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Many Consumers Want Fewer Marketing Messages In 2023 https://ift.tt/3uPCgOE Two-thirds (66%) of consumers said they want fewer marketing messages, and 27% said they feel as if they are bombarded by such advertising, according to a survey by marketing platform Optimove. About three quarters (73%) of consumers said they would like to receive fewer messages in 2023 than they did … Reminder: You are seeing this premium content because you are a subscriber to MediaPost's Research Intelligencer and/or a member of the Center for Marketing & Media Research. This content cannot be viewed by non-subscribers/non-members. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/pFCLDAR February 24, 2023 at 05:37PM
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B2BMX Speaker Spotlight: Jeff Marcoux on B2B Go To Market (GTM) Disruption https://ift.tt/TCX3ZdN Our B2B Marketing Exchange Speaker Spotlight is back with none other than Jeff Marcoux, CMO at Bombora, a provider of Intent data for B2B sales and marketing. With a conference theme of Performance Plus, Jeff is a great choice for a B2BMX keynote speaker with his extensive background in tech and enterprise B2B Marketing. I first met Jeff when he was a CMO Lead, Worldwide Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft in 2015 and was kind enough to educate us all in the art and science of predictive analytics. Jeff has continued on his path as a sophisticated B2B marketer in senior marketing leadership roles, giving back as an adjunct professor in marketing and starting his own go to market consultancy. At B2BMX, Jeff will be keynoting on the need for B2B marketers to disrupt their Go to Market approach to more effectively engage the entire account as companies dealing with economic uncertainty. This interview is a bit of a preview of his talk or a summary in case you don't make it to B2BMX. Tell us about your role as CMO at Bombora Jeff: I was a Bombora customer back at TTEC and I was a customer when I was at Icertis. I've always used it in my teaching, like for UC Irvine and Oregon State University. I've used them when I was doing some fractional CMO work and when I was doing a lot of advisory work with accounts, trying to figure out intent data. I have always been a fan and a champion as a customer, and they wanted me to come in and essentially do what I was doing as kind of an evangelist advocate for the brand naturally, but to replicate that internally. A lot of people don't know this about Bombora, but we have three distinct business units to some extent. We've got the intent data side that everybody know about. We also have a massive audience solutions business where we provide data to most of the big B2B holding companies and major brands. And then we have a whole channel partner ecosystem where people tend to see our stuff, like in 6sense and solutions like that. There are a lot of different pieces in the role from being a customer evangelist to now being the CMO, architecting a rev op function that is focused holistically on the business, pivoting the marketing team to focus on opportunity and revenue in a full funnel focus. It's all those different pieces coming together We created the function of segment marketing in addition to product marketing, which is kind of an interesting motion where the segment role is focused on the go to market motion for sales. So they're kind of the right hand of sales versus where product is focused on leaning into product, helping us drive voice of customer, ensuring we're actually following best practices on commercialization releases. The other part I'm implementing right now is kind of, I call it "wagile", a waterfall agile kind of combination. Certain elements in marketing have to be waterfall, right? Certain things have to happen for others to happen, but you can still execute that in a natural manner. For a lot of people it's just a feature in an ABM orchestration motion. I view it and have used it very differently, where it actually becomes like a fundamental element to business strategy. So, how do I start to help the market realize that it's more than just prioritizing accounts and putting ads in front of them? Or telling your sellers who to call first and all the different use cases that you can deploy it against? Everything from competitive intelligence to M&A to pipeline forecasting, to your content strategy plus all kinds of stuff around events, I'm just barely scratching the surface on those. Most people just want to know, are these are the accounts that you say I should go after? At B2BMX you'll be giving a keynote on the need for disruption in B2B marketing and go to market - what are some of the biggest changes driving the need for change? Jeff: The need for disruption? The need for change? A lot of what's playing out in our traditional playbooks isn't going to work as we go forward. I've been one to say controversially, that I think marketing automation is kind of dying and on its way out, just like the old traditional lead nurture flow. If a buyer is a good fit, if they're showing intent on our product or our brand, when do you want to talk to them? The answer's yesterday, right? Like, they don't want to wait for weeks. The key things that kind of stand out are, we're seeing longer sales cycles. And given current macroeconomic trends, we're seeing more people, more touches being necessary, significantly more people, which marketing greatly misunderstands. Obviously tighter budgets, budgets are trimmed down. The misalignment still continues to happen a lot in marketing between sales and marketing. You'd think we'd figure it out. I can say even when I was consulting, this was probably happened 95% of the time. Not having direct conversations and understanding your business continues to kill marketers. And then I still feel marketers are starting to get to the motion. We still do fluffy metrics. We spent forever beating the MQL into business' heads, but at the end of the day, business doesn't really give a crap about MQLs. They care about opportunities They care about closing on revenue. They care about identifying churn, all those other kinds of things. Matt Dixon's recent book, The Jolt Effect talks about how the fear of messing up is real in leading to massive indecision. Marketing needs to, if they haven't already, start to step up and take a bigger, full funnel approach to everything that they're doing. Because a lot of marketing departments are still limited to the top of the funnel. They're not looking at velocity and conversion rates. They're not looking at helping post-purchase. It's still shocking how after all these years it's like, "oh, we think we should be doing all these things, but we're not." Let's drill down on the idea of full funnel engagement. Can you expand on how marketers can make the shift? Jeff: So the first thing is, you have to change your metrics. If you're only focused on MQLs and top of funnel stuff, that's how you're gonna...compensation drives behavior. So, if that's what my budget's based on, I'm not gonna look down funnel when you align When I move the SDR onto our demand gen team, now the leader of that demand gen team is not about doing a webinar, it's not about checking a box. It's about, do we think that this is the best return on not only our investment, but also our effort, which that's become a big talk track for me is ROE. What I love about it is, if we truly think that this webinar is the thing that's the best use of our time, or this first party event is really important let's direct our SDR resources to get people to sign up, get people to register, whatever that is. Because holistically, we believe this is what's going to get us to the opportunity number. That as opposed to, I'm doing a flurry of activity and hoping, you know, that it'll turn out okay. Under what timeframe do you hold an effort like a webinar accountable and measurable? What role does content repurposing play for long, slow burn impact outside of the short term? Jeff: So it's interesting, I've always been a fan of kind of marquee, big rock content strategies where it's big material pieces that truly deliver value that can be cut into a lot of different, smaller pieces. They can live for extended periods of time. I still am a big fan of that. I think at the same time, we can look at some of these discreet pieces, and if we believe that they're going to have that long burn, then they're worth looking at. Simple things like, tying two things together. I could build a webinar that I run live every week that is available to my SDRs to target anyone who's showing intent on Bombora, right? Then if two people show up, or if one person shows up, or if 10 people show up, that's a win, right, if they're a good fit for us. If they're showing intent on us. Those could be turning into real opportunities really fast. That versus if I do something on a topic and I need 150 registrants or a thousand registrants, the mindset shift is different. It's like the effort is basically the same, but the shift on quality versus the quantity as well as how do you create those repeatable motions to get that long burn, to your point. I've actually now built out a cadence of things that we can do to equip the SDRs for that kind of stuff or like with our customers. I'm starting down this whole series on other ways you can use intent data. Like, using it for your event strategy, using it for your pre-year and post, using it for your content strategy, measuring your brand health, all these different kinds of things that people aren't doing - like how, how your agency should be strategically providing you insight and things like that. Especially with the trend of media buying shifting back in house. So, those are long burn, right? That's a piece of collateral that will live for a long period of time because the fundamental data doesn't change, but the way in which you think about it, interpret it does. What are some best practices for measuring a brand's health against their Ideal Customer Profile? Jeff: I'm still a fan of FIRE campaigns - I call it FIT, FIR and FIRE campaigns is what you could be running. You have those that are a fit for your company based on your ICP definition. And there's a whole new vein. Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter score, had a really interesting concept that I loved, which was he hates how basically bastardized NPS has gotten. So he released a new book and his comment was, we kind of do this whole fit profile wrong and what you really should be looking at is, what does it cost to acquire a promoter for your business? That's a big shift for marketers in the ICP world of, here's what the technographic, firmographic, or maybe psychographic data needs to look like. I might win more, but is that the best use of effort in terms of the longtime health of the business? So you have your FIT campaigns, right? They're a good fit for us. Then you have FIR - fit, intent and recency. So they're a good fit, they're showing intent, and that intent is headed in the right direction. And it's sustained. Then the E at the end of it is engagement, right? They're engaging with my brand, they're clicking on my ads, they're on my website, right? What's interesting, and growing up in the product marketing and demand gen space, I was always a brand pessimist. It was like, those are fluffy metrics. But now, Bombora's data is really interesting in this vein - you can put in your target account list, that ICP. Then when I run a campaign against any of those, I can look at number one, my brand versus my competitor's brands in the market just from intent with the FIT profile that I actually care about. I don't care about the whole market. I care about who I want to sell to, that's number one. I can see that health over time. Then when I run a campaign, I can see that the topic category of like ABM or whatever the topic is that I am trying to create buzz about. Did I actually see a material lift in that? And then did that also correlate to one with my brand? I can actually now measure that and see it visually as opposed to all the traditional trackers. And then if you overlay that with Bombora's tag or a first party tag, it de-anonymizes then, right? Not only am I measuring out in the world, seeing if that category shift and seeing if my brand shifted with the people I actually care about. Then you can answer the question, did they actually come to my site? Are they engaging? All those kinds of things. That's how you should be measuring brand. That's a great example of how you can truly measure the market you care about that has active interest in your brand. How can B2B marketers do a better job of engaging the full account in their go to market? Jeff: That's interesting, so it varies by deal size, et cetera, as you go through it, but there's also too many people. We're seeing seven to nine and upwards of 10 to 12 in medium to enterprise size companies. But if you go beyond that, there's diminishing returns and it just takes longer. And your win rate decreases with that. What's also interesting is the journey that people are going through - who engages when through your buyer's journey. As marketers, we tend to be like, that's obvious, except for the fact that most of us are like, "we're going to target the whole demand unit from day one", and that's not right. Like procurement and finance come at different stages, CISO's come in at different stages through a deal cycle. So you need to actually map out and understand who comes in when. Who are the key champions when? Where do you start when you win? Then who has to be involved in this? There's all kinds of great data from Gong and others. And you can start see things like, oh, if you have four more contacts, your win rate can increase by X. If you have a VP, it increases by Y. But the way in which you start to do that is by mapping that journey. Let's look into Jeff's crystal ball when it comes to the future of ABM and go to market. What should marketers be focusing on most in 2023? Jeff: In 2023, I'm guessing this is going to be a rough year. I'll call it a correction as opposed to "the sky is falling" in the market. That said, it's created an atmosphere of apprehension. So for marketing, lean in on metrics that actually matter. Understand the job to be done for your business. I think the marketers who do that are gonna start to be more successful. I think getting out of your head in some of the old world disciplines that we've spent a lot of time in like, lead scoring models and nurture programs are the greatest things since slice bread. You've gotta start to back out and think about, this account based everything, right? If you're not tailoring your stuff to accounts that you know are a good fit for you, however you define it, or if you're not thinking about utilizing some level of intent data to prioritize your time, you're just shooting in the dark and hoping people find you with broad brand campaigns. I think there's going to be a piece on efficiency and a kind of velocity that markers are going to have to lean into. I also think if I pause on lead scoring for a second, I think there needs to be a mental mind shift in what makes something good. And ready. That's kind of the coupling with SDRs where lead scoring could and should probably shift to likelihood to win motions, not likelihood to take a meeting or an opportunity. I think there's a whole realm of rethinking, I think we also have to get out of our heads. Enterprise marketers are the worst at making things complicated, way more complicated than they need to be. I try to be a simple guy and to me it's like, less is more except for pizza and paychecks, right? Attribution models and all kinds of this crazy stuff. W attribution models and this and that. At the end of the day, if you've got a good relationship with your sales team and you're aligned to business metrics that matter, you can be really freaking simple. It's like, which leads came from marketing? Which opportunities came from marketing we wouldn't have otherwise ? Marketing originated. Which ones didn't come from us, but we heavily influenced? Heavily influenced and they took a significant action with us? Great. Then which opportunities do we just lightly touch? Some, add some emails, things like that. I've got my three tiers of stuff, but what matters to the business? Did we actually hit our number? And then hopefully how much of that came from marketing? At the end of the day, if you're focused on the number as a whole, you look at for the business, compensation drives behavior. I want marketing leaning in to get their bonus on helping to ensure that sales hits their number no matter what. So if they're not focused on full funnel, if they're not focused on leaning in to the opportunities, creating custom content and facilitating pipeline through the whole journey, they're going to focus at the top of the funnel and they get defensive. "I take credit for this versus you." No, no, we're all focused on this number. We all need that to succeed. We, we'll track it because we want to be smarter and intelligent about it. But I need you to succeed. So it's just a different mind shift of "us versus them." It's like I, as a CEO, I as the CMO want my team working together to hit the overall number as opposed to pointing fingers and taking credit. That's where you see a lot of the friction happening. Thanks Jeff! You can connect with Jeff on all things related to ABM and Go to Market on LinkedIn, Twitter @jeffmarcoux or his company website at Bombora.com. If you're reading this before February 28th, you can also see Jeff live at the B2B Marketing Exchange, Monday, February 27, 2023 4:50 PM to 5:30 in the Camelback Ballroom where he'll be presenting: Well, There Goes My Buyer's Journey... In this session, we will dive into the shift in thinking and execution necessary to engage the whole account in your GTM. Jeff Marcoux will ensure your branding efforts drive effective impact at target accounts to structuring campaign alignment and engaging your buying group to execute with your SDR team beyond the first meeting. The time to disrupt yourself and your GTM is now... before you are disrupted. There are actually a few B2B Marketing Exchange tickets left, so if you are in the Scottsdale area or want to make a last minute trip to learn from your favorite B2B Marketing pros, use the discount code, TopRank25 for 25% off! More info here. Of course if you'd like to connect with me @leeodden or my Director of Agency Marketing, Katelyn Drake @kb_drake, we'll also be attending B2BMX and would love to meet you! The post B2BMX Speaker Spotlight: Jeff Marcoux on B2B Go To Market (GTM) Disruption appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®. Mobile Marketing,SEO via Hubspot https://ift.tt/9MFeQAt February 24, 2023 at 05:04PM
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The Sorry Customer Experience: What Annoys Shoppers The Most https://ift.tt/XILR6hw Big brands should not get smug about the customer experience they provide -- only 11% of online shoppers feel that firms exceed their expectations all the time. And a mere 4% are always pleasantly surprised by messages they receive, according to Consumer Engagement Report, a study by MessageGears. What’s more, 87% say that less than half the brand marketing messages they receive are personalized. And 66% don’t remember opting in for communications. Yet 61% will open messages that are relevant or from their favorite brands, especially email. Of those polled, 53% prefer to get marketing/promotion messages via email, versus 17% who like in-app notifications, 12% who favor SMS and 7% who want push notifications. Only 11% do not want email at all. And email works as an ecommerce driver: 59% of shoppers have made an online purchase directly from an email promotion, and 32% have done so in-app, 25% by SMS and 19% by push. advertisement advertisement But 49% strongly agree that they will unsubscribe from a brand that sends too many/irrelevant messages, and 28% somewhat concur. Still, only 17% are extremely annoyed when a brand communicates in a generic way that does not reflect their interactions, and 32% somewhat agree. Another 31% neither agree or disagree. How often do they want messages? Not that often:
Moreover, the most important demand for 59% is keeping their data secure. In addition, 38.4% want timely and helpful responses to customer inquiries, and 30.8 expect that communications are in sync across different channels. And 26.2% crave relevant product recommendations. But 49% say the least critical deliverable is personalized digital messages. How often do these consumers buy online? They do so:
These days, 55% place the most online orders on their mobile device, and 32% place the most orders on a PC/desktop unit. Another 13% use both. The full study can be found here. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/pFCLDAR February 24, 2023 at 03:16PM
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Urging Your Clients To Transform? Look To Your Own Business First https://ift.tt/qlZAPwt Last month on LinkedIn I saw a meme showing two marketing leaders debating whether this was the year of transformation or whether that was last year. It made me chuckle. It reminded me of the seven or eight years we media folk spent asking ourselves whether this was the year of mobile. Transformation is endemic in our industry, and with good reason. Disruption is a reality and whether you call it transformation or future-proofing, if you're not fundamentally changing the way you engage with customers you're in trouble – as a brand or an agency. I’ve spent the past few months in my new role running our global Consultancy Community figuring out how we can best support clients through their transformation. We know that changing the way our clients connect with consumers can unlock exceptional growth, but capitalizing on it needs a really systematic approach. I realized that we’re well placed to do this because as a media agency – especially as a media agency – we’re on the same journey ourselves. advertisement advertisement Transformation is a must for agencies as it is for clients, expedited by what we used to call ‘diversified services’ moving rapidly from the periphery to the core of our business. Two examples – one tangible and one a bit more existential. Retail Media has grown in five years at the rate it took Search 14 years and Social 11 years to grow. GroupM forecasts that it will hit $121 billion of ad revenue in 2023, $160 billion in 2027. For most U.S. CPG businesses, it'll be more than half, for some, two thirds of their digital media investment in a few years’ time (for some it’s there now) and is expected to comprise 25% of total digital ad spend in the next three years. The rate of growth may be slowing, but at that scale it will completely alter the way we think about the Consumer Experience Journey, the platforms we trade on, the type of content we create, and the partnerships we should be nurturing with retailers. Part of our transformation at Wavemaker is rapidly scaling our Ecommerce specialists to service this growth, but also training our planners, strategists, consultants and client leaders to plan in and across Ecommerce as they would longer-standing channels or routes to market. Then there’s ChatGPT. If technology can write A-level English essays in mere minutes and score an A*, what does such advanced AI mean for consumer behavior, for how we make choices and how those choices are influenced by marketing? It's one thing to ask AI to write some ad copy or a podcast, another to grasp how it will fundamentally change Search, the organic and paid media channel critical to digital media, Retail Media and pretty much every consumer journey we optimize for growth. For those businesses who've been slow to adapt to these and other disruptions, I am willing to bet there is a ‘transformation brief’ winging its way to their agencies or a reassuringly expensive consultancy firm. But it’s not a one-brief job. The simple truth is that change is hard and it takes time. Many businesses are reliant on known or proven, and often short-term, outcomes, especially from marketing. The turnover at C-suite level inside marketing organizations is short, so many CMOs are not incentivized for long-term change. Even if the will is there, the notion of transformation can seem intimidating, unwieldy, and expensive. To lessen the pain, our own hard-won experience has taught us to ask and answer three critical questions before we set forth on a transformation journey with our clients: 1) In dollar terms, what’s the growth available today by improving what’s already in the plan versus the transformative growth if we adopt a future-proof approach? 2) What’s the benchmark for excellence in your category? 3) What’s the roadmap to transformative growth that we can unlock? Across Data Strategy, Ecommerce, Addressability, Applied Innovation, Tech Consulting, Content & Brand Experience and Analytics, we break down the ambition into a series of steps in a Transformative Growth Roadmap. And because our teams are executing the tests, not just advising on their ambition, we are uniquely placed to ensure their success. The future growth of our clients depends on transformation, and ours does too. So, yes this is the year of Transformation. And it will be next year and the year after. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/pFCLDAR February 24, 2023 at 09:43AM
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Elevate B2B Marketing News: Social Engagements Hit New Low, Gen Z B2B Buyer Study, Bing’s New AI Image Creator, & Marketing’s Rising Importance https://ift.tt/NiejLCo Millennial and Gen Z B2B buyers are many and demanding online [Report] 64 percent of business buyers are in the millennial and Gen Z demographic, with the B2B buyers in these groups more likely to express dissatisfaction relating to purchase experiences than those in older groups — two of several findings of interest to B2B marketers contained in newly-published Forrester report data. Digital Commerce 360 The Most Impactful Trends of 2023, per Agencies 69 percent of marketing executives have said that short-form video is the 2023 trend that will have the greatest impact on clients and the marketing industry, while 43 percent pointed to influencer marketing as a trend expected to have strong impact, with 43 percent having also pinpointed the smarter delivery of personalized experiences, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts Marketing’s strategic importance continues to rise 40.9 percent of marketers see a greater strategic role for marketing in their business in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022, while 35.5 percent of B2B marketers noted that marketing is fully understood within their organization — two of numerous findings of interest to digital marketers contained in newly-released marketing survey data. Marketing Week Microsoft Bing Tests Image Creator In Search Results Microsoft's Bing search engine has begun testing the addition of a feature for the creation of prompt-driven artificial intelligence (AI) generated images, harnessing the technology of DALL-E to augment it's Prometheus-powered AI search capabilities, Microsoft recently announced. Search Engine Roundtable LinkedIn Adds Option to Tag Chats with a ‘Starred’ Function Microsoft's LinkedIn has rolled out a new option offering the helpful ability to use stars to denote especially important private message conversations on the professional social media platform, adding a new way for B2B marketers to organize direct messages, LinkedIn announced recently. Social Media Today The Rise of AI Content Generation Stirs Brand Reputation Fears By 2025 some 30 percent of outbound marketing messaging from large firms will be synthetic digital content built using generative AI, according to Gartner forecast data, and Adweek takes a look at how brands have their work cut out when it comes to monitoring and protecting brand reputation. Adweek [bctt tweet="“As generative AI continues to transform everything from how creators make art to how people develop written content, the ability to see how content was created is more important than ever.” — @AndyParsons of @Adobe" username="toprank"] AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology The U.S. Copyright Office has ruled that AI image-generation tools are different than other traditional tools used by digital artists, and that the images the AI tools create should not be granted copyright protection, the latest legal decision surrounding the rapidly emerging amount of generative AI-produced online content. Reuters Meta Announces Initial Test of ‘Meta Verified’ Paid Verification Scheme on Facebook and IG Meta's Facebook and Instagram have instituted a premium plan with new $12 to $15 monthly verification fees, offering more personalized account support along with increased content visibility and reach, plus a system aimed at helping to support other creators on the platform, Meta recently announced. Social Media Today Google Slides gets a ChatGPT plug-in – and it’s like a cheat mode for presentations A generative AI-powered plug-in known as MagicSlides has launched as a third-party add-on for Google's popular online presentation creation tool Google Slides, allowing marketers to swiftly create slide decks with the help of AI — a feature that has yet to arrive natively to Google Slides. TechRadar Social media engagement hits a new low, except for TikTok [Rival IQ Report] Average Instagram social media engagement fell from 1.22 percent in 2019 to 0.47 percent in 2022, with Facebook engagement rates falling from 0.09 percent to 0.06 percent, and Twitter dropping from 0.045 percent to 0.035 percent — three of numerous statistics of interest to B2B marketers contained in comprehensive newly-published report data from Rival IQ, and Search Engine Land takes a look. Search Engine Land ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “AI-Generated Sameness” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist First Generation iPhone Sells For $63,000 — The Onion TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
The post Elevate B2B Marketing News: Social Engagements Hit New Low, Gen Z B2B Buyer Study, Bing’s New AI Image Creator, & Marketing’s Rising Importance appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®. Mobile Marketing,SEO via Hubspot https://ift.tt/9MFeQAt February 24, 2023 at 06:18AM
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Google Limits News Site Content In Search Results In Response To Canada's Bill https://ift.tt/65DaRZw Google is blocking news across some Canadian publisher websites in Google Search, Google Discover and other Google platforms in a test that affects less than 4% of Canadians. The test, which will run for about five weeks, is in response to Bill C-18. The bill, if passed, would enact the Online News Act to regulate digital platforms and dub them intermediaries in Canada. The idea is to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news market, according to the Government of Canada website. “We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users," a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to Search & Performance Marketing Daily. "We run thousands of tests each year to assess any potential changes to Search." The spokesperson noted that Google has been fully transparent about concerns that C-18 is overly broad and if unchanged, could impact news products that Canadians use and rely on every day. advertisement advertisement "We remain committed to supporting a sustainable future for news in Canada and offering solutions that fix Bill C-18," the Google spokesperson wrote. These types of tests help Google developers understand the implications of potential product changes -- and not every test results in a product change. Google runs thousands of tests each year around the world to assess any potential changes to Search. Bryan Passifiume, a Parliamentary bureau reporter at the National Post, noticed and tweeted about the change Wednesday. At the time he was unsure whether Google had officially begun to block news in Canada, but had not been able to search news websites for more than a week on mobile and PC. The move in Canada reflects a similar scenario in Australia. Media agencies reported that Google has been hiding some Australian news sites from search results in a move that shows how the tech company can determine what people see on the internet. The report from The Australian Financial Review came at a time when Google was negotiating with the Australian government with regard to financial payment for content. In February 2021, Google struck a content deal with publishers and launched a platform in Australia offering paid news content. The initial Australian publishers in the launch were paid to provide content for News Showcase, Google’s project. Some of those publications at the time included The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The New Daily, InDaily and The Conversation. The News Showcase platform originally rolled out in Brazil and Germany. It had been scheduled to launch in June in Australia, but plans were delayed when Canberra, the capital city of Australia, moved to make it a legal requirement for Google and Facebook to pay for content from media companies, according to one news source. The Australian law took effect in March 2021 after talks with the big tech firms led to a brief shutdown of Facebook news feeds in the country. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/hSc4sjl February 23, 2023 at 02:54PM
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TikTok Is Embraced By Mercedes, Booted By European Commission https://ift.tt/XVEIOnG TikTok continues to be banned by a growing number of governmental bodies, even as it’s embraced by major brands, along with more than a billion consumers worldwide. The juxtaposition has never been starker than this week, when the short-form video app is simultaneously being banned within the European Commission (EC), and made available (along with other popular apps) in the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class cars coming to market this fall. The EC, which has about 30,000 employees, on Thursday issued a directive suspending use of the TikTok app on all corporate devices and workers’ personal devices when used for work purposes, citing concerns about cybersecurity threats. The EC also said that other social media platforms will be kept “under constant review.” Meanwhile, Mercedes will become the first auto maker to feature TikTok. advertisement advertisement TikTok — along with Zoom, Angry Birds, the Vivaldi web browser, Webex by Cisco and other apps — will be available in the updated version of the large-screen MBUX infotainment system in the new E-Class cars (above), in markets including the U.S. and China, a key growth market for Mercedes. Drivers will be able to watch TikTok and other video apps when parked. Mercedes developed new software architecture that makes it easier to integrate third-party apps in the infotainment system, and also launched its own app store. (By the middle of the decade, Mercedes plans to replace the MBUX with its own MB.OS operating system.) Among other announcements made this week at its research and development center in Sunnydale, California, Mercedes also revealed a long-term partnership with Google which will enable it to offer YouTube, maps and navigation capabilities while having control over its marketplace and IP. On the governmental front, concerns that Chinese parent company ByteDance could be passing TikTok-gathered data to the Chinese also led the UK Parliament to abruptly shut down its own short-lived TikTok account last summer, and caused the U.S. House of Representatives to order, in December, that staff and lawmakers delete the app from all government-issued mobile devices. Some state governors have banned TikTok’s use in local agencies, and some universities in those states have voluntarily banned it from campus Wi-Fi networks. India banned TikTok and many other Chinese-developed apps in 2020. Although some U.S. politicians and government officials — including Donald Trump, during his presidency, and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr — have called for a total ban of TikTok in the U.S., that prospect seems unlikely at this point. TikTok said it was “disappointed” by the EC’s ban decision, and reiterated its stance that such decisions are “misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions.” TikTok — which has also been questioned by EU officials about whether it will comply with Europe’s coming Digital Services Act (DSA) designed to increase online platforms’ accountability — has been upping its investments in infrastructure, including building data centers in Europe. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/hSc4sjl February 23, 2023 at 09:16AM
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Altice Posts Big Q4 Net Loss, Video, Broadband Customers Sink https://ift.tt/E5ikwTp Mid-sized legacy pay TV distributor Altice USA suffered major financial setbacks in the fourth quarter as a result of continued declines in video and broadband subscribers, posting declining revenue and a big net quarterly loss. As with other major pay TV-video providers, Altice has seen difficult business trends due to continued cord-cutting by consumers in its video business -- and more recently, weak or declining broadband subscribers. Altice posted a big net loss of $193 million, versus net income of $252 million in the year-ago period. The company’s stock fell 5% in after-market trading to $4.11 and then recovered somewhat. Altice revenues sank 6% to $2.4 billion in the period. Overall residential video customers dropped 2% (52,000) to 2.44 million in the third quarter of 2022, with broadband subscribers decreasing by 0.2% (7,700) to 4.28 million). The declines were more modest than earlier 2022 quarterly periods. Somewhat good news was that the company’s adjusted cash flow (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) fell nearly at analysts expectations -- to $913 million. This was down from $1.1 billion in the same period a year ago. advertisement advertisement Revenue at the company’s News & Advertising business unit revenue declined 10.8% to $151.8 million. Dennis Mathew, chief executive officer of Altice, said in a release: “Looking ahead, we have a clear strategy centered around growing our broadband and mobile businesses... and we are committed to executing with discipline, setting us on a path to return to sustainable customer, revenue and cash-flow growth.” Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/hSc4sjl February 23, 2023 at 08:14AM Email's Delicate Balance: It's Popular For Buying, But Watch Out For The Creep Factor https://ift.tt/0XcSTA7 Want to drive online sales? Email remains the best channel for doing that, judging by the U.S. Consumer Trends Index 2023, a study from Marigold, working with Econsultancy. Of the U.S. consumers polled, 55% have made a purchase directly from an email in the last year, versus only 23% who have bought from a digital banner ad. And they will share zero-party data to get personalized messages. Gen Z lags behind all other generations in email buying, averaging 49%+. But at least 61% apiece of Boomers, Gen X and Millennials have purchased by email. In general, email outperforms other digital channels by 139%, according to the study. Mobile is growing in usage, with 51% buying from an email viewed on a mobile phone. Moreover, 62% have purchased via a mobile app, and 30% directly from a text — a 20% increase YoY. And 68% have used a mobile phone to research a product in-store, while 51% have browsed in the store and bought the selected products online. advertisement advertisement For instance, 69% of U.S. consumers think an email reminder or ad about an abandoned shopping cart is not cool. And 61% feel the same about ads based on location data from brands they don’t know. Also suffering from the creep factor are retargeting ads derived from third-party cookie tracking (57%) and those related to something the person talked about near a smart device (61%). Yet 86% of individuals like brands that send personalized messages, and 75% will share zero-party data to facilitate them. That percentage rises for 84% for millennials. All that aside, the biggest driver of consumer sales is price, although that seems to be going down: 42% of shoppers are motivated by it, but that is down by 5% from 2022. Price leads across generations, although to varying degrees. Fifty-one percent of boomers surveyed cite price, versus millennials at 32% and Gen Z at 44%. Meanwhile, 52% of U.S. consumers are more likely to engage in a loyalty program this year, and that includes 57% of Gen X and 67% of Millennials. Overall, 48% will use loyalty program benefits when considering a purchase this year. Not to end on a sour note, but 49% of consumers are concerned about the rising cost of living and 48%, and 50% will make fewer impulse purchases. Marigold, in conjunction with Econsultancy, surveyed 1,561 U.S. consumers during October-November 2022.
Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/hSc4sjl February 22, 2023 at 05:18PM
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Microsoft Bing Chat Taps Voice, Goes Mobile And On Skype https://ift.tt/aGwrzqx The power of AI-powered Bing chat is in voice search. Microsoft on Wednesday brought the Bing search and chat experience to Skype and to mobile on iOS and Android, using the Bing mobile app and Edge mobile app browser. It will allow those in Bing Chat on mobile devices to use voice search. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, provided an example in the post of a father and son who developed a video-game idea with the help of Bing chat. “They started off by creating sci-fi stories using simple prompts in chat, eventually leading to the development of a video game idea where Bing not only helped create a plot, but also generated the code to input directly into Scratch – a visual programming tool,” he wrote. “In just a few queries, they captured the wonder and potential of the new Bing and Edge. We are hearing many similar stories on how the new Bing is helping people discover and create in ways previously not possible.” advertisement advertisement The AI-powered Bing for Skype made its worldwide preview today, to better assist users when collaborating with friends and family. More than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and chats across borders and around the world. The new Bing will enable a variety of helpful and entertaining new scenarios and capabilities. Adding Bing to the group is similar to the way someone would add a Skype contact. It provides the ability for Bing to answer questions and provide information to the entire group. For example, Mehdi wrote, if a family talking about the next family reunion, someone can ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and events around the time of travel. Everyone in the chat group will get access the results simultaneously. The availability of the Skype user interface will vary during the initial rollout. Mobile Marketing via MediaPost.com: mobile https://ift.tt/hSc4sjl February 22, 2023 at 05:18PM |
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