Podcasters would love to know if Apple is into podcasting or not.  John Herrman of the New York Times writes that even though podcasting is an industry now, Edison says 57M Americans will listen monthly this year, Apple doesn’t seem that interested.  And there’s a reason.  Apple gets nothing from podcasts.  Matt Lieber of Gimlet says ad spending on podcasts will hit hundreds of millions this year, but Apple doesn’t get a slice of that, and downloads are free, and Apple doesn’t let podcasters charge for downloads or subscriptions.  What do podcasters want from Apple?  Gina Delvac of “Call Your Girlfriend” says the lack of podcast data is shocking.  Apple gives it to app developers, but not podcasters.  And they’d like clarity on the iTunes “Top Podcast” list, a nearly do or die list run by an incredibly small team and a mysterious “Mr. Wilson.”

 

Look out YouTube, Facebook video and Vimeo.  Amazon’s ready to rumble.  They launched Amazon Video Direct, and anybody who makes videos can tap into all those ecommerce shoppers Amazon has.  Todd Spangler writes what Amazon is doing a little different is giving all those Spielbergs 4 choices in how to distribute their epics.  They can make it available to Prime Video subscribers and get a 6 or 15 cents-per-hour royalty.  They can sell it as an add-on subscription through the Streaming Partners Program.  They can offer it for rental or purchase and get half the retail price.  Or they can make it available to all Amazon customers for free with ads and get 55% of the ad revenue, which is what YouTube gives you.  Launch partners include Mattel, Baby Einstein and StyleHaul, whose Chief Content Officer Mia Goldwyn says is bringing some of its original shows, like Denise Richards’ fashion drama “Vanity”.

 

Clarabridge’s Elizabeth Clor knows most CEO’s couldn’t possibly care less about your vanity content marketing metrics.  So she gives us 4 that…well to tell you the truth, there are some CEO’s that won’t care about these either, but they put you in a better position to tell a story in which your content marketing is bringing real value to the company.  So getting on with it; number of sales-accepted leads, which is a lead the sales team has deemed worthy because they were at least able to get a meeting.  Share of voice, or how much of the conversation about your area of interest you’re capturing vs. your competitors.  Bosses loves being shown that competitors are being beaten at anything.  Branded search; which is people searching your company by name.  No, you can’t prove your content made that happen but if your share of voice is growing, a correlation can be made.  And customer sentiment, CEOs like to hear about happy customers and text analytics of comments can do that.

 

Say it with me, I am better than a robot.  If you’re a content writer, that statement is probably true.  In fact, Kerry Creaswood reassures us that with so many jobs at risk from technology and AI and robots, yours might not be one of them and gives 4 reasons why.  1: a robot can research, but it can’t be inspired, and only stuff that’s inspired can inspire people.  2: excitement about the topic shows up in the writing, and robots aren’t that excitable.  You know there’s a difference in writing stuff you have to and writing stuff you’re really into.  3: robots aren’t risk takers and thus, can’t think outside the box.  Some risk is required to make anything truly impactful.  And 4: human writers can use emotional “draws” because they’ve actually felt those emotions before.  Robots have no emotional experiences to draw on.  Apologies to those of you currently dating robots.

 

SocialTimes is telling us when people watch video, they’re likely doing it on Facebook, the preferred video source for 37%.  The Philo Media study says in fact, the whole online video thing is still in flux.  The Millennials though, still prefer YouTube over Facebook for video.  And get this, 6.8% of Gen X’ers actually prefer Twitter for their online viewing.  Twitter’s got to love to hear that #needsallthegoodnewsitcanget.  For video sharing, again Facebook comes out on top with 63%.  The study points out that if you want your video to get shared, emotional targeting is what gets it done.  Positive emotions work better than negative, and 55% say humor is the biggest motivating factor for sharing.

 

Do you Like this podcast?  Do you love it?  Do you Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry this podcast?  Those are the many faces of Facebook Reactions which was all the buzz when the 5 new options showed up at the end of February.  After 2 months, a Quintly study shows hardly anybody is using them.  They account for about 3% of interactions.  Maybe 2 months just isn’t long enough and users haven’t realized they can have other emotions now.  Or maybe people don’t want to express themselves as much as previously thought.  Of the new interactions, Mark Wilson of Betanews says Love is the most popular.  Over 76% of interactions were good ol’ Likes, 14% were shares, and a little over 7% were comments.  One kind of content gets 40% more reactions than other kinds, it’s video.  Quintly’s Alexander Peiniger says if they catch on, the new reactions can show brands how their posts are being received.

 

If you desperately want to please millennials, and I know I do, that’s why I’m growing a man bun, you get advice from the people who are doing an amazing job of it.  That would be theSkimm.  Things are going really well for them.  It’s an email newsletter that tells you what’s going on with its own distinct personality.  Sarah Buhr reports in just one and a half years they’ve hit 3.5M subscribers around the world.  If that sounds like a lot, it’s because the New York Times wishes they had that.  It’s more digital subscribers than they have.  And thousands of “Skimm’bassadors” are out there trying to win stuff by getting other people on it.  So back to how to appeal to millennials.  theSkimm founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin told Disrupt NYC you serve up digestible news that matters to that age group and be completely honest about how you advertise to them.  Weisberg says, “Looking at your phone is the new definition of ‘me time’”.

 

When you think of Spotify you probably think of music; playlists and playlists of music and video ads you can watch to get 30 minutes of commercial free music.  But now Spotify is thinking hey, let’s make videos that are content, not ads that interrupt content.  Look for 12 original series, most centered around music.  And that shouldn’t come as a surprise since they’re coming from content partnerships chief Tom Calderone, who did plenty of music based shows while he was at Viacom.  He jokes that there are videos on Spotify, but they’re buried at the bottom of the app with how to unsubscribe and the privacy policy.  Lucas Shaw reports shows will be a few minutes to 15 minutes and include things like “Landmark” about big moments in music history, Russell Simmons’ “Rush Hour” where 2 hip-hop acts must collaborate and perform, and a Tim Robbins mockumentary about a competition to be the next dance music phenom.

 

If I knew you and you were always doing awesome things, guess what I would do.  I’d want to do those same awesome things myself.  And social networks are no different.  LinkedIn has been keeping an eye on what Facebook’s been doing with Instant Articles and is acting like the droid R2MeToo.  That makes no sense, I hope I have time to edit it out.  Anyway, BuzzFeed News has reported talks are going on at LinkedIn to get a similar thing out for publishers.  Why?  Maybe it’s because Instant Articles has been working, posts with rich media that load and play so quick brands don’t seem to care the content isn’t on any of their properties.  Whiz bang like that could enhance LinkedIn’s influencer blog posts.

 

I got a $500 loan against next month’s paycheck and all I have to do is pay it back almost immediately at 36%!  Thank YOU Pay Day Loan Company!  You might keep seeing those kinds of ads on late night cable but you’re not going to see it on Google anymore.  They’re updating their AdWords terms to put in a total ban on lending products like that.  If it’s got to be paid back in 60 days or have high APR’s, Google says no AdWords for you as of July 13.  Paul Sawers reports it may be because Google just loves and wants to protect consumers, or because regulators were on their backs, because the old terms were “AdWords will only serve payday loan ads if the phrase “payday loan” or similar terms are included in the user’s query.  On the Google Display Network, they’ll be shown only on sites related to payday loans.”  Now the kibosh has been put on.  Did you know Google blocked 780M ads in 2015, up 50% from 2014 for various nefarious reasons?

That’s it.  Would a follow of @mikestiles kill ya?