Photo from Mike Baird
What I’m reading:
- WeWork is acquiring Conductor.
- Little depressing: No signs of newborn North Atlantic Whales this season. “We’re looking at the very real possibility of extinction.“
- Talent isn’t everything. “The results are something of an eye-opener. Their simulations accurately reproduce the wealth distribution in the real world. But the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest.”
- A reminder that sometimes you should just slow down.
- Paying attention to this -> Pagedraw a UI builder turns your website design mockup into code automatically. 👀👀👀
Also currently into Ready Player One. I want to read it before the film comes out (and the film looks amaZing btw).
What I’m watching:
Friday Night Tykes
Texas Football is no joke. Friday Night Tykes is an Esquire Original Series that you can currently stream on Netflix. The series dives into the cutthroat world of Texas youth football, where kids face grueling demands and pressure from coaches and parents to win. … Bitter rivalries and controversial coaching tactics take center stage as the teams of the Texas Youth Football Association vie for a championship.
I’m two seasons in and if I had a son (and this applies to my daughter as well)…. after watching this… I don’t want them playing youth football… at leas not that young. Regardless – outside the injuries, rough language etc. you can tell how much passion the coaches have for the game and their kids – and that’s what makes for great TV.
Check out the trailer
Purchases I am enjoying:
Am spoiling myself for the next couple of months with a subscription to VapeBox. I quit smoking 2+ years ago now, I vape instead and am for the most part basically nicotine free (every so often will go light on the nicotine). Long story short vaping has changed the quality of my life in a massive way; and gotten me to give up a habit (cigarettes) that I thought I would have for life.
As much as I enjoy going to the local vape shop (if you are not into the culture: picture your favorite coffee shop but all ex-smokers, vaping away on sofas) to chill, talk shop and try new juice – I simply don’t have the time I would like, to do that regularly, and my favorite shops are not close to home.
VapeBox is helping me fill a gap: they send a curated box of premium vape juice / e-juice and vape hardware from the greatest brands straight to my mailbox every month.
What I am listening to:
What’s “in” in social:
As part of Facebook’s 2018 focus on building community, last month the social media company announced it would be prioritizing local news in users’ News Feeds.
The latest update in this mission is an expanded test of Facebook’s “Breaking” tag for publishers to use when emphasizing important or developing stories. Currently, more than 50 publishers across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Australia can use the label in an expansion of a testing phrase that kicked off in November 2017.
Strategy Corner:
(a place to spark thought or talk shop)
Have your post traditional digital display ad strategy worked out?
Look: Advertising will always be around in some form, but as technology changes we’ll see ads migrate from out of certain platforms and into others, the massive shifts you saw when ad $’s moved from print to web. Those same shifts happen on a continual basis in the digital space. Ad spends that used to go to websites, or apps, are going to start going to AR/VR and voice assistants, and so on and so forth.
Essentially most publishers are having to deal with dollars moving out of their traditional channels… and into new ones where they may not yet have products launched or strategies formed. So if you currently have a primarily ad-supported model (regardless if it is display or not) you are increasingly facing a more and more challenging environment.
What platform is next? Where should I be creating content? How much? Should I? What partners? Which Ad tech do I choose over the other? Are the plethora of questions a publisher in today’s environment has to manage/decide regularly.
End of day: Consumers are spending more time with media than ever before; however, per PQ Media’s Global Consumer Media Usage & Exposure Forecast, our time with ads across these channels is declining.
Largely due to the increase in ad-free subscription models like Netflix and The New York Times, ad-blocking, and consumers’ general aversion toward advertising experiences that cut into their engagement time.
How are you overcoming the challenges that many publishers are running into in today’s market? If you are not thinking about it – start now.
Weekly Hack:
Facebook marketing (link to handy little guide) is so important. But it can be incredibly difficult in some cases to effectively spend your dollars. Even when you do know the platform intimately it can surprise you. End of day it is incredibly powerful. This weeks hack is about getting more bang for your buck.
This weeks hack: Delay your Facebook pixel firing.
Bouncing users are a reality that all websites face, some websites more so than others. It’s a fact that some of your site visitors are going to leave the site fast.. a lot of times even before the page finishes loading. A bounce rate of around 40-50% can be totally normal, but it means that almost half of the people on the site were not really interested in what you had to offer to them.
Do you want 40-50% of your advertising spend on an audience that bounces from your website? The answer is “of course not” and here one solution that is relatively simple.
Delay Your Facebook Pixel Events.
Essentially what you’ll want to do is delay the time when events are triggered in your Facebook pixel in order to filter out bounced visitors. Changing your timeout to something like 45 seconds, and creating and re-targeting the audience that matches the 45 second event. Most often a developer can help you with this but there are also some third-party services that can help. As an example: If you are using WordPress you can check out PixelMySite.
You’ll see your ROI on your Facebook spend skyrocket and will spend fewer $$$’s on an more likely than not disinterested audience.
Quote of the week:
“There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” — Ray Goforth