RADIO HANGING ON IN-CAR FOR DEAR LIFE:  Last week Edison Research rolled out a new batch of audio data in its Definitive Guide To Audio Report, as highlighted in the attached RAIN link.  The findings are in line with most other audio research from the past few years around the general migration of music listening from AM/FM and Downloads to Streaming.  However, there was one interesting new data cut around in-car listening that’s worth noting.  To set this stat up consider the fact that in-car has long been considered the last bastion of broadcast radio’s monopoly over audio consumption.  The reasoning is simple – it takes OEMs longer to install apps and wifi connectivity in new car models, so AM/FM Radio’s position in your car’s center stack has remained stable.  But things are starting to change.  As you can see in the graphic below, the newer the car is the more likely streaming audio listening will replace AM/FM.  It’s inevitable that this trend will continue until Radio is just one of many ways to deliver music in-car.  And when that happens the broadcasters’ last stronghold will crumble.

APPLE’S COOKIE BLOCKING – ONE MONTH IN:  You may recall last month Apple implemented a block on its Safari browser to only allow cookie tracking over a 24 hour window.  This means publishers and networks who rely in cookie data to behaviorally retarget ads got a severe haircut on the amount of targeted inventory they have to sell because any data more than a day old is now lost.  Now that we’re a month in to this change publishers are starting to see to the inventory, pricing and yield impact, as noted in the attached Digiday link.  Not surprisingly, yield from ads run through Safari is down – about 10% by most estimates.  This is due to the fact that networks have lost the ability to layer on behavioral data at a premium, which relegates more impressions on Safari to cheaper non-targeted ads.  Fortunately for publishers Safari is a relatively small player in the browser space.  The “sum of all fears” scenario for publishers and networks would be if one of the big boys, like Google Chrome for example, instituted the same behavioral blocks as Apple.  More to come on this, I’m sure.

GLOBAL AD REV SURGES THANKS TO MOBILE:  Yesterday there were a pair of long-term ad revenue forecasts released.  The first was from eMarketer who charted out global ad revenue growth over the next several years.  The numbers are strong – with an estimated 7% CAGR worldwide, and about 5% in North America, from now through 2022.  (The NA growth is slower because it’s a more mature digital market.)  In the second forecast Zenith calls for Mobile usage and ad revenue to continue its rampage.  According to Zenith, by 2019 Mobile will account for 76% of time spent online, and 62% of all the digital ad revenue.  As noted in the attached Inside Radio link, if you put these two data sets together you can see a clear picture of Mobile as the growth engine for global ad revenue over the next several years.  And to think just five years ago we were all patiently waiting for the “Year of Mobile” to happen.  Now it’s Mobile’s world, and we’re just living in it!

Have a great Tuesday guys!

MO’ MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS FOR SPOTIFY:  Since Spotify isn’t a public company there’s no way to get fully transparent look at their books.  But there are some estimated financials from the first half of 2017 floating around the industry right now, as reported in the attached Inside Radio link.  The headline is that Spotify took in an estimated $2.25B during 1H’17, which is a 70% increase over 2016.  The other screamer stat is that operating losses from the first half of the year are estimated at around $200M, with a staggering 85% of Spotify’s business expenses going to pay for music royalties.  So what does this all mean?  Spotify continues to pursue a go for broke strategy of driving as many new subscribers and top line revenue as possible regardless of the bottom line, in hopes of going public at a valuation that reflects its high growth.  But as the article points out, the clock is ticking.  Over the last three years Spotify has lost roughly $1B, and has no reasonable way to raise new capital.  (Keep in mind their plan to Direct List on the NYSE won’t generate any new money for them.)  So Spotify’s entire plan hinges on being able to control royalty costs by pushing even more of their “freemium” listeners into subscriptions before they run out of cash.  So basically Spootfy’s revenue growth is the worst good news you can have in business.

THE POWER OF “GAFA” IN ITS PRIME:  Over the weekend I came across an interesting read in the attached blog post from Benedict Evans, who’s a Silicon Valley VC.  Mr. Evans ran a fascinating analysis on the power currently yielded by GAFA (Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon) through their annual revenue, employee count, etc..  Then he compares their rev to the tech titans from one generation ago, which he refers to as Wintel (Microsoft – aka Windows, and Intel).  The difference in scale illustrated in the graph below is astounding.  If you compare each group in their “period of dominance” GAFA has 10x more revenue compared to the rest of the tech industry while Wintel had a 3x lead during it’s heyday.  Mr. Evans’ theory for this change has to do with diversification.  Today’s digital powerhouses are so much more than a software suite or a microprocessor chip company.  They’re consumer electronic devices, data storage farms, media sales, retail sales, content subscriptions, etc, etc..  This change is a direct reflection of how many more ways tech is integrated in our lives today than it was just 15-20 years ago.  Makes you wonder what the next generation of tech dominance could look like.

TAKE IT FROM LeBRON, CHEAP IS A GOOD THING:  LeBron James is a billionaire and one of the most powerful celebrities on planet earth.  So you’d naturally assume he pays for whatever he wants when he wants it.  But it turns out LeBron is a little more frugal than that.  In the attached NBA.com link, King James is outed by teammate and buddy Dwayne Wade for being super stingy with his money.  And sure enough it’s true.  Straight from LeBron’s mouth . . . “”No. I’m not doing that. I’m not turning on data roaming. I’m not buying no apps. I still got Pandora with commercials.”  While this is amusing to hear from a worldwide celebrity, there’s a nuanced point to his comment account Pandora.  While the music streamer does play commercials on the free tier of service, the number of ads played and the way they’re served is so nominal that it doesn’t negatively affect the listening experience.  Of course LeBron James could pony up $5 or $10 a month for one of Pandora’s ad free tiers, but in his eyes that’s wasted money because the service is just fine the way it is.  And if it’s good for a guy whose net worth is more iHeart Media and Cumulus Broadcasting combined, then it’s good for the rest of us too!

Have a great Monday guys!

PAID TV HAD A BAD DAY:  After the market closed on Wednesday AT&T (and its subsidiary Direct TV) announced that it had lost 390,000 paid subscribers in Q3 alone.  This spooked investors and caused a sector-wide selloff on Thursday – image below.  So what’s going on here?  According to the attached Bloomberg article, Wall Street is waking up to the realization that traditional paid TV services like Cable and Satellite are on an inescapable decline thanks to new OTT and video streaming competitors.  Because they have more choices, consumers are getting smarter about what the choose to purchase and watch.  The days are numbered for the bloated cable “bundle” where you pay some exorbitant fee for 200 channels when you only watch 10-15 of them.  The trend is towards a la carting, where consumers piece together a couple of internet-based video services they really want, and end up paying much less overall to watch TV.  I predict Wednesday’s announcement by AT&T is only the beginning of a downward spiral for Big Cable.

SHHHH . . . GOOGLE CAN HEAR YOU:  Earlier this week a tech blogger discovered something very creepy about Google’s new Google Home Mini speaker – it was secretly recording and saving audio clips of what it heard, even when the device was in dormant standby mode.  The details are in the attached Money.com link.  Apparently, connected home speakers with voice activation temporarily save audio clips as a way to “learn” your voice commands.  But that usually just happens when you activate the device by saying “Hey Google . . . “.  The revelation that Google’s Mini speakers were recording 24/7 takes this to a whole new level of privacy invasion.  Google quickly swept this under the rug as a coding bug and pushed out a software update to stop the continuous recording.  But you have to wonder how long this would have continued if someone hadn’t noticed.  And then you start thinking about what other connected devices around you are listening too.  Eeek!

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE:  Things are about to get very interesting around the issue of Russian operatives buying Facebook ads to influence last year’s Presidential election.  Yesterday in an interview with Axios Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg said the company had provided the House Intelligence Committee with all the examples it had of ads purchased by Russian buyers.  Then she doubled down by saying FB would provide the targeting used for all of the ads once the Committee releases the information to the public (which is expected to happen today).  This will give us a really clear picture of which ads were targeted to whom and probably indicate what Russia was trying to accomplish.  It’s important to note that these ads were purchased through FB’s self-service API, and the company wasn’t even aware of what occurred until last month.  There’s also evidence that the same activities were occurring on Twitter and Google, so I’d expect both companies to follow FB’s lead by offering up all the information they have.  Mashable has a good article on yesterday’s Sandberg interview in the attached link.  Buckle your seatbelts for this one.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

ONE CHALLENGE, TWO VERY DIFFERENT REACTIONS:  There’s little doubt that Amazon is having an effect on the entire Retail landscape. This year alone 19 retailers have declared bankruptcy and over 6,000 B&M locations have closed.  Not all of this is due to Jeff Bezos & Crew, but you know they’re a big part of the disruption.  When facing this challenge you’d assume the two biggest Mass Merch retailers, Walmart and Target, would have a similar reaction.  But that’s not the case.  In a fascinating pair of Fortune articles both retailers lay out completely opposite strategies.  Target’s position was articulated on Tuesday by its CFO Cathy Smith in the attached link.  The key takeaway . . . “We are going to win when we’re the best Target, and not trying to be a competitor against Amazon or anyone else.”  So basically Target is going to ignore Amazon and just keep running its own play.  By contrast take a look at this Fortune article, which appeared just one day later.  It showcases Walmart’s effort to go all in on an eCommerce strategy to compete with Amazon.  Over the last 12 months they’ve successfully acquired and accelerated online sales at Jet, Bonobos, Moosejaw, etc..  They’ve also charted a course to integrate the best of their on/off-line assets as described by Walmart CEO Doug McMillan when he said . . . “We’re combining the accessibility of our stores with eCommerce to provide new and exciting ways for customers to shop.”  Seems like Target and Walmart are taking the exact opposite worldview on eCommerce, doesn’t it?

IS CLOTHING ON YOUR SHOPPING LIST?:  So with all the challenges in Retail these days, what’s going right?  One of the bright spots is Hispanic gifting purchases, especially for clothing items, as noted in the attached MediaPost link and image below.  It turns out that US Hispanics are much more likely to give the gift of clothing then the average consumer.  This has to do with cultural identity and the demographic composition of Hispanic households.  Hispanic women use clothing as a cultural touch point, so it’s usually higher up on the holiday shopping list.  And 57% of Hispanic families have children under 18 in the household (which is about 10 points than other ethnicities), so the chances of parents/grandparents buying clothing for their children are much higher.  These are terrific insights for retailers who are looking for pockets of marketing opportunities in the upcoming holiday season.

A REALITY CHECK FOR THE 1^ST AMMENDMENT:  In this blog I really try to stay away for political issues, but yesterday’s Twitter post by President Trump can’t be ignored.  For some background, Trump was upset about news reports from NBC which said he was demanding a significant buildup of the US’s nuclear arsenal.  As a pushback he went to his usual #fakenews narrative, but then took it one step further by suggesting that NBC should have its broadcasting license revoked.  The idea that a news outlet’s license should be shut down just because it ran negative stories about the Executive branch of our government is pretty disturbing.  It directly goes against the 1^st Amendment of the Constitution which preserves freedom of the press.  Beyond the shock value of this suggestion, there’s a mechanical and legal issue to consider.  The licenses are held by the FCC, so they would be the ultimate arbiters of NBC’s fate.  Technically the NBC Network itself isn’t a licensed entity, so there’s nothing to revoke.  But NBC’s affiliate stations do have licenses, and must reapply every five years.  Could you imagine a scenario where these TV stations are denied license renewals based on their political coverage?  If you want more details on this story the  attached link from Money.com has some fairly balanced coverage.  In the meantime I’m just hoping President Trump doesn’t try to shut down the Daily Gabe too!

Have a great Thursday guys!

BRAND SUPPORTED VOICE SKILLS ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A BIG DEAL:  Do you think Voice is becoming important for marketers?  While you’re considering the answer to that question read the attached AdWeek link.  In it the author states that . . . “Voice is having its moment. People are talking, devices are listening and brands are attempting to insert themselves into the conversation, using Amazon Alexa voice skills and Google Home apps.”  This is occurring thanks to the perfect convergence of three factors; 1) consumer behavior is shifting from visual-based touch input to verbal-based voice activation, 2) AI is getting smart enough so that Chatbots can carry on meaningful conversations with humans, and 3) brands are beginning to create voice-based content (aka Voice Skills) to be relevant on this new technological platform.  And the best part is we’re just getting started.  I wouldn’t even say we’re in the top of first inning yet – it’s more like the team is getting on the bus headed over to Voice Ballpark to play this new game!

THIRD DOWN AND LONG FOR THE NFL ON AMAZON:  Earlier this year Amazon made news by stealing the live streaming rights of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football from Twitter.  Over the first half dozen games the top line audience stats have seemed promising, with an average of 1.9M views per week.  But as The Drum reports in the attached link, these numbers might not be as good as they look.  The basic problem is that a digital “view” can be any visit, however brief, by a single site visitor.  Comparing that stat to traditional TV ratings, which calculate the average number of viewers at any one time, is an apples to oranges situation.  According to multiple sources, Amazon’s actual in-game audience is around 372,000 viewers who watch for an average of 55 minutes.  That wouldn’t be a bad number for a local radio morning show, but we’re talking the NFL here.  By comparison, those same games were watched by an average of 14.2M viewers on traditional TV.  Amazon’s smaller than expected audience could have to do with a lack of exclusivity – why go through Amazon to watch the game live when it’s on the NFL Network and local TV affiliates?  The other theory is that viewers just aren’t used to streaming live sports yet, so there’s an adoption curve to get over.  Regardless of the cause Amazon has a long way to go to move the chains on their NFL investment.

THE RACE TO BANKRUPTCY:  Finally today, I’d like to spend a few minutes on Radio’s other big financial problem.  We all know about iHeart with its staggering $22B in debt and constant rumors of bankruptcy.  But what about the second biggest broadcaster Cumulus?  Their debt is $2.4B, which seems relatively mild.  But then consider the fact that Cumulus’s stock is trading at just 34 cents, and it’s market cap is $9.9M (yes that’s an M for millions, not a B).  Put those numbers together and you have a company worth less than $10M which has $2.6B in debt.  (Reread that last sentence.)  The Wall Street optics are so bad that NASDAQ has begun the process of delisting Cumulus from the exchange for failing to hit a $1 stock price over the past 30 days.  And keep in mind, we’re not even talking about the NYSE here.  When NASDAQ delists your company you know you have a problem!  All kidding aside, Cumulus does have some decent stations which are obviously worth more than $10M.  But the overwhelming consensus from investors is that Cumulus is about to go bankrupt, which is why their paper is trading for pennies.  With iHeart and Cumulus as your “top” two broadcasters, is there any wonder why Radio is in so much trouble?

Have a great Wednesday guys!

ADWEEK’S TOP DIGITAL STATS:  AdWeek is out with another installment of its Top Digital Stats from the past week in the attached link.  After two straight weeks of Digital Media conclaves (first Advertising Week and then the ANA Conference), there’s plenty of meat on this bone.  If you’re into Russian hackers buying Facebook ads to influence our Presidential Election #1 is for you.  Or maybe Snap, Inc.’s downgraded earnings is more your thing in #4.  For me the most interesting blurb is #3 – about some brands demanding higher Viewability standards than even the MRC’s.  It’s hard enough for publishers, agencies and ratings councils to get agreement on a consistent set of Viewability standards, and now every brand wants their own set of minimums?!?  AdWeek did it’s homework on this list – totally worth the read.

DIGITAL NOW HALF OF TIME SPENT ON MEDIA:  The tipping point day has finally come when Digital comprises half the time Americans spend with media.  According to the latest eMarketer stats in the attached Inside Radio link, we’re spending 12 hours per day consuming media.  Of that number 5:53 is digital, and within that stat 3:17 is mobile.  In the image below you’ll see Radio’s slice at 1:26 per day – this doesn’t include streaming which is classified under Digital.  Interestingly, eMarketer has Digital Audio at 51 minutes per day (within the Digital #).  So compared to AM/FM Radio’s 1:26 per day, the listening split is now 62% terrestrial and 38% streaming.  That percentage is way higher than any number Nielsen has ever reported – they usually have streaming in the 20-25% range of total audio consumption.  Lots of numbers to sort through here, but it’s a safe to say we’ve now crossed the threshold into a digital first media world.

“COLLABORATIVE EFFICIENCY” IS KILLING WFH:  Over the last several years there’s been a subtle shift away from letting employees work from home in an officeless utopia back towards a more centralized office structure.  Why is this happening?  Back in the 70s and 80s “telecommuting” started to become popular as an employee perk and as a flat out cost saver – since employers could save on office space needed to run the company.  This trend peaked about 5-6 years ago.  But as reported in the attached article from The Atlantic, WFHing is starting to become less popular.  The reason for this is something called Collaborative Efficiency, which is defined as “the speed in which a small group solves a problem”.  The further away coworkers are from one another the longer communication takes.  The most extreme example noted in the article is the Boeing 727 flight simulator situation, where a group of three pilots in a tightly packed cockpit can almost work without talking to solve something like a fuel leak.  Could you imagine copilots having to email each other in real time to fix that kind of problem?  Granted, most work situations aren’t as urgent as an in-flight emergency, but it’s easy to understand how face-to-face is a better way to communicate than a phone call, and a phone call is easier than email.  And as work functions become increasingly more complex and communication-intensive, maybe the in-your-jammies WFH model isn’t the best way to get business done after all.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

THE AMAZING SHRINKING TV AD:  If you’re a broadcast old timer like me you might remember back to 2004 when ClearChannel (now iHeart) launched something called Less Is More, which promoted the purchase of :30s over :60s on radio stations.  The rationale was to sell :30s for about 60% of the cost of :60s – so they could get more ads in and revenue out of the same length stopsets.  Now TV appears to be getting into the shorter-length game.  According to Axios in the attached link, and in the graphic below, Network and Cable TV ad lengths are steadily shifting from :30s to :15s.  The decreasing length is probably a result of shortening attention spans of viewers who are responding just as well (if not better) to :15s – so why buy the whole :30, right?  You’re even starting to see :06 micro units created for OLV being repurposed on TV.  If this trend keeps up could you imagine a day when :06 is the new :60?!?

HOW “SITE SPOOFING” IS TAINTING PROGRAMMATIC:  Just as surely as the sun will rise, there’s yet another way to scam programmatic buyers of digital inventory from ad networks.  Today’s example of fraud is something called Site Spoofing.  The attached AdExchanger link meticulously describes a real-life example which was uncovered by Business Insider.  Here’s how it works . . . a bad actor buyer prepurchases a small amount of inventory from a legitimate site like Business Insider.  Then they set up a faux network of their own and sell their BI inventory to a well-intentioned buyer.  But then they package a ton of less valuable crap inventory into their network bundle.  So a buyer who thinks they’re getting pure BI inventory only ends up with 1-2% of their impressions running on BI (just enough to prove performance on the premium site), with the rest of the impressions running on junk sights.  And the nefarious arbitrager pockets the CPM difference between the list price they sold the BI impressions for and what they paid for the junk impressions.  In this example everyone ends up losing except for the Site Spoofer who carried out the scam.  Pretty slimy stuff, to be sure.

THE IRONY OF “FEARLESS GIRL”:  By now you’ve seen or at least heard of the Fearless Girl statue in the picture below.  While it depicts a young girl standing up to a charging bull, it’s real symbolism is of a woman challenging the male-dominated world of business.  But in a very ironic life-not-imitating-art situation the investment firm State Street Corporation, the parent company of Universal Worldgroup  (which is the agency that created the Fearless Girl campaign), announced last week that it had reached a $5M settlement with 300 women and 15 minorities in an equal pay lawsuit.  The problem with this situation is the principles of what Fearless Girl supposedly represent isn’t even being lived up to by its creators.  It’s the ultimate example of marketing being about the “theater of the mind”, since in this case the talk isn’t being backed up by the walk.  In a weird way this situation could be a wake up call for Madison Avenue to start paying real attention to equality in the workplace.  Hopefully that happens because something needs to change here.

Have a great Monday guys!

HEY MARC . . . SO HOW ARE WE DOING?:  It’s fitting that P&G’s Marc Pritchard has come back to Florida, the scene of his now-famous challenge to the digital media industry at January’s IBA conference, to deliver an update on where things stand today.  This time he spoke before 2,500+ marketers at the ANA Masters Conference in Orlando.  His on stage remarks, and follow up interview, are covered in the attached AdExchanger link.  The overall tone was more positive in a “progress is being made” sort of way.  Mr. Pritchard describes the effort as 2/3 of the way complete, with hopes of being finished by EOY.  Interestingly, the publishers are further along in the TAG certification process which is now a mandate for any digital publisher hoping to do biz with P&G.  The bigger delay actually sits with the MRC’s (Media Ratings Council) ability to establish vendor-level accreditation standards.  So maybe we can call this a B+ with hopes of getting to an A sooner than later?

COULD SERVER-SIDE BECOME A HAPPY MEDIUM FOR DIGITAL MEASUREMENT?:  Proving a digital impression was served to and viewed by a human is complicated.  In the early years of digital media publishers self-reported impressions they served and happily sent over their invoices.  This created the current swamp of ad fraud which reportedly wastes 25-50% of the digital media dollars being spent by brands.  To counter this problem an entire industry of tracking pixel vendors came to be.  So now we have tracking tags for viewability, ad completion, audience verification, and every other digital metric you can think of.  But it’s nearly impossible for publishers to add all of these tags from different vendors.  Doesn’t it feel like there should be a better way?  And what if that way was something called Server-Side Measurement.  As described in the attached Jounce Media link, publishers have the ability to send over anonymized log files from their servers, which could be validated through a 3^rd party clearing house by utilizing blockchain technology, which was originally created to track cryptocurrency transactions like Bitcoin.  Could this get the entire industry out of pixel-based tracking jail?  Since the current state of measurement is kind of a hot mess right now, I’d predict server-side measurement to become more popular within the next few years.

THE UNREACHABLES:  Finally this week Wharton University and the agency Hearts & Science, with the assistance of several digital publishers, has created the attached E-Book around the concept of the “Untouchables”.  This group is aptly named because they can’t be tracked, and therefore can’t be targeted, on typical media channels  So they’re effectively a blind spot for marketers.  And the problem with this blind spot is that it’s getting bigger as more and more Millennials and Gen Zers become untouchable.  This trend is driven by cord cutters/cord nevers whose only digital footprint is on a mobile device(s) with zero trackable web usage. This is sort of a meandering read, with several choose-your-own-adventure side roads you can go down.  Maybe spend some time with it over the weekend to get up to speed on this new group which is becoming a vexing problem for our industry.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

OPEN SOURCE SDK IS FINALLY READY FOR PRIME TIME:  Mobile publishers have had a growing SDK (Software Development Kit) problem over the past few years.  Every time a new Viewability and Verification vendor comes on line the publishers must embed a new SDK in their app.  This creates the problem of slowing down or even stalling the app, and that totally defeats the purpose of adding the new SDK in the first place.  The industry solution to this problem, which has been in the works for years, is something called an Open Source SDK.  It’s a neutral SDK which can house several tracking vendors.  Think of this as an all-you-can-eat tracking buffet all under a single SDK.  The beauty of this solution is that publishers only have to install the one SDK, which reduces their risk of app latency.  The IAB is behind the Open Source SDK effort, as outlined in the attached AdExchanger link.  Most of the major trackers like IAS, Moat, Nielsen, etc., are included.  And publishers like Pandora have assisted through the working group to bring this breakthrough to market.  Notably absent from this conversation are Google and Facebook – they’ve traditionally resisted allowing 3^rd party tracking within their walled gardens.  But something tells me if Open Source SDK takes hold as the new industry standard the duopoly may be pressured to participate.

NIELSEN GOES 360 ON MUSIC:  For the last five years Nielsen has produced a research piece called Music 360, which aims to show consumption patterns across broadcast, streaming, satellite, downloads, etc..  Keep in mind this is the same Nielsen who can’t figure out how to accurately measure audio streaming (Tuesday’s blog post), but that’s a separate issue altogether.  Since Nielsen is a critical part of the audio measurement ecosystem I dutifully sold my data soul to them to gain access to the full report – Nielsen Music 360.  Most of the Music 360 data is around the rise of playlisting – either custom playlists created by individual listeners or prepackaged genre playlists.  There are also plenty of pro-radio stats around music discovery, which Nielsen attempts to correlate to relevancy for AM/FM stations.  For me the most interesting stat is on the right hand side of the graphic below.  Social sharing of music is way up – increasing from 24% to 32% in just one year.  Feels like even music streaming sites are getting into the Social game.

NIVAs TURNING UP IN RERUNS . . . WTF?:  Native product integrations in TV shows and movies are getting more and more common.  That’s when that can of Pepsi prominently placed on a TV show’s kitchen table happens to be turned label out so the viewers can see it.  These are called NIVAs – Native In-Video Ads.  Pepsi plays a small placement fee for the native integration, and the producer makes a little extra money without changing content’s storyline.  But what about previously produced shows which are now running in syndication?  There hasn’t been a way to retroactively insert NIVAs into existing video . . . until now.  Thanks to some new technology described in the attached Media Village link, future tech companies like Mirriad are able to insert product images into previously recorded video.  For an example of what I’m talking about check out the Geico ad on the TV screen in the upper left corner of the screen shot below.  Our lizard buddy wasn’t in the original version of the show, and instead was inserted by Mirriad after the fact.  As the article points out, there are natural limits to the products which can be inserted.  For instance, you can’t put an image of a smartphone in an old Happy Days rerun, because no such product existed then.  Regardless, the whole idea of retroactively inserting NIVAs into video content could open up a whole new frontier of native integration.

Have a great Thursday guys!

GOOGLE EXPRESS UNITES TRADITIONAL RETAIL:  You might recall last month’s announcement about the Walmart-Google partnership in which Walmart would supply and ship purchases made on Google Home connected devices.  This strategic partnership benefits both sides as it gives Google a neighborhood-level distribution platform to compete against Amazon’s Echo-based purchases, and it provides Walmart with a new eCommerce sales channel.  Now a reverse partnership is expanding across the entire Retail sector.  The attached AgAge article (Google Express) describes how Google is teaming up with several national retailers (Walmart, Target, Costco, Walgreen’s, etc.) by offering free shipping of their online purchases through Google Express, without Google’s normal $95/yr subscription fee.  This consortium is even going so far as to run a co-branded marketing campaign to support the launch.  So did you ever think you’d see the likes of Walmart and Target paying to advertise together?  I guess that speaks to the power (and threat) Amazon has become to the entire Retail space.

US AUTO SALES ARE UP (NOT A TYPO):  If you touch any part of the Auto industry you know 2017 has been a rough ride.  But based on the latest September sales report the clouds might be breaking just a little.  According to the attached Inside Radio article US Auto Unit Sales rose 6.3% vs. Sept’16.  This growth was driven by light truck sales that rose 12%, which offset a 3% drop in car sales.  There’s some early speculation that some of this growth was driven by hurricane replacement vehicle purchases – it’s estimated that 500-750K automobiles sustained water damage during Harvey and Irma.  There’s also the reality that US economic conditions are generally favorable for auto sales – with strong employment and lower gas prices and interest rates.  No matter what the cause, the entire US Auto Industry is breathing a collective “we’ll take it” sigh of relief this morning!

RECOGNIZING OURSELVES IN WHAT’S AROUND US:  In today’s last article Inc.com asked 25 of the most successful people in the world to give career advice to millennials.  I know this might seem like a cliché list of inspirational proverbs on the surface, but there’s a really interesting exercise you can do with it.  After you read the list pick the three which really speak to you.  Then share your choices with someone who knows you professionally.  If you’ve been completely honest with yourself about your favorite three, the person you share these with will almost always say “those remind me of you”.  Why will this happen?  Because we define positive things around us by what we value internally.  So if we’re given a list of choices we’ll naturally gravitate to the ones which most closely mirror us.  It doesn’t mean the others on the list are bad or less important, they’re just not us.  As for my three I choices I went with; #4 J.K. Rowling – embrace failure, #14 TJ Miller – work harder than anyone else around you, and #21 Cynthia Tidwell – be patient enough to learn, but impatient enough to take risks.  If you know me do you think these reflect who I am?  Care to share your favorites?

Have a great Wednesday guys!