This week on the Content Marketing Quickie, something a little different, a little special.  My takeaways from this year’s Content Marketing World 2016 in Cleveland.  Some of it was stuff I learned, some of it was stuff I knew but needed to be reminded of.  Let’s see if any of this will provoke your thoughts.

I had a chance to chat with Content Marketing Emperor of the Galaxy Joe Pulizzi and expressed my appreciation for his calling out that after banging the drum for 6 years, only 20% of organizations are fully committed to this content marketing thing.  And a lot of what is being done is just the making of more marketing assets, not audience building and storytelling.  And because he believes lame content hurts your brand worse than doing nothing at all, he’s calling on marketers to get in or get out.  Stop saying you do content marketing and just go do interruptive ads and admit that’s all you’re willing to do.  Much needed tough love.

Lego’s Lars Silberbauer, whether he realized it or not, said something kinda profound that speaks to how we view our products vs. how we view and do our marketing.  He said Lego is just a brick.  That’s the product.  It’s a fine product.  But it’s the imagination put into those bricks and the content made around and using those bricks that makes Lego what it is.  So if you have a decent product but you’re not putting any story or imagination into it, your product is probably just sitting there like a brick.

Andy Crestodina made me take a lot of notes.  He said the stuff we’re making, it’s mostly not working.  75% of articles have zero external links and 50% get 2 or fewer interactions.  Another truth you should probably accept, a mere 1% of people on the internet actually make the internet.  Everybody else just lurks and consumes content.  So you have to target the other makers with your content if you want your stuff actually shared.  That makes so much sense, but that’s a tough and jaded audience.  I know, because you guys never share or tell anybody about this podcast.  Well I’m not emotionally crippled yet, because Andy gave us the two kinds of content that work.  1. Original research, studies, survey results.  The sharing audience likes sharing that.  2. Strong opinion, which is super rare out there.  We’re all trying to be so careful and it’s incredibly boring.

Got some good “contextual marketing to mobile” advice from Rebecca Lieb, who says content is getting increasingly visual and abbreviated.  And buyer decisions are broken up into multiple micro-moments of info-gathering and question-asking.  So the question I’m asking that might make you shiver is, “Can your brand be THE answer-provider in a one question/one answer consumer future?”  Rebecca says contextual takes all of the following into its makeup: thing, place, time, history, conditions and the individual.  You know how your bosses are always screaming for ROI?  Context might be your path to pursue.  No less than the engineer responsible for Amazon Echo and Disney Magic Bands says the more context there is, the more ROI there’s going to be.

CMI’s Robert Rose is also aware many of us are struggling.  Only 36% of content marketers feel like they’re being effective against senior leadership’s arguments against content marketing: costs more than ads, too slow, takes too long, can’t tie it to revenue, etc.  But those guys are trying to fit the old things into new forms.  Content marketing is about the audience.  That’s its value, not another widget sold.  And when you build an audience, you acquire knowledge of them that gives the business super-powers to optimize all their marketing.  To build that valuable audience, work backward from the customer experience you want.  Adobe’s CMO.com is an experience for corporate marketers worth subscribing to.  In return, Adobe’s gathered incredibly valuable intel about that target audience.

Once we got past his threat to show us Irish folk dancing, RazorSocial’s Ian Cleary gave us the steps to conversion.  You know, in case you do want to sell a widget.  First you build that social audience, but it should be a relevant, active audience.  Next you build the relationship with them.  You build it with citizen influencers using content.  You build it with power influencers one-on-one by promoting them.  Transactions rarely happen on social so now you’ve got to drive inbound traffic with links in your content.  Obsess over building your email subscriber list.  Also build a retargeting list of site visitors that didn’t opt in and hit ‘em with interactive content.  To help with all of this process, map out your funnel with a yes or no journey chart.

What, you think I’d go to Content Marketing World and skip the session on podcasting?  The only and one Jay Baer conversed about that subject with Mirum’s Mitch Joel and what stuck out was how different their podcasts are, and how differently they approach producing them, hosting them, distributing and promoting them.  And that’s the point right?  Podcasting is so creatively liberating and the topics and methods so diverse, the opportunities for brands are wide open.  Did you know more people listen to podcasts than use Twitter in the United States?  You do now.  But how much does your company focus on Twitter compared to how much it works on its podcast?  Oh, it doesn’t have a podcast?  Well that’s smart seeing as how the average podcast listener listens to 5 podcasts per week, it’s a lean-in format, it gives you a niche & relevant audience, and listeners build trusting relationships with hosts.  Who would want all that?

I spent half a day listening to Andrew Davis in a special session so imagine how relieved I was that he was really good.  He says don’t sell, inspire demand.  If you sell, you’re skipping critical parts of the funnel.  His focus is on creating moments of inspiration, which then lead to questions that start the active evaluation.  Way too many of us focus on the end stage of that evaluation, where frankly, most of the decision has already been made; driven by emotion by the way, not the logical selling points we love to push.  Moments of inspiration send people, using content, on a journey they didn’t expect to go on.  And here’s something that will turn you sideways; if you try to execute that on your site, you’re asking way too much of the user.  Andrew says don’t create branded content.  Create content brands, audience-first propositions that happen to be “brought to you by” the brand.

Lastly, shout-outs to reunions I had with former Vitrue and Oracle Social colleagues Paul Broft of Atomized, Jack Newton at Manhattan Associates and the inimitable Jill Rowley with Affinio.  It was great seeing you and I’m sure you’ll agree I haven’t aged a bit.

That’s it.  Follow my smart alec marketing remarks @mikestiles.

Why are some brands doing podcasts?  And why are the brands who aren’t, aren’t?  Little up and comers like Netflix, GE, State Farm and eBay, see it as a great lean-in, engagement play.  Lauren Johnson writes that listening to a podcast requires attention.  eBay just finished one with Gimlet Media, “Open for Business,” that hit #1 for business podcasts on iTunes.  eBay’s Annie Lupardus said, “We wanted to use a light touch with the eBay integration to ensure people didn’t feel they were listening to an ad, but stipulated there be one connection to the brand per episode.”  Companies like Gimlet can offer cross promote on their existing hit podcasts, which is nice.  Now on to why brands won’t talk about podcasting.  They’re expensive to do consistently…at least if you’re having a big podcast company do it.  Sometimes it runs 6 figures.  Zowie, you should email me at Brand Content Studios if you think that’s wildly too pricey.  And, the metrics aren’t as thorough yet as they are for awesome tactics like pop-up interruptive display ads.

If your social media strategy is aimed at pissing people off and getting everyone to unfollow you, I’m about to tell you how to get that done.  You’re welcome.  Sprout Social asked users what they think about how you brands are doing your posting.  The thing that annoys them most is when you post too much promotional content.  You’re probably calling that content but they’re ads and the public knows it.  Kimberlee Morrison reports 40% don’t like it when you use slang or jargon, they know you’re not that cool.  However, 34% don’t like it if your brand has no personality.  And if you use humor, you better actually be funny.  32% don’t like forced humor.  Oh, too many promo messages was also the top reason users unfollow a brand.  And you know, sometimes life’s not fair.  Utility brands were ranked 3rd worst for responding to social contacts, but they actually performed the best.

How about some actual actionable info in the ol’ Content Marketing Quickie?  Mohammad Farooq shared 5 ways to beef up your YouTube videos.  1: Add a watermark that keeps your brand visible and whose clicks can be tracked in YouTube Analytics.  2: Use cues to point to your call to action; arrows, people pointing, whatever.  3: Add keywords to titles, tags, and descriptions.  In the title, tell me the benefits of watching the video.  4: Add annotations that might urge viewers to watch more or subscribe.  And 5: Add subtitles and closed captions to reach a wider audience.  YouTube’s got auto-subtitles or closed captioning, but you can make your own inside of YouTube.

You’re going to get this whole SEO thing figured out for content marketing, again, and you know what’s going to happen, again?  Google’s going to change the way it determines search results and you’re oh-so-clever SEO strategy gets greased.  Meet Google’s RankBrain, which as of October 2015 was already using artificial intelligence to handle 15% of searches.  What should you be doing about that?  Chris Flores passes on Google’s advice that the more you focus your content on actually answering people’s needs and questions and quit trying to game the search system, the better off you’ll be.  Didit.com’s Steve Baldwin says Rank Brain uses co-occurrence to deliver the most relevant results.  That means insert keywords naturally – no stuffing, use synonyms, and have the content answer questions because content that reads naturally will get more Google love.

Julia McCoy has some stats for us, stats that remove any shadows of any doubts we’re in the right field with this content marketing thing.  200M people use ad blockers, so great content is the way.  The people doing content marketing right have 7.8x more site traffic than others, proving that if that’s your metric, it works.  The IBM Digital Experience Survey says 56% of marketers think personalized content gets higher engagement rates and higher recall.  People spend an average 37 seconds on articles, so yes they do read past the headlines.  Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but creates over 3x as many leads.  That one doesn’t even need expounding.  And CampaignMonitor says for every dollar spent, email gives back $38 in ROI and gives you the broadest reach…a fine channel for great content.

You know that song “People, people who need people”?  Barbra Streisand sang it.  She was a singer that came before Sia.  Anyway Facebook doesn’t need people.  At least not to write the descriptions and summaries for Trending topics.  From now on you’ll get a list, and the summary, if any, you get when you hover will come from algorithms pulling in excerpts from the stories.  SocialTimes says the list of trends will be different for everybody, depending on things like pages you’ve liked, where you are, what trends you clicked before, and what topics are doing well overall.  Trends like just how much longer is Kanye going to talk on the VMA’s?  But don’t worry, it’s people that will continue to make sure trends make a reasonable amount of sense.

If people want to run your video ad before their videos are shown, why shouldn’t they be able to?  You’ll be happy to know Twitter feels the same way.  Venturebeat tells us their Amplify Publisher program now supports pre-roll ads in videos.  People upload their video, then before they tweet, they can check a box saying they’re okay with pre-roll ads.  The financial split will be a fairly industry standard 70/30, 70 going to the video creator.  They also have a non-exclusivity arrangement, which means if someone uploads a video to Twitter, they can also upload and make money off it on other platforms.  Advertisers like being able to tightly target their video ads.  So really the only people left unhappy are those viewers that absolutely despise pre-roll video ads, like me.  Very few people care if I’m happy.

GoPro, those cameras are so cool.  I know I always use them when I’m balancing my BMX bike on a surfboard as I go over waterfalls and land on the wing of a plane in flight.  But CEO Nick Woodman is looking beyond the hardware of the cameras and thinking, like the rest of us, about content.  They’ve got plenty of it.  They’ve got branded content partnerships with brands like Ford.  They license content to customers like Royal Caribbean and Airbnb.  And their YouTube channel has an envious 1.25B views.  What else could they want?  Janko Roettgers writes they plan to debut 32 short-form shows.  GoPro’s 200-person entertainment unit is producing them, led by Ocean MacAdams, who’s been at MTV and Warner Music.  Want to be famous and work for them?  They’re going to use their content pool to discover the best GoPro’ers who will then be used to make more shows.

That’s it.  Follows are like Christmas @mikestiles.

So where to you put the most important part of your brand messaging in your video ads?  You might not have had any guidance about that in the past but now you will.  Twitter and IPG Media Lab did a study all about memorability and recall of Twitter video ads.  Okay the short answer as reported in SocialTimes is put the best messaging up front.  Branding above videos before what’s called the “viewability timer” kicks in makes a strong impression at low levels of viewing.  IPG Media Lab SVP Kara Manatt said, “We were struck by how valuable the impact of front-loading your branding and messaging can be.”  And know this, about half of Twitter users recalled video ads after seeing just one second.  The 3-second mark, however, is critical because recall jumped 13% between 1 and 3 seconds.

You know what a great idea it is that there’s no sound when you’re scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed and come across videos unless you click to get the sound?  Yeah well Facebook might be in the business of getting rid of good ideas, because Ariel Bogel in Australia says they’re running a test down there in which that sound kicks right on in the mobile app.  They want to see just how much users hate that and just how many awkward situations it creates in public.  Automatic sound on video includes ads and Facebook Live.  Now if that’s too embarrassing for you there are two ways to stop the sound.  Leave the sound off on your device.  Or you can turn the sound to “always off” in settings.  But why are they testing this to begin with?  Facebook’s own research learned 80% of people react negatively when mobile video ads play without warning.

Frederic Lardinois tells us that Google, you know Alphabet’s Google, is switching a couple of things up.  One change makes decent enough sense, and the other one is simply awesome unless you’re a slimeball shady marketing weasel.  One, they’re getting rid of the “mobile-friendly” label in mobile search results because, well, 85% of resulting pages ARE mobile friendly, so label was just clutter.  Second, if your site has intrusive popup interstitials with microscopic close buttons that make it annoying to get to the content, Google will punish you with lower rankings.  They already do that to app install ads, the point being to reduce accidental or deceitful ad clicking.  If your pop-up and over is for login or legal requirements, they won’t spank you.

Nothing looks better than a good piece of stock photography.  A carefully diverse group of executives wearing 80’s business attire pretending to talk on phones or pointing to a graph.  That kind of stuff is irresistible to website users.  Well Dr. Janet Bastiman poses the poser, what if you could write a text description of what you need, and a computer generated photo depicting what you described is cranked out?  They’ve had some success with super small images, 40% of the time test subjects couldn’t tell it was made by a computer.  Now they’re working on more complex and bigger such pictures.  Anyway, until robots can make our pictures, Dr. Janet says think UGC.  Using on-open live UGC in email has been known to return a 43% CTR increase and up to 3x improvement in conversion rate.  Plus, it’s 50% more trusted than the 80’s people pointing at things.

When we talk about content marketing, most of the time we’re talking about making stuff for the public or consumers.  But how much effort have you put into making stuff for your sales team?  Ohhh, I hear what you’re saying, you’re making plenty of stuff but the salespeople won’t use it.  In fact, official estimates are that 60 to 90% of content goes unused by sales.  How do you convince them to use it to cultivate relationships?  Samantha Owens Pyle of Green Apple Strategy suggests some ways to do that.  Send downloadable content to a stalled decision-maker.  Blast it to existing clients to remind them of you.  Print it and include it with seminar or workshop materials.  Send it as a follow-up to a conference call.  And/or use it to arm your internal champion at the prospect company.

NPR, that stand for National Public Radio you know.  It’s the people’s radio!  Except for they don’t really want to hear from you anymore.  Okay that’s an extreme exaggeration and not true.  But they are shutting off public commenting on its website.  And let’s face it, they’re hardly the only media outlet that’s done that.  You people just can’t resist hiding behind a pseudonym and writing things that would not make your mother proud, even if she is in prison.  Michelle Manafy reports NPR will focus the interactions on social, and will support their journalists in using their social accounts.  NPR’s Elizabeth Jensen says sites that still allow comments spend a lot on moderation tools.  And they make you be a registered user using your real name, like my real name of Rutherford B. Hayes.

Are you ready for the new YouTube?  You’re indifferent?  Okay well you should at least know what it looks like.  It’s an update to the YouTube TV app and the rhyme and reason is to make it a better experience on that big screen in the living room/den/Big TV room.  Sarah Perez reports that mostly, it’s about where categories are.  Forget that side thingy, high level categories like News and Trending are at the top now with subcategories below.  Why?  Because you use YouTube differently on TV than on desktop or mobile.  On those last two things you’re probably going right to a video that was shared or posted somewhere.  On big TV, you’re chillin, you’re bingin’, you’re in Netflix mode.  So the YouTube TV update is about browsing around and discovering things to watch.  There are also new sections for live streams and 4K content.

Sensor Tower, it’s an application store optimization company, puts out on a fairly regular basis the Ad Intelligence Digest.  It takes intelligence about ads and digests it.  For the purposes of this story, let’s look at what they found out about Instagram advertising.  You know the pretty pictures and filters app started supporting longer videos and marketers went yay!  The average length of a video ad on it went up to 25 seconds.  In fact, video is increasingly the darling of Instagram advertising.  26% of its total ads were video ads.  That’s a jump of 23% just since January.  Brandy Shaul goes on to report some fun facts about app install ads too.  That kind of ad made up 26% of all Instagram ad impressions, the rest is trying to send people somewhere on the web.

Hey would a Twitter follow kill ya?  @mikestiles

So here I am, I’m YouTube, I’m the biggest, most well-known video platform out there and people watch me all day and all night.  So you can imagine how pissed off I’d be to hear that when it comes to digital video ad campaigns, 65% of marketers actually prefer social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat.  The study by Trusted Media Brands shows it wasn’t even close, the social networks win by about 10 percentage points.  The ad method that will likely see the biggest investment over the next year is, you’ll like this, branded content.  In-video banner ads and pre- and post-video ads are falling out of favor.  C’mooon Skip This button!  Business Insider reports a lot of people are very interested in live-streaming video advertising too, especially on Facebook.

Well, I just won a Content Marketing Award for best podcast.  That, of course, is a lie.  And Mark May and the people at Citi just finished a study that says you probably didn’t much appreciate being lied to.  They found 48% of US internet users felt deceived by clicking on a commercial they thought was news or commentary.  Now in my defense, I didn’t deceive you, I just blatantly lied to you.  If you play people for fools or trick them, odds are good they won’t think highly of your brand.  But writer Myles Udland wonders about the 32% who didn’t feel deceived.  Were they so happy with the ad they were tricked into that they bought something?  20% said they didn’t know if they felt deceived.  How can you be that out of touch with your feelings?  I don’t know what I think and I don’t know how I feel.

Getting your content shared might be the goal for some of your campaigns, so listen to what Fractl and BuzzSumo’s study of the most social-shared articles from December 2015 to June 2016 turned up.  First of all, it’s getting ridiculous how dominant Facebook is for sharing.  It has 90.2% of all social sharing.  In 2nd place is Twitter waaay back at 6.1%.  Facebook had a little over 81% last year so as ridiculously dominant as it is, it’s getting even more-so.  Twitter fell 29.1% and LinkedIn surpassed Google+ and Pinterest.  The other thing they did is use MeaningCloud to check the sentiment of the content getting shared.  Bottom line, it’s content that evokes positive emotions that get spread like a lovely, desirable infection.  Less than 8% of shared content was negative, and Twitter seems to have almost twice as much of that as Facebook.  #everythingsux

Sharing is important.  In fact, go share the fact that sharing is important.  So as mobile usage continues to grow and eat the world, you might want to know how to make your stuff as shareable as possible on mobile devices.  That’s exactly what Dan Steiner wrote about.  First, how does your content even look and work on mobile?  If it’s lousy your chances of getting shared are super close to nil.  Nil is bad.  Second, ShareThis learned people are 3x more likely to share on their iPhone than desktop, so make it amazingly obvious and easy to do so.  Next, pop down the pop-ups on mobile.  Don’t do it.  They slow page load, interrupt the content, and make people angry.  Fourth, make sure you invite people who use social logins to follow or like you to secure that connection.  And lastly, put shareable content on platforms made for mobile like Instagram and Snapchat.

Polar rolled out their global look at how branded content performed in Q2, and now here come the results right to your eagerly awaiting ears.  Click-through rates, meh.  It stayed about the same at .31%.  CTRs were highest on tablets for whatever reason.  Time spent with branded content was an average of 2:36, with the US spending the most time.  But there sure are more people making stuff and more people watching stuff.  Tobi Elkin writes the number of creatives went up 111% and views of branded content went up over 2.2x.  But pay attention to this; 40% and rising of branded content views now happen on mobile and tablet.  But those two also see lower time spent than desktop.  So Polar’s Greg Bella says that means you need to focus on making your content more “snack-sized.”

Remember when Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire shooting a Pepsi commercial?  You might be too young to remember that but it was probably the least weird thing about Michael Jackson.  Well now Pepsi’s the launch partner for a new Twitter ad option, promoted stickers!  Twitter’s Ilya Brown said Twitter debuted stickers in July and now brands can jump aboard.  So Pepsi kicked it off with 50 stickers as part of its PepsiMoji campaign.  David Cohen writes brands should like it because their stickers get shared with users’ followers authentically.  And the stickers are a visual hashtag so if a follower taps the sticker, they’ll see more Pepsi stickered photos and the brand will see them.  And then my God the amount of Pepsi that will get drunk!  If one is to believe Twitter COO Adam Bain, #Stickers have already been a big hit with tweeterers.

Well the news doesn’t get any better for Google+.  After September 12, Google+ Hangouts on Air will no longer be available.  Emil Protalinski writes that Google made that announcement as quietly as they could, but here I am telling you about it, so it wasn’t that quiet.  It’s not like it should come as a shock.  Google has been uncoupling its services from any Google+ requirement since summer of last year, so now they’re doing the same to Hangouts on Air.  Two things to know; Hangouts on Air will still exist, it just won’t be attached to G+.  You can’t use it to schedule new Hangouts On Air.  The 2nd thing is that even though it will still exist, Google wants you to use YouTube Live from now on, which Google rolled out just one year after they made Hangouts On Air available to everyone.

Introducing, for the first time ever, so that you can stop holding your breath now, it’s video ads on Pinterest!  They’re called Promoted Video ads are video ads and what makes them Pinteresting is they have featured pins in them so hopefully viewers will do something after seeing the videos.  Millward Brown studied the new ad unit’s performance and found they delivered “significant brand lift metrics” across several verticals and were 4x more memorable than ads without videos.  Guinea pigs included the movie The Secret Life of Pets, and Old El Paso.  Old El Paso’s Meredith Schaffner said, “Our customers come to Pinterest with high intent, and the ability to show a recipe and our products through video is a unique opportunity.”  Pinterest’s Mike Bidgoli said now the 67% who say Pinterest videos make them want to take action can click and start doing just that with brands’ products and services.

That’s it.  Make me a hotshot on Twitter @mikestiles.

The greatest thing in the world is the way advertisers can super narrow target campaigns on Facebook, right?  It’s so “greatest” that the narrower the targeting, the more of a premium Facebook places on that ad product.  Well hold the phone, actually hold the toothpaste.  The Wall Street Journal’s Sharon Terlep reports Procter & Gamble, who spends more than anybody, says they just don’t think it’s that effective for them and they’re backing away from it.  Am we on the Bizarro planet?  Nope.  Think about it.  As Ace Metrix’s Peter Daboll says, “If you could run an ad and reach a million people or run a targeted ad to reach 5,000, you have to have pretty impressive returns on that 5,000 to make it worth it.”  P&G’s CMO Marc Pritchard says they took Facebook targeting too far.  But they, and others, will still use narrow targeting when it makes sense.  But if you’re big, you gotta market big.

It’s quite the existential crisis when you email someone then never hear back from them.  Why that could rattle a guy’s self-esteem.  As marketers maybe we shouldn’t take offense, because Return Path says only 79% of legitimate commercial emails ever even make it to their recipient.  The rest go to spam folders or get blocked.  I guess the good news is, that rate isn’t any worse than 2015.  But it’s not any better either.  eContent reports that the US experienced inbox placement 6 points lower than the average.  Things are much brighter email-wise in Australia and the UK.  They had the highest inbox successes at 90 and 88%.

You know what you do, but what else could you be doing in the content marketing space?  Dawn Papandrea talked to some thought leaders and wrote about 4 uncommon roles that might need filling.  They are Social Journalist; traditional journalists who know how to do content with brand context and know social distribution.  Crowd Developer; to run a super focus group of passionate customers that can guide brands.  Lisa Bialecki at Rust-Oleum Group says, “We want to use a crowd to help us make better, more relevant products.”  Growth Hacker/Data Scientist; somebody who can look at different data and recommend what to do based on it.  And Visual Storyteller, a master or mastress of SlideShare, video, infographics, and whatever else comes like VR and AR.

Haven’t you always wanted to be able to encourage people to share your content by rewarding them in some way?  Twitter’s hooking you up.  They’ve got this new ad format, called Conversational Ads, that will let you do that.  Of course all this in Beta, but NetImperative says brands like Coke, Marvel, AMC and Axe body spray (you can never put enough of that on you know) are trying it out.  There’s a call to action button in the ad that gives the user a pre-written tweet from the brand the user can then personalize to share.  That’s when the gated content goodies come out.  What this is all about is getting more engagement at no extra cost because organic posts are being generated.  Twitter’s claiming 34% engagement lift so far in the beta.

More evidence that those podcast listeners are the kind of people advertisers want to reach.  the7stars agency did a survey of 2,000 people in the UK and discovered why they listen and where and how they generally felt about it.  Helen Leggatt writes that most thought podcasts are a nice change of pace from listening to music.  Almost as many said they listen to expand their knowledge.  That’s why you listen to this one, right genius?  You might assume most listening happens in the car or at the gym, but 95% listened at home.  And 73% consider it time well spent.  Almost two-thirds don’t mind ads in podcasts at all, which dovetails nicely with what Hernan Lopez & the peoples at Wondery found: podcast listeners found ads to be less intrusive there than in other digital formats.

Facebook has an interesting approach to ad blocking.  Well, they’ve got an approach, we’ll have to see how interesting it is.  If you think you’re Clever McCleverson and have ad blocking software, it’s not going to work for you anymore when you’re on Facebook on desktop.  Instead, VP Ads and Business Platform Andrew Bosworth says it’s going to be power to the people.  They’ll start showing ads whether you’ve got ad blocking or not, but…they’re going to let us have more input into the ads that we see.  They found out the top reason people use ad blockers is that ads are disruptive.  They figure if they’re around your interests, they’re not.  SocialTimes reports you can now go in and get rid of interests in your ad preferences so you’ll never see ads based on those interests again.  So what if I liked Caitlyn Jenner’s page?  I don’t want any more ads for man-size panties.  You can block specific businesses and organizations too.

So how is LinkedIn doing…really?  They’re okay, with a bit of a caveat.  Q2 earnings were $933M, that’s more than I made.  And they have 450M members, nothing to snort at.  However, out of that 450M, only 106M, just 25% of them, go on the platform at least monthly.  No wonder nobody ever answers my messages there.  VentureBeat writes that the overall number of users is up, up 18% from last year.  But that regular monthly users number is flat.  Really flat.  Been flat since Q2 of 2015, having seemingly topped out at that 25% area.  Apparently there’s not enough to do there for people who aren’t actively seeking jobs, or workers.  Sure enough LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions bring in the most dough, followed by their marketing solutions and premium subscriptions.

I might mysteriously disappear after I tell you this story.  See, the Olympics are going on.  You are watching right?  Because if you aren’t, you’re killing NBC.  Anyway, people pay a lot of money for Olympic sponsorships and that means the International Olympic Committee and the US Olympic Committee do not want us mentioning the Olympics in social or content marketing if we aren’t sponsors.  Armando Roggio runs down what we can’t do.  Use words or phrases like Olympic, Olympian, Paralympic, Rio 2016, Road to Rio, or similar.  Use the word Olympic in other words, like podcastolympics.  Use any Olympic words in hashtags like #TeamUSA.  Use any Olympic logos or photos taken at the Olympics.  Name Olympic athletes, even to wish them luck.  Describe Olympic results or say who won a medal.  If you’ve already done that, you might better go into hiding.

Keep the follows coming @mikestiles.