Alix's Weekly Digital News

Hello everyone and welcome to 2018!

As usual, the industry just never calms down, especially during the holiday season.

Today see a lil' roundup of digital news ranging from social media to voice tech and influencer marketing.

Next week I will publish a detailed roundup of what to watch out for in 2018 (main trends and predictions that I am currently gathering).

ENJOY!

News Roundup

Diageo pulls advertising from Snapchat

• When advertising Captain Morgan on Snapchat, Diageo created a filter that would add a beard and hat to the user’s face, and apparently targeted kids/underaged people, which is against the Advertising Standards Authority’s regulations for an alcohol brand.
• Diageo has been banned from using sponsored Snapchat lenses ever again
• Diageo paid between $500k and $1M a day for a sponsored lens and ran their campaign based on assurances by Snapchat that they would not be advertising to kids. However in between then and now, Snapchat launched interest-based targeting, which is where the mistake occurred.

Speaking of Snapchat, they want to implement video stories everywhere

• Snapchat is struggling – since Instagram started Instagram stories and reached 800M+ monthly users, Snapchat’s growth rate has slowed down a lot and they need to find a way to still be relevant to young people
• After reshaping their Discover section to have publishers and studios hosting digital channels and shows, their new thing is to let publishers post videos outside the app to make them available everywhere
• This is similar to Twitter’s move in 2011 that made tweets available on outside sites.

The state of voice technology – Amazon Echo vs. Google Home & 2018 trend

• Google & Amazon collectively spent $70M to advertise their devices between Thanksgiving and Christmas (doing the math, that’s about $2M a day…)
• Seems to have paid off: Amazon says it sold tens of millions of Alexa devices and the Alexa app was the #1 app most downloaded on Christmas and Boxing Day (while Google Home was #6)
• In 2018, voice tech is set to shake things up in terms of marketing – the use of Siri, Alexa, Cortana and soon Apple HomePod has dramatically increased and will keep on growing this year
• How you ask? It starts with asking for the weather forecast, then by asking information about certain products (equivalent to mobile browsing) and at some point when you ask your voice assistant to “Add milk” to your groceries list, it comes back to you with best options based on prices.
• By 2020, voice is expected to drive 50% of searches on mobile and mobile is expected to drive 50% of e-commerce transactions

A look at influencer marketing and its dangers – another dimension of brand safety

• Last year we saw Disney stopping its contract with YouTuber PewDiePie after anti-Semitism comments, this year the YouTuber we’re looking at is Logan Paul, a teen celebrity followed by 15M people
• His mistake? Showing a dead body in his latest video.
• Brands must be weary of the influencers they’re partnering with, which is stressed out by several influencer marketing and analytics companies – all in all, this is another dimension of brand safety: how does the content of these young Internet celebrities complying with the brands’ content?
• The goal for many brands is to reach the highest number of people, so with the assurance that 15M people will see a video, is sounds attractive (even in exchange for 6-figure salaries…)
• Since last year’s YouTube Gate, brands are more and more cautious about their content safety.

 Stat of the Week

UK Programmatic Spending will account for ￡4.52 bn by 2019, against ￡3.39 bn in 2017. See here

Have a great week everyone!

Alix