⃛Level Up ↴
“I have no ego in this.”
-a client
The best way to approach planning and performance analysis.
Prior decisions are sunk costs. Analyze, learn, advance.
Are you filtering through the fluff?
Or fluffing up the filter?
I just concluded a prez to the Blue Ion crew by saying that smart/AR glasses are the next consumer computing wave.
This piece from The Verge makes me feel better about that prediction.
and the third is the idea that no one device is the future of XR. Headsets, for example, may just be “episodic” devices you use for entertainment. Glasses could supplement phones and smartwatches for discreet notifications and looking up information.
“The way I see it, these devices don’t replace one another. You’ll use these devices throughout your day,
Ambient computing!
There are plenty of hurdles left, but if Google has figured out on-lens optics, the big ones left are for the accountants.
As for the promisor…it’s exciting to make the promise. You get to look cool and powerful and helpful. But then when no one is looking and there’s no excitement and maybe you don’t feel like it, you have to fulfill the promise. And it’s important to remember that while you don’t feel like fulfilling the promise, the promisee is somewhere excited that you are going to come through.
Marketing is a pyramid of promises.
Higher promise delivery rate = better reputation = more successful efforts
The headline: Google To Have More Core Updates, More Often
Details are thin, but this slide from the Search Central Live event where this was announced is interesting:
More core updates and even faster core updates are exepcted in the future. #SCLZurich pic.twitter.com/9pZhYabxoH
— Kenichi Suzuki💫鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) December 12, 2024
Will mobile game ads be wired in 2025?
So far AppLovin has the magic 8 ball saying Outlook Good 🎱
AppLovin’s ads are unskippable and pop up between game levels—a sweet spot for undivided attention.
And for now, for players used to seeing ads for other apps, these retail ads feel like a welcome change, making them more memorable.
Competition is driving ad costs up and novelty will wear off, driving effectiveness down, but this space has had Next Big Thing status for years.
The appeal of late night show hosts was (and still is) their mix of personality and taste. Makes sense that podcast hosts are becoming the new late night hosts.
new statistics from YouTube show the platform has cracked 400 million monthly video podcast watch-hours on connected TVs, saying audiences are watching podcasts in their living room in the same way TV audiences in previous decades casually consumed late-night TV.
Third-party cookies are a tool, not a strategy. They influence how marketing is delivered and measured, but they’ve never been a substitute for a sound marketing plan or strong data practices.
Substitute any form of tech or data solution for “third party cookies” above and it still holds.
The best solution for a theoretical post-cookie world is still the best path forward:
- First-party data
- Build relationships and trust
Inflation is sticking around.
From the BLS:
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in November, after rising 0.2 percent in each of the previous 4 months
Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.7 percent
Shelter index rose 0.3%
Food up 0.4%
Energy up 0.2%
4 tactics from CMOs on maintaining a healthy marketing funnel in tough times
- Bottom funnel traffic started as top-of-funnel, don’t cut your discovery efforts.
Those upper-funnel ads are necessary for lower-funnel ads in places like search to work.
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Make sure any low-cost and no-cost avenues are fully optimized
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Measure on the right time frame
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Be proactive talking with leadership
As the name of this blog might suggest, I’m big on curiosity.
“It’s lo-fi chill electronic music” is the aisle where you find things at Home Depot. “It makes you nostalgic for something that didn’t happen” makes you curious.invoking something people wish they had, wish they had back, or wish they knew. It exposes a gulf that an audience would agree exists between what they know or feel now, and what they would like to know or feel. It is specific, not general. It is a gap they have to fill
Advertising accounted for 9% of Amazon’s revenue in Q3 (up 19% from Q2). That’s compared to 40% of revenue from their online store.
It accounts for 12% of Walmart’s profits.
Everything is an ad platform now.
Retail profit margins tend to be slim – in the 3% to 4% range. The margin on ad sales is usually 70% to 90%
Your creative is more important than your targeting.Don’t leave the ad content as an afterthought.Your ad creative is more important than your ad targeting.You’ve got to grab attention. Spend at least as much time on your creative strategy as your targeting strategy.
Creative is the new targeting.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent
Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.
Per CNBC, gains are due to:
the effects of a significant labor strike and violent storms in the Southeast receded
The simplest law of pricing
The price paid will always be less than the value it creates for the purchaser. And the price is never more than the amount the purchaser can exchange.
“But, our server is FIVE times slower. There is no silver bullet that is going to fix that. We’re going to have to use a lot of ‘lead bullets.’”they had to build a better product. No silver bullets, only lead bullets.
Silver bullets are flashy and exciting and fun. And probably just distractions.
Lipstick on a pig, as it were.
‘Immediately recognizable’ is the key. What do you have that is?
As for rockstars, so for brands (because they’re basically the same).
Bonus points if what’s immediately recognizable about your brand is not specific to your industry or product.