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People want ads that make them laugh
Humor is a more prominent factor than purpose, surprise, or novelty when looking at the most popular commercials in modern history
It’s also more fun to work with.
large groups of people don’t always share a sense of humor
I wonder how much algorithmic platforms and personalized ads change this. You’re not making an ad to reach everyone, you’re making an ad to reach a subset of your audience that it will resonate with.
Robert Greene defining the curiosity gap:
People love mysteries and enigmas, so give them what they want.
via The Daily Laws
Love these quotes from AriZona Iced Tea’s founder about the 99 cent cans
People say, ‘How do you do it?‘ We make it faster. We ship it better. We ship it closer. The cans are thinner.
&
Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent pay more for their drink?
&
I tell people every day I go to a gunfight with Coke and Pepsi. I have a water gun and they have machine guns.
&
We’re going to fight as hard as we can for consumers, because consumers are my friend.
Find a value prop you can make synonymous with your brand.
Make it the center of everything.
via CNBC
Next addition to the Google graveyard: infinite scroll
Google said this change is to serve the search results faster on more searches, instead of automatically loading results that users haven’t explicitly requested. Loading more results automatically didn’t lead to significantly higher satisfaction with Search
consumers form more negative impressions of and are less persuaded by influencers who disable social media comments. These outcomes are driven by the perception that the influencer is less receptive to consumer voice
I wonder how this translates to brand accounts.
On the other hand, negative comments can act as rallying points for fans.
You can’t be for everyone, so your brand should actively turn some people off.
from the paper No Comments (from You): Understanding the Interpersonal and Professional Consequences of Disabling Social Media Comments
Cue the Khaled memes:
PayPal announced plans to create a new advertising platform rooted in transaction data generated by its nearly 400 million active accounts
via Marketing Dive
Of course, there are times where sharing your strategy may be unproductive. Like when signaling to competitors.
Seem to want something in which you are actually not at all interested
Robert Greene expands:
hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: you appear friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.
via The Daily Laws
More on the Google ranking factors leak & why it shouldn’t distract you from focusing on users.
People have long divorced SEO from user experience, I think the two need to work more closely together. Because ultimately you need someone to come to your page and stay there. That is a signal that Google is using.
-Mike King
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is search engine optimization (SEO).
Google’s search ranking factors leaked & the SEO world has been doing its best Shark Week impression trying to digest the info and tease out the secrets contained within.
It’s over 14k attributes.
I haven’t dug in yet, but I agree with this approach:
Ultimately, you want to build content that people like. That people want to click on. That people want to consume. That people want to share. That people just want to go back to.
-Barry Schwartz
Content may be distributed by algorithm, but it shouldn’t be created for them.
Survey says…
Of the industries included, podcasting provided the highest short-term return on ad spend with 4.2x, as well as the highest long-term ROAS of 4.9x, compared to the average media ROAS of 3.7x.
Instacart plugs retail media data into YouTube Shopping ads to fuel offsite growth
There are two parts to the digital ad equation: data + inventory.
Platforms dominated both in recent history. But crumbling cookies are changing this.
Retail media is increasing the amount of data seeking inventory.
Disney has 2 new ad types for streaming.
The first: boring shopping ads via QR codes.
The second has strong old school banner vibes: advergames
Quiz Show is a multi-question, multi-answer trivia game that users interact with through their remotes. The second offering, called Beat the Block, allows viewers to participate in a themed game.
via Adweek
Retailers and brands with very strong brands and brand positioning are doing well. And those that aren’t or are struggling to define why somebody should buy their products or goods are struggling.
Building a brand is expensive in the short run and cheap in the long run.
28% of listeners say they listen to “all of the ads” on podcasts, the highest percentage among all media channels tested.
In part because
they expect to hear ads
It’s an understood part of the ecosystem. Because they’ve been there since early on. Unlike platforms that scale user growth in order to monetize.
& some always good advice
just respect the listeners’ expectations
via podnews
Artificial Intelligence: A Definition
Walter Sinnott Armstrong with my favorite definition of Artificial Intelligence:
“It occurs whenever a machine learns something.”
Because learning involves intelligence.
Often, in AI systems, the machine is given a certain goal and it learns new and better means to achieve that goal. That’s when artificial intelligence occurs.
I like it because it’s hard to move the goal posts on (the old saw that “ai is anything computers can’t do yet” comes to mind).
& because it isn’t rooted in human-centric thinking. So much of AGI discourse is an ego trip.
This definition of intelligence can apply to any species or system.
It also leaves room for curiosity and consciousness as differentiators across species and silicon.
via Philosophy Bites
YouTube is taking its next step in the ongoing tug of war between ad tech and ad blockers.
The “server-side ad injection” approach bakes ads into the core video file itself, making them indistinguishable from content for client software and extensions that try to filter out advertising.
Feels like a page out of podcasting’s playbook, but I could be misunderstanding the tech.