THE DIGITAL AUDIO TAIL IS ABOUT TO WAG THE BROADCAST DOG:  Two weeks ago I posted an article ‎on the MRC’s attempt to standardize Digital Audio Measurement (DAM).  While there’s still work to be done before this new standard is implemented across the industry one thing is already very clear – once DAM gets integrated in the buy side there will be considerable pressure on broadcast radio to meet these same standards.  In the attached AdExchanger article, guest author and Pandora’s Director of Product Management Jonathan Eccles lays out two ways broadcast radio measurement will be impacted.  The first is a quirky Nielsen ratings anomaly in which radio stations get credited for a quarter hour of listening time if a person listens for at least five consecutive minutes in that window.  Pretty sweet deal for radio – someone tunes in for five minutes and they get to sell that as 15 minutes of listening time to advertisers.  Once DAM mainstreams buyers will be able to see exactly who’s listening down to the second and not just a quarter hour estimate.  The other change DAM will bring to radio is the idea of Audibility.  Just like OLV buys, which are often transacted on viewability guarantees, digital audio will eventually be purchased using audibility.  While this will be challenging for the streamers, it will be nearly impossible for broadcasters who can’t prove if individual listeners hear an ad.  Between closing the loophole on the 5/15 minute discrepancy and introducing audibility, broadcasters better figure out how to get on board now before the DAM train leaves the station.

SNAP BACK:  On Tuesday Snap, Inc. announced stronger than expected revenue and user growth during its Q4 earning call.  Snapchat added 6M DAUs in Q4 and grew it’s ad revenue by 38% compared to Q3’17.  This is the first positive earnings report since Snap went public in March’17, which bounced the stock up +23% in intra-day trading.  What’s most interesting to me are the details inside these numbers.  As reported in the attached AdExchanger link, an astounding 90% of Snap’s ads were sold programmatically, with most transactions occurring through their self-service API portal.  The only downside to this trend is pricing – by commoditizing and automating their ad units Snap’s average CPM dropped 25% YoY.  Regardless of the price erosion, Snap seems to have found their monetization footing through automation.  And since money is lifeblood in digital media I’d expect them to run the same play for the foreseeable future.

REAL GROWTH OR MOVING PEAS AROUND THE PLATE?:  The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) and Borrell Associates are out with some fresh brag stats on the growth of digital revenue for broadcast radio.  As you can see in the attached Inside Radio link and image below, there’s a nice trend line developing.  In 2017 total digital billing for broadcasters topped $700M, which was +13% YoY and an $83M increase in raw dollars over 2016.  While that’s a great headline it belies the reality that radio still isn’t growing.  Because for every dollar of digital growth there’s almost one dollar lost in spot billing – Local/National Spot rev decreased by over $60M in 2017.  There are two ways of looking at this shift.  It’s either radio being resourceful by using digital to make up over-the-air revenue attrition, or stations having to add on layers of digital deliverables to dress up their stale core product just to save existing buys.  Either way this isn’t the resounding success the RAB would have you believe.

Have a great Thursday guys!

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT FACEBOOK COULDN’T GET ANY CREEPIER:  Since the beginning of 2018 Facebook has been trying to pivot from growing its user base and making money to doing what’s right for humanity.  That’s a noble enough idea, but it doesn’t really comport with how FB is still operating.  For a latest example of using technology to push the envelope of societal norms check out the attached CB Insights article.  On February 1^st FB received patent approval for an algorithm that allows it to identify users’ socioeconomic status based on the data it collects.  You can see an oversimplified flowchart of how it works in the image below.  Basically FB is tying together variables like age, home ownership, number of internet connections used, etc., to determine if you’re “middle class”.  Of course, if they can label a certain group of individuals middle class, then they can also bucket us in upper and lower classes too.  But rest easy, FB isn’t going to do anything with this data themselves (insert sarcastic phew here.)  According to the article, “Facebook notes that the patent is aimed at third parties to increase awareness about products or services to online users.”   So basically they’re bucketing us by economic class and selling the data to third parties as audience segments.  I know other publishers sell high/low income segments too, but that delineation is usually derived from real purchase data and not just what sites like FB know about us.  Is #creepyzuck too aggressive a hashtag to get started?

HOW DID IHEART GET TO THE VERGE OF BANKRUPTCY?  Last week I posted an article about iHeart missing a $106M interest payment which put the company on the path to a potential default on March 1^st.  So how did the largest broadcaster in the US get to this precarious point?  The WJS has a fascinating answer to that question in the attached analysis.  WSJ’s conclusion is that iHeart consolidated at the market peak (for both radio station valuations and Wall Street) in 2007.  So iHeart overpaid for stations it acquired and in the process took on $13.5B in leveraged debt – which has now ballooned to ~$21B.  At the time this seemed like a justifiable plan because radio revenue was expected to keep growing.  But then came the Great Recession of 2008 and innumerable digital competitors taking audience share and advertisers from the broadcasters.  You can see the net effect on radio’s revenue in the graphic below.  This combination of using debt to buy high and having revenue drop has become a deadly 1-2 punch for radio.  It’s already claimed Cumulus which entered bankruptcy protection in November, and is about to do the same thing to iHeart.  Sad story to be sure, but they should have known better.

THE BEGINNIG OF THE END FOR CDs:  The day is finally here for us old timer music aficionados.  As reported in the attached Business Insider link, on Monday Best Buy announced it would stop selling CDs in its stores by July 1^st, and other retailers have signaled plans to do the same.  This is means the CD era is officially coming to an end like vinyl records, 8-tracks, and cassettes did before them.  This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone since streaming has officially become THE way to listen to music.  But for those of us of a certain age there’s some nostalgic longing for wandering the CD aisle at your neighborhood store to discover new music.  Personal admission . . . the first time I ever heard about Nirvana was at the campus bookstore in Oxford, OH during September, 1991.  So I guess that makes me really old, because campus bookstores are disappearing as books go online, and now CDs are too.

Have a great Wednesday guys!

APPLE PASSING SPOTIFY IN THE US . . . SORT OF:  I bet you didn’t expect to see that headline, but Apple Music’s underwhelming streaming subscription offering is sort of about to pass Spotify’s subs in the US.  I say “sort of” because both companies’ subscription stats are a little fuzzy.  Apple claims roughly 36M subs, mostly in the US, but count 90 day free trials in there total even though those listeners have yet to pay for anything.  On the other hand Spotify most recently claimed 70M worldwide subs, but doesn’t breakout the US portion.  Industry estimates are that about half of Spotify’s subs are in the US – so call it 35M.  Based on that calculus Apple is right near Spotify.  What’s more clear is the overall trajectory of the two streamers, as reported in the attached RAIN link.  Spotify’s sub growth has slowed to about 2% in the US, while Apple has maintained a 5% annualized growth rate thanks to Apple Music being the default setting on Apple’s device platform.  This might not be the best timed disclosure for Spotify who is still trying to thread the needle with a direct list IPO in the next month or two.

LABELS PIGGING OUT AT THE STREAMING TROUGH:  Last week I posted an article ‎about the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to raise publisher (songwriter/composer) royalties on interactive streamed music by 44% over the next four years.  In fairness to the publishers, even with this increase their royalties as a percentage of what the streamers pay for content is still a fraction of what the performers and artists receive.  For an idea of what one of the major label’s rev picture looks like check out Warner Music Group’s Q1 earnings results in the attached Billboard link.  WMG is thriving again thanks to streaming, with revenue up 14% YoY.  While most people would agree that a healthy industry is great for everyone who loves music, it still feels like there’s an imbalance here.  Labels and their artists are making money again, the publishers are set to cash in, but the streamers are still in the red.  I wonder what WMG’s balance sheet would look like if Pandora, Spotify, etc. ever went out of business.  Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.

FEWER ADS IN OUR FUTURE:  Here’s a thought provoking idea.  In five years marketers’ ability to reach consumers through advertising will decrease by 20-30%.  That’s the doomsday prediction from (ironically) Publicis’s Chief Growth Officer Rishad Tobaccowala, according to the attached Media Post link.  There are two factors driving this forecast.  First, consumers will continue gravitating towards ad free subscriptions for media content (aka Netlfix), as a way to avoid commercials.  And second, marketers will shift from traditional advertising to direct outreach by using purchase-based and behavioral retargeting.  Envision P&G knowing individual customers so well that they could ping parents through a connected device when they’re ready to buy more Pampers.  One could argue that the latter use case it still marketing, but the direct path is very different from today’s ad model of embedding commercials in content.  Not the rosiest prediction for industry, but worth considering.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

SUPER BOWL AD ROUNDUP:  Is anyone else exhausted from last night’s epic Super Bowl?  For the second year in a row the game itself upstaged the halftime show and the commercials.  Speaking of the latter, this morning the trades are out with their usual analysis of the hits and misses from the brands featured during the Super Bowl.  Let’s start with AdWeek’s list of the Top 5 ads.  Winners include Tide’s Mr. Clean revisit, Amazon’s Alexa replacement, Dorrito’s Tyrion Lannister speed rap, Australia Tourism Board’s Crocodile Dundee spoof, and the NFL’s own uncomfortably funny Dirty Dancing redux.  Digiday went a little deeper in their analysis by highlighting branding wins by Janet Jackson and the app HQ, who both scored social points without even running ads.  It was also interesting to see how many come together/stand united-themed ads there were, while no brands touched on the #MeToo movement.  Makes you wonder if brands are being more cautious about going too far out on a limb for social causes after Pepsi’s 2017 Kendall Jenner fiasco. All in I’ll give the Super Bowl commercials a B+ this year, with sparks of great creative but no real touchdowns (sorry) to speak of.

KEEPING ALEXA QUIET:  I’m guessing you saw Amazon’s 90-second ad during the fourth quarter of last night’s game, when ten “Alexa . . . do so-and-so” commands were given.  So how was Amazon able to suppress viewers’ Echo devices from performing an action which were within earshot during the commercial?  As Bloomberg is reporting in the attached link, this acoustic slight of hand was made possible thanks to a patented technology called Audio Command Filtering (ACF).  Here’s how it works.  During the ad Alexa was also playing a signal that was inaudible to the human ear (between 3,000-6,000 megahertz), which told the Echo devices not to act on each command.  This suppressed the devices’ response to the commercial’s commands in the moment.  The real trick to this technology is that ACF didn’t disable anything else the Echo may have been hearing in the moment.  This was good news to viewers who may have simultaneously been asking Alexa what the Over line was for the game.  Pretty crafty!

FUNNY, BUT TRUE:  And finally, you know I’m a sucker for advertising-related cartoons.  Yes that makes me weird.  If you share my appreciation you’ll get a kick out of this cartoon which was featured in AdExchanger this morning.  Enjoy!

Have a great Monday guys!

NOW IT’S iHEART’S TURN TO SKIP AN INTEREST PAYMENT:  If you’ve been following Cumulus’s bankruptcy proceedings this will sound familiar.  On Wednesday iHeart formally missed a $106M interest payment which was due, according to the attached Radio Ink link.  The missed deadline triggered a 30 day “grace period” in which iHeart can make the payment without formally going into default.  But if that date passes without payment they’ll be in default of their loan, which will initiate bankruptcy proceedings.  Keep in mind there could be some gamesmanship in this stall.  For months iHeart has been wrestling with its creditors to give them a more generous debt restructuring as a way to keep the company solvent.  Bobby Pittman might be betting that the threat of bankruptcy will bring the creditors back to the bargaining table.  Or iHeart might have come to the realization that bankruptcy is inevitable and are hording their cash as they head into the liquidation process.  I guess will find out either way on or around March 1^st.

AMAZON’S AD BUSINESS GETS REAL:  Well, we knew it was coming and now it’s here.  Yesterday during Amazon’s Q4 earnings call they announced that “Other” revenue (aka ad sales) grew by 60% to $1.7B.  For a comparison Google reported $27.3B in ad sales for Q4 and Facebook tallied $13B.  So Amazon’s ad biz is still small relative to the Duopoly, but as reported in the attached Digiday link, it’s only a matter of time before they catch up with the big boys.  Amazon’s secret sauce is an on-platform search offering collectively called Amazon Marketing Services, which allows brands to embed search ads as Amazon users are very close to making a purchase.  Whatever they’re doing it’s obviously working, because 60% YoY growth doesn’t just happen by itself.

RADIO JUST WENT THERE:  Leave it to radio to bring sexual misconduct, one of the world’s biggest pop stars, and a Confederate Army general together into one sad topic.  It’s the story of former KYGO-FM morning show host David Mueller who was found guilty of groping Taylor Swift during a station meet and greet in 2013.  You probably remember this case as one of the sparks which started the #metoo movement in 2017.  Fast forward to 2018 and the unemployed Mr. Mueller was looking for a job.  According to the attached NY Daily News link gainful employment was found as the morning show host of a small Greenwood, MS station.  To get a fresh start (or hide his identity) Mueller took the stage name “Stonewall Jackson” after the famed Confederate general.  It took about five minutes for word to get out that Stonewall was in fact Mueller, and then the complaints (up to and including station bomb threats) started coming in.  In the article some of the quotes from the station’s owner hint at the idea of using Mueller’s infamy as a way to get publicity for the small station.  To me this seems more like a case of poor taste and not a stroke of PR genius.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

GETTING SNEAKY DOWN UNDER:  As reported in the attached Engadget link, Spotify is launching a new standalone app called Stations which provides a free, radio-style online listening experience.  This may sound just like Pandora’s core product, because well, it is.  In an attempt to compete for the non-subscriber streaming listener Spotify is testing the copycat service in Australia right now.  Ironically Stations’ own description says . . . “finding the right thing to play can feel like a challenge. With Stations, you can listen immediately, and switching stations is simple and seamless — no searching or typing needed.”  That seems like some ironic double-speak from the streamer whose primary business model is on-demand playlists.  So why go through the trouble to create a whole new app instead of making it a product option the way Pandora does?  For the answer just follow the money.  Right now all of Spotify’s sub listening is covered under more expense label-direct licensing agreements.  But online radio listening, without on-demand or playlisting, can be covered under certain countries’ compulsory royalty decrees.  And the per song compulsory royalties average less than half the label direct rates.  Right now only three countries have the compulsory setup – the United States, New Zealand, and . . . wait for it . . . Australia.  So while this may be billed a cool new app in the test phase, it might actually be a way for Spotify to game the royalties system and pay less for content.  Sneaky move, mate!

SATELLITE OVER THE INTERNET? Over the last several years SiriusXM has been like the slow and steady tortoise in the audio race.  You don’t hear as much about them while the broadcasters, streamers, and labels battle it out, but they quietly grow their subscription base and revenue every quarter.  Now that may change.  On yesterday’s earnings call CEO Jim Meyer offered a glimpse into the future of Sirius, as summarized in the attached Inside Radio link.  The headline is that Sirius intends to expand into the connected home via the internet.  That’s right – internet delivery of satellite content into the growing connected home market via a Sirius app.  It’s an unusual move, but it could be a brilliant one.  Over 90% of Sirius listening happens in the car, so the connected home is a huge untapped opportunity for them.  And as we know, music listening on in-home IoT connected devices is the hottest thing in audio right now.  Worth keeping an eye on.

YOU DON’T KNOW DILLY DILLY:  Finally today, I want to give you a funny albeit surprising example of the power of sonic symbols.  It’s the story behind the term-of-the-moment “Dilly Dilly!”, which you’ve undoubtedly seen in Bud Light’s current TV ads.  How the phrase came to be is explained in the attached Seattle Times link.  The power of the phrase, and its surprising viral amplification, has caught even the creators at Wieden + Kennedy off guard.  That’s because the term was thrown in by chance at the end of the creative process, and literally means nothing more than “hear, hear”.  So why has it become so popular that you’re starting to see Starbucks baristas donning Dilly Dilly tees?  Because it’s crossed over from being a phrase and is now a sonic symbol.  It’s sort of like the que for a joke you’re in on, even though there isn’t really a joke or a punch line.  By breaking through the cultural zeitgeist with a sonic symbol Bud Light has captured marketing lightening in a bottle.  It reminds me of their Frogs “Bud-Weis-Er” creative from Super Bowl XXIX in 1995.  Fortunately for us, goofy medieval Dilly Dilly scenes are funnier than three CGI frogs making weird noises.

Have a Dilly Dilly Thursday guys!

ENGAGEMENT IS EVERYTHING:  As our time spent with media gets increasingly mobile and social a predictable thing is happening – we’re spending less and less time with individual publishers’ sites.  According to the Taboola research noted in the attached eMarketer link and graph below, our average session time spent with publishers is down to 1.9 minutes, compared to 2.1-2.2 minutes in the first half of 2017.  The underlying cause of this decrease is fragmentation.  With more sites offering more content we scroll, flip and swipe faster than ever.  And since time spent on a site is a good proxy for engagement, it’s easy to see how users are less engaged with publishers and their sponsoring brands.  That’s why it’s critical to find platforms where users come and stay.  Music streamers like Pandora, Spotify and SoundCloud are examples of this – each is in comScore’s Top 10 mobile time spent rankers every month.  According to Triton’s latest Webcast Metrics release, Pandora leads time spent with 34 minutes per session, which is 17x the engagement rate of the average publisher.  So could engagement-heavy publishers be the key to marketing success in this crazy digital world?  You know where my head is at.

PAGING DOCTORS BUFFETT, BEZOS AND DIMON:  A few years ago could you ever have imagined a plan, like the one announced yesterday, in which Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon and JP Morgan Chase join forces to create an alternative option healthcare system that isn’t designed to make money?  That’s exactly what occurred, as described in the attached CNBC link.  The embedded video is actually worth the watch as the anchors read the breaking news headline in real time and can’t quite get their minds around it.  Sure there are many more questions than answers at this point.  Will the new system be open to everyone or just employees of those companies?  How will they work with the HC providers and pharmas?  While all of this will take years to work out one thing is certain.  The Healthcare system, with its infinitesimal layers and overcharging bureaucracy, is ripe for disruption.  And now a cross-section of business titans have the industry in their sights.

WHAT McDs EARNINGS SAYS ABOUT OUR SOCIETY:  On yesterday’s earnings call McDonald’s reported same store foot traffic was up for the first time in five years.  Credit for this increase was given to a two part menu strategy.  The first move was McDs’ recommitment to value with its Q4 “McPick 2” and $1 soda LTOs.  That’s fairly standard for a QSR.  But what’s unusual is that McDs simultaneously released higher end menu offerings like Kale & Sriracha burgers and more premium coffee drinks.  This high-low strategy paid off for McDs at the cash register, and also illustrates something far more transformational about our society, as reported in the attached Business Insider link.  The middle is collapsing, as consumers gravitate into either the Value or Premium camps.  In McDs terms, there are simply fewer “quarter pounder combo meal” customers out there, because we either want five sandwiches for five bucks or burger-shaped kale patties.  And it doesn’t end with QSR.  You’re now more likely to shop at either Whole Foods or Aldi instead of Kroger.  We don’t own four-door sedans anymore, because we either drive murdered out trucks/SUVs or don’t own a car at all.  These aren’t random product choices we’re making, it’s just who we are.  A nation of two distinct camps with very different product preferences.  For brands which can figure out how to serve both sides at once, like McDs in this case, there’s money to be made in the bifurcation.

Have a great Wednesday guys!

PUBLISHER PERFORMANCE ROYALTY SPIKE:  Yesterday the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) announced a steep escalation in the royalties paid on streamed music to songwriters and composers.  Traditionally they’ve been the forgotten group in the streaming royalty ecosystem, with performers and their label masters reaping 4-5x the royalty payments the publishers get.  But the CRB seems bent on correcting this imbalance by mandating a 44% increase in publisher royalties paid with tiered increases over the next four years.  Today audio streamers pay the publishers 11.4% of total revenue, which is then divided among all the publishers based on the percentage of their songs being played.  By 2022 that rate will increase to 15.1% of total rev.  Obviously this decision has the publishers dancing in the streets, as noted in the attached RAIN link.  As much of a boom as this is for the songwriters, you can image the bust feeling the streamers are going through right now.  To date no streamer has been able to maintain profitability, and adding royalty charges will make it that much harder to sustain a business.  Considering the fact that the global music industry now receives over half of its revenue from streaming, you’d think the publishers would be more concerned with the industry’s viability than just short-term upcharges.

TWO SIDES OF THE APP WARS:  I usually don’t write about the App Download landscape since it’s sort of tangential to digital media, but there are some interesting trends happening in the sector, as noted in the attached App Annie link (yes, that’s a real site).  In Q4’17 Android and iOS both set app records, but in very different ways.  Let’s start with Android.  In Q4 an astounding 19 billion apps were downloaded on Android devices.  Most of this growth was in developing markets like Indonesia, India, and Brazil.  As you can see on the left side of graph below Android’s download rate was more than 2x iOS’s.  On the other side of the coin Apple is crushing it with download monetization.  On the right side you’ll see iOS’s $10B in consumers’ in-app spending during Q4, which is almost double Android’s Google Play haul.  So what’s to make of these two very different stats?  My read is that Apple is at the high point of its app monetization curve right now – they have a massive footprint in more affluent markets and are milking the cash cow for all its worth.  But as rosy as things look for iOS today, tomorrow belongs to Google’s Android.  As more and more of the world starts using Android phones (86% of the global mobile devices at last count), you can be sure that app-generated revenue will follow onto the Android platform.

DIGITAL VIDEO REIMAGINED:  Over the weekend you may have seen an obscure news tidbit about Meg Whitman (former head of eBay and HP), becoming the first and only employee of a new venture called WndrCo.  While that headline seems inconsequential enough there’s actually quite a bit more to the story, as described in the attached Digiday link.  WndrCo is the brainchild of former Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.  Mr. Katzenberg’s vision is to create a stand-alone video platform (working titled New TV),  which will specialize in short-to-mid length original video content.  The simplest example of this new video format is the “mini-series”, which will feature a couple dozen 8-10 minute chapters per season.  These segments are more snackable on mobile devices than the typical 30-60 minute broadcast content you see on Hulu, but have more of a story line and character development than the short-form videos you see on Facebook’s Watch and Verizon’s Go90.  So will New TV be that perfect goldie locks fit for a digital video on a mobile platform?  Apparently Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman are convinced it will.  And given the pair’s depth in Entertainment and Tech I probably wouldn’t bet against them.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

THE DIVERSIFICATION OF THE GRAMMYS: Did you watch the Grammy Awards last night?  If you did you may have noticed the larger than ever presence of Hip Hop and Hispanic performers, presenters, and award winners.  According to the attached WSJ article, ethnic-based genres have never been more prevalent at the show.  These gains are coming at the expense of traditional white/male dominated genres  – for the first time in fourteen years neither Country or Rock even had a nominee in the four major cross-format award categories.  So why is popular music getting more diverse?  One theory is that the music played by the pure-play streamers is now being factored into Billboard’s chart calculations.  And since the average listener is more likely to find niche or trending artists than “Top 40 radio”, the charts are getting more diverse.  As a proof point consider that an amazing 40% of this week’s Billboard Hot 100 songs are from the Hip Hop genre.  Overall this is a good thing for our industry.  Artist popularity should be driven by what listeners enjoy, and not just what the labels and their broadcaster cohorts tell us to listen to.  I’d expect this trend to accelerate as the diversification of America continues to be reflected in the music we love.

AMAZON (AND VOICE) WILL BE FRONT AND CENTER IN THE BIG GAME:  On Friday Amazon confirmed plans to air a :90 second commercial in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Super Bowl, as reported in the attached AdWeek link.  While they’ve only released a :30 teaser so far the ad itself seems fairly quippy. The premise is around Alexa getting sick (with a cold?) and losing her voice.  This sends Jeff Bezos and the gang scrambling for a backup plan.  Although the teaser doesn’t show it, the remaining :60 of the ad will feature Alexa’s would-be subs like James Earl Jones, Gilbert Godfrey, etc..  Beyond the branding for Amazon and it’s Alexa platform, the fact that Voice is the key creative ingredient of this ad tells you how important voice-recognition AI will be in the coming year.  At an estimated $7-8M price tag for the commercial time, Amazon is making a big bet on Voice.  I’m guessing other brands and competing tech companies will take notice.

BIG MEDIA, UNRAVELED:  The media industry is getting more interwoven by the day.  What used to be a segmented industry of content producers and distribution platforms is getting blurred into one very interconnected ball.  Recode has made a noble attempt at unravelling this birds nest in the attached link, and image below.  It’s fascinating to see how big in relative scale the major distributors are compared to the content producers.  You can also see how stand-alone content entities like Hulu could be so important for a company like Disney to get its hooks into. I’d love to see this graphic recreated in a few years.  My guess is that we’d see several more blended circles (like Comcast/NBC is today), as the two halves of the media industry become one.

Have a great Monday guys!

IS THE FOURTH SCREEN REALLY A SCREEN AT ALL?:  When you hear the term “Third Screen” you think smartphones and mobile devices, right?  That’s been the standard definition for the past decade.  But what about the next gen “Fourth Screen”?  One thoughtful definition has been put forth by Pandora CRO John Trimble in the attached Recode article.  According to Mr. Trimble the Fourth Screen is the ever-growing array of IoT connected devices which will define tomorrow’s connected homes, connected cars, etc..  One important differentiator between Third and Fourth Screen technology is the growing importance of auditory communication over visual interaction.  Today you don’t use a keyboard to type into a smart speaker, you just give a voice command which the device’s AI interprets.  Tomorrow you won’t even read the instruments on your car’s dashboard as you drive along, you’ll just tell your Cruise AV where you want to go and it will do the rest.  So in an ironic way tomorrow’s Fourth Screen might not be a screen at all.  Worth thinking about . . .

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT RIDESHARING COULDN’T GET ANY CREEPIER:  It looks like a God View 2.0 scandal could be breaking at Lyft.  For the uneducated, God View was Uber’s controversial data platform that allowed staffers to match personal data with rideshare usage history.  When the program was exposed in 2014 Uber promptly shut it down.  You’d think Lyft would have learned a valuable lesson from its competitor on the importance of managing sensitive data, but apparently they didn’t.  According to Tech Crunch in the attached link, Lyft has been letting staffers access rideshare data which can easily be “unmasked” to show the riders’ personal data.  Yes, there are legitimate uses for this, like if you lose an item in a Lyft car and need to track down the driver.  But how about something more nefarious, like the disgruntled lover working at Lyft who could track their ex’s pick-ups/drop-offs.  Besides the obvious PR problem for Lyft, this brings up a larger data management concern for our industry.  As tech advances allow us to collect more and more individual-level data, we need to develop safeguards to keep that data secure.  I think Lyft is going to figure that out the hard way.

FACEBOOK AT THE TIPPING POINT:  To send you into the weekend I’d like to share a provocative Vanity Fair article about Mark Zuckerberg and the crossroads Facebook now finds itself at.  It chronicles the rise of FB from a budding social platform to a global tech powerhouse by using a take-no-prisoners approach to business, complete with bullying and idea stealing.  While looking back on FB’s history is interesting, the real guts of the article are in the back half.  The author calls out FB’s pivot from doing what’s right for the user (and even mankind), to doing what’s right for Wall Street.  The emphasis on the latter has created a manipulative algorithm that literally addicts users who devote their time and attention, but only get sponsored blabber, feelings of inadequacy, and even depression in return.  I know that sounds pretty extreme but it’s that poignant of an article.  It’s a longer read so maybe save it for some quiet time this weekend.  And special thanks to Pandora’s Hunter Bradford for digging this one up.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!