You’re probably pushing a good bit of your content over email.  Okay well, email’s not always going to be what it is today and 20 experts recently gave their take on where it will be by 2020.  1. You won’t create email “campaigns” because machine learning and automation will make the scale so huge and complex, you can’t manage it like a campaign.  2. Subscribers will be able to opt out of tracking.  Andrew Bonar of Deliverability Ltd. says, “Open tracking, device tracking, location tracking, click-through behavior, and other data may all be subject to subscriber opt-ins and opt-outs.”  3. You’ll have to learn to email a new audience: machines.  Len Shneyder, VP of SparkPost, says, “The IoT has the potential to generate trillions of messages a day.” And 4, Chad White reports that with 55% of emails in March opened on mobile, email messages get shorter, with just one CTA.

 

Video ads work.  Oh man, aren’t you glad you listen to this podcast to learn things like that?  I better tell you more than that.  The length of your video ad matters if you want people to watch as much of it as possible.  Think With Google, Mondelez International and Droga5, tested 3 cereal ads, one was over 2 minutes, one was 30 seconds and the 3rd was 15 seconds.  Same message, same relative brand presence.  Kimberlee Morrison reports the shortie 15 second one was skipped the most!  Nor did the viewer remember the brand as well.  The 30-second got skipped the least and more people watched the whole thing.  Many of you brands think you’re being cool, or sneaky, not showing your brand ‘til the end of videos.  But just 15% of people watch long ads all the way through so…what have you accomplished?  Then again, hard sell the brand too much and they’ll also leave the video.  Video viewers are so fragile.

 

Consider this a warning.  If you’re dragging your feet shifting your company more toward a mobile-first mentality, you are getting comfy cozy right behind the 8-ball.  comScore reports that for 4 months straight, overall time spent online in the US on desktop and laptop, has dropped.  That’s measured against the same months the previous year.  The new numbers even insinuate they know when desktop Internet usage peaked, and it was March of 2015.  Jack Marshall writes as recently as May of 2015, mobile and desktop were both growing.  Now that’s not the case; one is dropping while the other continues to grow.  Internet on mobile was up 13% last month compared to March of last year, and the number of minutes on mobile nearly doubled that of desktops at over 1T minutes.

 

More and more people are discovering podcasts they like and getting into the regular habit of listening to podcasting.  But one thing has sort of been holding back the floodwaters of podcast consumption.  No podcasts on Google Play for Android users.  Well all that changed Monday.  NPR kind of accidentally blew the whistle a little early but that’s okay.  We’d heard from Google itself back in October podcasts would be added to the platform.  And like music, you’ll see podcasts based on your mood, your activity, or your interest.  Lauren Keating reports for Tech Times that if you have a podcast, you can submit the RSS feed for approval, and if approved, you can join podcasters already aboard like Earwolf, Radiotopia, HBO and Tim Ferriss.

 

So does Twitter hold up its end of the bargain when it comes to driving social traffic to media sites?  That’s what Parse.ly wanted to know, so they put on their study hats and found at least where their own network of publisher’s is concerned, Twitter drives a median 8.5% of total social traffic.  But that’s not enough to learn.  You have to see what kind of tweets successfully drove that traffic.  Well there’s typical content, like ongoing tweets about a long lasting story – say the Zika virus (don’t worry, I feel fine).  That drives about 1.5% of traffic from Twitter.  But then there’s “most active” content, which is breaking news that has immediate but short impact.  That drives 11% of traffic from Twitter.  Parse.ly concluded Twitter’s good at both kinds but breaking real information about your brand will win out over long, contrived campaigns.

 

Look around you, because you can now.  YouTube’s rolling out 360-degree livestreaming video support as well as spatial audio.  The first is important so you can experience live cool events (they’re starting with Coachella) and see everything around you.  The second is important because if the audio isn’t as realistic as the video, complete with intensity, depth and distance, the disconnect makes for a lame VR experience.  Deafheaven just won’t sound right.  YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan tells Ken Yeung he’s stoked about VR moving beyond pre-recorded stuff, and they’re working with peepers like Two Big Ears and VideoStitch on compatibility with YouTube’s platform.  The API will be open to you developers.

 

You’ve got to feel pretty good about yourself when Verizon Wireless and Hearst team up to buy you, but that’s what happened to Complex Media.  What’s the attraction and estimated $250-$300M valuation?  The mostly video pop culture lifestyle site gets over 50M unique visitors a month and more than 300M page views.  Verizon likes that because as SVP Consumer Product and Marketing Brian Angiolet says, “The decision is a continuation of our media strategy, focused on disruption in digital media and content distribution, and building a portfolio of the emerging digital brands of the future for the Millennial and Gen-Z audience.”  Lucas Matney writes Complex CEO Rich Antoniello is staying aboard and in charge and the brand will be left alone to operate independently.  Well…as independently as you can when you’re owned by Verizon Wireless and Hearst.

 

It’s the old “eating your own dog food” argument.  You’d think no one would be better at content marketing than content marketers.  Well NewsCred took a look at how well articles about content marketing have been performing and sure enough, they’re getting more attention and engagement than social feed ads or display ads do.  But Benjy Boxer reports there are lessons to be learned in the data.  If you want to grow your audience, you’re no different than anybody else.  You’re going to have to do paid distribution so get over it.  And you’d be wise to use email to push your articles, cause that really works.  When email’s the main traffic source, the average article totally outdoes other articles.  And interestingly, licensed articles outperform original content on some channels for engagement.  The thought is it takes high quality journalism to at least initially capture attention.

 

Did you know that Bob Marley was black?  Well Snapchat sure does.  Alex Heath reports they did a fun little thing that they’ve done in the past, made a lens that lets you take a selfie and overlay a filter that makes you look like Bob Marley.  They did this Wednesday to commemorate some big weed day, I’m a muscle relaxer guy myself.  Well if you are hyper tuned in to political correctness and looking for reasons to be outraged at the drop of the hat, you can already imagine what I’m going to report.  Users immediately claimed it was the digital equivalent of blackface.  You can’t portray a black person if you aren’t black, even if you love that person and are paying tribute to him.  I don’t know if portraying Bob Marley as white would have resulted in less backlash but there you go.  Snapchat worked with the Bob Marley Estate to create the lens but what do they know?  The important thing is to get mad and stay mad, as if that’s what Bob would have wanted.

 

Content Marketing Institute’s rolled out their B2B enterprise content marketing report and we get some of the numbers from Amy Gesenhues.  There’s not a lot of faith in their content marketing strategies.  74% of the content marketers have one, but only 22% think their efforts are particularly effective.  Only 35% of those that have a strategy document it, I guess the rest just kind of have it in their heads.  The most used tactics were events, videos and social.  And speaking of social, LinkedIn was the most popular social platform for B2B, with YouTube 2nd and Twitter a close 3rd.  B2B likes paid distribution and search engine marketing is their fave method of it.  58% rank it as their most effective paid distribution tactic too, then comes content discovery tools, promoted posts and social ads.  But even though they aren’t sure it’s effective, 73% of respondents said creating more engaging content is a top priority, and also understanding more what content works and what doesn’t.

 

That’s it.  You could do worse than following @mikestiles.