Author: ghh14a

Split-Second Advertising

Neurons Inc. completed a research study for the Mobile Marketing Association to evaluate consumer’s reaction times to advertisements. Their research found that “consumers took 400 milliseconds to see and react emotionally to 67% of mobile ads tested.” (Ives, 2019) All of the brands had equal opportunities to be seen, however it was the big brands that evoked an emotional response. The majority of reactions occurred within the first second for still advertisements and 2 seconds for videos.

First impressions are just as important in mobile marketing as they are in real life. Since the majority of reactions occur within the first seconds, creating advertisements that focus on creating a strong first impression can greatly affect the ad’s viewing ratings. Viewability is a major player in where brand’s choose to buy spots for their advertisements. This makes sense due to the purpose of the advertisements being to engage a brand’s target audience.

With this information, it will not be surprising to see big brands begin shifting away from the longer advertisements that are common to find online and begin choosing to focus on shorter advertisements that last closer to 15 seconds. Since these brands are being successful in evoking responses at such a quick pace, I believe this would be a better usage of marketing resources. However, this is only referring to bigger brands. The research in this article suggests that small brands that are not as easily recognized will not have quite the same benefits as larger brands. Meaning that continuing with longer advertisements will probably be the best way for smaller brands to use their marketing dollars.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mobile-ads-do-more-work-in-one-second-than-you-might-think-11551870001?

Keep the Internet Child Friendly

In December 2018, Oath (who is the owner of AOL and Yahoo) settled to pay $5 million for violating federal child privacy laws. The violation was in regards to their advertisement placements. AOL placed hundreds of advertisements on websites who’s target audience is under the age of 13 using personal data. The usage of personal data placed Oath in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 also known as COPPA. The purpose of COPPA is to prevent children’s personal data from being used by advertisers for target marketing.  

Since this ruling was handed down, more internet companies are making changes to their sites to create a more kid-friendly environment. An example of this is Tumblr’s decision to remove all adult content to make the site more inviting for all ages. A major part of this shift towards making the internet a better environment for children comes from data collected about children’s internet usage. Everyday approximately 170,000 children get on the internet for the first time each day, and according to eMarketers 83% of children interact daily with digital media and 70% are on social media daily.

YouTube has become the latest internet giant to take action towards protecting children who are on their site. Thursday, the company announced that they will be disabling comments on videos with children in them. This is a result of pedophilia behavior that has become a pattern on these types of videos. The reason for completely eliminating the comment section instead of censoring the language used is that some comments currently being left are words that would not necessarily be picked out as inappropriate. Additionally older minors who are also at potential risk of pedophile behavior will have their comments sections turned off as well. These efforts are being made with the intentions of protecting young children who use YouTube and to maintain a kid-friendly environment.

Vavra, Shannon. “YouTube disables comments on videos of children to root out pedophilia”. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/youtube-disables-comments-young-children-videos-pedophilia-e95c0b9b-6a3d-420a-ac40-d4e9bdf5b7ef.html?

Fischer, Sara. “The internet reckons with kids”. Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/internet-kids-online-privacy-oath-payout-29b6a61c-637e-4650-afb5-a56da099e39b.html

Maheshwari, Sapna. “Oath Agrees to $5 Million Settlement Over Children’s Privacy Online.” New York Times. Retrieved from  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/business/media/oath-children-online-privacy.html?

 

Is Facebook on Target?

When you’re on Facebook you expect to see two things. Posts from friends or groups you’re a part of, and advertisements. Most people associate the later as a necessary evil in order to use the free social media platform. In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) answers why there is currently not an option for users to pay to opt out of viewing advertisements.

Before reading this article, the thought of paying to eliminate advertisements on Facebook had never crossed my mind. The more I think about it however, I can see why people would be interested in this. Currently the only time I truly notice advertisements and recognize them as such are when I am watching a video on Facebook and I have to wait for an advertisement to finish playing about halfway through to finish the video. This is usually slightly inconvenient and at the very least annoying. At the moment I don’t watch videos enough on Facebook to see it as something worth paying to remove but I have paid to remove advertisements on other applications before, typically games on my phone.

During the interview, Zuckerberg made an interesting point about why people are interested in this feature. From the data Facebook has collected, he says that people’s issue is not necessarily with the advertisements but the methods used to collect data to target advertisements to them. The methodology for collecting data that is currently employed utilizes sources from all across the internet. This means that in order to give users this option of opting out of how Facebook collects their information, completely new features would have to be implemented. A “Clear History” function is currently in the works which will allow users to dissociate what they search for on the internet from Facebook’s data.

Something I applaud Zuckerberg on is his plan, that when the data controls are published making them available to all users not just those who are able to pay for a subscription. This aligns with his long time stance that Facebook needs to be a free site in order to successfully connect people across the world. By making this option available to all users, I’m not sure how necessary an option to pay to opt out of advertisements would be if the root issue truly is with data collection.

Wagner, Kurt. “Mark Zuckerberg explains why an ad-free Facebook isn’t as simple as it sounds.” Recode. Recode, February 20, 2019. https://www.recode.net/2019/2/20/18233640/mark-zuckerberg-explains-ad-free-facebook?

Self Regulation or Social Regulation?

Of late, there has been a continued push to have social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter be responsible for the content being posted on their sites. The reason behind this movement is a result of the influence the content has on younger social media users.

Currently, users on all sites are able to post whatever content they would like to their profiles. The only site that currently filters users posts at all is Twitter who defines certain content as being explicit and allowing other users to decide whether they want to view the content. Otherwise, there currently are no limitations on what social media users are allowed to post.

In the United Kingdom, government officials are looking to create legislation that will force social media sites to be more mindful of the content they allow users to post on their sites. The report by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Committee says “We believe that a compulsory code of ethics should be established, overseen by an independent regulator, setting out what constitutes harmful content.” The proposed code of ethics would make social media platforms liable for the content being posted to their sites with the potential for hefty fines.

Should a code of ethics be created and companies be held to the standards put in place, there would have to be many changes made to how the platforms are currently being operated. There would have to be some sort of filtering process put in place in order to make sure that all content met the code’s guidelines. I don’t believe that there would be a simple filtering system that would work for all social media sites however, due to the unique types of posts on each individual site.

Additionally, the report wants to allow the public to communicate their complaints to the sites as well as give the regulator access to personal information.

To what point should the social media giants be held responsible for their users actions? If successfully implemented could this change how social media operates worldwide? And to what extent should individuals be able to express themselves versus creating a safe environment for all?

Ellicott, Claire. “Social media giants threatened with criminal charges if they fail to protect young users from harmful content”. Daily Mail. Daily News, February 17, 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6715575/Social-media-giants-face-criminal-charges-fail-protect-young-users.html

Trouble for Twitter?

After publishing their fourth quarter earnings report, Twitter had many positive things going for them, such as increases in revenues and ad sales. However, there is one portion that is tarnishing the report. User numbers for Twitter have dropped by approximately 9 million users since the third quarter. While this may not initially seem like a big problem for a company who has over 300 million users, however the news of decreased users has affected Twitter’s stocks with a drop of 8% once the news hit. This drop would not have been as significant had the company not also increased expenses for the year.

 

Twitter however, is not concerned with the drop of users.

 

The reason is they believe the drop in users directly correlates with their efforts to cut down on users who are abusive and takeaway from the desired experience on the social media site. Is this really a direct correlation? Or is there a different reason for the sudden drop in users?

 

Most social media sites have moved towards trying to eliminate fake accounts. Facebook and Instagram both have made headline news with their efforts to rid their sites of these bots. Instagram in particular has received the most attention since the number of followers and likes per a post displays popularity which sometimes results in product promotion offers and other benefits. However, I have not been able to find anywhere that talks about there being a direct affect on the company’s stock prices after these purges.

 

Despite the user numbers dropping, Twitter has had one of their strongest quarters to date. For that reason, I don’t think the loss of users will have much of an effect on Twitter’s profit in the next quarter.

“Lower User Numbers Tarnish Twitter Earnings Report.” Odwyerpr, 8 Feb. 2019, https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/12025/2019-02-08/lower-user-numbers-tarnish-twitter-earnings-report.html.