Data-Labor-Technology

After years of decline, the number of arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement climbed to a three-year high in fiscal 2017.

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Pixability, a platform that originated as a tool for identifying high-performing YouTube channels, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company will refund advertisers for views that run on YouTube inventory that is not brand-safe or fails to meet an advertiser’s agreed-upon brand safety terms, either through cash or TV-like “make-goods.” Although Pixability… Continue reading »

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At Crayola, the lines between paid and earned are blurring. “The interaction between friends and family is so valuable – and it just can’t be garnered from paid media,” said Marisa Scurato, who oversees the brand’s strategic digital marketing efforts. “But we do believe that those things go hand in hand.” Crayola consumers create a lot… Continue reading »

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SoftBank Group is in advanced talks to buy a stake in reinsurance giant Swiss Re that could be worth $10 billion or more, in the latest example of the Japanese conglomerate’s soaring ambitions.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Sincerest Form Of Flattery Facebook appears to be testing another Snapchat product clone, this time of Snap Maps, a mapping feature allowing users to view and share Stories posts based on location. Earlier this month, Instagram also added a carousel format tripling the… Continue reading »

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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.”

 

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

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.

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

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