Let’s talk about something you care about deeply, you and how much you can earn in your career.  McKinley Marketing Partners did a survey to see who’s getting hired in marketing, and what skill sets are most in demand right now.  Ayaz Nanji reports the biggest lesson, you better know and be comfortable with marketing technology.  The biggest jump in expertise that hirers are looking for was in digital marketing, 27% more than last year.  As for skills with the most planned hires this year, it’s a tie between general marketing and content management.  Then comes communications.  If you’re just getting started or are still a junior-level type, the most jobs for you are going to be in digital marketing, analytics, and content management.  But you can’t ignore those mysterious soft skills either.  Most, 64%, say problem-solving is essential.  Then comes elegant thought articulation, analytical thinking, company culture fit, and personality.  And here you thought you were going to get by just on your sparkling personality.

 

We all think marketing technology is cool but there is that line that has “creepy” written on it.  Steve O’Hear tells us that a new ad unit from Vyking called ReactivAds, is able to watch you right back when you’re watching it using your device’s camera, see what facial expressions you’re making using emotion, face and gesture recognition, and have the ad react to how you’re reacting to it.  You’ve got to opt in of course because some people like to be watched and others, you know, call the police.  They say they don’t store pictures of you, everything’s done in real-time.  CEO Matthew Klimpke says something interesting, that it offers up a whole new metric.  He says, “Any effective advertising evokes an emotional response; this technology will enable advertisers to hone in on the raw, unfiltered emotions from their campaigns.  Advertisers need more KPIs to measure engagement beyond clicks.  Emotional engagement will become the new KPI of advertising effectiveness.”

 

Are you still trying to game Google?  C’mon, join us in 2016, because a lot has changed and even more is in the process of changing.  If you don’t already, you should know about RankBrain.  That’s Google’s artificial intelligence they’re using to decipher vague, long-tail type queries and deliver relevant results.  15% of searches are getting RankBrain applied to it and Google’s Greg Corrado says it’s the 3rd-biggest contributing signal.  If you’re ever playing Google trivia with friends, a) God help you, and b) there are over 200 search signals Google uses.  Al Gomez @alseoblog tells us how content marketers should start dealing with RankBrain.  Narrow that audience and answer problems they may search; I mean really narrow.  Make your content sound human and natural, like you’re talking to a person.  Steve Baldwin of Didit.com says think long-form cause RankBrain uses co-occurrence, how often similar terms are in the content.  We’re not talking keyword stuffing, we’re talking similar or synonymous terms.  Lastly, refer to authoritative sources cause it helps the algorithm figure out the intent of your post.

 

If you start seeing more Facebook posts with marketing stuff like end cards, brand logos and product placement, don’t be surprised.  What, my warning isn’t enough for you?  Okay I’ll explain further.  Facebook is now letting publishers and marketers share brand content on the platform.  AJT Santos reports that it’s not like a free for all, there are still a few guidelines in place like you still can’t do branded or sponsored cover photos or profile pictures, you can’t watermark and you can’t do pre-roll ads.  But trust me, the brand content is gonna flow.  A new tool from Facebook even lets publishers tag the brand being promoted in the content.  Facebook’s VP of Partnerships Nick Grudin said, “We know many of our partners have existing partnership deals with marketers, and this gives them the ability to extend their branded content business onto Facebook.”

 

Can I ask you a question and have you answer it honestly?  No?  Well here’s what I was going to ask.  Do you want people to engage with your content or not?  Because if you’re gating your content and making people fill out a form to get it, you have a wildly inflated sense of how great and valuable your content is.  You’re lucky they found it, you’re even luckier they’re clicking on it, but then you want to withhold it unless they sacrifice themselves to you as a lead?  Anna Talerico reports that gating is taking a back seat to quality interactive content.  When Demand Metric tested a gated interactive white paper against an un-gated version, the un-gated drove 33% more leads than the gated version.  How?  The un-gated version had an optional form to get a PDF version.  Plus, Anna points out most people are smart enough to find the info they need somewhere else without coming through your gate.

 

It’s been decided by others that you have too many choices.  For instance, you have a choice as to whether or not to watch a video ad in your messaging apps.  Well you did.  Brielle Jaekel reports Snapchat’s 2.0 update lets marketing content get right in your face and roll without a click.  Mark Cluett, who’s a Marketing Manager at Polar, Toronto, says, “Before, even if a user chose to follow a brand on Snapchat, they had to manually interact with the brand to see what they shared.  Now, videos from brands will see more views and engagement as users stumble upon them naturally.”  But with great power comes, that’s right, great responsibility.  Cluett goes on to say, “If a user is inundated with stories from only brands when they’re expecting a stream of content from celebs, friends, and news sources they’ll unfollow very quickly.”  The warning, brands better share less content that’s more valuable.

 

It’s not like Snapchat is the only one in the in-your-face video business.  Twitter’s had First View since February, letting you get your paid video content to the top of users’ feeds for 24 hours.  When that happened, there was some wondering going on; wondering if users would rebel.  They haven’t.  In fact they’ve hardly noticed them at all.  Does that surprise you?  David Neuman, Director of Social Media Services for Prime Visibility says, “Users are so accustomed to seeing native ads across all of their social feeds the rollout of First View isn’t going to be met with much backlash.”  And as John Montesi writes, Twitter’s an easy place to quickly get those native ads in barely noticed…as opposed to pre-roll ads before YouTube videos.  And since they only run for 24 hours, users don’t see it often enough for it to sink in that it’s an ad.

 

We don’t do a lot of stories about gaming but hey, it’s a very valid channel on which to do content marketing.  And a Unity Technologies report tells us whether or not gamers are turned off by in-game video ads.  Brandy Shaul reports that it depends.  If it’s a run of the mill full-screen picture ad, 39% of developers say their players left the game “either a little faster, or even a lot quicker than usual.”  But if the players get rewarded for watching a video ad, that’s a whole different ballgame app.  78% are open to watching reward video ads and 71% prefer that as a way to “pay” for in-game content.  Well okay, but such video ads would hurt other in-app purchases right?  Nopers.  86% of developers say they weren’t affected or even went up after reward video ads were introduced.

 

You’ve put together some dynamite downloadable content.  Maybe it’s even about dynamite.  So learn now what device people are most likely to download your stuff onto.  Limelight Networks knows, cause their State of Digital Downloads report found overall, 45% of people are more likely to download all kinds of digital content than last year.  But here’s the big news, the smartphone just now passed PC’s as the device most downloading is done on, specifically Android smartphones.  The iPad and Android tablets were almost tied at 2nd and 3rd.  As for what’s downloaded, EContent reports other than OS updates, it’s new apps at 33%, video games at 18%, and movies & TV content at 13%.  Most downloading happens from 6pm-midnight.  But whenever it’s done, that download needs to be fast.  Especially Millennials have no patience for slowness or hangups.

 

Are you ready to chat with Facebook Messenger’s 900M users?  Among the many announcements at their big F8 shindig to-do, they said there will now be a Messenger chatbot platform, and you, Mr. or Ms. Brand, can pay to bot message those poor souls who connected with you at one time on Messenger.  “Sponsored Messages” are being tested and one of the things they’re really trying to figure out is how to keep this experience from being, you know, hated.  Facebook’s VP of product David Marcus says, “These will definitely be limited…we’re very paranoid about that.”  Josh Constine writes what we all know is true, when Messenger buzzes right now, you know it’s a friend.  That assurance could go away.  In addition to Sponsored Messages, Facebook also announced “Click to Message” which can be put into News Feed ads.

 

That’s it.  I live on Twitter @mikestiles.