Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Sixteen months ago, Snapchat started testing the water with ad tech and programmatic buying. Now, it’s going all-in and opening up its marketing application programming interface (API) to give a flood of companies access to its ad-buying platform and potentially more data. Snapchat expanded its Marketing API program today so that any tech vendor, agency…

As one of the earliest lifestyle publishers to successfully marry editorial content to e-commerce, Clique Brands Inc. — formerly Clique Media Group — is focused on continuing to find new ways to use digital tactics to strengthen this relationship.

With the combined business acumen of co-founders Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr, Clique found mass appeal when it launched the Who What Wear clothing collection for Target in 2016, a partnership that has since evolved to include spinoff lines, like its recently launched activewear line JoyLab for Target. Since then, Clique has strategically sought out ways to build the business, acquiring editorial properties like College Fashionista and launching verticals like its wellness site, The Thirty. Now Clique is gearing up to launch its first beauty line later this year, and as the brand continues to expand its product inventory, it’s focusing on how to better use data to inform both editorial content and product development.

We asked Power to share some of the latest happenings at Clique, during her break from overseeing a promotional photoshoot in Lower Manhattan for the next Who What Wear for Target collection. The responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

What role does consumer data play in designing the Who What Wear collections?
The development of our product line is super driven by our consumer. We’re engaging them throughout the process. We have a direct message group with our most engaged people around the collection on Instagram. We send photos of prints and patterns, and ask them which they like best, or we might test a new silhouette that we’re thinking about making. People are able to answer us directly and specifically about what they might like or not. Across all of our brands and communication platforms, we’re trying to form a one-to-one connection and have that conversation directly with the user instead of a push-it-out content model.

Why is direct communication on social media so important?
We’ve been doing some version of that for a while, through the comment section of Instagram, on the website, or we’ll send out a survey in a newsletter testing several different types of skirts or shoes. This takes it one step further, where we can talk directly to them. We have private Facebook groups where editors go and can talk to this very engaged community to incubate content ideas. We just created a message bot on Facebook where you can connect with a Who What Wear editor and have a very specific conversation. For example, yesterday, I asked an editor what I should wear to a black tie wedding.

What else informs your collections?
We drive the sales of about 20,000 different products per month, so we can see at every price what’s converting and what’s not, which silhouette is working, what material, what colors. All of that is given to our design team, and it’s their responsibility to forecast based on the design cycle and use their creativity. As a collection comes out and we see something is having trouble selling, we identify that maybe it’s missing some context — an occasion, what type of event to wear it to — so we can go back and raise awareness through editorial content to drive more sales.

How has Facebook de-emphasizing media content on its newsfeed impacted Clique’s editorial properties and how you market your products?
We still put out content there, but we’re super aware of the algorithms. We’re just re-tailoring our strategy to have a more organic connection with the users and to abide by [Facebook] rules. Our job is to not be super dependent on it, and we’re not. I think we have a good, healthy referral of traffic.

Running a media company is no easy task. What’s next on your priority list for Clique?
We’re at such an evolution point. It’s kind of like the spot we were in 12 years ago. At the time, we were in print, and we felt compelled to rethink the way women would consume content and shop for products, and how that would be monetized. We were really able to lead the charge on what is now called native content, and get a lot of luxury fashion retail brands to advertise on the internet. We’re at another evolution point where the monetization of media is changing and we all need to change the way we do things.

The post Clique co-founder Katherine Power on how to succeed in a new era of digital media appeared first on Digiday.

An ad-tech company owned by 21st Century Fox has hired a former ABC executive as its new president. TrueX–a company that replaces traditional TV spots with interactive ads to boost engagement–has named Pooja Midha to lead the company. Midha comes from Disney ABC Television Network, where she spent five years as svp of digital ad…

AT&T is launching a new campaign built around a 60-second anthem ad promising “More for Your Thing,” whether that’s binge-watching Game of Thrones or sports, gaming or enjoying VR experiences on the subway. “Everyone has a thing. That binge-watch over the weekend thing, that back from the dead or robot cowboy thing,” begins the voiceover,…

Right about now, millions of Americans (mostly men, all procrastinators) are hastily scanning the web to order flowers or secure a restaurant table, having suddenly realized that Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Spending for the occasion is up this year, according to data from the National Retail Federation, to $19.6 billion–about as much profit as AT&T…

Fearless Girl is here to stay. Nearly a year after she first appeared in downtown Manhattan, right before International Women’s Day 2017, negotiations are under way between the Mayor’s Office and State Street Global Advisors, the financial firm behind the now-iconic statue, regarding the long-term future of both Fearless Girl and her nemesis statue, Charging…

Give Salon points for novelty. On Feb. 12, Salon added an unusual proposition to the message it greets ad-blocking site visitors with: Either whitelist us, or let us use your computer’s spare processing power to mine cryptocurrency instead.

Those who grant Salon consent then have Coinhive, a piece of software that uses JavaScript to commandeer users’ computer processors, launch on their computers or phones. The software then uses that computing power to solve complex math problems, the process required to produce more of a cryptocurrency called Monero.

Though Salon’s move will only apply to a small share of its total audience — around a quarter of its audience has ad blockers turned on — the publisher said it sees cryptocurrency mining as a serious source of revenue in the long term.

“This is not a farce,” Salon Media Group CEO Jordan Hoffner said. “We were intent on being the first media company to make this part of our monetization strategy.”

According to Hoffner, Salon’s development team had been kicking around the idea internally for months before it first became aware of Coinhive. Hoffner, a former Google executive, said he spent two years studying blockchain and cryptocurrency and thinking about how it fits into digital media, a question that many have been turning over in their minds.

Salon was a pioneer in digital publishing, but has shrunk to become a small company. In the last nine months of 2017, it reported just $3.9 million in revenue.

Immediate reaction to Salon’s move has been mixed. Some cryptocurrency watchers saw the idea as intriguing. “If this caught on, it would represent a major disruption to the mining industry,” said Preston Byrne, the founder of blockchain client Monax and a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. “It would mean you could produce large mining farms simply by producing good content.”

Others saw it as less appealing. Salon will have to hope users don’t confuse its proposition with bad news Coinhive has faced recently, after bad actors worked its script into popular browser plugins, porn sites and digital advertisements, which did not require user consent.

Hey @Salon, this is a terrible idea. Forcing your readers to either run crypto mining code or disable ad blockers is actively harmful. pic.twitter.com/uOAeSzDa8i

— Kenn White (@kennwhite) February 13, 2018

The post Salon to ad-block users: Let us use your computers to mine cryptocurrency (really) appeared first on Digiday.

This Valentine’s Day, how will you show your love for McDonald’s Big Mac? Let’s see … you could eat a Big Mac, of course. Or maybe a Grand Big Mac. Or even a Big Mac Jr. Or you can save yourself all those empty calories by playing a pair of brand-boosting games developed by DDB….

What a difference a big product move and a few months can make. Snapchat late last year revamped its mobile app to include an algorithm that is designed to show users the most popular content from their friends. The move was seen by many marketplace observers as a way to shake off Instagram, which had…

Omnicom announced the appointment of Torrey La Grange to a newly created position of chief talent officer of its Global Clients Leaders (GCL) group, which is made up of executives who oversee the holding company’s top global accounts. La Grange, previously head of account management and global business director at BBH New York, will work…