Posts

VR heats up at YouTube

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n June 22, the  New York Times  reported that, with the exception of the gaming industry, VR has proven a disappointment. It cites weak sales for  VR headsets  and the fact that all the “dabbling” in VR ventures has not amounted to serious strides. But that may change with a boost from YouTube. The Google-owned video site is promoting the development of VR videos with new resources and tools that help developers and may make VR videos more attractive for marketing. Which VR elements in a video get the most attention? That's something that creators are able to track with Heatmaps, a feature that YouTube rolled “ for 360-degree and VR videos with over 1,000 views”  on June 16. You can see an example of a heatmap applied to a music video here:  Read more in   YouTube Heats Up VR Market

If you're wondering about Bitcoin

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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Bitcoin_logo.svg/1024px-Bitcoin_logo.svg.png I've written quite a number of articles about the potential of digital currency, most of them for CoinDesk , but also for CFO . EETimes , and   EBN . Find out why alpacas became an official mascot for Bitcoin and how the the “ Casascius ” got its name. You can even learn about the history of currency  in real life and why metal and paper currency isn't practical on the final frontier .

Marketing B2B

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B2B: Targeting Companies and Contacts When it comes to B2B marketing, whom do you target? Do you go after the company or a particular individual? Whichever choice you make, there are, of course, solutions available to help you achieve your goal.... Just as it does for B2C, the strategy for B2B marketing starts with knowing who your target market is and reaching them with compelling content.  read more in B2B: Targeting Companies and Contacts

STEM for women not happening in Star Wars

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In November 2016, NASA shared this short video as a tribute from cast from Star Wars to honor the women at NASA who serve as “engineers, aviators, research scientists, astronauts and more are making a future possible for humanity in a galaxy far far away.” This is somewhat ironic in light of what followed in the Star Wars franchise. In December 2016, the Star Wars film Rogue One was released with a female hero at the center of the film, and there were a couple of female fliers to be seen among the rebels. But the role of scientists and engineers were all held by men. The protagonist’s father was the chief scientist leading whose team of engineers were all men. Even if the film makers didn’t want to go so far as making the protagonist’s mother the scientist, they could have at least allowed for some female representation on the Empirical engineering department, but no. So progressiveness in representation on film still has a long way to go. But the good news is that in real l

Twitter tools, now with more buttons!

Marketers have recognized the great potential for spreading their messages through shared content on social media. Now Twitter is bringing out new tools for tapping into that potential alongside the new chatbots designed to increase user engagement. On May 23, Twitter announced that “ a new, customizable Direct Message Card ” was available to “in limited beta to Twitter advertisers.”  Combining eye-catching pictures or videos with :fully customizable call-to-action buttons,” the card gives marketers a way to reach new customers and further engage existing ones, as well as foster shares of branded interactive experiences, particularly for brands that use chatbots. On June 13, Twitter further expanded the options for businesses to connect with customers through Direct Messaging with new buttons. As the  Twitter blog  put it, “ Now, businesses can attach buttons to messages to make it easy for people to take actions outside of the Direct Message conversation – like composing a Tweet,

Location connecting social and marketing

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Location-Based Social Marketing For extreme introverts the great thing about social media is that you never have to see your connections in real life. But for people who like to actually interact with people face-to-face, as well as the businesses that seek to get people in a physical door, that can actually be a shortcoming. Location-aware social media can bridge that gap between the virtual and physical. Location awareness is what distinguishes the  Locye  social media platform. It allows users to “observe social activity at real-time hotspots and places of interest worldwide” and to post content that those nearby can see. For those who don't want to give too much away, there is an option to post anonymously. Users can also select whether they want their posts kept up for just a day or for a virtual eternity.  Locye's Founder and CEO ,  Sajjad Mustehsan, discussed the platform's potential for marketing with me. He said that it “will soon be offering business-to-c

The problem of visibility in today's complex supply chains

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Supply chains today are integral to building a competitive advantage. As they grow in complexity, those who manage them acknowledge that they do not have as full visibility as they should. Technological solutions can point the way to more visible, better managed, and more efficient supply chains that deliver better value for companies and their customers. While there is wide variation in the supply chains of various businesses, there are still some identifiable trends. The  2017 GEODIS Supply Chain Worldwide survey (PDF)  delves into some of them. The report draws on the responses of 623 professionals in 17 countries from various functions related to the supply chain, including finance, operations, marketing, strategy, IT, and management. The majority (67%) of people surveyed in a position of supply chain leadership rank as C-Level or top management. This does appear to play some role in successfully strategies because businesses in which that position is help by “a midd

Data Scientist Interview

Domingos Lopes is about to begin a new job involving machine learning at Google after having completed the NYC Data Science Academy 12-Week Data Science Bootcamp. He came in with a strong math background, having earned a PhD in that field from NYU in 2016. After deciding that he did not want his job prospects to be limited to academic settings, Lopes decided that the best course of action was to acquire data science skills. In addition to the technical skills like Python fluency, he expects to draw on the ability to communicate data insight and work effectively in a team setting as he embarks on his career at Google. Read more in  https://www.switchup.org/blog/alumni-spotlight-domingos-lopes-hired-at-google

Wait, what?

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This is not a post on the popular book that bears that title. (I did write about that here:  uncommoncontent.blogspot.com .) This is my reaction to the number a billion that sounds impressive but is really completely meaningless without context.* When I shared a link today on LI, it offered me three other links to read. Among them was a FastCompany article, " Six Ways YouTube Is Primed For The Future (And Four Areas That Need Work)"  Now read what it says for the fifth and see if you have the same reaction I do: 5. YouTube’s rebuilt algorithms have led viewers to watch 1 billion hours of video a day. YouTube is optimized for what it calls “watch time,” which encompasses what users view, how long they tune in, the length of their overall YouTube session, and so forth. Together, these signals help YouTube algorithms decide which videos a user is most likely to watch shortly after they’re posted and which will lead to the longest overall viewing period. Do you get what

Expanding comments with AI

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The problem with human moderators is that they have human limitations that cannot keep up with a pic from https://d1avok0lzls2w.cloudfront.net/img_uploads/Blog-Comments.jpg huge influx of comments. That was the problem the New York Times faced in balancing reader comments demand with an editorial standard of civility for all published comments. Its solution was a partnership with , an incubator owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet. Back in September, the Times announced the partnership in an article that set out the challenge faced by its 14 moderators tasked with reviewing the comments on the 10% of articles that do allow them. That alone amounted to 11,000 comments a day. As the article invited readers to try their hand at moderating, it was entitled  Approve or Reject: Can You Moderate Five New York Times Comments? I took the test. The official summary of my results were: "You moderated 4 out of 5 comments as the Community desk would have, and it took you 81 s

Personalized video marketing

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“What's in a name?” Possibly quite a lot when it comes to personalized marketing. Several months back I received a marketing email from  Sprinklr  that was rather ironic given its message about effective use of data. It opened like this: “ Hi {lead.First Name:default=}.”  Obviously, something went wrong, and I saw the code rather than my name. Of course, personalized emails are not all that unusual any more, so some marketers have upped their game with personalized video. After receiving the “A Dog's Purpose” video (above) — in a correctly personalized email — I contacted  Adgreetz's  co-founder and CEO Eric Frankel about what data is used for this kind of personalized video marketing, and how the video was delivered to people who are 1) dog owners, and 2) have a dog of that particular name?  read more in  A Marketer's Best Friend

Define "good"

I don't mean that in an abstract way or with the kind of depths of thought about what we mean by "qulity" that drove the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  toward madness. I just mean it in the context of "good pay."  The question arises from this job posting: We pay really well because we want really good content. “Really good content” means well-constructed, well-reasoned arguments that are also extremely engaging. Articles need to be a minimum of 500 words, though analysis pieces need to be a minimum of 1,000 words We provide you with the headlines and an initial source We’re looking for both weekday AND weekend writers. There’s a bonus for weekend writers. We often promote writers to management positions Ah, I think, they say they have high standards but compensate accordingly, so I was picturing a minimum of three figures and not just with a one or two at the beginning of the number. But my illusions about some shared view on what con

AI gets a boost from curiosity

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As data analytics become increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI), photo credit:  https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2332/2083892100_3e015d810a_b.jpg researchers search for a way to drive machine learning. The key ingredient its future development may be a dash of curiosity. There are all kinds of AI systems currently used by various businesses with different names like  Alexa and Albert to personalize then . Perhaps it's time for an AI system named George after the monkey whose curiosity propels him into various adventures. That would be an apt choice for the Intrinsic Curiosity Module (ICM) developed by a group of four researchers at University of California, Berkeley. The attempt to inject curiosity to achieve self-motivated advances in machine learning was the subject of their paper,  Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Prediction , that was just submitted to the 34th International Conference on Machine Learning ( ICML 2017 ). Their premise is that

Getting insight on all the channels with AI

Marketers have access to more data on their customers than ever before. The challenge is getting rapid insights from all the channels used, in time to act effectively. One solution is an  AI-powered customer retargeting platform for omni-channel marketing operations. Abhi Yadav, ZyloTech's  co-founder and CEO, spoke to me about the function of AI in omni-channel marketing. ZyloTech , formerly DataXylo, launched in 2014 as an MIT spin off. Its advisory teams includes PhDs in AI, data scientists, and other marketing experts from the university. The platform uses machine learning to analyze all customer data continuously, and in near real time, for actionable insights on omnichannel marketing. In the current environment, marketers really have “no way of knowing whether the individual” targeted by the ad “is a new, lost, inactive, loyal or brand-conscious customer,”  says Yadav. Read more in  An AI Approach to Omnichannel

On working almost for free

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Someone I did some freelance work for a few years back contacted me to inquire about writing for his current company. The exchange on LinkedIn messaging went like this: Hi Ariella, Not sure if you remember me from my ___ days but I am looking for a freelancer to help out with blog posts across two products here at ____. I don't remember what your pricing was but I do remember that you made my life a whole lot easier. Can you send me what you were asking?  I assured him that I did remember him and asked what kind of articles he had in mind. His response: product focused and a bit of thought leadership Just so I can make sure, does $50 for an 800 word article work? I wrote back: I'm assuming you dropped a zero there. Surprisingly enough, he said: I did not. Our content director informed me that is what we normally pay for an 800 word article. Understood if that is way too cheap.   That was far below my rate even when I first started freela