? The idea isn’t new but it’s become more popular as people see the huge profits that Google, Facebook, and others make from using that data, as consumers become more aware of the data trade, and as blockchain technology makes low cost micro-payments a possibility.

David Raab takes a look at the current vendor marketplace, and reaches the realistic conclusion that “You’ll have to wait”. Good advice. Read More

Why the IAB GDPR Transparency and Consent Framework is a non-starter for publishers

The IAB and IAB Europe, which are charged with representing a much broader set of stakeholders including hundreds of ad tech companies, Google, Facebook, Oath, and many others with significant intermediary interests, has released its plan to handle the GDPR roll-out. The IAB framework, which was submitted for industry commenting, was clearly designed by ad tech companies and included endorsement from 23 ad tech companies and, most notably, zero publishers. Read More

Also…

• Tools matter. To improve open data, help publishers via The Open Data Institute
• The game is more complicated than Will the tracker always get through? via Digital Content Next
• It’s not as simple as tracking source code changes… The Machine Learning Reproducibility Crisis via Pete Warden’s Blog
• If you want to understand Blockchain, try to understand Switzerland More informative than the obvious high level high level title. via Never Stop Marketing

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

Why decentralization matters

Chris Dixon has a really useful post explaining the intense interest in decentralized cryptonetworks and why he thinks they will drive a return to a more open internet less dominated by the major platforms. His post is short, clear, accessible, and a great starting point for strategic discussions.

The 140+ comments are useful as well but keep in mind there is a natural tension between centralized and decentralized networks in the same way there is between all proprietary and open architectures — there is a role for each and a tendency for one or the other to dominate at different points in time and usefulness. There are also different types of decentralization which can too easily be conflated. Read More

The meaning of open

Google’s Alex Komoroske digs into the tension and interplay between open and closed systems in a thoughtful piece that is a good companion read (not a response) to Dixon’s piece on decentralization. In the context of what it means to be open in general, you’ll get some insight into Google’s thinking about the balance between their own platform components and being part of the open web. Read More

The next platform for media and makers

Jarrod Dicker, who you may know from the Washington Post, Time, Huffington, and The RebelMouse content management system, believes it’s time for a blockchain-based platform for content creators and publishers. Dicker just left the Post to be CEO of Blockchain startup Po.et. This will be interesting to watch. Read More

10 breakthrough technologies 2018

MIT Technology Review’s annual list is always worth reading. It comes as close to a carefully curated and neutral list as you’ll find. And while their broad coverage means not all the technologies will have a near term impact on your business decisions, they are likely to be “technologies that will have a profound effect on our lives.” Read More

Also…

• • After years of testing, The Wall Street Journal has built a paywall that bends to the individual reader via Nieman Lab
  • Just a matter of time before something clicks… publishers (again) turn to micropayments via DigiDay
  • More than an Apple Watch market? Yes, but their watch may rule the ecosystem… The Evolution of the Wearables Market via Tech.pinions

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues

How is AI disrupting marketing?

An excellent summary from Scott Brinker on the current/near-term reality of “AI” marketing applications. “…here’s the irony: as much as the hype has overstated what AI

might do formarketing in the next 12-24 months, the reality of how AI is already working in marketing today is often under-recognized.” Tis true. Read More

The NYT is boarding the AR train — here’s what that means for storytelling

One of the areas we’re paying attention to this year is the use of AR content for serious enterprise applications and truly useful consumer use cases. In the case of publishing, The New York Times, Quartz, Axel Springer, and others, are experimenting with how the unique characteristics of AR content can enhance customer experiences rather than distract. As powerful as the AR promise is we don’t know how news consumers will react to the extra, more active, effort involved. But it’s time to find out. Read More

How blockchain could kill both cable and Netflix

Not this week, but there is keen interest in using blockchain technology to build decentralized peer-to-peer content management and distribution applications. There are a number of these kinds of projects planning to go live this year. Rizwan Virk describes much of the collective vision and potential disruption. A good place to start learning more. Read More

Smart homes and vegetable peelers

Andreessen Horowitz’s Benedict Evans doesn’t have a unified vision of the future of smart homes, but he does have some ideas and lots of enlightening questions. In this post he looks at smart home ecosystems and questions smart thing use cases, market dynamics, platform roles, integrations, and how we’ll interface with them. He remains “extremely skeptical” of voice as a new major platform, and rightfully so. This a must read for anyone building or investing in products or businesses around smart things – not just for the home. Read More

Also…

• • The retina is the next screen to deal with, and… Intel’s new Vaunt smart glasses actually look good via The Verge
  • Interesting analysis… 8 Lessons from 20 years of Gartner Hype Cycles via Michael Mullany
  • As they say at Axios “Be smart”… Bitcoin, Blockchain, and the Trouble with ICOs via Wired 
  • Think the future of things should be more like the Open Web? See… “Project Things” – An open framework for connecting your devices to the web via the Mozilla Blog

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. See all issues