News

10 Second Takeaway: Remember renting a video at Blockbuster? And remember how Netflix DVDs seemed a huge leap forward? Consumers now have many video streaming services to choose from. Blockbuster still had 1,500 stores as recently as six years ago. That’s about the same time that the iPad launched–two years into President Obama’s first term. That’s not a long time and the retail trends we’re writing about this week are coming just as fast. Changes in the number and types of jobs, where goods are bought, and cashflow are all going to change soon. Get ready.

SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL RETAIL TRENDS

Amazon Go Store

 

Big data and analytics follow you when you shop in a brick-and-mortar store. That’s one of the biggest retail trends of our generation and until robotics are in place, it probably remains the story.

Shelves in your local supermarket can now analyze your expression and respond with an appropriate message announced retail tech firm Cloverleaf this week. The company says that categories of expressions include joy, sadness, anger, fear and surprise.

Meanwhile Amazon continues investing in technology but also reported that it would add 100,000 new full-time jobs by mid-2018. Amazon Go, the company’s physical grocery store, uses cameras instead of cashiers. The stores also have human observers behind the scenes according to reporting from Recode.

Amazon employees are testing those stores now. They are due to open this year.

Our Take: Industry analysts say that the technology is ready for small-scale experiments.Will people sacrifice some privacy for more convenience? We think that will depend on what they’re buying in the early days. Then there will be no option when the technology grows ubiquitous–much like trying to find a store that rents DVDs today.

SPOTLIGHT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook

We write a lot about Snapchat because the company is in the same spot we saw Instagram in several years ago. Snapchat now boasts 100 million monthly users–63% of whom are between the ages of 13 and 24. Those users are interacting with brands on Snapchat. Video company Delmondo created a great infographic that has more data.

Social media leader Facebook isn’t resting on its laurels. Facebook advertisers now reach 1 billion people though the Advertiser Network. Facebook announced this week that new participants include Univision, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone. Like Snapchat, there is huge growth in Facebook’s video advertising.

Our Take: We continue to be Snapchat proponents for brands that want to reach younger consumers. And we continue to be impressed with the response to Facebook advertising. During 2016, we shifted our client advertising spends to an almost even mix of Google and Facebook. If you take away the Google Grant advertising we manage for nonprofits, we managed more advertising on Facebook than Google during 2016.

DIGITAL CITIZEN

user and password fields

Passwords like “1q2w3e4r” and “123qwe” seem random enough but are easy to guess because they are basic keyboard patterns. Software security company Keeper looked at 10 million passwords that became public via hacks in 2016 and found that most of us could still use help creating secure passwords.

Even worse: 17% of accounts were using 123456 as a password!

Take a look at the list of the top 25 passwords and update your password if it appears on this list.

 

 

Image of Amazon Go store courtesy Amazon. Image of mobile video courtesy Facebook. Image of computer security by Pete Linforth.

News

 

10 Second Takeaway: Google changes its search ranking factors fast, but perhaps never as fast as in 2016. This week, I was testing local search by using Twitter to send an emoji to Google. The response I received in seconds was an abbreviated local search for the emoji. Try telling that to someone 15 years ago. Search is irrevocably changed when an emoji gives you results. If you’re not strategizing about that or voice search or social search, you need to start right now. Here is the full scoop from Mashable.

 
 

Have you used Houseparty yet? The company says that it is receiving 1 million daily active users (DAU). That would put the video group chat app comfortably within the top 1,000 websites in the world. That means you need to start thinking about it for your organization.

Here are 11 other fascinating marketing facts about today’s digital landscape.

Here is what making me think about Google. I looked at previous issues of Spotlight from earlier this year and saw a clear trend. Changes so far in 2016:
  • At least two sets of results, including the main one, for mobile!
  • Removing the ads from the right side of the page and changing the number of ads and “organic” results on each page.
  • Warnings about mobile-friendliness and overall page speed.
  • New emphasis on local search
  • More focus on original content. If you just publish manufacturer specs or other generic information, your site will not receive as much search traffic as others who publish unique content.
 

Global WebIndex is adding mobile surveys in 40 countries to its research data.

They created a benchmark to start, and the results skewing to younger consumers was just one finding. In this chart, you can see that nearly half of “mobile-only users” are aged 16-24.

This is a tricky stat that’s worth over-explaining since it’s early and it’s Monday. Of the mobile-only, nearly half are 16-24. This does not mean half of 16-24 year olds are mobile-only users, although that day is coming too.

 

Lights. Camera. Search.

Google is experimenting with a thumbs-up and thumbs-down measurement of movies and television shows right on the search results page. 

Remember our caution about unique content? IMdb and Rotten Tomatoes will eventually be dwarfed by the number of ratings left by billions of Google users worldwide. Remember it’s nothing complicated–thumbs up or thumbs down. 

Think about what changes you could be making to give your organization that kind of unique data. Have a look at the details by clicking this link to Search Engine Land or by clicking their snazzy graphic above.

The Most Useful Thing I Read This Week: Google’s news isn’t all gloom-and-doom and we’re-taking-over-the-planet info this week. They’ve released a new service called “Trusted Contacts” that lets you choose loved ones or friends who can learn your whereabouts without having to call or text you. The feature can be turned on or off at your discretion, and you’ll always see a message when someone has used the feature to find out where you are. It isn’t just for the chronically tardy, but I’ll use it too. Lifehacker has all the details.