The Full Monty — August 1, 2016

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Advertisers get guidance for ad blocking; how the paywall is working out; don't tweet if you're not an Olympic sponsor; quarterly earnings from Facebook delight; Twitter, not so much; Yahoo finally throws in the purple towel but it's always sunny in Sunnyvale for CEO Mayer; Uber is getting beaten in Europe; Tesla slowed down the self-driving car movement; SoundCloud wants to sell; the podcast upfronts are returning; customer satisfaction is dropping on social sites; the analytics skills that are in the highest demand; the photographer that's suing Getty Images for $1 billion; the neuroscience of cool; The Full Monty goes audio; plus our trivia challenge, a limerick and more.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

If you're around at 9:30 pm ET on Sunday evenings, you can get a preview of a couple of topics from the week's via the live video on Facebook. If not, you can always catch the replay here — or catch a more formal audio version in The Full Monty show.

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Join Me

I'll be keynoting at Brand ManageCamp from September 15-16 in Las Vegas.
And it's back to Vegas to keynote at Pubcon in October.

Industry

In a survey of 1,500 consumers, the IAB found that two-thirds would be willing to turn off their ad blockers. Of course, there's a catch: they'd want publishers to adhere to the IAB's LEAN principles for ads: Light, Encrypted, Ad choice supported and Non-invasive. The question is, will advertisers deliver?
- It's not just the web. Podcasting has an ad-skipping problem too. Technologies built into audio players are complicit in listeners' ability to jump past content 15 seconds at a time.

A look at how The Times and The Sunday Times have succeeded with their paywall, netting a £10.9 million profit and over 400,000 subscribers, while The Guardian has seen a £68.7 million loss over the same period. When good journalism meets a solid business plan, a paywall can work.
- Meanwhile, over at The New York Times, they're busy trying to connect reporters to analytics data, with the goal of making audience engagement data easy to find, simple to understand, and even fun to use for journalists.
- Business Insider has managed to do well at video through constant content assessment, a separate team, and repurposing of existing content.
New tools and calculating ROI cause marketers the most anxiety when they consider digital transformation. In a survey from the American Marketing Association and Milward Brown, respondents were primarily concerned with the need to do more with the same (or fewer) resources.
- David Rogers joined Mitch Joel on Six Pixels of Separation to talk about his book, The Digital Transformation Playbook. Give it a listen and pick up the book.
Half of US ad agency professionals said their clients are most interested in advertising on TV or cable. Television still holds sway.
The Olympics Committee says non-sponsors can't tweet about the Olympics. But evidently Russian athletes who are doping are still eligible to compete.
Reddit is opening its arms to marketers, who it says will be allowed to sponsor Redditors' posts. We'll see how Redditors react.
- And Donald Trump held an AMA on Reddit. Surprisingly, sparks didn't fly. Maybe because of how tightly controlled the answers were, or because he was trying to participate via in-flight WiFi. But to show you the depth of the candidate, his answers were one or two sentences long each. Here's a glimpse, compared to another politician's answer to the same question:

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Platforms

Facebook / Instagram

Facebook reported its Q2 earnings this week, with 1.71 billion users and $6.44 billion in revenue. Mobile now accounts for 84% of Facebook's ad revenue. It's a mobile world. Proof? Facebook now has over 1 billion daily active users.
Facebook gets about 2/3 of the world's social media advertising budget.
There have been changes to the layout of Facebook Pages. Here are 5 changes that brand managers need to know about.
Facebook's mobile video app (in Android only) is featuring a dedicated video tab and subscription-based channels.
Facebook and Instagram (joining Twitter) will be carrying highlights from the Olympics. Just don't expect to see any live video.
If you do want live video of sports, check out soccer, whose elite athletes Facebook is paying $4 million to use Facebook Live.
One naysayer claims that live video won't be live for long. He claims that appointment viewing doesn't work, the poorly edited format turns off too many people, and that it's going to be one of Facebook's failed experiments. It's worth noting that he's the CEO of a native advertising company, so live video doesn't work for his business model.
Instagram will allow users to begin filtering comments on their posts.

Twitter / Periscope / Vine

Twitter pushed for a big rebranding this week, with its "See what's happening" campaign that's an effort to better define Twitter for nonusers.
Twitter reported its Q2 numbers this week. They include 3 million new monthly active users, a slight miss of revenue and profits, and lowered guidance for Q3. Twitter is once again being viewed on a quarter-to-quarter basis, which hampers its strategic efforts.
Vine seems to be in trouble, with many of its top stars leaving the service.

Alphabet/Google

Alphabet also had Q2 earnings this week: its revenue increase included more than just advertising: enterprise sales, digital media store and hardware sales are up.

Microsoft / LinkedIn

We all know how annoying the skills endorsement feature of LinkedIn can be, particularly because you have no control over it. Evidently endorsement bombing is a thing.

Yahoo

Yahoo and Verizon made the news official last week: Verizon is expanding its media empire with the acquisition of Yahoo. Mobile video is a big piece of the puzzle, as is the scale of their ad technology and audience.
None of this is a terrible surprise, as pundits have watched Yahoo's slow motion fall from grace for years. When Yahoo's own executives couldn't define what it was, that should have tipped everyone off.
But to hear Marissa Mayer tell the story, things are looking up for the purple people. Check out the weasel density in an analysis in her writing. For her part, she says she plans to stay. We'll see what Verizon says.
Even it Mayer walks away, she still takes home another $57 million, for a four-year total of $219 million at the helm of the soon-to-be-defunct brand. Time to stock up on purple tchochkes on eBay!
Tumblr is getting ready to roll out ads to all of its sites, for its users to take part in. Of course, it will be turned on by default. "We promise not to screw it up…"

Trivia question: What on-demand economy app was announced this week, only to have it be revealed to be a piece of art?*

Collaborative / Autonomous Economy

Transportation

Ride-hailing apps are now officially legal in China, clearing up regulatory uncertainty.
The CEO of Gett claims that they're beating Uber in Europe. Don't worry; they'll soon undermine you too.
UberCentral allows businesses to book and pay for rides for their customers. Much like businesses have done with taxis and car services traditionally.
Uber is investing $500 million to create its own global mapping system. If you've ever been in an Uber where the driver used Uber's existing mapping system, you'll understand why this is so necessary.
According to a study, the advent of Uber has done nothing to affect drunk driving rates.

Autonomous Vehicles

Americans are now more aware of self-driving cars, but less likely to be interested in them, thanks to the Telsa Autopilot crash.
Audi is setting up its own autonomous vehicle division.
Apple hired a Blackberry executive and promoted one of its own to lead its autonomous vehicle group. Dan Dodge, who led the QNX division at Blackberry, is working for Bob Mansfield, a highly regarded longtime Apple executive.
Old school automakers see car sharing as a viable future, not car owning.
Ford has revolutionized the cupholder. Forget self-driving cars. Americans care about cupholders.

AI/Bots

Money as message: how WeChat implemented payments. Not just a messaging app, but a portal.
Service and subscription are two ways that brands can begin to use messaging bots.
Of all of the jobs out there, can you name one that can't be automated some day?

Virtual Reality / Audio

Virtual / Augmented Reality

ABC News, CNN and The Huffington Post were among the news outlets that published VR and 360-degree videos during the political conventions. Move over, live video. The true breakthrough will be live VR.
An inside look at mixed reality glasses.

Audio

China's version of Spotify, QQ Music, is profitable. How? It's owned by the same company that owns WeChat, which gives it access to over 700 million subscribers.
Meanwhile, SoundCloud is looking at selling itself for $1 billion.
On the heels of its distribution arrangement with Libsyn, iHeartRadio is partnering with NPR.
The advertising industry is hosting its second Podcast Upfronts, hoping to lure brands into audio advertising. Hey, let us know if you're interested in sponsoring our show.
Program of the Week. This week's recommendation is our own newly-launched show: The Full Monty, a 15-minute dose of commentary, analysis and wit, in which we do a deep dive into two issues from this newsletter. You give us 15 minutes and we'll save you hours. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts

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Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing

Mark Schaefer has the nitty-gritty on social media and customer engagement.
The 2016 Customer Experience Index scores have been released, looking at the level of customer centricity in 300 brands. Forrester data show that 71% of businesses are prioritizing CX initiatives.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index notes that social media sites have dipped one point this year. The culprit? The volume of advertising on the sites.

Privacy / Security / Legal

Carol Highsmith is a photographer who's suing Getty Images for $1 billion after the photo giant licensed her public domain images that had been donated to the Library of Congress, and pocketed the money.
Wikileaks released a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee during the convention, and Facebook blocked the link. So much for that bias training !
In Michigan, police asked a 3D printing lab to recreate a dead man's fingers to unlock his phone. They're digitally savvy!

Measurement / Metrics / Data

The third in a series of articles from BCG on setting and executing digital strategies with speed, foresight, and savvy. This focuses on helping executives create a data-driven organization.
Which analytics skills are in the highest demand? The top skills in demand are fairly basic: reporting and use of tools.
Running Google Analytics on your site? Then you'll want this checklist to determine how to improve on the out-of-the-box setup.
56% of small business owners and managers polled said that social media trumps all other digital brand building techniques.
Marketing technology is critical to the success of every modern marketing. Where are marketers planning to spend on martech? Social media marketing tools, email marketing and digital advertising are among the top choices.

* Answer to the trivia question above:

The newly launched satire app was none other than Pooper - Uber for dog poop. The creators developed it to show just how ludicrous the on-demand economy has become and how lazy we are.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC14Ohz5h4Q&w=854&h=480]

When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

Here's what CEOs are reading this summer, via McKinsey.
Cool is a target that’s constantly shifting. It’s an attitude, a term of approval. It’s a game of superficially rebellious status-chasing, centered on consumerism. It's heralded by the influencers and it's something you can buy. On the neuroscience of cool. Let's just make it less about skinny jeans.
Ancient Roman poets can pop up in the strangest of places. It's why one author wrote "My Longest Healthy Relationship Is With the Dead Roman Poet Catullus."

“Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is. ”

— Catullus

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Monday, August 1, 2016