SPOTIFY TAKING DATA TOO FAR:  Over the past year Spotify has been touting its ability to gain insights into listeners’ lives based on the music they like.  Now they’ve hubbed these insights into a platform called spotify.me.  So does this insight engine identify listener traits as well as they say it does?  According to the author of the attached Mashable article, the answer is a resounding no.  The example sited is pretty ridiculous.  Since 74% of the test subject’s music is deemed “energetic”, then they must be a cooking enthusiast who likes “soundtrack souffles and possibly even bbq”.  What?!?  No amount of musical data in the world can help you infer specific personal traits like this.  And the worst part is that Spotify tries to monetize these insights through their Spotify For Brands platform.  By selling insights which are basically prettied up guesses, Spotify is effectively defrauding brands who think they’re paying for super-premium targeting, and serving irrelevant ads to unsuspecting listeners who are incorrectly profiled.  #notcoolspotify

THE GENERATIONAL SHIFT IN MEDIA CONSUMPTION:  Nielsen is out with its Total Audience Report, which is a quarterly report card of how much time listeners spend using different media types.  To me the most interesting data cuts show how the different generations consume media – graphic below.  Even if you take out Gen Z, the comparison between Millennials and Gen X/Boomers is stark.  Millennials spend much more time on a mobile device and 30-40% less time consuming traditional media like TV and Radio.  Even Radio’s time, which appears to be holding steady YoY, isn’t what it seems.  During the back half of 2016 Nielsen started rolling the broadcasters’ stream listening into the overall radio total, which created an artificial bump up.  Regardless of how you move the peas around the plate, traditional media will continue to suffer an erosion of time spent as younger consumers age up into the key buying demos.  Here’s a download of the full report for your viewing pleasure.  total-audience-report-q1-2017

SELLING IN A PROGRAMMATIC ERA:  If you’re like me, the first time you heard the concept of programmatic buying you thought of eventual job irrelevancy as machines eventually took over the sale process.  But as it turns out skilled humans still need to guide the technology in a way that’s meaningful to client/agencies . . . and that still sounds an awful lot like sales.  In fact, the joke about programmatic actually being “program-manual” is pretty spot on.  So as a sales professional the challenge of programmatic is less about if you’ll still have a job, and more about the new skill set needed to compete in a programmatic age.  I think the attached LinkedIn Post, from an article which originally appeared in Mobile Marketing Magazine, accurately frames up the challenge.  Maybe give this one a read over the weekend and ask yourself how well you’re growing your programmatic muscles to be able to compete on tomorrow’s digital media battlefield.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!