Shareen Pathak interviewed an anonymous social media marketing executive who apparently believes this whole influencer marketing frenzy is, well, not so warranted.  Let’s see if you agree.  The mystery executive said once brands decided social was here to stay, the crush to make content went up, but now there’s too little quality and too many influencers.  And those influencers got too much money thrown at them too fast, so fast they don’t value their art anymore.  Are they really into the topic, or do they just want to be influencers for money?  Brands have no idea what to pay them and influencers have no idea how much to ask for.  What counts as an influencer?  At a major car brand the exec worked for, they paid $300,000 for a few photos because the CEO’s kid liked somebody.

 

When Michael Stelzner and Edison Research’s Tom Webster get together, look out, ‘cause there’s all kind of statistics about to happen.  They talked about how The Infinite Dial survey has been tracking podcasting since 2007.  2 years ago, 15% of Americans 12+ listened to a podcast in the past year.  This year it’s already surpassed 21% as it moves ever increasingly to all kinds of mainstream content featuring known stars and future stars.  In the beginning mostly tech types listened to shows about tech because they knew how to use podcasts.  Today, even though few people have in-dash entertainment systems, they’re going to the trouble of figuring out ways to listen in their cars, which Tom says is a clear sign of BIG pent-up demand for great shows.  In fact, he says look for the term podcast to not even stick around, because a pod isn’t necessarily involved and it’s not cast.  He says they’re on-demand shows, that’s what they are.  Sorry if you snagged a domain name with podcast in it.  I love this stat: the average ‘Murican listens to about 4 hours of audio a day, but not podcast listeners!  They listen to 6 hours a day.

 

For a brief period, everyone got excited when the rumor was swirling that Twitter would give up its 140-character limit.  But then the company came out and said not true, we LOVE random character limitations and will stick with what we’ve been doing.  Okay, turns out they want to give us a little more breathing room after all.  Rumblings are they soon won’t count photos and links against your character limitation.  Sarah Frier reports in Bloomberg Technology this could happen in the next couple of weeks.  Twitter, of course, will not comment.  But since they’re trying to be such a destination for live events, this is a fine way to encourage tweeters to use more media in their tweets.  Fun fact!  The limit was originally put in place because they wanted tweets to fit into mobile text messages.  Maybe necessary in 2006, but you know, that whole smartphone thing has happened now.

 

Have you heard?  Playboy’s putting its clothes on.  Wants to offer up content that’s more safe for work and on par with what other men’s magazines are doing to attract millennial dudes.  At their first NewsFront presentation, CEO Scott Flanders said, “This is the most exciting and complex brand transformation of my career.”  But he was quick to say Playmates will still be part of the picture, calling them the magazine’s “single breast brand ambassadors.”  Best!  I meant best!  Now like other publishing brands, Playboy knows video is key so they’ve got shows going up in the Lifestyle, Documentaries, Food & Spirits, Gaming, and Scripted Comedy categories.  Tim Baysinger of AdAge says it’ll be shows like a dinner party series, a show on the magazine’s editing process, “Tech 360” with blogger Jon Rettinger and model Amy Willerton visiting tech destinations, and Pamela Horton’s “Gamer Next Door” show.  To do all this, you guessed it, they’re launching their own branded content studio led by Deputy Editor Hugh Garvey.

 

My how time flies.  If you need any other clichés you keep listening and I’ll keep ‘em coming.  But yeah, we’re not that far away from being halfway through 2016.  Given that, what have we seen happening in content marketing so far this year?  Craig Zingerline lists some of them.  It’s not a fad, people want shorter and they want visual.  It’s estimated 84% of content will be visual by 2018.  People are getting immune to tons of content coming at them, so it better get personalized and relevant.  Interactive content is rising because passive content struggles.  Demand Metric says interactive is 2-3X more effective than static content for lead gen, engagement and conversion.  Mobile-first.  Stop fighting it and just do mobile first.  And budgets are going up.  CMI says 51% of marketers will increase content budgets over 2015.

 

I’m going to tell you somebody else is opening a branded content studio and you won’t be shocked a bit.  It’s A&E Networks.  You know, they’ve got A&E, Lifetime, History, and a bit of Viceland.  So this place will be called 45th & Dean, will be in Brooklyn, and will open this fall.  Jeanine Poggi writes the studio will be quote – hyper-focused on content creation, distribution, measurement and audience development for A&E’s channels and their branded content partners.  Whenever you hear a studio will be hyper-focused, but then hear a list of 6 or 7 things they’ll be hyper-focusing on, doesn’t feel right does it?  But it’ll be run by pros, Paul Greenberg will head it up while he keeps doing his job as GM of FYI Network, Shannon King is SVP-content partnerships and social, and Todd Pellegrino is SVP-video content.  This content will be data-driven too because A&E has new data products called A&E Precision.  Dog the Bounty Hunter could soon be selling your deodorant!

 

Lucky you, you lucky marketer you.  SocialTimes says video ads are available now through the Facebook Audience Network.  Your ads can be in-stream or in-article, and can run before, during or after videos on 3rd-party apps and sites, be they on desktop or mobile.  If you put it in an article, the video will show up between paragraphs and auto-play once at least half the pixels are there.  Users have to make sound happen though.  All you’ve got to do is make sure Audience Network is checked in the placement section when you’re making your ads.  First place you’ll see them is Instant Articles.  Why would you want to be on The Audience Network’s third-party apps and sites?  Maybe because they make up almost 6% of the total time spent on US mobile apps.  With the announcement, Facebook says advertisers that opt in to the Audience Network can get around 10% more incremental reach than if they just used the mobile News Feed.  Mobile News Feed, so passe.

 

3 French anti-racism associations are not happy with Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.  They’re so unhappy they’re filing legal complaints against them for not removing “hateful” content on their platforms.  As a matter of fact, it is the law of all of France that websites have to remove racist or homophobic material tout suite!  Wait, is doing a French accent racist?  What about asking that question?  Is asking questions about what’s racist racist?  Am I descending into a spiral of hate?!  VentureBeat reports the groups, who must be incredibly avid social media consumers, found, documented, and reported 586 bits of content they didn’t like in just a little over a month.  Twitter removed 4%, YouTube 7% and Facebook took down 34%.  The president of one of the groups said, “In light of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook’s profits and how little taxes they pay, their refusal to invest in the fight against hate is unacceptable!”  You know it’s really hateful to be the president of anything, because that makes all non-presidents feel bad.

 

That’s it.  Let’s do the follow thing @mikestiles.