Editorial
The biggest moment digital media moment of the year occurred last week (bigger than GDPR), when Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify and YouTube removed pages and content published by Infowars. It was finally an acknowledgment that platforms need to exercise the same sort of editorial controls as publishers. The hold-out was twitter. Twitter’s CEO defended their inaction, saying he wouldn’t take “one-off short-term feel-good actions” and journalists should fake check / refute fake news. The latter comment was not without controversy, but CNN took up the challenge and published a detailed investigation of all the times Infowars has violated twitter’s terms of service. Post the publication of the article, twitter admitted there were rule breaches but the account would remain.
Kara Swisher wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times on the topic, detailing that twitter needs values. The best quote is where Swisher defines values as “a code that requires making hard choices“. It’s a good call out across the entire digital ecosystem. While there are 3rd party tools that can be used to help with brand safety, privacy/data protection, and media quality these tools do not and should not let platforms abdicate responsibility or avoid making hard choices. This includes platforms (and publishers) making decisions on what content should be on their platforms, what content is eligible for monetization, and enforcing these rules.
Now onto all the other news.
General
- The WSJ reports that Facebook is in talks with major US banks about getting access to their data. Facebook is pitching this as a way for users to access their financial information within Facebook. Facebook has also said the data wouldn’t be used or available for ad targeting purposes.
- Facebook has launched AR gaming in Messenger. There are two games at launch “Don’t Smile” and “Asteroids Attack” with more games due in the coming months.
- Similar Web (a web traffic insights company) has released research stating that YouTube is on track to become the #2 website, taking the position from Facebook who will fall to #3. The company also predicts Amazon will come in at #4, stealing the spot from Yahoo!
- Snapchat’s Q2 results showed that it made $262M for the quarter (up from last quarter) but lost 2% of Daily Active Users (DAUs) falling from 191MM to 188MM (see this graph) and blamed the redesign for the user decline. On a Monthly Active User (MAU) basis, this puts Snapchat at #2 to Facebook (241MM v 100MM).
- Google has released an invite-only iOS app called “Cameos” where celebrities can answer (in video) the common questions asked about them in Google search. The content will then be published in actual Google search results (not YouTube). If you think you’re famous and warrant access, you can download the Cameos app and request an invite code. If you’re not famous, consider this a great tool for clients like Hulu, Sony, and Spotify to leverage their celebrity relationships.
- Roku’s Q2 results were interesting because Roku’s Q2 platform revenue (ad sales and revenue share on channels) exceeded hardware revenue ($90.3MM vs $66.5MM) showing a growing future for ad-supported OTT content. Roku also announced that their free ad-supported Roku channel will be free on the web for anyone (no need to own a Roku).
- Spotify is conducting a test in Australia that lets users skip ads (audio and video). The ad format is being called “Active Media” and advertisers will not pay for ads that are skipped. Spotify has indicated that if the test is successful, the capability and ad-product will roll out to other markets.
- According to reports in Germany, Google is considering entering the digital Out of Home (OOH) space with a programmatic media offering. It’s not the first time Google has experimented with digital OOH, having done tests as far back as 2015.
Brand Safety
- Facebook will be requiring pages with large US audiences to undergo additional authorization. This includes requiring page administrators to enable two-factor authentication (2FA). There will also be a section called “People Who Manage this Page” showing what is the primary country where the page is managed.
- Google has published steps being taken to help journalists in the lead up to the upcoming elections. Google is partnering with “First Draft”, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center to help journalists understand how to verify user-generated content. The 1-hour verification short-course is also available to the public.
Have a wonderful week.
Joshua
PS. The distraction of the week is this research from the US Army (PDF link) which will help you identify just how much caffeine you need to stay alert. If you don’t want to read the full research, this article on Inc. gives a good overview of how much and when you should drink coffee.