Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

With so much data being collected, stored and used, it was inevitable that breaches would be on the rise. The year 2017 saw more personally identifiable information (PII) exposed through malicious intent than ever than before.

Equifax and Yahoo led in the headlines, but there were many other notable breaches. As we look back, let’s see what we can learn from them.

Equifax makes all the headlines

Attackers hit more than 145 million Equifax customers this September. They stole names,
[Read More …]

The skaters-turned-commentators say their sport is missing the sort of stars it had in the ’90s.

In the 1990s, U.S. Olympic figure skaters were household names. But today, you’d probably be more likely to know the names of the skating commentators, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.

“We’re very proud to educate people in a different way than maybe they have over the last many moons,” Weir said on the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka. “Tara and I do things more conversationally. We’re very direct with our audience, and it’s a huge audience for us to be carrying figure skating.”

Figure skating is, in Weir’s words, “the diamond in the tiara of the Winter Olympics.” Talking with Kafka and Weir, Lipinski said part of their goal next year will be reminding viewers why that is — despite the shortage of household names.

“There really hasn’t been a name that is in the media on a daily basis and that’s what skating in the ’90s was,” Lipinski said. “Everyone knew, after the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan incident — Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan — everyone knew these names; they were household names because they were winning, they were on TV.”

“The perception of skating was different,” she added. “It had a little more glitz and glamor, it appealed to all ages. Whereas now, we haven’t really had that star. If we do, and that star starts popping up in pop culture moments, that would change the sport, in my opinion. You never know when that could happen.”

You can listen to Recode Media on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

On the new podcast, Weir said that when he competed in the Olympic Games in 2006 and 2010, he found himself having to compete with a completely different type of celebrity than his predecessors. And the older generation of people who coach and judge the skaters don’t always appreciate how interesting and different today’s personalities can be.

“I understood, in the twilight years of my skating, who I was and what I was going to be able to do at the Olympic Games,” Weir said. “… When I was going to my second Olympic Games, it was Gaga and it was Kardashians — it wasn’t as wholesome as maybe the ’90s would have been. You have to be, in some ways, competitive in an entertainment format with that sort of person.”

He and Lipinski also reflected on how the internet is changing the sport: Figure skating superfans can follow their favorite skaters year-round, thanks to the proliferation of livestreaming options online. But during their first turn in the booth, at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, the commentators took advantage of social media.

“Our main audience really isn’t that [superfans], and I think we established that in Sochi,” Lipinski said. “We brought in a lot of people that never watch figure skating at all. We really don’t know, [but] we go off of our Instagram and our Twitter.”

“I think back to my time when I was skating: I was 15 and there was no such thing as Instagram,” she added. “Nowadays, it can only be helpful that these athletes can engage with fans and become visible on a different platform. For Johnny and I, it was a huge blessing in Sochi … we made a joint Instagram account just because we thought it would be fun, and I remember one morning knocking on Johnny’s door and saying, ‘We had 11 followers last night, now we have 20,000 more followers!’”

If you like this show, you should also sample our other podcasts:

• Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with the movers and shakers in tech and media every Monday. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
• Too Embarrassed to Ask, hosted by Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode, answers all of the tech questions sent in by our readers and listeners. You can hear new episodes every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcastor wherever you listen to podcasts.
• And finally, Recode Replay has all the audio from our live events, such as the Code Conference, Code Media and the Code Commerce Series. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on Apple Podcasts — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Peter. Tune in next Thursday for another episode of Recode Media!

---

[Read More …]

NFL ratings are down this season, but in-game ad revenue continues to grow year-over-year this season, according to new data from Standard Media Index. This season’s NFL revenue, from September to the end of November, is up 2 percent among all networks. There was one additional nationally aired linear TV game than in the same…
[Read More …]

The revolution in customer relationship marketing (CRM) continues with an exponential increase in the points of data available to leverage for marketing. Data is more robust, measurement tools are better, and channel capabilities are improving — not only on their own, but also in their ability to orchestrate marketing across channels. All of this is great for the industry, and it is driving investment in new marketing stacks.

When I talk about a marketing stack here, I don’t mean that
[Read More …]

AdExchanger |

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Trey Stephens, director of audience monetization at Acxiom. As 2017 comes to a close, it’s a great time for brands to assess ways to improve marketing strategy and better capitalize… Continue reading »

[Read More …]

Last week, Instagram added two features that will alter the content in users’ feeds: The ability to follow hashtags will surface hashtag-focused posts, and a “Recommended for you” section will show posts friends have liked.

When it comes to organic reach on the platform, both changes have favorable and unfortunate implications for brands, publishers and influencers. Here’s a rundown of them:

Clutter will increase
Both changes will add increased clutter to Instagram feeds, resulting in more content users must scroll through to reach all organic content. Ever since 2016, when Instagram switched from a chronological algorithm to one that tailors posts for each specific user, brands have to pay to be seen. Instagram said the new changes will not impact where paid ads will appear within user feeds, so posts that are not backed by a robust paid Instagram strategy are likely to be further buried.

The new hashtag-related posts will follow the platform’s same algorithm. If a user follows a certain hashtag, say “#photography,” Instagram will determine which posts to show the user in their feed based on the recency and quality of the posts. There is no limit on how many hashtag-related posts appear in a user’s feed, said an Instagram spokesperson.

Meanwhile, the new “Recommended for you” section, which will include three to five posts, will appear after a user has viewed all of their new posts. Consequently, users who open and close the app more often will see the “Recommended for you” section more frequently than those that do not.

More discoverability
Both updates could improve discoverability on the platform in general, even as organic posts fall to the bottom of feeds. Take the “Recommended for you” feature.

“If Instagram follows Facebook,” said Samantha Skey, president and chief revenue officer at SheKnows Media, “I imagine we’ll see plenty of sponsored posts, which could make for strong advertising as it captures a trusted referral.” For the time being, Instagram said it has no plans to place sponsored posts in the “Recommended for you” section.

With the new ability to follow hashtags, marketers can capitalize on trending conversations. For instance, on Dec. 15, Target used #StarWars in a post to appear next to other posts that reference the opening of “The Last Jedi” movie. Now, if a user follows #StarWars, they might see Target’s post in his or her feed.

“For years, brands that had a right to be seen alongside certain hashtag-related content were buried by the algorithm,” said Matt Lang, senior digital strategist at digital agency Rain. “But now, they’ll have a chance to surface.”

Letting users follow hashtags could also boost influencers, said Kamiu Lee, vp of business and development strategy at influencer platform Activate by Bloglovin’.

Hashtags could encourage publishers to create communities related to their own brands and hashtags that audiences will want to follow, said Amy Ramirez, Instagram manager at travel publisher Culture Trip.

Hashtag abuse
Marketers don’t need big follower counts or social media budgets to do so, so it’s likely that they will add more trending hashtags to their posts as well as to their Instagram Stories, which could lead to hashtag abuse.

“The real challenge on all of us [is] determining which hashtags are actually relevant and can add value to conversations,” said Amanda Peters, group strategy director at Wunderman.

Allie Arends, social media engagement supervisor at Space150, said brands and influencers will have to start strategizing about their organic Instagram content almost like they would an SEO strategy. “The image, copy and especially hashtag usages should serve a specific strategic purpose to maximize organic reach,” she said.

Still, there’s no guarantee brands’ and influencers’ hashtagged posts will appear in users’ feeds. Lang said advertisers shouldn’t be surprised if Instagram decides to enact another algorithm that prioritizes which posts get featured for a specific hashtag that is being followed.

Either way, advertisers look forward to seeing which hashtags users end up following. Scott Lindenbaum, evp and director of digital strategy at Deutsch, said this kind of personal interest data could help make ads more relevant.

[Read More …]

This ain’t your grandpa’s Walmart.

When Walmart paid $3 billion for Jet.com and its founder Marc Lore, the promise was that the entrepreneur would help the retailer appeal to new types of customers.

Here’s the next step in that evolution.

A new Walmart subsidiary, called Code Eight, has recently started testing a personal shopping service for “busy NYC moms,” according to multiple sources, with the goal of letting them get product recommendations and make purchases simply through text messaging.

The target customer of Code Eight is described in an online job listing as a “high net worth urban consumer” — translation: A rich city dweller — certainly not the historical sweet spot for Walmart’s main business.

Household items are delivered for free within 24 hours; other purchases are delivered within two business days. Returns are picked up for free at a customer’s apartment building or house.

Walmart’s startup incubator, Store No. 8, is also working on another under-the-radar project, dubbed Project Kepler. This effort aims to reimagine the in-store shopping experience with the help of technologies like computer vision.

Multiple people familiar with the project tell Recode that one goal of the initiative is the creation of physical stores that would operate without checkout lines or cashiers — in a similar fashion to Amazon’s futuristic Amazon Go store, which was announced a year ago but has yet to open to the public.

A Walmart spokesperson declined to comment.

Taken together, these Walmart initiatives mark a major leap in the vision for the type of businesses Walmart will operate, and customers it will serve, five or 10 years down the line. But since both business strategies are in early stages, there is no guarantee that either will develop into a long-term business or launch widely.

Walmart had previously announced that Rent the Runway co-founder Jennifer Fleiss is heading up Code Eight, but has revealed little to no details about the startup.

Recode has learned that Code Eight plans to eventually charge a membership fee, but current testers are using it for free. The personal-shopping service is currently focused on items in “health & beauty, household essentials and apparel/accessories” categories, according to a job listing. It’s not clear if the startup is sourcing this inventory from Walmart and its subsidiaries, or from outside retailers.

Code Eight has told early users that they can order products simply by texting a photo of it. They can also message with a general request for a type of product they need, and leave it up to the service to pick the specific item for them; customers fill out a survey upon joining that is supposed to help personalize their experience.

One source says that the Code Eight product has the appearance of an automated bot, but seems like a human is actually the one communicating on the other end of the message. That may change over time.

“[W]e set our sights on taking the lead in conversational commerce by leveraging machine learning, NLP, and personalization algorithms,” a Code Eight job listing reads. NLP refers to natural language processing — essentially, how a computer turns a human’s spoken or written request into instructions it can process.

The Project Kepler project focused on the future of in-store shopping is being led by Mike Hanrahan, the co-founder and former chief technology officer for Jet.com, multiple sources tell Recode. It is located in Hoboken, N.J., where Jet is based.

A Project Kepler job listing for a “computer vision engineer” says that the role will involve creating a “best-in-class consumer experience in the physical retail space.”

Amazon’s Go concept uses a combination of sensors and cameras to track what each store shopper takes off of shelves so it can automatically bill them for their purchase without their having to stop to pay on the way out. The store’s launch has been severely delayed, however, with reports that the technology did not work well when the store was crowded.

Walmart is envisioning a similar system that would potentially eliminate the need for cashiers in stores outfitted with the technology. Walmart has more than two million employees worldwide, many of whom work at checkout.

But it’s possible that the Project Kepler technology would be used in new types of store formats, rather than be retrofitted for existing stores. This project is just one of several across Walmart focused on what the retail store of the future should look like, according to a source.

---

[Read More …]

This article appears in the latest issue of Digiday magazine, a quarterly publication that is part of Digiday+. Members of Digiday+ get access to exclusive content, original research and member events throughout the year. Learn more here. 

David Pemsel, CEO of Guardian Media Group, is concerned about Facebook but bullish on the ability of philanthropic contributions to fund publishing. Below is our conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed.

Your move to a more reader revenue-focused model has resulted in reader revenue overtaking advertising. What’s the future for that?
When we started this three-year plan, we recognized that advertising alone would not secure a sustainable business model. We looked at the binary decision of either putting up a paywall, which will inevitably impact reach, or going the advertising-only road and saw a third way in which we can still have reach but at the same time optimize reader loyalty globally and domestically.

Why not a paywall?
Well-intentioned people often tell me, “Just keep cutting costs, put up a paywall and the Guardian will be profitable.” But we have to remind people of the role the Guardian plays in the world. People are anxious about what the world is right now, and our unique ownership structure, which is totally independent and free of shareholders, means people trust our independence and want to support us to keep us as openly accessible as possible.

What are the cultural challenges in moving to more of a reader-revenue model?
We haven’t always legitimized genuine collaboration. There’s tension. When you’re trying to get to a sustainable outcome, a dynamic news agenda, with finite resources, you’re pivoting from an advertising-only to a reader-contributor strategy, there’s a lot of heat in the organization. You must deploy your most precious people in a strategic way, but give them autonomy to collaborate, debate and argue their way to an outcome.

What’s the opportunity in philanthropy?
There are some conventions derived from The New York Times that X percent of your regular readers are likely to become paying subscribers, and that’s your future business model. Over time, that will cap out. You’re then stuck with a finite number of paying subscribers. There are different groups of people who will subscribe digitally and others that contribute at an article level because they feel passionate about a subject. There is no ceiling on how far contributions can go.

What’s next for publishers’ relationship with Facebook and Google?
We have a close relationship with Google from [CEO] Sundar [Pichai] down. They recognize the role of quality news within their ecosystem. So we’ve collaborated a lot around video, VR funding, data analytics and engineering resources. It’s a valuable strategic relationship.

What about Facebook?
Facebook is a different picture. Our relationship with them is difficult because we’ve not found the strategic meeting point on which to collaborate. Eighteen months ago, they changed their algorithm, which showed their business model was derived on virality, not on the distribution of quality. We argue that quality, for societal reasons, as well as to derive ad revenue, should be part of their ecosystem. It’s not. We came out of Instant Articles because we didn’t want to provide our journalism in return for nothing. When you have algorithms that are fueling fake news and virality with no definition around what’s good or bad, how can the Guardian play a role within that ecosystem? The idea of what the Guardian does being starved of oxygen in those environments is not only damaging to our business model but damaging to everyone.

Should Google and Facebook be regulated?
Regulation ensures there isn’t negative impact from market dominance, which there is with those organizations, especially in advertising. But you can’t sound anti-platform or anti-digital or anti-Google or Facebook because it’s the future. News organizations have had this narrative of “it’s unfair, look what they’re doing.” But regulation needs to be used appropriately to ensure there is fairness.

You’ve described the digital ad model as broken. How would you describe it now?
The commoditization that’s come with everything being more machine-led has meant some clients have lost sense of how to build brand equity over time. There is nothing wrong with programmatic; it’s just the safeguards in that ecosystem need to be about total transparency. Some of those data points in media planning are completely opaque, and that still needs to be solved.

Who is responsible for addressing ad fraud?
There is a client at the top of this food chain. It’s their money. They can’t allow their money to be disseminated in places they don’t understand, so it’s beholden on clients being much clearer on where their money is deployed and for agencies to be more clear and transparent about where that money is going.

What’s a big trend you see in 2018?
Voice is increasingly on our radar. The translation of the written word into devices like Google Home or Alexa is starting to take off. What is the role of news organizations in a voice-activated search world with no interface? What’s the user experience? How do you get brand recognition? If you say, “Good morning, Alexa or Home,” how can you be reassured that the Guardian is the first thing that comes up in the news category? I love that challenge.

[Read More …]

Harford and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi worked closely together at Expedia.

Uber is filling another key role in its executive ranks just as the year turns. The ride-hail company has hired former Orbitz CEO Barney Harford to be its first-ever chief operating officer.

Harford, who has been learning the ropes at Uber as an adviser since October, worked closely with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at Expedia. Before becoming CEO of Orbitz — which Expedia later acquired — Harford led Expedia’s push into Asia while Khosrowshahi was CEO. He begin his official work as COO on Jan. 2.

His appointment comes as Uber embarks on an important year. Coming off a year wracked with public scandal, Khosrowshahi is under a great deal of pressure to turn the company around in 2018. Adding to that, the long-time travel executive has his sights set on taking the company public in 2019.

Harford joins a growing C-suite. In October, Khosrowshahi appointed former Pepsi executive Tony West to be Uber’s chief legal officer. The next priority for the company is to fill the CFO role.

“I have never met a stronger operator or a more thoughtful strategist than Barney,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “He is able to go deep on key aspects of a business while never losing sight of the big strategic picture. He loves engaging with operations, marketing, product, and engineering teams around hard problems, and is passionate about using technology to transform the world.”

---

[Read More …]

This week we are seeing some innovative product launches, powerful collaborations and lots of career moves.
MarTech in Motion
Digimind announces its Social Wall
The social listening analytics company adds a data visualization presentation tool. Its first-to-market offering will allow brands and agencies to display simple, up-to-the-minute social listening analytics metrics and more.

CliqStudios.com selects Visual IQ’s marketing intelligence platform
The seller of custom kitchen candid
[Read More …]