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Silver Beacon’s Weekly Briefing for Leaders

 

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 30th. Stock increases after earnings calls added $181 billion to the market cap of the Big Five online companies. Execs from two of the five and Twitter are headed to DC to testify before the Senate Judiciary committee beginning Tuesday. What happens there will have a big effect on future regulatory oversight.

Highlights
  • Facebook and Twitter are introducing new advertising disclosures for every ad.
  • Google’s “mobile first” index is live and rolling out across the Internet.
  • Want to book a hotel room on Google? How about have Amazon open your front door? Both initiatives launched widely last week.

Questions or comments?  Click the green button below & write George. 

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Facebook says that advertisers will have to verify their identity in the future.The social media company will also include all ads in a searchable archive that lets regular users see every ad an advertiser has created. The age, location, gender, and costs will also be public information.

I shared the news Friday with a group of more than 100 Facebook advertising professionals when it came out. Their reaction was silence mixed with incredulity. Their reaction was similar to mine. None of us seemed to expect Facebook to go that far that fast. 

Facebook Ads VP Rob Goldman: “Starting next month, people will be able to click “View Ads” on a Page and view ads a Page is running on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger — whether or not the person viewing is in the intended target audience for the ad. All Pages will be part of this effort, and we will require that all ads be associated with a Page as part of the ad creation process.” Goldman’s post

Your organization’s ads will also be visible. We’ll all have to adapt and live with this new transparency.

Facebook followed Twitter’s earlier news that Russian government news affiliates RT and Sputnik are now banned from advertising on Twitter. All three companies are desperately hoping that they can sell Congress on self-regulation of online advertising.

This is important regardless of your politics after the MIT Technology Review published “How Tweets Translate into Votes” on Thursday. The study found that two UK elections showed “…politicians with Twitter accounts do get a higher share, though not by much.”

 

Despite announcing a 2018 launch date, Google has launched its “mobile first index” initiative to some websites and will continue adding more, according to Google exec Gary Ilyes at a search conference. Search Engine Land reported the news and quoted Ilyes as saying that this was an expansion of the testing with live sites. (SEL’s coverage)

You need to care about this because Google will be using mobile website information as its primary index for all searches. We’ve long since passed the 50% of search in mobile milestone. You probably work on a computer all day. Your org’s website performs differently on a mobile. Test your website’s speed, appearance, and everything else on mobile. The window to make changes before this shift occurs is narrowing fast.

Google also broadened its “Book Online” feature to include businesses like barbershops (pictured above), salons, yoga studios, and more. Google is treating this like we told you last week that Facebook was addressing food delivery. First, they’ll be a big repository of other companies. Then they’ll presumably take over the industry. Provider list here.

Spotlight Headlines

 

Monday’s Break Time

Pumpkin pie season is upon us once we get past Tuesday’s mini candy bar holiday. And now we learn courtesy of Marketplace that almost all commercial pumpkin pies are actually flavored squash. Cookbook author Stella Parks says that there are no labeling rules for pumpkins vs squash, and we’re not eating a pie made from those big orange things. Read the rest.
 

News

 

Spotlight

Silver Beacon Marketing’s Weekly Briefing

 

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 9. This day is still called Columbus Day on federal calendars. There is no regular mail delivery and some big banks are closed. FDR created Columbus Day in the late 1930s, and there is a big movement to rename or abolish the well-intentioned but historically inaccurate holiday. Time has a good article on the controversy.

Highlights
  • The Russian political ads that ran on Facebook were divisive at best.
  • Yahoo admits that all customers were hacked in 2013, not just a third of them.
  • Maybe you’ll use Walmart and Amazon for mail next year. We’ll explain below.

Questions or comments?  Click the green button below & write George.
 

We continue discovering the bad things that happened to our privacy because of data breaches over the last several years. 

That includes Yahoo (now a part of Verizon-owned Oath) admitting that all 3 billion user accounts were compromised in 2013 instead of the 1 billion previously claimed. The breach is four years old so there is little if anything you can do now to protect your privacy from that.

We’ve also learned that the bit.ly and Kickstarter website breaches of 15 million records are now available on black markets. Lifehacker has more info at the link below.

And we’ve been telling you how the Trump administration’s FCC guidance regarding privacy has been to allow Internet companies to sell your browsing data. Google announced this week to publishers that it is testing Insight Engine, a new service that “will include age, gender, relevant search history, shopping history and what visitors seem in the market to buy”.

Learn more: NPR coverage of Yahoo, Lifehacker on data availability, AdAge on Google selling data

Facebook sent Congressional investigators more than 3,000 ads that it says were purchased by Russian organizations in 2016. The post on the left, featuring a hoax image of Hillary Clinton and Osama bin Laden, is reportedly typical of the content. Ads included doctored images of Secretary Clinton in a jail cell and images that sought to exacerbate racial and other divides.

Facebook is now warning advertisers that approval for political and advocacy ads will be delayed by human reviews.

We’re also learning that antivirus software maker Kaspersky may have assisted the Russian government in obtaining classified information from an NSA contractor’s home computer. We warned readers about Kaspersky last month and suggested they use alternatives like AVG or BitDefender. We’ve got a link below from Ars Technica quoting the original article in the Wall Street Journal, which is only available to subscribers.

Learn more: Faked Facebook posts, Russian anti-virus software, Facebook’s comments

Walmart and Amazon traded punches again this week in their battle for 21st century marketplace dominance. Walmart bought Parcel, a logistics company that delivers in 2 hour windows and integrates with smartphone apps.

That move comes on the heels of media reports that Amazon is testing a program called Seller Flex that will compete with UPS and FedEx for the company’s business. Amazon accounts for 5%-10% of UPS revenue and “less than 3%” of FedEx revenue.

Remember that Amazon’s most profitable business is AWS, its web-services division which generated $4 billion in revenue and a 25% profit margin in the second quarter. AWS began as an ancillary service reselling Amazon’s scalable computing services. There’s no reason why the same can’t be true of an Amazon delivery service.

And Amazon announced Friday that AWS will be General Electric’s preferred cloud service provider.

Learn more: Walmart’s Parcel announcement, AdAge on Amazon delivery, Amazon GE announcement

Spotlight Headlines

  • Google search results for movies and television will begin showing audience reviews as the search engine looks for unique data to display.
  • Squaring off against Google, Facebook announced it will expand its use of Wikipedia information throughout the site.
  • Puerto Rico may get cell service back faster thanks to permission granted to Google to launch its large scale Project Loon balloons carrying tech equipment overhead.
  • But the communications world also got word of a loss this week: AOL’s famous AIM chat service will close on December 15, twenty years after its launch.
  • Remember when we told you that Amazon was testing a personal clothing service? They just bought Body Labs, a company that makes 3D images of people so they can try on clothes via computer images.

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News

 

Highlights
  • The Justice Department wants information about 1.3 million people who visited an anti-Trump website earlier this year. 
  • You can now order food on Facebook and subscriptions on Google. We have other new online examples of industry disruptions.
  • The FTC reached a 20 year privacy agreement with Uber. Yep, 20 years.

Good morning! It is August 21, the day of the solar eclipse. People are excited beyond words about that event. Here is a nice CNN resource with maps, transit times, and explainer videos. And remember that the day without solar eclipse news is coming.

 

The US Department of Justice has filed legal paperwork demanding that web hosting company Dreamhost turn over records related to 1.3 million visitors to the anti-Trump website, disruptj20.org. Dreamhost provides the computer servers that make this website available online.

After the Department of Justice apparently refused Dreamhost’s request to narrow the scope of the information requested, the two are scheduled in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday. At issue is whether the federal government has the right to receive information that can be used to identify individuals (you, me, your groovy Aunt Susie) who simply visited the site online.

The government continues to press for information, even for casual visitors who simply clicked a link. Critics say that the request is “overreach” and called it unconstitutional.

Learn more fast: Dreamhost blog, EFF including filings, Fortune

Uber’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer continues. The company again entered a settlement agreement with the FTC regarding privacy complaints. Uber paid a $20 million fine in January and now has agreed to provide the government with third-party privacy audits. The findings of a Justice Department investigation into the company’s alleged avoidance of law enforcement vehicles is still pending. You can read the FTC announcement online.

Other cases involving privacy this week include a court’s ruling that a data broker can continue gathering public LinkedIn profile information even if it does not have a relationship with the person. (Read Chicago Sun-Times coverage)

Facebook also addressed a unique privacy issue in a post that explains how the company handles account information for people who have passed away. It’s worth a read if you have an active Facebook account.

Bloomberg reported on the cutthroat restaurant delivery industry this week with some startling data points. Papa John’s Pizza now calls itself an e-commerce company and receives 60% of its orders online, including from Facebook. McDonald’s and Uber are partnering to have fast food delivered, and voice-activated devices are also taking orders. This shouldn’t surprise many of you. Bloomberg’s data shows that about 70% of people have ordered food online.

One of the most famous online disruptors was Amazon’s patent on one-click ordering technology. This was a big deal 17 years ago. Expect to see changes on some of your favorite websites when the patent expires on September 11.

A March 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Internet pioneer and author James Gleick expressed sarcastic wonder that a company could hold a patent on such a common process. And in prescient words, he wrote, “When 21st-century historians look back at the breakdown of the United States patent system, they will see a turning point in the case of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com and their special invention: ”The patented One Click(R) feature…”

News of two other disruptions came this week. Google will follow Facebook’s example and start selling subscriptions to news publications. And Apple flashed some of the cash we told you that they had by announcing that they would spend up to $1 billion on video programming like Netflix or Amazon. That leaves Apple with only $255 billion in cash.

Learn more fast: Bloomberg on delivery and Google subscriptions, The Wall Street Journal on Apple video

Headline Scan
  • Facebook will expand its Marketplace service, a Craigslist competitor
  • Tech journalism website Mashable is looking for a buyer
  • White supremacist website The Daily Stormer has been forced to retreat to an underground site after American and later Russian companies refused to host the site or act as its domain registrar
  • Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg donated $100 million of her Facebook stock to charity. It’s become a regular gift for her. She’s now donated about a quarter-billion dollars of her estimated $1.6 billion.
  • Google and ProPublica announced that they will be creating a free database of news about hate crimes. 
Following Up
  • This spring we told you about big brand name advertisers stopping their YouTube purchases because they couldn’t control the type of content that featured their advertising. Those advertisers are coming back now. Verizon is back on YouTube now and will use a third-party auditor in conjunction with their orders.
  • Net neutrality advocates are giving Congress an eyeful. Advocacy group Fight for the Future announced that it had purchased billboards in six states that target members of Congress who oppose net neutrality.

What Silver Beacon Does

We believe that the Internet can be a powerful tool for helping organizations make the world a better, more positive place in which to work and live. We support organizations that are the heart of that positive energy. And we believe that data can help even the smallest firms compete nationally.

To help companies accomplish that change, we offer online marketing services, including Search Engine Optimization, Google, Bing, and Facebook advertising, and amazing social media marketing. There are no long-term requirements. 

Talk with us if you would like to explore working together. Call us at 802.232.2667 or click that green button below this box.

Write George
Images of keyboard courtesy Macedo Media. LinkedIn, Uber, and Facebook logos courtesy of each respective company. Pizzeria photo courtesy Gustavo Garcia.