Good Monday morning. It’s July 16th, Amazon Prime Day. Today’s jaw-dropping statistic: Amazon has 49% of e-commerce market share in the U.S. and 5% of all commerce.

Highlights

• • Google’s search rankings will now be influenced by page speed for every website. The long-staged Google change is now in effect for all website pages on every site. More below.
  • Google AdWords is now called Google Ads. The change is subtle but an important reminder that a lot of search now occurs via images or by voice. And with a $100 billion revenue line, this branding change was not done lightly.
  • You’ll be able to use Google Ads for new hotel formats(!) and via its new retail partnership with Shopify as Google scrambles to catch up to Amazon.

Google: Hotel Ads & Page Speed Update

Here is a look inside a Google Ads campaign creation screen that the company announced during its marketing show last week. Notice that “Hotel” will be the only industry type shown out of all the industries that exist. Google Hotel Ads have existed for years, but moving into the main campaign screen is a big vote of interest from the company.

Google also announced that its “page speed update” is now rolling out to all websites. This means that webpages will be ranked, in part, based on how fast they render on a mobile device. These are important to point out because Google is notoriously circumspect about most changes. Its most clear signals come from its actions and sporadic announcements. When those are made, the entire marketing ecosystem takes note.

This is especially true when Google shares news about search language. We heard last week that searches for “[something] near me” are up 10-fold. Google has hammered on the near me phrase and put it into our lexicon. Google often uses this phrase to signal local or retail intent.

The final big Google announcements dealt with small business reluctance to engage online. Google says that about half of all small businesses still don’t have a website. The new twist is that Google Ads will create landing pages automatically based on what it knows about the prospect and your organization. Here’s the kicker: the ads have to be in an automatic campaign run by Google.

The changes show Google looking to grab the market from the next size tier of small businesses while also staking its claim to hotel advertising, retail, and mobile device speed.

Spotlighted

Facebook was fined $664,000 by the U.k. for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. More fines are coming. We’re also looking for Facebook to launch new news shows starting today.

Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin has unveiled SparkScore, a new software tool that gauges a Twitter account’s influence.

Having killed net neutrality protection in the U.S., the FCC has changed its complaint processes. The FCC argues that it hasn’t changed the rules, but they made a similar argument about net neutrality. Bottom line: it will now cost $225 to file a “formal complaint” against an Internet Service Provider. The agency does not review informal complaints and only forwards them to the companies involved.

Watch This

Five new ads have been nominated for Emmy Awards this year. You can read about them at this AdWeek link and watch my favorite below.

Spotlight

News You Need to Know Now

Good Monday morning. It’s June 4th. There is a major Apple product announcement today at 1 p.m ET. Analysts expect the company to announce the latest system upgrade and new tools built into its phones that will help people monitor and potentially curb their usage.

Highlights

• • Privacy battles are making news on multiple fronts, and there is more to it than websites changing their terms of service.

• • Facebook weathered its criticism over news hoaxes and privacy. Overall Facebook usage looks consistent, but there’s a big drop among younger users.

• • Multiple Google search initiatives launch in the next few weeks. They include new signals about a website’s security and even more reliance on a website’s speed as a quality measure.

Privacy Battles: (CA vs FTC, ACLU vs Amazon, and Those Privacy Notices)

A European Union data privacy rule that took effect May 25 caused all of those “Our data privacy rules have changed” notices you saw over the last few weeks. The rules are among the most stringent ever and create new requirements for any online entity regardless of where they’re located. The General Data Privacy Regulation, known by the acronym GDPR, even address information that doesn’t identify a person by name.

A company like Securus couldn’t exist in a GDPR world. Media reports have focused on the little known data company that can track “any phone within seconds using data from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint,” according to a ZD Net report. That’s pretty explicit information, and there have been abuses of that private data. Even worse, that company has been hacked at least once. Brian Krebs, one of the best security reporters on the planet, has written a must-read story called “Why is Your Location Data No Longer Private?”

Krebs ties the whole thing to the death of net neutrality’s consumer protection rules. That deadline has shifted several times and is now set for next Monday. The California State Senate passed a bill that is expected to become law that requires companies to adhere to net neutrality protections or be ineligible for California state contracts. And like the EU used GDPR to protect its citizens everywhere, California’s rules are expected to apply to its citizens as well.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is targeting a face-recognition program made by Amazon’s web services division called “Rekognition”. The ACLU claims that law enforcement agencies in at least two states are using the program to conduct surveillance. Other uses include finding lost children in crowds or providing security for high-profile events.

This was probably not the best month for Google to remove its “don’t be evil” motto from most of its websites.

Facebook’s Influence & Enforcement

Anyone can now search a Facebook archive of political or sensitive issue ads by company name or subject matter. The two ads shown above are part of the archive which grows more every day. Visitors can see the ad and which ages, locations, and genders were targeted and how those ads performed.

Search the archive at this link

Facebook also announced Friday that it was eliminating its Trending News feature and will instead show news items from Fox and CNN. Look for that feature change this week as Facebook rushes to slap a fresh coat of paint on the website.

Little more than cosmetics seem necessary because usage actually rose during CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional and EU testimony. Facebook continues policing itself and says that it removed 583 million “fake accounts” in the first 3 months of 2018. It also removed 2.5 million pieces of hate speech, 21 million sexually explicit images, and 837 million pieces of spam. You can read their first published enforcement report here.

Google Search Initiatives

Google’s “Speed” update, ranking websites based on how fast they render to end users, launches in July. Google is serious about website speed. We’ve been telling you about this initiative for years. They’re only going to be more focused as devices rely on public wifi and other slower systems.

The most important thing to note is that Google Analytics now reports on actual user experiences regarding speed. The speed data in their reports shows how fast your users load a page regardless of the technology they are using. Google will not base rankings on how fast its programs can access your website, but how fast your users do. The difference sounds subtle but is significant. Sue and I have spent most of the last year getting daily reports on site speeds for some sites. It’s not because we thought the reading was great.

Google will also start reporting on websites that are unencrypted in its Chrome browser. The previous standard was to show that a website was “secure”. The company will now report on an “insecure” website as it assumes that all are following the best practice of encrypting the entire site.

Also coming fast is Google’s “mobile-first” update. Google has already notified us that they will be using pages in the index based on how those pages appear on mobile devices in some sites we own and manage. This initiative affects consumers, businesses, and even government sites.

Finally, watch for a Google Chrome option this summer that will allow you to use facial recognition instead of passwords to access sites.

Great Data

Good Monday morning. It’s May 14th. Ramadan begins tomorrow evening and continues through June 14th. About 3.5 million Americans are expected to observe Ramadan, which includes fasting during daylight hours.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read.  There are also video links to another 10 minutes of video. 

Highlights

• Digital ad spending during 2017 was $88 billion, a 21% increase over the previous year. Don’t try conceptualizing $88 billion. Think about 21 percent YOY growth.

• Online political advertising’s future continues with the first wave of agencies, including Silver Beacon, authorized for political advertising on Facebook although the process is still a bit glitchy

• Right after the video of robots running and a Google demo of a computer talking to a person on a telephone wowed the Internet this week, Google said it had plans to make tech less addictive. 

Questions or comments as you read this week’s Spotlight?  Write George

And it would be great if you encouraged your colleagues to get their own copy. They can do that at this link.

Political Ads Released, New Rules in Place

Congressional Democrats released 3,500 ads that were purchased by a Russian company over a two year period. We’ve looked through many and read many analyses. The key points:

• The ads targeted people on divisive issues. Feel strongly about health care coverage or another hot button topic? You were targeted, but so were people on the other side. The goal was to create dissension.
• It worked.
• USA Today did the best analysis we read. They found that more than half the ads were about race and another 25% were about crime, often with a racial component. 

Hint:  Don’t get caught up in the money spent or even the impression count that describes the number of times something was displayed. Every ad you see or hear in any media counts as an impression. We don’t know the real impact yet of the 25 million times that the racially divisive ads were seen.

What this means for the future

We told you last week about Facebook’s new political ad authorization process. The process works, but the execution of new ads was glitchy this weekend. Google is launching the same type of program as Facebook approves the first agencies to place political and issue advertising and hopefully things will run smoothly when after a few more days.

Facebook’s list of “political issues” that will require disclosure: abortion, budget, civil rights, crime, economy, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, government reform, guns, health, immigration, infrastructure, military, poverty, social security, taxes, terrorism, and values.

We’re pretty sure we can advertise toast, but it can’t be buttered and can only be made from white bread, not whole wheat.

Why this is Important

The issues surrounding online political advertising are summarized in a fantastic BuzzFeed News piece. They found that they could access an unreleased Facebook tool that shows where a Facebook page’s managers are based.

The page above that shows an American flag and is titled “Conservative Fighters” is managed by 17 people who live in Macedonia and Germany. 

There are plenty of other pages, not ads but pages, that are run from overseas locations. Some mention political candidates or the president.  That’s a problem that won’t be fixed by a political ad authorization process. Read the article here.

“We are living in a science fiction world,” my wife Joan told me. She’s right, and it’s not just Atlas.

Google made people gasp this week with these phone calls that Google boss Sundar Pichai played at a developer’s conference.

One big issue: the human-like non verbal comments such as the “umms” and the other vocal tics. Another big issue: the automated assistant doesn’t introduce itself as a machine. We’re in uncharted territory–the science fiction world my wife mentioned. Our laws, ethics, and education don’t address these issues yet.

Even as Google introduced this amazing technology and former Google company Boston Dynamics showed its robotics tricks, Google made a pitch to make tech less addictive. The initiative is called “Digital Wellbeing”.

Three features in the rollout:

1. Turning your phone screen side down will activate “Shush” and silence calls and notifications.

2. “Wind Down” activates color filters on your phone during the times you set so that looking at your phone doesn’t disturb your sleep cycle.

3. And you can see how much time you spend on different apps on your phone with “Dashboard View”. You can even set the system to alert you if you’ve used your phone longer than you planned overall or in certain apps.

Spotlighted

Facebook is rolling out new fundraising functions for non profits. If you work at a nonprofit org, you need to be putting them on your Facebook page. 

Media company Gannett has purchased a leading Google advertising agency that also created its own software. Could they be positioning to supplement newspaper advertising online?

Amazon has stopped purchasing Google shopping ads. That’s good for retailers who won’t have as much price competition. Amazon is one of the few companies who could stop advertising on Google and remain okay.

Great Data