Author: rssmasher

Publishers who are looking to reduce reliance on Facebook since the social network announced plans to deprioritize news are giving LinkedIn a fresh look.

LinkedIn is best known as a social network for business professionals, but even publishers beyond the business space are eyeing the platform to see where they can capitalize on it.

News UK titles The Times and Sunday Times don’t post any content to LinkedIn, but the publisher said it plans to make publishing there a bigger focus this year.

HuffPost UK is working on an editorial series of work-related videos and text articles more suited for LinkedIn. Lifestyle publisher Shortlist Media is hiring several people to focus on LinkedIn.

Shortlist Media was approached by LinkedIn in last two months to test what video content works well with audiences. LinkedIn’s U.K. team is not adverse to receiving feedback on what works, said Owen Wyatt, managing director at Shortlist Media, who meets with the platform every other week.

“When I look at all the platforms, the biggest opportunity to grow audience and revenue is LinkedIn,” Wyatt said. “LinkedIn is trying to learn with content companies.”

Publishers like the Financial Times, the Economist and CNBC in the U.S. are also testing native videos on the platform, which LinkedIn rolled out last August. The Economist’s video on artificially grown meat has generated 2,000 likes and a few dozen comments. The FT posts a weekly five-minute video on a look ahead at the week’s news and 60-second stories like Tuesday’s launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy. Both videos have around 500 likes. CNBC International isn’t doing native video tests with LinkedIn, but video content created by the International team like this Davos explainer video, has had 500 likes and two dozen comments after being posted to CNBC’s flagship page. We asked LinkedIn to comment on its publisher approach; we’ll update this story if they respond.

Publishers are unlikely to replace lost Facebook traffic with LinkedIn, though. LinkedIn is still a tiny source of referral traffic for publishers, accounting for less than half of 1 percent of all global referral traffic, according to Parsely data. While desktop traffic was flat last year, mobile referral traffic for LinkedIn across Parsely’s publisher base more than doubled. Engagements on LinkedIn content have increased fourfold in the last two years with publishers like Forbes, the BBC, Bloomberg and Business Insider, according to NewsWhip. LinkedIn told Digiday that comments, likes and shares are up more than 60 percent year-on-year, due to product updates, new features and analytics.

LinkedIn is also taking a slow and steady approach to video, perhaps to avoid repeating the brand-safety and measurement mistakes of other platforms before it, like YouTube and Facebook. Outside of branded content, LinkedIn hasn’t said how it will monetize video content through ads, according to publishers in the U.K.

There’s also a perception among publishers that it’s harder for small media companies than for big ones to reach large audiences there, whereas Facebook was more of a level playing field.

Page-follower growth has been slow for CNBC International, despite its business and finance content having a natural place on the platform, said Cristy Garratt, head of digital video and social media at CNBC International. LinkedIn drives more meaningful traffic when CNBC International’s reporters post stories from their own profiles than when the publisher itself does.

“Engagement [on posts] is really hit or miss,” said Garratt. “LinkedIn is newer to the news-feed game, and we’ve seen improvement since it redesigned its app. Hopefully, video will be a game changer.”

 

The post Publishers eye LinkedIn as Facebook’s reliability falters appeared first on Digiday.

With enforcement of Europe’s highly anticipated General Data Protection Regulation just a few months away, Oasis Fashion is getting choosier about which companies it shares data with.

The fashion retailer doesn’t buy third-party data nor does it sell any of its customer data, but it does outsource some data-management tasks, and it is those companies that are  being vetted, Oasis’ head of digital, Helena Theakstone, said. Companies like SMS providers and email service providers are among those being scrutinized by Oasis, and it’s turning away any new mar-tech partners that pitch for its business if they aren’t yet compliant.

Oasis isn’t alone in having its work cut out for it in preparing for the GDPR. Fifty-nine percent of marketers haven’t received any GDPR-related training, according to a survey of 381 marketers by the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing. A separate study from the U.K. trade body the Direct Marketing Association found over half (57 percent) of 197 marketers surveyed admitted their team is under-trained when it comes to the GDPR.

Oasis’ legal firm is vetting the retailer’s existing data partners and prospective suppliers to determine how they gather, use, disclose and manage the retailer’s data. Once the audits are returned, the retailer will determine if it continues with the suppliers. But given it has such a small roster of partners, Theakstone doesn’t predict any wholesale changes to its suppliers. Also, the retailer’s own data has given it a pretty good idea of whether a person’s privacy is infringed upon when it processes someone’s data.

Although a person’s individual rights have been strengthened when it comes to what an advertiser can and can’t do with someone’s data, the foundations of those rights were there all along under existing legislation, said Theakstone.

Oasis has already vetted two potential new partners in the last month. The retailer declined to work with one business when it discovered it hadn’t updated its privacy policy to account for the GDPR and was unwilling to create one with Oasis. It chose another partner that was willing to work with Oasis on such a policy.

Spanish banking group Banco Sabadell is also assessing its third-party vendors for GDPR compliance, including marketing services providers. Speaking at an event hosted by online security firm RSA on Feb. 4, the financial firm’s IT risk director Javier Sanchez Ureta said it now judges all vendors against 14 different areas of risk, such as their security track record, before agreeing a deal.

Beyond the audits, Oasis is also using its GDPR preparations as a chance to take more ownership of its data. It recently hired a website optimization manager, customer insights manager and customer services expert, roles that will help Oasis develop a more rounded view of its customers. The customer services expert, for example, will oversee the company that handles the retailer’s interactions with shoppers. The customer insights manager will help the brand build a CRM platform and do contextual targeting. Industry observers believe contextual targeting will be a better alternative to third-party cookie data, which will be harder to use post-GDPR.

To that end, Oasis is also looking at customer values, such as who they vote for, whether they have kids, and whether they a dog or cat person, Theakstone said. “We’re trying to pinpoint who our customers are so that we can target around those [contextual] themes rather than [cookie data].”

One role the business has no immediate plans to recruit for is a data protection officer. There is still some confusion in the market as to whether the role is compulsory or not. At one point, any company with more than 250 employees needed to hire a DPO, but current guidance says the role is only necessary if a company handles a lot of sensitive personal data.

Image courtesy of Oasis Fashion

The post How Oasis Fashion is protecting its marketing data from GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

TD Ameritrade is letting customers initialize trades over Twitter, the latest attempt by the discount brokerage to attract digitally savvy and younger investors.

A convergence of public and enterprise blockchains is on the horizon, according to the CEOs of two of the most high-profile companies in the space, Chain and Blockchain.

While similar in name, they’re entirely different. Chain is a blockchain startup; it builds databases, effectively, for big companies to move money or other assets and its customers include Citi, Visa and Nasdaq, all of whom actually use the blockchain technology in their businesses today. Blockchain is a definitely more of a crypto company, a consumer crypto-wallet and exchange whose CEO, Peter Smith, does more p-to-p payment volume than PayPal.

“The dichotomy between public and private blockchains is a false one,” Ludwin said at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in New York Wednesday. “Over time there will be more of a convergence of what’s happening in the enterprise and what’s happening on the open Internet to create this future of value over IP.”

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

The post Public and private blockchain networks are trying to work together appeared first on Digiday.

As digitally native brands continue to disrupt the beauty industry’s status quo, more and more investors are rushing to back them up.

It doesn’t hurt that beauty at large seems to be having a moment, with U.S. beauty sales rising to $17.7 billion in 2017, a 6 percent increase from the year prior. Skin care accounted for 45 percent of those gains, which is not surprising, given that every media outlet from The New Yorker to New York Magazine has unpacked its current vogue. 

But the consumer stickiness and loyalty the beauty category affords makes it appealing in the long-term, too, according to Sutian Dong, a partner at Female Founders Fund, which has invested in brands like Winky Lux and Manicube.

“That results in very predictable revenue,” she said. “But more and more people are also realizing that it’s a really compelling place to make tremendous margins at scale.”

Buzzy companies like Glossier, Huda Beauty and Charlotte Tilbury have all received recent funding, but new investor cash isn’t just reserved for high-profile brands. Last February, the customizable hair-care company Function of Beauty secured a $9.5 million Series A round led by GGV Capital, while its competitor, Prose Beauty, raised $5.2 million of its own this past December in a Series A round led by Forerunner Ventures.

All in all, the beauty sector saw an all-time-high of more than 149 deals in 2017, according to an April report from CB Insights, representing a 19 percent jump from the year prior.

Even the traditional beauty players left in the wake of these younger brands are catching on to their appeal, which has led to a frenzy of M&A activity over the last few years.

After scooping up Smashbox early in 2010, Estée Lauder purchased Too Faced Cosmetics for $1.45 billion in 2016. The same year, L’Oréal purchased It Cosmetics for $1.2 billion. After Unilever acquired a slew of brands in 2015, including Kate Somerville and Dermalogica, the company continued its buying spree last year, shilling for brands like Carver Korea ($2.7 billion) and Hourglass Cosmetics (for an undisclosed sum).

But the beauty startup space is increasingly crowded, and not all new, digital-first brands meet the mark for investors. What it comes down to is a combination of product efficacy, transparency, innovation and customer connection.

Product is king
In the age of Instagram, good branding matters. But it won’t lead to success in and of itself, especially in the beauty space, where results are key. Evidence that your products work is not just essential to courting consumers, but potential investors, too.

“A company might be able to pull off bad product with good branding at first, but I think it will be short-lived,” said Jonathan Keidan, the founder of Torch Capital, an early stage venture fund.

“You know which products work right away from consumer behavior,” agreed Matt Scanlan, the founder of the seed-stage fund Softmatter Ventures, an investor in True Botanicals. “They create a repeat-purchase behavior that is highly identifiable and profitable, and that leads to healthy, organic growth for the company.”

Clinical trials are also helpful, even if, as Scanlan pointed out, many young brands avoid investing in them for fear of the results or the belief that marketing dollars are better spent elsewhere.

“That’s a mistake — they’re a huge indicator of value,” he said.

Everything that True Botanicals produces, for example, goes through rigorous clinical trials to ensure that its results are top-notch.

Legitimate transparency
Those trials also offer an important reflection of your supply chain, something investors agreed is crucial for beauty brands to be open about today.

“Customers want to know what ingredients are involved and where they’re coming from,” said Keidan. The more natural or organic they are, the better — but only if the products actually work, added Dong: “You can’t rely on natural in and of itself.”

Sustainability, or the assurance that a product’s creation has not had a negative impact on the environment or its producers, is also important.

“It’s a huge category-buster right now,” said Scanlan, whose company considers it the No. 1 factor when investing. “It’s really changing beauty at large.”

He added that sustainability has even reached Sephora, and the retailer will be rolling out a sustainability initiative in most of its store in the coming months. Although Sephora didn’t respond to a request for comment, the retailer has promised in the past to better audit the suppliers it relies on for Sephora Collection.

Of course, many companies today have jumped on the sustainability train for the good PR it affords, so Scanlan and his peers seek out those who’ve been validated by an external source, like those vetted by the Organic Consumers Association or that have been Fair Trade certified.

“I could tell you how sustainable I am until I’m blue in the face, but without some sort of auditing service to validate those assertions, it doesn’t hold a lot of weight, especially with consumers who can Google results and get information so easily,” he said.

Innovation meets personalization
Beauty brands that are truly doing something different, and at warp speed, are the golden ticket for investors today.

Dong points to Winky Lux, which she calls “the Zara for beauty,” as an example.

“They have a very differentiated backend production and logistics network,” she said, which allows them to take products from ideation to release within 45 days on average. “They’re giving consumers beauty that is always fresh and always evolving according to what they want.”

One investor, speaking under condition of anonymity due to current fundraising, said that Winky Lux (and its speed-to-market capabilities) has exactly the brand blueprint he and his colleagues are looking for today. Alongside its constant customer-listening that leads to speedy product innovation, it’s selling lower-priced and trend-driven products, like eyeshadow palettes and highlighter, largely online (the company only has one storefront in NYC).

Customization is also on investors’ minds these days, with many pointing to the aforementioned hair-care brands Function of Beauty and Prose, which offer products curated to customer needs, as particularly exciting.

“That level of personalization is crucial across categories today,” said Keidan.

Knowing your customer (and where to find them)
Of course, none of this matters if a brand can’t effectively reach its target consumers.

“Product market fit is vital,” said Scanlan. “You need to know who your customer is, and your branding needs to service that audience.” Glossier, for example, has succeeded thanks to its knowledge of its target “cool girl,” the aesthetic she likes and the channels she hangs out on, he said.

Kylie Cosmetics and LimeCrime have seen similar success targeting their makeup-heavy and edgier consumer, respectively, on social media.

“These brands only go after who their girl is,” said Scanlan.

Many of these less mainstream or minority demographics have historically been shunned by legacy brands, said Dong, and tapping into that whitespace is key. Fenty Beauty, which has shot to success thanks to offering a more diverse product range — including 40 foundation shades — is a prime example.

“We look for companies that can leverage the reach of social networks to really speak to and capture these consumer groups that have long been on the periphery,” she said.

The post What makes a beauty brand worthy of investment in 2018 appeared first on Digiday.

Amazon.com said it will start delivering Whole Foods groceries via its fastest delivery option in four markets, marking the first major integration between its e-commerce operations and its new brick-and-mortar grocery chain.

Tesla signaled it is making progress in overcoming its early production troubles building the Model 3 sedan, telling shareholders it expects to generate its first sustained operating profit sometime this year.

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When Gerber baby food first appeared on store shelves in 1927, it freed countless mothers from the chore of straining vegetables for their own infants. But while the food inside the jar turned some heads, the label on the outside turned even more. It featured a pencil sketch of an idealized American infant. Her name…