View Details

I enjoy thinking about the future of Ad Tech... but it's more fun as a group sport... I was fortunate that AdStage's JD Prater agreed to join me on a one hour journey into the future.

View Details

I enjoy thinking about the future of Ad Tech… but it’s more fun as a group sport.

I was fortunate that AdStage’s JD Prater agreed to join me on a journey into the future. As head of Growth Marketing for AdStage he keeps focused on every trend and every bit of breaking PPC news…

We talked about:

1. Digital Billboard ads that might target just a single person,
2. Why limited inventory insures it’s in Facebook’s interest be a great “match maker” for advertisers and users
3. How interactive voice based ads might work “Hey Google…,”
4. Speculate about Amazon’s future, how well they play with other ad networks (and their billion dollar net income from advertising),
5. What it means if we all literally owned all the data that was captured (and enhanced) while tracking us,
6. My notion that the future of ad tech is more reward ads,
7. How Facebook Analytics allows attribution of Reactions (like, love, etc.) right into eCom sales funnels
8. How the lose of Net Neutrality might drive update of lightweight HTML like AMP & Facebook Instant Articles
9. and much much more!

JD Prater, Head of Growth Marketing at AdStage. If you don’t know JD, you probably should — even if you are not someone who is buying ads online —

“JD Prater is the Head of Customer Acquisition and Growth Marketing at AdStage. He’s a performance marketer and digital media strategist with a passion for organizing data into actionable stories. His expertise is in crafting marketing strategies and campaigns that drive acquisition, retention, and engagement across the customer lifecycle.

AWARDS

– 2017 Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts

– 2016 Landy Awards Finalist for Best Mobile Search Marketing Initiative — SEM

– 2016 Hero Conf – Most Innovative Session

CONFERENCE SPEAKER

– Hero Conf London 2017

– eMetrics Chicago 2017

– Hero Conf 2016 London

– Salt Lake City Digital Marketing Conference

– Hero Conf 2016 Philly

– Adworld Experience (Italy)

– PPC Hero Live Summit”

Links:

JD Prater (Twitter)

Personal Data.io (Paul Dehaye‘s company)

Is Advertising Dead? Wired 1994

The PPC Show (podcast)

AdStage’s Blog

Transcript

(00:00:01.0)

(00:00:28.5)

Harry Hawk:

Hello, this is Harry Hawk, and this is Talking About Everything, and today we’re talking about the future of Ad Tech with JD Prater. JD, welcome to the show.

(00:00:39.7) JD Prater:

Hey, thanks, Harry, for having me on.

(00:00:41.1) Harry Hawk:

We’re talking about Ad Tech. You’re with AdStage. What makes you sort of interested in the future of Ad Tech?

(00:00:50.2) JD Prater:

I’ll give you two-folds. For me, I’ve been in marketing now for quite a while. I’ve had a really fun time with a lot of the advertising side of marketing, more specifically. I don’t know. It’s one of those things where you can immediately get some kind of immediate result, so I launch something and I get a result, and that becomes really addictive, and that’s something that I really like about advertising, whenever you’re putting out different messages or different ads or you’re testing…that, for me, is kind of my personality as a kind of a performance type of marketer, and for AdStage, AdStage is really trying to help people like me, and that’s really trying to connect marketers to the data that they need to understand performance, to understand insights, and really draw them out in order to take action that they need.

(00:01:35.4)

We’ve got a reporting solution, we’ve got an automation solution, and then we also have our API solution, if you just want it shipped into your own database.

(00:01:45.3) Harry Hawk:

It really gets to something we were sharing in email about, you know, my own vision for the future of AdTech, at the time, in the ’90s, thinking more about TV, but this sort of master station where a marketer, a buyer, or a planner, somebody can just sort of be there and start spinning up ads and seeing results and checking marketing databases, and that seems like a lot of what you just described.

(00:02:11.5) JD Prater:

It seems like you had the vision a while ago, but I mean I think we’re slowly able to kind of piece all that together. I think that was one of the things, you know, as a younger company, at just over 5 and 1/2 years old, it took us a little bit to kind of figure out where the market was going, where it was headed to get the engineering resource that you need to build out this product. Now, I feel really good about where we’re headed, going into 2018.

(00:02:36.1) Harry Hawk:

Is there a weather report, so to speak, like Moz is famous for their SEO weather report, and actually they just did a…released a survey where you showed, you know, from Q1 to Q3, I think there’s about a 43 or 45 percent increase in CPM class, because I think that’s some real critical information.

(00:02:58.2) JD Prater:

You aren’t the only one. So, literally, we just had a hack-a-thon, and this is within AdStage internal teams, and 2 of the 6 teams actually tackled that exact same pain point that you just said. What they were…kind of the gist of it was how do we take this, these benchmark datas, these trends, and put them into maybe like a reporting tool and actually show you how you are performing next to advertisers similar to you, so you can kind of get the trends of where that data’s going. So, yeah, that’s kind of the weather report, if you will. I actually really like that idea of visualizing it that way. Who knows, maybe in the future there will be an advertiser weather report very similar to what Moz is doing.

(00:03:40.3) Harry Hawk:

I love talking about the future and I really want to dive into it. I hate talking about the specific future. I love talking about multiple futures, a technique called scenario planning. Are you familiar with that at all?

(00:03:53.2) JD Prater: Not specifically. Go ahead and give me a primer.

(00:03:55.9) Harry Hawk:

Sort of like the multi-worlds theory in physics, where there’s multiple futures and there’s a few set things that have to be the same in all of them. So, if you’re watching Marvel or DC Comics, you know, it’s some of the characters, as you go from world to world, somehow look the same, but in our world it’s real certain things like the sun’s going to rise, uncertain, you may not see it. Each scenario plays off…it’s not just good and bad, but just different flavors. Each scenario has to have those same foundational elements.

(00:04:30.4)

Perhaps there’s going to be advertising, but one future might say, you know, there’s going to be less advertising, and some other future might say there’s going to be a ton more and so forth, and not that I have a set plan for us today…I want to think about the alternatives of…talk about the alternatives of 5, 10, 15 years in the future. We can go as far out as we want, because I took a look at your bio. You’ve bought ads, you’re a marketer, and so you understand, clearly, what’s at stake. I think…the thing I guess I want to talk about the most, isn’t this all just going away and AIs just, you know, lose our buying to an AI?

(00:05:11.0) JD Prater:

I don’t think that is too far off. So, essentially, that can still be 5 years away, but 10, 15, definitely possibilities. I mean let’s just break down even the last year, looking at Facebook specifically, and I want to use them as an example. So, they just kind of released this campaign optimization for your budget, to where you give the budget to a campaign, let’s say a hundred bucks. It doesn’t matter what ad sets you put underneath it. It’s going to prioritize that spend of all the ad sets underneath it to get you the best performance.

(00:05:40.3)

So, that’s almost optimizing your budget for you. You don’t have to worry about that, which also means you probably have your auto bid on, so you’re giving Facebook the power to then pick your bid. They also launched this ad creation and testing to where you can give it the inputs, which I really think is the key with us moving forward with AI is controlling the inputs, let them control the outputs. They can create 62 hundred ads for you in the snap of a finger, understand the testing, and they also own your audiences, pretty much, with these like lookalike audiences.

(00:06:11.5) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:06:11.5) JD Prater:

So, they own the budget, the bid, the creation, and the audience. The only thing you’re really giving it is the inputs of what you’re trying to do.

(00:06:20.1) Harry Hawk:

That creative planning tool, is that just in beta now, or is it…?

(00:06:24.1) JD Prater: So, the ad creation aspect, it’s available on certain objectives. So it’s out, and what you’ll end up doing is giving it like 5 headlines, 5 descriptions, 5 like textboxes, and then I think 10 different images or 10 different videos.

(00:06:37.9) Harry Hawk:

Wow.

(00:06:38.8) JD Prater:

So, I think those numbers equal 30, and then all the permutations that they can create equals like 62 hundred, and so you’ll see that rolling out.

(00:06:46.6) Harry Hawk: Do you know what objectives?

(00:06:48.5) JD Prater:

I believe like trafficking conversion, for sure, on those two, but you know if you’re like maybe like boosting a post or trying to get engagement, it’s probably not going to be there yet.

(00:06:58.5) Harry Hawk:

Yeah, and they’re already, you know, for a long time, looking at lift and awareness, it’s pretty amazing, and then they’re being a lot more transparent. Before, there was always this sense the algorithm is learning, but now in the UI they’re popping that up and saying learning.

(00:07:15.0) JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:07:15.5) Harry Hawk:

Which, you know, that signal to the human, relax, you know, it’s not going to get done in a minute, give us a few days…

(00:07:23.0) JD Prater:

I think, you know, whenever I look at some of the things that they’re doing, and obviously they’ve already got the big advertisers, like let’s be honest, I think what they’re really trying to get is some of the more SMB style of advertisers, you know, your mom and pop shops, maybe your local plumber, that kind of thing, to really have that ability to go in and create a campaign that’s very simple, very easy, and it’s hands-off, and they’re going to continue to get more of that ad spend.

(00:07:48.1)

I think I saw…they only have like 8 percent of all businesses’ advertising. So, they still have like 92 percent of businesses to reach, and you think about how much money they’re raking in right now. It’s, wow, you guys are…still have so much potential.

(00:08:05.2) Harry Hawk:

Then this brings up a really interesting point. You hear that percentage. I think about conflict at auction and even, like in the stock market, what they call front running, where somebody is getting in front of you, knowing what you’re going to buy, buy it up, and obviously we know from multi-networks, there’s all kinds of tricks going on there, but even within Facebook, I think what they can do with the AI and figuring out the lookalike is really also trying to prevent a certain amount of overlap at the auction, which will essentially give them more inventory.

(00:08:39.2)

In other words, this is my future scenario that in the future there’s going to be less ads. The idea is simply that if you can get people the right ad, at the right time, perhaps a reward ad, even in the ’90s, there was over a thousand dollars per year, per home, spent on advertising. Today, it’s got to be a much larger number. You don’t have to show as many ads or also on the ad side that they can show a little less inventory. Certainly Facebook’s been leaning towards it, and all the people who complain about reach on Facebook, besides the fact that they’re bad marketers, in my opinion, it’s only going to get worse for them.

(00:09:17.5) Harry Hawk:

Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think that’s what we saw, even in 2017, within our report. We looked at Facebook specifically and we saw like 170 percent increase in CPMs. That’s huge. You know whenever you’re thinking about…January, that was just January to September. That’s nine months and you’re seeing that kind of increase. You’re either going to drive people out of the auction because of basically max ad capacity on Facebook’s networks and properties, or Facebook’s going to have to figure out a way to place ads in different locations.

(00:09:48.7)

They’re going to like sneak them in, in different places, so that’s what I think for 2018, they’re going to see ads in groups, you’re going to see ads in WhatsApp, you know, different places and ways. I think I saw, this week, they were…they just backtracked. They’re now going to do pre-roll ads, which they were like so against with pre-roll ads. They were doing in-stream ads, and now they’re like, well, actually, okay, we’ll do pre-roll.

(00:10:11.8) Harry Hawk:

Interesting. They’re doing ads in Messenger and all of that, and I think that’s part of finding space for it.

(00:10:15.6) JD Prater:

Messenger, yeah.

(00:10:17.5) Harry Hawk:

And I just heard my first ad on a Google Home.

(00:10:20.6) JD Prater:

Oh wow. That’s cool.

(00:10:21.8)

Harry Hawk:Which I’m pretty sure…it seemed like it was inserted very different audio level and very different tone than the newscast that I was part of, but I think this conflict, I mean, it’s just been a long time building. In 2012, 2013, I bought a single zip code in Brooklyn, about 70 thousand people. I bought as much of it as I could for a year, and I was getting between 15 cents and 25 cents per thousand.

(00:10:51.2) JD Prater:

Wow.

(00:10:51.8) Harry Hawk:

There’s a theory, in a sense, that if you’re not flighting your ads, if you’re a large buyer like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, or a small buyer like the neighborhood bakery or dry cleaner, you can be in the market all the time. There’s no urgency. What matters is just when no one else is going to buy, you can buy and get that, you know, my own analysis is it’s 60 times more expensive, and so that campaign that we did for 5 to 10 thousand, 5 thousand local and then 5 thousand outside the zip code, today would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don’t need…you know that was just hammering people, where today we’re a lot smarter. When they run out of inventory…on the other hand, and let’s think about this, I didn’t think they’d get much past 1.2 billion monthly active users, and they’re now up to 2 billion.

(00:11:44.9) JD Prater:

Yeah, they’ve…I think they’ve got some really good data scientists there. They know how to build a product that gets you coming back, and I think one of the things they keep doing is they keep adding on services, they keep adding on different things, right, so being able to call an Uber or order food, right, from Facebook. Like, that, to me, was unthinkable, but now it’s easy, right? You’re in a big city. You’re like, well, I’m already on Facebook, I’m using it for over an hour a day, okay, cool. So, I’m actually interested to see what they’re going to be adding next to basically hold my time on this app and to keep me coming back, and they’re really good at making it very addictive.

(00:12:24.6) Harry Hawk: Right, and just getting more data for their data.

(00:12:28.0) JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:12:28.4) Harry Hawk:Sentiment analysis, I think, is something that’s critical to the future of any kind of digital marketing, Michael Jackson Bad, you know, is Bad, Bad, or Bad, good, and hey, shut up, and you know that’s friendly or not friendly, and I interviewed a guy named Paul Dehaye. He’s a researcher in Switzerland, big privacy expert. He’s one of the guys who blew open the Cambridge Analytica story, and it’s very clear from different accounts you run unique, polarizing ads, so just think three different accounts, you know whatever your political view is, three very polarizing, polarized views of that, and you start running memes and stuff, and people, you have that page engagement, and so people engage with one page and not the other and maybe the third, but obviously there’s nine permutations.

(00:13:17.7)

You know the Russians and other folks were running multiple, multiple accounts, and if you have access to these, right, you can do an ad, you know, custom audience that says people who like this page, engage with this page, but not this one and this one, and then engage with this one, and so could like triangulate and really start to hone in on massive cohorts, but what about…I think a lot of hacks and a lot of potential illegality of who owns a page and having to create and maintain all those pages, maybe not so hard, and having to be polarized, and I don’t think that marketers necessarily need to be polarized.

(00:13:56.6)

One thing that I’ve always wanted to do in the last year was put out meme-like ads and be able to…now, I can get the engagement on that from Facebook, people engaged with my ads or posts and in Facebook analytics, I can filter through the funnel tool, likes and loves versus sad and anger, but I can’t buy those reactions. I’d like to make a custom audience list based on engagement, but then include a reaction or two.

(00:14:27.7) JD Prater:

Yeah. I’d love to see that one as well. That’s been…I think that’s one that’s on my list for them to create, because Pinterest ads, you can do that. So, Pinterest has the ability for you to build custom audiences based off of someone viewing an ad or taking an action on a specific ad, right?

(00:14:48.7) Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(00:14:48.7) JD Prater:

And so I can sequence ads to you much better now, so, yeah, I’m completely onboard for that, and I think another thing, so, this is only a six-month future in Ad Tech, but it looks like in the US, probably about summertime, there will be a section on your Facebook page, and people can go in and see what ads you are currently running. So, again, no funnels, it’s just all ads, and it’s probably going to look really weird to someone if they’re not familiar with you, because that messaging doesn’t make sense a lot of times. Like, it’s like, no, I created this ad for you, you know, because you’re in this, this purchase phase or you’re here in the funnel or I’m trying to attract you, and so I think that’ll be really interesting to see.

(00:15:30.8) Harry Hawk:

The good news is no one looks at Facebook pages.

(00:15:33.7) JD Prater:

That’s also true. That’s right. I know. I think that’s another thing for Facebook. It has to figure out…it really is an echo chamber, and I would really love for them to kind of figure out how do you get stuff that you may not necessarily agree with? And I get it from the engagement aspect. When I open my phone, I know exactly what I’m going to see, and it’s stuff that I really like, but it’s also I need to see stuff that I’m not necessarily going to like. You know maybe it’s a friend from high school that we have different political views, and you know he’s posting something, and that’s okay, you know? Like, but being exposed to that at least gets me a different worldview.

(00:16:11.1) Harry Hawk: To go into Ad Tech past, the idea of filtering, right, any kind of mailing list in the ’90s, early aughts, if you’re on a mailing list, right, they turn into firehoses, and then people leave the list. In fact, I think Facebook figured it out very early that if they showed everything to everybody, they’d love it for a half a second and split, and I learned on a high-volume mailing list, engineers and really high-tech, intelligent people, that they’d rather leave the list and not see any messages than miss a few, right? They didn’t want to be out of the loop, and I think Facebook today, it’s far from whatever Edgerank was. I think they’re doing some very smart things. So, you know, if there’s a disaster somewhere, right, all of a sudden they open up your friends, the people who might be there, and at New Year’s, right, people that you’re kind of tangentially acquainted with, all of a sudden you’re seeing their New Year’s greetings. Can you think of any, you know, if we were advising Facebook, how to bring about that discovery? That’s a really billion dollar question, right, of how to try to get discovery?

(00:17:15.8) JD Prater: Yeah, I think that’s a really tough one, and I think it’s something that they’re definitely playing around with. I don’t know if you saw, but they…this is probably about a couple of weeks ago, a couple weeks right before Thanksgiving, where they came out with this…it was a whole different feed, and this feed was only from brands that you have not interacted with, and it was a bunch of videos. So, of course it’s going to be interactive, of course it’s going to be fun, and it was really curated for you. So, myself and a coworker, we looked at our own Facebook…like I think it would be called like discovery feed or something like that.

(00:17:48.1)

So, it was even something similar to what we’re talking about, and you know I got a bunch of like cycling and sports videos, and they were actually very entertaining, and they actually did a really good job. They know exactly what I want to see and curate for me, and it was great because it also gave brands that I wouldn’t’ve known and been exposed to an opportunity to show me stuff, and so I think that was a really good one and something brands should probably keep on their radar. I don’t know if it’s going to fully roll out, of course, with Facebook, but it was out as of a couple weeks ago. It was kind of buried and hidden, but…

(00:18:21.1) Harry Hawk: Interesting, I mean I think Marc Maron coined the term sheeple, right, but we know from just any kind of engagement that people mostly want to consume. You can be on a mailing list or a group. Most people are lurking. They’re not going to engage.

(00:18:37.4) JD Prater:

Right.

(00:18:38.8) Harry Hawk:

And so it’s a wonderful myth that we should all be content creators and so forth, but you know not everybody really wants to do that or can do that broadly.

(00:18:48.0) JD Prater: It’s true.

(00:18:49.1) Harry Hawk:

Do you work at all with marketing automation?

(00:18:51.9) JD Prater:

Yeah, I do. We use Pardot for our marketing automation, here at AdStage.

(00:18:56.9) Harry Hawk: So, part of the Marketo and that family? Am I right?

(00:19:01.2) JD Prater:

Competitive to Marketo.

(00:19:02.2) Harry Hawk: That’s…it’s Microsoft?

(00:19:06.6)

Harry Hawk:

I thought Salesforce owned Marketo. Let me check. Okay, Google, who owns Marketo?

(00:19:10.9) Google Home:

‘On the website digitalclaritygroup.com, they say the announcement, made by Chief Executive Phil Fernandez, marks a return to private ownership for Marketo after being publicly traded since 2013.”

(00:19:23.6) Harry Hawk:

Wow.

(00:19:24.1) JD Prater:

Wow. No, that was really cool though. That was a really cool use of Google Home.

(00:19:30.8) Harry Hawk:

Yeah. In fact, that was one of the topics I wanted to get to.

(00:19:32.6) JD Prater:

Sure.

(00:19:33.0) Harry Hawk:

In the early days of search, one of the reasons you wanted to put a search button field, whatever, on your website, was to learn what terms your customer was searching for. If you’d never done search before that would be a very quick way of getting some insight and refine that, and I think one of the reasons that companies need to move to voice and to prepare their content for voice is if you create, you know, the tool, either for Alexa or for Google or any of the others, I guess Bixby, building your own little app on voice, you’re going to learn something about how people think about your product, because you’re going to get all the kind of…the null responses, and I think that could help inform. How do you think Ad Tech works in the vocal internet?

(00:20:23.6) JD Prater:

Oh man. I mean we…I can give you, I mean, a few things. So, there’s a few on the wish list, but I think there’s a few things that you were kind of saying that I think we definitely need to address, right? So, I think Microsoft has come out, and you know they’re like, look, what is it, like 20 percent of all searches now are pretty much voice?

(00:20:42.7) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:20:42.2) JD Prater:

And I think Google backs it up well with like Android.

(00:20:45.8) Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(00:20:31.9) JD Prater:

So, it’s already happening, like 1 in 5, right, are, like of all searches, are made like talking to a home device or our phones.

(00:20:54.4) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:20:55.4) JD Prater:

And so that, to me, was staggering. I mean I think that’s something to really think about, and then I think when we move forward, it’s also how do we use voice and an ad together? So, I’ll give you…I was kind of thinking through like the future of Ad Tech.

(00:21:05.8) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:21:07.6) JD Prater:

So, I think this isn’t too far off, either, so maybe even 3 to 5 years, and you think about IBM and the Watson Ads that are interactive and being able to interact with voice, right? So, now I can be out somewhere and have an interactive conversation with an ad, and I think there’s a couple different use cases that we can maybe talk through, but I think that’s definitely on the horizon.

(00:21:30.7) Harry Hawk:

All right, this is the rabbit hole that we need to go down, because I have a lot of thinking on this, and again, back in the early days, the future, one of the futures that never happened was interactive television, meaning ads that were interactive as well as, you know, football games where you and everybody else in the country could indicate what you think the next play is going to be, and then you find out in 20 seconds if they passed or punted or whatever. That kind of interactivity, from a computer science standpoint, because of the synchronicity, say, of literally millions of people watching the same game, it’s not people sort of hitting the server, sort of at the same time, but it’s literally millions at the exact same time.

(00:22:15.1)

You know there’s no room for the network to hide statistically, and maybe today we have that kind of content delivery networks to absorb that, but I think there’s such a lower threshold for audio that the audio ad definitely needs to be interactive, it definitely gives you, also, the opportunity through the reward ad. I’m a huge believer, ultimately, in the reward ad, if we can get to the world where there’s less ads. In other words, I’d rather give an advertiser 2 or 3, 4 minutes of my time and kind of be done with ads for that whole show or whatever it is that I’m doing for an hour on Facebook. As we just talked about, Facebook may not like that from an inventory standpoint, but they could really charge a lot of money, and then the attribution goes out the window.

(00:23:05.9)

Someone’s actually interacted with it. It’s, you know, you can attribute that, but you know that it wasn’t a chat bot, although, again, for Ad Tech fraud, it leaves a big juicy target there. What kind of features do you think would make a great interactive ad?

(00:23:22.3) JD Prater:

Yeah, that’s a really good one.

(00:23:22.9) Harry Hawk:

Both from the buying side and on the consumer side.

(00:23:26.2) JD Prater:

I’ll work backwards. So, that’s how I like to do most of my marketing is how would I want to be marketed to, and so I think, for me, when I think about interactive ads, like let’s do TV and then maybe we could talk about radio. I think that would be a fun one.

(00:23:42.4) Harry Hawk:

Okay.

(00:23:43.1) JD Prater:

And then maybe we could even talk about…

(00:23:45.1) Harry Hawk:

But think audio, just through Google Home or like that…

(00:23:46.9) JD Prater:

Okay, so audio.

(00:23:47.4) Harry Hawk:

But any of those.

(00:23:48.7) JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:23:49.0) Harry Hawk:

I just think TV is too much of an edge case for now.

(00:23:54.2) JD Prater:

Okay. We could do…

(00:23:54.5) Harry Hawk:

But let’s talk about it a little bit.

(00:23:56.6) JD Prater:

Yeah. Let’s do TV, radio, and Google Home, and so I’ll give you some examples.

(00:24:00.4) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:24:02.2) JD Prater: So, I think for TV, some of the things, I think they’re somewhat there, right? So, I think you’re correct on the server load. That would be something they’d have to kind of work through and figure out, and so maybe it’s not exactly real time, but I think there are some ways that we could figure this, but they always have these interactive trivia games. You know I was watching some college football on Saturday, and they always ask these like random questions, and they want you to tweet the answer, which is almost like the same thing.

(00:24:28.4) Harry Hawk:

Yeah. Yeah.

(00:24:28.9) JD Prater:

It’s just like we all have Smart TVs, right, so if you’re buying a new TV now, it’s probably connected to the internet, right, and there needs to be some way to maybe I push A, B, C, and I can interact, and I think that is possible as maybe like a case, you know, a user. I think within the ads itself, they’re going to have to be the edutainment, right, and this is what Facebook’s always been saying.

(00:24:50.0) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:24:50.6) JD Prater: Edutainment, and so it’s going to have to give me some value out of it in order for me to interact with it. So, I think that would be something, as a buyer, I’d want to really kind of figure out is what value am I giving, outside of trivia, you know?

(00:25:03.4) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:25:03.7) JD Prater:

So is it a recipe, you know? Is it a coupon?

(00:25:07.3) Harry Hawk:

That was literally a big chunk of my thesis back in the day was that you have a couple of advertisers, and they’d say, hey, JD, which of these rewards do you want, and let you pick the ad. Today with ad fraud, you know, it scares me a little, because the solution is a lot of intrusion, you know iris scanning and all this, but there’s no reason that the NFL or Major League Baseball or The Arrow or The Flash can’t run inside of essentially an app…I don’t know enough about Docsis 3.whatever the current version of cable set top boxes are, but I would think that they could program so the video is taking up 99 percent of the screen, but leaving an edge somewhere there for an app. We already have Google Cast, where you can control volume, and if we’re all at a party, we can each pick music videos and stuff on our phones and send it to the cast, and it just stacks it up in a queue and plays them. So, I think the models for interactivity are there. I just wonder if the rewards will ever be meaningful enough.

(00:26:15.5) JD Prater: That’s a hundred percent correct. I think that’s something that we’ll have to crack as advertisers in order to really, you know, kind of get to kind of what you’re getting at, and I would agree with you. I think what we’re seeing is really…it’s a…yeah, I would say it’s a competition for your attention. I mean that’s really where we are. It is I want your attention, and so I think why we see Facebook getting so much advertising dollars is we already know they have your attention, and so I just need to put something on there to get your attention again, right?

(00:26:45.0) Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:26:45.4) JD Prater:

To kind of keep it going, and so I think with these different types of voice ads, you know, I even think about like Amazon, right? I mean you’re talking into your Fire Stick or whatever that thing is called and then going into let’s say like Spotify, you know? I think Spotify definitely has an opportunity, so, if I’m listening to music and an ad comes on, and maybe it’s…I mean I’m going to use McDonald’s…this isn’t great…for all the listeners that hate McDonald’s, I apologize, but you know like your local McDonald’s comes on, and it’s like, hey, JD, because you have my information, I see that you’re actually close to a local McDonald’s because I have your GPS information, and you’re driving along, hey, Exit 250 and I’ll give you a free Big Mac, you know, something like that.

(00:27:30.0)

So, and I think that’s a completely possible…or maybe even like a loyalty card. Somehow it’s all tied into your car and your phone, and they’re going to start synching this data around.

(00:27:41.6) Harry Hawk:

So imagine you’re at home, you’ve got your Google Home or Alexa and you know the ad comes on, and think about what we said earlier about lookalike audiences and Facebook really trying to shape traffic or when inventory is available to try to, you know, it’s in their interest to find the best matches because then that gives them more inventory, because you’re going to get the 5 buys a day that you want, and think of co-marketing, so, you know, the idea of 2 or more brands working together. So, you’re at home, JD, and it says, hey, I’m an interactive ad from Spotify, brought to you by Uber and McDonald’s. Right now, we will give you a 2 dollar coupon on any order of 2 dollars or more, so even free food, just tell me right now if you want a Big Mac, and we’ll send it right over.

(00:28:30.8) JD Prater:

I mean a hundred percent agree with that. I don’t think that’s too far off, actually, the way that you said it and the way that you pitched it. It’s like can I invest in that company. Yeah, but I don’t think we’re too far off from there.

(00:28:44.7) Harry Hawk:

And that solves the…they’re already working together, but that solves part of the inventory problem. If Uber gets the ad, it could go further and say, great, you know, it could force you, like gate it, you need to install…this is free, but you need to install the Uber app on your phone, and if you’ve got an Android or whatever, it could say, okay, I’m going to install it now, is that okay? All right, and please pick up your phone and click okay, and now we’ve got a download for Uber Eats, and maybe you didn’t know about it, and McDonald’s is giving you that Big Mac when you’ve got…

(00:29:17.2) JD Prater:

Yeah. I like that. I think that’s a perfect use case of…I think with the co-marketing, a hundred percent agree with that. I think that’s going to be a really good one.

(00:29:25.8) Harry Hawk:

It’s all local.

(00:29:26.6) JD Prater:

You know I even…it’s all local, and I think that’s going to be part of the key, as well. Like, think about, like, so your Google Home and it’s reading your calendar, and it says, you know, JD’s birthday is tomorrow, and we know that JD likes doughnuts, and it’s able to figure out that JD likes doughnuts, and it can figure out a way to get them to you. So, I think it’s convenient…

(00:29:47.7) Harry Hawk:

Shout out the top, Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle?

(00:29:49.3) JD Prater: There you go.

(00:29:50.6) Harry Hawk:

Maybe you like them. I know the guys over there.

(00:29:52.1)

JD Prater:

Yeah, they’re good.

(00:29:53.0) Harry Hawk:

So, you know, maybe it’s like, hey, JD, it’s Harry’s birthday tomorrow, and you know he loves Hot Pot Doughnuts, and the new Amazon shipping service is offering a doughnut six pack. Shouldn’t you buy that for him?

(00:30:10.5)

JD Prater:

Yeah. I think that’s going to happen real quick. I think that’s going to be the future of how they’re going to think about it. I think Amazon will solve it first. For some reason, man, I’ve got my money on them when I think about Ad Tech in the next couple years and how much they’ve grown, how they’re integrating all of their services, and who they’re acquiring, like the acquisition of Whole Foods, I think is a really interesting one, especially when you compare it to like Google+ Walmart and what’s going to happen there. So, I’m really excited for the future of Ad Tech, honestly.

(00:30:39.1)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:30:39.9)

JD Prater:

I’m okay with less ads, but I think we’re going to get better ads.

(00:30:44.5)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah. This is the Holy Grail since the early days of cable, the first really super interactive system was in Ohio, maybe late ’60s, early ’70s, Prodigy and all these things. People are playing with ads. The idea of just picking the ad, you’ve seen for several years on Hulu. So, you know, so it’s definitely out there, but let’s talk about Amazon. I’ve yet to buy on Amazon, but I am going to in the next couple of weeks, but right now one of my clients is having me drive sales into Amazon, which has put me back to the future, back to 2012 or 2013. There’s no feedback. I’m looking at…I’m in a big run of offline conversion, but they don’t even give you the email, right? They give you the Amazon email. It just seems like a big black hole. I’m used to all these nice AI tools that I know are back there, working, helping shape my buys.

(00:31:47.9)

I’m sending people in, and I’m looking right now. I’ve got two campaigns, both on iPhones. One is a canvas and one is just a regular mobile ad. Canvas ads are about a dollar more a click, but I also know if they’ve seen the canvas ads, they’re engaging with it, and I’ve got video and stuff in there, and so if I had something on the other end, my gut is that the canvas folks are more likely to buy. Amazon, they’re so competitive on everything else. They just open up everything, but they don’t seem to be opening up attribution.

(00:32:22.8)

JD Prater:

I think it’s coming. Digiday had put out an article a couple of weeks back that they’re looking to hire like 2 thousand people in New York, just for their Ad Tech platform. I think we’re going to see like more types of ads. Right now they have, what is it, like three. They have like product ads, sponsored ads, and I think like headline ads, like their three main types. So, I think as long as you’re running their ads and doing on their platform, you’re going to get a little bit more attribution because they really are trying to solve…they’ve announced lookalike audiences. Like, if you’re using their platform on their platform, you can get it, right, but if you’re running traffic to Amazon, it’s going to be a little bit different. It’s, that’s the part they have to solve.

(00:33:02.5)

Harry Hawk:

I don’t get it because I’m sending people to them. You know you’d think that’s something that they’d want. A slight detour and then back to this, I did some work for HubSpot Labs in 2015, 2016, and one of the neat things, we were talking about marketing automation before we went down this rabbit hole, for anyone who’s not paying attention, marketing automation is all of that tracking and analytics on your website, on your email, in other parts of your business, obviously apps and so forth. You put people into buckets, people who’ve seen this page and not that page, people who’ve been in the last couple of days, but one of the things that they have is the ability to take any of those lists, so, you’ve got the 20 thousand people who’ve been to two parts of your site but haven’t been back in the last 2 weeks, and you’ve scored them, you know, beginning stage of the journey, and maybe you have some persona segmentation as well.

(00:33:54.3)

But just imagine whatever it is, there’s 20 thousand people, you can say to HubSpot build that as an audience as Facebook, and they just do that. You can just run that, try to bring them back, put a video. Obviously it would be very affordable, but there’s no reason that Amazon can’t say build a list on Facebook of everybody who’s looked at your product, if they wanted to.

(00:34:17.0)

JD Prater:

If they wanted to, that’s right, if they wanted to. Yeah. I don’t know if they’re going to be…I think Amazon wants to keep their audience, and I think they’re going to keep it there and keep you on their platform rather than pushing to another network. That’s my guess.

(00:34:31.1)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah. They want to sell you the ads.

(00:34:33.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:34:33.9)

Harry Hawk:

Do they have any third-party networks at all, or is it strictly within the…I guess they want it within Alexa and so forth?

(00:34:40.8)

JD Prater:

Basically the article was saying they just hit a billion dollars in ad revenue and they’re about to hire 2 thousand more people, if you’re not watching them in 2018, you should be, and I think that was kind of the gist of the article. So, I’m not sure about the third-party integrations.

(00:34:55.1)

Harry Hawk:

I don’t know if you heard Google is blocking some stuff on Fire Stick right now.

(00:34:59.8)

JD Prater:

I wouldn’t be surprised.

(00:35:02.7)

Harry Hawk:

Because they’re not playing very well, and so this is really a fight over the ads. The whole premise of Amazon, of AWS, that everything that they do, you can buy, right? You could be a competitor of theirs and use their tools. It seems like I go on Amazon 5 times a month, maybe, maybe on a good month 20 times, but I’m on Facebook for hours. I don’t get why they wouldn’t want me to visit more often, and maybe they’ve figured out that if I visit, it’s going to be a waste and I’m not going to buy, but I think the opposite, right? They have to have figured out what to sell me, and I get they want the money.

(00:35:41.1)

JD Prater:

It’s interesting because like I see, I actually see Amazon ads on Facebook, trying to pull me back into Amazon. So, I’m a Prime member. I’m like, I’m probably their guy. I’m this younger guy who has the Amazon app, who’s just like, oh, I need something, I go to Amazon first, right? It’s like almost without a doubt, I go to Amazon first, I look at it, and then I might do a Google search, right, depending on the product and everything. They will actually like send me ads, like product of the day, you know, and it’s some kind of electronic that I’m sure I want, but you know trying to entice me.

(00:36:14.7)

Harry Hawk:

I’ll definitely search on Amazon first if it’s something I’ve bought before or similar that I know I’m going to get a good price, but very interestingly, so, if I’ll get some underwear, I’ll get a good price on Hanes Underwear. Obviously they don’t have a good deal with Hanes, so it’s all like third party people. Hanes.com and got a much better deal, but I think that’s less the rule today.

(00:36:38.6)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I would say that there’s probably, on some of those, like a convenience fee, right? You’re going to have to kind of figure out.

(00:36:42.9)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:36:44.1)

JD Prater:

And I think you’re also correct on the brands that they do play nicer with some brands over others, and so figuring those out, and you kind of, you know, figuring out what you’re going to purchase on Amazon is also a task in itself.

(00:36:56.9)

Harry Hawk:Not to turn this into a product pitch of AdStage, right, but one of the things that AdStage lets you do, as a buyer of ads, is to work with multiple networks, right?

(00:37:09.1)

JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:37:09.6)

Harry Hawk:

One of the things I’ve really loved in the last couple years is that all these targeting pixels pretty much make it really easy. I can run an ad towards consumers and have the LinkedIn pixel, and I know, because of my targeting, I’m going to pick up some professionals within that industry that I want to target, potentially, as partners. I can then go onto LinkedIn. I’ve got, say, maybe a couple thousand of them, and then I don’t know how many of those are, right, professionals, but then I can filter that. As long as I’ve got 3 hundred, now I can send them a message to partner with me. In fact, I know that they’re already warmed up to me. So, bring it back to Amazon, do you really think it’s in their long-term interest not to integrate with the rest of the world?

(00:37:54.9)

JD Prater:

That’s a really good point. That’s actually a really good one, so, like an Amazon pixel that would like go on your website, right? Yeah, and vice versa. I think that’s an interesting one. So, I think, though, this is where at an advertising agency I had clients that were E-commerce. Some were like I’m okay with Amazon getting some sales, and then we had others that were like I’m selling on Amazon, but I want as many as I can get on my website, and I was like…that’s an uphill battle, man. Like, I get it that you want to build a brand and you want that affinity to your website, but if you’re selling on Amazon, they have my loyalty, they have Prime free shipping.

(00:38:32.0)

So, like, literally, I’ll give you one example of an advertiser was they offered free 2-day shipping through Amazon, but on their website you had to pay 10 dollars in shipping. So, it’s like I can’t get you more sales because that’s 10 dollars, 1, that’s a lot on like a 25-dollar product, and then 2, I can get it in 2 days for free, your exact same product, from you, just on a different website. So, why would I do that? And so I think what we’ll have to figure out with Amazon is will the E-commerce websites want to play nice? I, ultimately, I think they want that data, and they’ll love having that audience data, which is another future Ad Tech prediction we should get into around privacy, but that’ll be interesting to see. I don’t know the answer. You posed a good one.

(00:39:16.5)

Harry Hawk:

Well, let’s talk about privacy because that’s always a concern in all of this, especially if we’re playing in Europe.

(00:39:21.4)

JD Prater: Exactly. That’s kind of what I was thinking. So, you talked about different scenarios. I think we see one scenario where privacy gets like a crack the whip, right, and I see us moving more towards like Europe and that type of like GDPR, trying to figure out how we protect users, but then I look at the other half of Americans, and we just blindly accept all terms and conditions. We blindly don’t care about a lot of things, as long as it’s free. I think those two things are at odds with each other, where I think, for me, it’s like I know how much data I’m collecting, and it scares me as the person that’s going to the website, you know?

(00:40:02.9)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah

(00:40:04.9)

JD Prater:

And you’re like, oh, but I think, in the end, most marketers probably aren’t sophisticated enough to actually take action at scale with the amount of information they have. They really need AI and machine learning, that kind of stuff, to really make sense and connect all the dots for them, because there really is too much data, and then I think the other side, other world, other scenario is we’re going to see a lockdown and cracked whip, you know, this is starting in May 2018, so even AdStage, we’re prepping for May 2018 because we have customers and we do have clients that are in Europe, and so we have to abide by those rules.

(00:40:42.0)

Harry Hawk:

A couple of rabbit holes here that we can dig in, Paul Dehaye, which has…shout out to you, Paul, if you’re listening. Paul Dehaye, it’s really interesting. He’s an academic researcher in Switzerland. His website is PersonalData.IO, and his theory in Europe, where it’s all locked down, is let’s just buy into the premise that you, JD, go to a website, say razors or glasses or beer or whatever it is that you buy. Your information on their website is yours, and they can’t commingle it, and they can’t do anything with it other than use it themselves. Paul wants to come in and with all kinds of proper credentialing, say, to…well, throw out one of your favorite brands. We might as well plug something else here.

(00:41:27.9)

JD Prater:

Oh man, favorite brand, let’s do Adidas.

(00:41:32.0)

Harry Hawk:

So, you’ve been shopping on the Adidas site for a couple years, it knows your favorite colors, your shoe size and whatnot, so essentially PersonalData.IO, Paul’s company, would go to Adidas, and this is, again, a European, but Paul thinks ultimately a worldwide thing, and says you’ve got JD’s data, and you know you can’t use it, but JD is willing to sell you the right to use his data, as long as you give him a cut. So, it’s almost like Apple taking 30 percent of everything, right? It’s saying, yeah, you know I’m willing to let you use my data, as long as we have an agreement here. That’s one kind of a rabbit hole, and they have really good data, and with your permission and really putting that together right, it could be even more meaningful, a little bit cumbersome, but I think it’s conceivably possible, for sure.

(00:42:18.9)

JD Prater: That’s actually really interesting. I like the premise of it, I guess I should say.

(00:42:22.7)

Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(00:42:23.8)

JD Prater: Where, I mean, we could get into, I guess, see, this really goes into like who owns the internet. This goes into what is the internet for.

(00:42:28.2)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:42:30.4)

JD Prater:

You know that’s, that’s really where Ad Tech is kind of playing, and we could get into net neutrality, but let’s go down that one, I guess, with what Paul is kind of saying there, and so I actually like the idea of it. You know me personally, I like that it’s my data. I like that I own it. I understand that I’m visiting your properties, and therefore you’re now collecting my data, and you know what, like you have a little thing that pops up, you know, and it says do you agree to these terms and conditions? Like, we are tracking you, right?

(00:43:00.9)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:43:01.6)

JD Prater: We always push yes, okay, cool, and I think that’s why we’re also seeing a lot of ad blockers pop up, and we’re seeing a lot of trackers pop up. I use like Ghostery, for an example, or you know using Adblock, and I try to, try to limit as much as I can, but I understand that I’m being tracked, and I think what Paul is trying to do is say, hey, you know what, you can get rid of all of that, and we’ll just go in, we’ll talk to…you know you can put your name on this list, and we’ll go and do that for you, which again, I’m okay with because I don’t have to do it, and I don’t have to opt out of anything. So, I think it’s actually a really good space. I think the adoption is where you may have some trouble, so.

(00:43:36.8)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah. Well, the other thing is he’s suing everybody, all the time, to get…because you have the rights to that data. So, it’s also in their interest, now, in Europe, to maintain that data in a way that you can find it, which Facebook will tell you about what brands watch you is limited in some ways. For example, they really don’t tell you what pixels have been tracking you and then what audiences within those pixels.

(00:44:01.1)

JD Prater: Right.

(00:44:02.5)

Harry Hawk:

And what scares me about the last election cycle is let’s say I am a secret agent spy guy from another continent, and I get a couple of Facebook pixels. I hand one to my friend JD, who maybe doesn’t know that I’m a spy guy or whatever. Hey, you know, that thing we’re working on, can you put this pixel here, there? I put these pixels all over those sites. It’s coming back to me. I’m building those audiences. You know I’m sure, for Facebook, it has a way to track that back, but to a consumer, you look at a pixel, even if you’re working with a brand, you can’t tell, unless you’re authorized, you can’t tell, which I mean, you know, is good. They’ve got it locked down. A concern about this, I think, would solve that a little bit.

(00:44:44.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah.

(00:44:45.4)

Harry Hawk:

I had one of my earliest thoughts about this at the ad agency where I worked in ’89, ’90, ’92. I ran a computer department that managed all the ad buying, TV ad buying, not making the ads. We managed the software that did that, and so every night we’d print out contracts, hundreds and hundreds of contracts. So, for every TV ad that’s ever been bought, there’s a contract that says when it will run and terms and conditions and all that. You can wonder, well, how can you negotiate all those contracts? And the answer is that the advertising agency, the 4 As, the advertising agency…3 As, 4 As or…?

(00:45:25.2)

JD Prater:

Four As sounds right, but I can’t remember what the other A is.

(00:45:26.8)

Harry Hawk: Yeah. Yeah. American Association of Advertising Agencies has a standard contract, and that’s what they use. They’ve all agreed to use this contract. So, one of my earliest thoughts was what if consumers got together through AARP or through American Express or through Consumer Reports and we all agreed this is the contract that we’re going to use, and you know there was an idea once that consumer data might be available in the browser, and we bomb that data to that contract, and we…it’s like, you know, like a honeypot, almost, in a security system. They say here’s my phone number, my social security number, whatever, here’s all my data, whatever you decide what you want to make available, and advertiser, you can access this, but here’s the contract that binds you to how you can use it, and then we’ll all sue you if mis-abuse it because you’ll have the biggest class…now, a lot of reasons why that will never work, but what Paul was suggesting with PersonalData.IO is a more plausible way of freeing up the data.

(00:46:33.0)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I really do think, well, I think a couple of things with that. There needs to be a better education, and I’m specifically picking on Americans, is we aren’t really that educated around trackers and what’s available, what type of information we’re correcting, and it’s crazy, I mean, what’s out there and what’s available, as far as tools. I can sit there and create videos of users on my website. So, I can watch people interact with the website. I can get heat maps, you know?

(00:47:01.1)

Harry Hawk: Well, not their faces.

(00:47:02.4)

JD Prater:

Yeah. Yeah.

(00:47:02.9)

Harry Hawk:

Not their faces.

(00:47:02.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Not, sorry, not your face, like how you interact. Like, I can see like your mouse moving or you typing, you know, on the screen.

(00:47:09.1)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:47:09.5)

JD Prater:

So, yeah, yeah, sorry, you know and getting heat maps, getting scroll maps, like and this is all available, and now granted, I don’t know who is doing it, but then you tie that into like Facebook information, you can tie this into Google Analytics, you can tie this into purchasing, and there’s really a lot of data…I’ll go back to I don’t think we know how to best use it, but I do like the idea of there should be a contract of whenever I am browsing the internet…I do want to feel safe, and I want to be safe, and I want to know how you’re collecting it and how you’re using it, and I get upset whenever businesses collect my email and then sell it. That makes me upset. It’s like, wait, no, I gave that to you, not for you to go make money off of, you know, like sell, you know?

(00:47:54.0)

Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(00:47:55.2)

JD Prater: So, I think those are all valid points. Then the last point is we can also talk about how Apple is going to be blocking some of these cookies, so yeah.

(00:48:04.3)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah. Let’s dive in there because that’s exactly where I was going to go that…

(00:48:07.7)

JD Prater:

Oh, perfect.

(00:48:09.0)

Harry Hawk:

Got Amazon blocking some stuff and then Apple blocking the other, we could end up in this world where we can’t really sell stuff, or Apple wants a 30 percent cut.

(00:48:18.1)

JD Prater:

I think that’s the key. I think Apple’s like, look, I’m not getting that ad revenue data like you are, Google, and so I’m going to try to, you know, cut you where it hurts, and so I think the blocking is good. So, they’re going to wrap it up, and they’re going to sell it to me as privacy, and I think Apple, Apple, out of all companies, I do think they value my privacy more than others. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but I think, based off their marketing and their messaging, it feels like they do and based off some of their actions. I’ll give you a quick update in case the listeners didn’t quite hear.

(00:48:52.4)

So Apple, within their new…if you have an iPhone or you’re using Safari on maybe like a MacBook or something with the latest OS update that you did, High Sierra or the like OS, I think, 11, they implemented what’s called an intelligent tracking prevention, and what it’s basically doing is it is imposing a 24-hour time limit on tracking tools, and so what this is doing is saying we know that your cookie, for example, is mostly supposed to expire after 30 days. Well, Apple says, no, we’re only going to give you 24 hours, and we’re not going to let you understand the tracking it from website to website.

(00:49:32.4)

And so I think that’s another great thing when we think about data and how it’s collected is that it really…you’re not going to be able to see cross…I go to your website then to AdStage. I wouldn’t be able to see that information, and it’s only 24 hours, it’s going to expire, and so I actually like the expiration as well.

(00:49:50.7)

Harry Hawk: Will that also prevent login via cookie?

(00:49:55.0)

JD Prater:

I think if you come back regularly, it will. It will keep, but you are correct. I think if you came back like 7 days later, you’d have to log in again. So, as a user, you’re probably going to be frustrated if you have to keep logging into things on the mobile web.

(00:50:09.9)

Harry Hawk:

They’ll solve that by saving the password for you.

(00:50:12.5)

JD Prater: Correct. Yeah, it’s a really interesting use case. I see it hurting programmatic advertisers the most. Probably we won’t feel it too much on Facebook. We might feel it a little bit in like Google display remarketing. I really think it’s going to hurt the programmatic people the most.

(00:50:30.7)

Harry Hawk:

I’m sure everybody listening has heard of Facebook Instant Articles, the competition between that and AMP, and that’s another area of kind of portable lightweight content, especially, you know, maybe in 30 or 40 years when the internet…I mean it already reaches Mars, but you know reaches Mars in a more sustainable way, lightweight content may be more important when our content-delivery network is using a rocket to physically move data. The big news, related exactly to this, was that Facebook Instant Articles have been upgraded so that you can gate content and sell it, right, and that’s one of the things that Apple’s blocking, and I think that’s a little bit scary to me, because it gets a little bit to net neutrality in a sense, but if I bought a thousand-dollar phone, and I’m using Facebook, and I read an article from The Washington Post, Amazon almost owned, at least Jeff owned, you know, so somewhere in there it says, hey, you want to keep on reading, 25 cents, and Apple’s blocking that, and I’m not sure…what do you think? Do they have the sort of the right to block that?

(00:51:37.9)

JD Prater:

I think in that case there should be a way for you, the user, to maybe give access. So, I think you block it until you assign it. So, maybe, maybe there’s a pop up that says are you okay with this, in the future, remember this, you know something like that, and I think that’ll be okay, but I do think you’re right. That does get into a little bit of net neutrality and some issues around that. One thing I do want to mention, I do think you’re onto something, like lightweight content and portable content. I really do see that as kind of a future of marketing and where we’re going, as we look at attention spans and we look at how people are consuming content and how much content is being produced. I think that’s something to also…we can further table for down the road.

(00:52:19.2)

Harry Hawk: You want to go down into kind of a darker future?

(00:52:21.6)

JD Prater:

Let’s do it.

(00:52:22.6)

Harry Hawk:

All right. So, let me set the stage. It’s 5, 6 years from now, and net neutrality or you know the idea that internet providers are common carriers has gone away, and it’s also, this is very hard to understand, but basically in every town there’s only one company that has the right of way to deliver cable TV and generally one other company that has the right of way to deliver telephony, telephone service, and so those are sometimes competing with each other, sometimes not. Basically, you can get an internet connection from your phone company or from your cable company. In this brave new world, one, I’m sure they can own each other, because why get in the way of competition, and it’s the local municipality, by the way, that has the right to give people the right of way to come into homes, and they’ll generally sell it, but they make 5 percent, under Federal law, they get 5 percent of the income from the cable company. Why give that up? Why have more than 1 competitor?

(00:53:24.4)

In this world, they’ve turned what was a single-sided market into a double-sided market, meaning you pay them for the internet and they handle both sides of the transaction, but basically you’re paying them to maintain the service. It should be open, whatever website you go to, they deliver. In this braver new world, you go to Amazon, and they’re saying, in that case, to Amazon, we’re going to block that, unless you want to pay us to get to this person, we’re going to block you, and we’ve been talking about a lot of blocking here, right? And this is ultimately, you know, a whole economic topic of rent-seeking using government regulations or not to kind of control things, in this case, the lack of regulation.

(00:54:05.1)

And to get even darker, if you’re a smaller business, they may say, you know, we already have a deal with Amazon and your products on Amazon, so we really don’t want to let you in. I mean you can pay to come in. I believe somewhere in Eastern Europe, when you buy a cell phone, they bundle which websites you can access. Like, if you’re on an airline they say, you know, for this plan you can get email, and for this plan on the plane, you can get everything, but you can’t stream video, and if you want to reach these sites, you buy this plan, and that’s what they’d like to sell, in a sense, make it like cable television.

(00:54:39.8)

You pick what websites. Why should you be able to go to any website you want? We want to build this network. We want to profit from that. So, in that world, then, which brings us back to portable content, maybe there’s a loophole, you know, for portable content, because it’s lighter weight, meaning if either you’re paying by the bit, they’ll let you get in, because at the end of the day, if you’re running a Facebook Instant Article, it’s coming from their content-delivery network, which means guaranteed, whatever the bill is, they’re paying for it, Facebook.

(00:55:13.7)

JD Prater:

Right. Right.

(00:55:14.9)

Harry Hawk:So, so that’s kind of that dark future of…in the future, we’re all using AMPs and Instant Articles because Google and Facebook is paying for the delivery, Google off the search engines, not off your server, and Facebook all the time. What do you think? I mean is that…?

(00:55:30.6)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I mean I have some strong feelings about net neutrality. I’m with you. I think it should be open, right? I’m already paying you to deliver it to me.

(00:55:39.4)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:55:40.3)

JD Prater:

I’m not going to pay you to then throttle it and then charge me, you know, if I want to watch Netflix and Hulu, that’s my choice, and I’m already paying you for access to that. They’re probably going to turn around and then charge Netflix and Hulu, say hey, do you want a fast lane, you know?

(00:55:55.9)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(00:55:55.7)

JD Prater:

And so, and I think we’re already starting to see this. So, we already see this coming in with the news, right, with the FCC wanting to reverse this, and then I think we’re also starting to see this…if you pay attention, I was watching, again, some football game this weekend, and I saw an Xfinity commercial, and this is a current one, and it said, like, don’t you think, you know, you should be buying your TV services from like an internet company, or something like that. It was like your phone from like an internet company or something like that.

(00:56:20.9)

So, they’re trying to tie in TV, phone, and internet, and they’re already trying to blur those lines, you know, like look, we are your one-stop solution and we’re doing all these things for you, which you are correct. I get it. Verizon, you own Comcast, which I use for internet. I might use Verizon for my phone. I might use Xfinity for my TV. I get it. I really do. However, you don’t get to necessarily control what I watch, what I view.

(00:56:48.4)

Harry Hawk:

And they certainly want you to have a data cap, because…

(00:56:50.8)

JD Prater:

Right, also true.

(00:56:51.3)

Harry Hawk:

Why should you have unlimited, right? Some group has been talking about setting up a VPN.

(00:56:57.6)

JD Prater:

Correct.

(00:56:58.4)

Harry Hawk: You get your content through the VPN. This is going to work perfectly because they can’t see into the VPN, and my answer is, sure, so they’ll just give you a hundred megabits a month VPN cap, enough to telecommute but not enough to watch Netflix.

(00:57:15.8)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I mean, because it’s ultimately about the data, right? It’s not so much where you’re accessing, right? So, the VPN makes it look like you might be in the UK, for example, but you’re still getting the internet from your actual physical address, you know, like where you’re actually…your router is, right, your modem, masking your IP for that website, but not necessarily the provider, and so I think there’s some things around it I agree with.

(00:57:41.2)

Harry Hawk:

Which it is…you get this third party who provides it. They give you essentially an encrypted tunnel, something like a wormhole between you and this provider.

(00:57:46.4)

JD Prater:

Oh, okay.

(00:57:49.8)

Harry Hawk:

So Comcast can’t see inside of it without decrypting it, but they could certainly put a cap on it.

(00:57:55.6)

JD Prater:

Got you. Yeah. I can see that.

(00:57:57.3)

Harry Hawk:

But then that also limits, potentially, you know Ad Tech and how, again, how we contract and manage. We’ve got to bring this conversation to a halt at some point here. I want to see if we can jump…see if I can get the JD Prater…go far out into the future, just anything that you think, as long as it’s plausible, through the course of this conversation, anything really come up in your mind?

(00:58:21.3)

JD Prater:

Oh man. All right. I’ll go…let’s see if I can really stretch myself. So, we never talked about AR and VR. That would be another thing with Ad Tech.

(00:58:28.7)

Harry Hawk:

Okay, go.

(00:58:31.3)

JD Prater:

But you know, I think, I can’t figure out if VR is all hype. As of right now, everyone’s like oh, yeah, VR’s going to be the future, and I’m like, no, we’re just not there yet. I don’t think we’re there as a market. I think they’re ahead of market. I mean when I think about Google Glass, where it was, it was so ahead of the market that everyone was like what is this, you’re an idiot, right?

(00:58:52.6)

Harry Hawk:

And that was more augmented, right?

(00:58:55.3)

JD Prater: Correct.

(00:58:55.8)

Harry Hawk:

But it’s still ahead of the market?

(00:58:56.9)

JD Prater: Still ahead of the market, yeah. That’s where I was going with that one, and then I think the augmented reality has a better use case, as I’ve kind of seen how it plays out. When I think about those interactive ads, I do think augmented reality could be really cool, especially when you’re out and about maybe at a billboard or if you’re looking at a mall. I’ve seen some really cool ones that are like using facial recognition and putting you on an ad and customizing the ad to you, and that’s like right now. So, moving forward, I think that’s going to become more popular. I think we have to say VR will happen, as much resources and time is being put into it. I don’t know when. The Oculus still comes down in price. I think now it’s like 2 hundred dollars or something, and I think Google Cardboard is like free, and so…

(00:59:43.8)

Harry Hawk:

I think the limiting factor of VR is its isolation. Part of that isolation is data processing and part of it is just the physicality of being isolated in the device, and I mean it’s kind of like television. If you’re watching television, generally hard to drive. You can listen to a podcast and drive, and if you’re literally wearing this device…yes, you can bring in a thousand people to join you, including even in a window into the real world to see where you are, to orient yourself if you’re walking around. It just seems so isolating to be…one thing to be in your living room watching TV, and you can see cars driving by or their headlights or whatever, you hear sounds from the house, but imagine you’re in this thing, you’ve got earbuds in, and you’re wearing this thing. You’re in a cocoon.

(01:00:31.4)

JD Prater:

Also true.

(01:00:32.2)

Harry Hawk:

But we’re talking about that real-time rendering, and so in Wired Magazine, in ’94, there was an article a whole bunch of people wrote. I shared some of it with you. It was based in part on my master’s thesis. I worked with John Batal and ultimately like five other people wrote it. So, I do have a credit in the table of contents, but not in the actual article itself. In there, the idea, just what we’re talking about, the person has selected a reward ad on their television, and they pick a Wonder Beer ad. They’ll get a Wonder Beer case for half off, and they get a printed coupon.

(01:01:07.1)

This is from the article. At Wonder Beer Headquarters in Milwaukee, a computer receives Jack’s signal, and referencing the satellite map of his town, instantly creates an animated commercial in which two dragons from another galaxy battle in the streets of Jack’s neighborhood over a giant bottle of Wonder Beer, and just as the evil dragon is about to smash Jack’s house, the good one drives the neighbor’s chimney through his heart and saving Jack’s home and winning the beer, as Jack’s converter box spits out a bar-coded coupon for the case, turns to the audience and say Mr. and Mrs. Public, this beer is for you. Well, we know today that the coupon’s going to come to your phone, not to your printer attached to your television, which will never exist. What do you think? That’s almost plausible today.

(01:01:50.9)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I think that one’s definitely plausible. I see like kind of this programmatic TV ad buying, where we’re going to be a lot more specific to who we’re targeting. You know you and I could be next-door neighbors and be watching the exact same TV show and not see the same ads. So, I think that’s definitely getting closer. If you want to go 10 years out, 15 years out, I think biometrics is something that’s really interesting, so like thinking about how you’re walking through and it’s like reading, you know, my heartbeat, and it’s looking at my diagnostics of my body kind of thing, and maybe it’s, you know, you need to go see the chiropractor, you know, something like that?

(01:02:31.7)

Harry Hawk:

So, I mean, or if you have a…

(01:02:34.5)

JD Prater:

A Fitbit, yeah.

(01:02:36.7)

Harry Hawk: A Fitbit, that kind of thing.

(01:02:36.5)

JD Prater:

Oh, sorry. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

(01:02:37.6)

Harry Hawk:

Your car, your insurance, all that, and another kind of thing I think could be done with privacy maintained, but you have a fingerprint reader on your phone. If the ad says, hey, you won a coupon or whatever, we’ll put it on your fingertip, and it could get the rights for a moment to read the fingerprint reader and hash it, and it’s not actually sending the actual fingerprint, but enough to know how to identify it, and you just walk into McDonald’s or Adidas or wherever you are and you just…I don’t know that there’s a real need for that, but certainly the biometrics of, again, putting a pixel on your Fitbit, we’re buying…I want people who’ve done a thousand steps today or I want people who’ve done a hundred thousand steps today.

(01:03:18.7)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I think that one’s, that one’s pretty interesting, as well, and I mean, actually, you know what? I’m going to go down…sorry, I’ve got one more rabbit hole because I think it’s really interesting, because, because we were talking about Fitbits, and like really our phone is really attracting us, and that’s really where all of this data’s coming from is really how…if you have your location settings on, and like I can guarantee you’re going to see a lot of local ads, and that’s really where they’re picking up a lot of this stuff, and so if you don’t want those kind of things, turn off those location settings.

(01:03:46.6)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(01:03:46.9)

JD Prater:

But if you are seeing a lot of those, I do think location-based advertising, which has been around for a really long time, and really I think it’s…we’re going to see a lot more ____ (01:03:56) next year, a lot more online and offline connections, points, I think that’s really going to be the key. I know that’s something for AdStage that we’re really trying to solve.

(01:04:06.7)

Harry Hawk:

And what about beacons? Have we heard about them for a while, and they’ve kind of rescinded, receded into the background? Are they coming back?

(01:04:13.3)

JD Prater:

That’s a really good question. I’ve seen like crazy-cool stories with beacons and how they can heat-map you and how they’re tracking you and how like they can have, like, store specific coupons based off where you are. If I’m in the men’s section, looking at socks or Hanes Underwear, boom, you know, show me this.

(01:04:28.9)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(01:04:31.5)

JD Prater:

I don’t know why we don’t see more of them. I think they’re cool. There must be some kind of limitation there, or maybe they’re just more…and I’m not recognizing it because, again, I’m younger and not going in-store anymore. I’m shopping online.

(01:04:45.6)

Harry Hawk:

I’ll give you one more crazy, plausible, but really unlikely example. If you drive, you’ve probably seen a digital billboard.

(01:04:52.9)

JD Prater:

Yeah.

(01:04:53.5)

Harry Hawk:

Giant, giant screen television. They certainly could have a sensor in there that’s reading cell phones that go by, and so they can obviously have a count of the people going by, and they can certainly adjust the speed of the ad change to the speed of traffic. So, when the traffic is slower, they can change the ad faster, but go back to when we were talking about Facebook and artificial intelligence and really trying to find the right person at the right time. When the traffic is slow, inventory’s increasing, as we’ve talked about, because they can switch more often. They could identify, for the right customer, for the right brand, people who are driving by that billboard, and it’s doing its general billboard-y thing, but all of a sudden here comes JD, and when it knows that you’re nearby and maybe flashing or doing something to hopefully get your attention or at a particular curve in the road where looking straight ahead more or less puts you there, there’s an Adidas ad.

(01:05:53.2)

It’s okay for everybody, but you’re the one they’ve decided to buy that ad for, and again that’s slow-moving traffic time. They could give you 2 or 3 impressions, and I think it’s farfetched, but if you think about luxury cars, investment pension fund, other really big-ticket items, think, plausible?

(01:05:53.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah, I’d say plausible on that one. You know we went out…we were looking at some new cars this last weekend. The amount of Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth connectivity, like the amount of information in my phone that I am giving to the car, they know everything, you know? So, like I can log into Facebook, because there’s an app in the car. I give it access to my contacts, so that way it knows that my wife is texting me.

(01:06:35.5)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(01:06:36.3)

JD Prater:

And so the billboard just reading from the car or reading from me, like, I’m now one thing, right?

(01:06:42.7)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah.

(01:06:42.8)

JD Prater:

And I see that.

(01:06:43.2)

Harry Hawk:

Well, yes. Well, but if it’s like a beacon, it knows who you are, anyway, just from…it doesn’t need the car Wi-Fi, but yes, it could find your car, but the other thing is then actually having the conversation. So, now you…top-of-funnel, you’ve seen that Adidas ad for a couple of days, because they’ve been targeting you, and you know let’s imagine, you know, we’ll put this into real marketing terms.

(01:07:03.7)

I’m in New York. There’s, let’s say, a hundred thousand people or 2 hundred thousand people on a particular road. I’ve decided I’m going to target 10 to 20 thousand of them to convert top-of-funnel, picking cars that have an affinity for Adidas, just at that slow time of the day when I have all those extra time slices. Unbounce, Oli Gardner, I’ve talked to him a few times, their idea of delaying the conversion request until someone’s warmed up and has a relationship. Okay, so you’ve seen the Adidas now all morning, and it’s weird because the guy behind you is seeing McDonald’s or whatever random thing, and some cars behind that are seeing, you know, an investment company, but JD’s seeing Adidas ads. Then, all of a sudden, at the right moment, because it’s the right moment either because it knows empirically or just it’s tested to find out what the best possible right moment is, we talked about the audio ads.

(01:07:59.7)

Now you’re in your car and you’re listening to Spotify because you’re a Spotify guy, and hey, this is Adidas here, we wanted to know have you seen our new line of soccer shirts or whatever it is, the ad, that unit can say we’ll wait for your reply, if you don’t reply, your music will continue in 20 seconds. So, you’ve got…maybe that’s tested down a little bit. They don’t want to get you to turn the channel, right? So, hell, I’ll respond. Yeah, I’ve seen them, and now you’ve converted. I mean that’s the next step in the funnel, and now…but I bet we could get that 10 or 20 thousand people, if we’ve decided they are influencers or whatever, to invite you to an event at the Adidas warehouse or invite you to shop, if you’re more of an online shopper, at the virtual Adidas store, because you have the Oculus device or whatever, but anyway.

(01:08:52.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah. I like it. I think there’s a couple of things, so, for me, the media buyer that gets excited is the sequential-ness of it, right, and then the omni-channel-ness of it, and I think that’s really cool when I can think about placing ads in different locations and then sequencing them based off how you’ve interacted with them, until, you know, what you’re saying like with Oli’s, like, this is the right time, here it is, 20 percent off at your local Foot Locker, whatever it is, right?

(01:09:20.0)

Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(01:09:20.5)

JD Prater:

And I’m totally in. I think that would be a really interesting way to be marketed to.

(01:09:25.6)

Harry Hawk:

It could be really fun. Again, if it’s personalized, we’re going to love it. You talked about omni-channel. I’m a huge, huge, huge believer in Facebook analytics, the tool, in part because I can attribute Facebook likes and loves to my shopping cart. Have you…but I think that’s something that AdStage plays in, as well, a lot, is cross-network kind of attribution, and do you have any thoughts about that kind of multi-omni-channel attribution?

(01:09:53.8)

JD Prater: It’s tough. I will say that. It’s not easy. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I don’t think we’ve quite solved multi-device. It’s being worked on. You know I think Facebook does the best job because they can tie all your devices to one user login, which is me, and they know exactly who I am in my car, on my phone.

(01:10:15.1)

Harry Hawk:

And your gender.

(01:10:15.2)

JD Prater:

And your gender.

(01:10:16.4)

Harry Hawk:

And that you’re married, and that you like Adidas.

(01:10:18.7)

JD Prater: Everything, right? I think they have the best and most accurate data. Let’s say I tied my credit card information in with my Messenger, because I wanted to give my buddy some money, right?

(01:10:27.1)

Harry Hawk: Yeah.

(01:10:28.1)

JD Prater:

They now have credit card information that they can go buy from Oracle, you know, Datalogic, whatever it is, and they’re tying it. They know everything, so with analytics, I mean, the multi-channel stuff, it’s tough, and I think there are some things that advertisers can do to better understand a lot of this information. We just had a really good podcast that I did, so, on the AdStage podcast.

(01:10:50.0)

Harry Hawk:

Yeah, please plug it. Yeah.

(01:10:51.6)

JD Prater:

Oh, yeah, so we have the PPC show, and we did a podcast with the Director of SEER Interactive, and he is their Director of Analytics, sorry, at SEER Interactive, and he was talking about how he does user scoring based off of what actions you took on a website. He’s actually…it’s like lead scoring in marketing automation, but this is in analytics, and then based off of that, he’s able to help with attribution. He’s…it also helps him refine his audiences to serve better ads, and I think that’s ultimately the best we can do for now, but with attribution, I know it’s like the next billion-dollar idea, if you can tie it all together and show me what’s working. The problem is it’s a lot of different devices and a lot of different locations, and so you’re constantly interacting with a lot of different channels, networks, to really piece it all together.

(01:11:40.1)

Harry Hawk: Well, I’ll give you this. I have a client, it’s a small client, but they have maybe a thousand customers, maybe a little bit more than that, but they only sell to licensed folks. So, they’re in a few states, smaller audience, but I show, through Facebook analytics, over a 90-day period, 759 people liking or loving or any kind of reaction to a post, and I can show 25 hundred dollars being added to the cart. It’s only 7 or 8 people, but I can show…or 13 people, but I can show a thousand dollars being purposed, and there’s no causation here.

(01:12:14.6)

They may have been buying anywhere, but I’m also looking at the time, and from the like or the love or whatever to the purchase, and the 75 percent cohort is 1.8 weeks. So, these are people who are discovering and converting, and there may be some future point where the data gets a little bit fuzzy, and they’ll need some other segment in there, but one of my questions was is that data available as an API from Facebook and are they keeping that…is that another thing that’s being blocked?

(01:12:46.3)

JD Prater:

It is available. That is available through their API, one of their…it might be under the marketing API. They just blocked another API, I think it was yesterday or around like this kind of audience insights API, because, as we know what happened, so they’re blocking some of that. You’ll still have access to Facebook auction insights, which is another good one, but I do want to hit on one thing. I think you said it, and I think it’s spot-on as we move into 2018, is engagement is going to be key when we think about how we’re interacting with our audiences and where we’re putting that spin, because I do view engagement as super important. That may not drive the last click conversion, but I know that you’re interacting with my content, and I know that I’m seeing an uptick in sales when that happens.

(01:13:35.4)

Harry Hawk:

Well, I’ve got to plug Dennis Yu at Blitz…

(01:13:37.2)

JD Prater:

Oh, Dennis is good. Yeah.

(01:13:38.9)

Harry Hawk:

BlitzMetrics, and he’s all about engagement, and I tell my clients, you know, engagement on Facebook as is intent to AdWords. If you don’t have engagement, and you have an empty page, the lights are off, it’s just going to make your advertising more expensive. Well, I know we could do this for hours and hours and hours.

(01:13:56.2)

JD Prater:

Yeah.

(01:13:56.5)

Harry Hawk:

And I’ve got a million things we could bring up. Maybe in 6 months, 12 months, we could have other people join us and talk about the future, the year to come, and Ad Tech and all of that, but this has been a tremendous amount of fun for me.

(01:14:09.5)

JD Prater:

Oh, same here. Thank you, so much, Harry, for having me on. Like you said, I could do this for hours. So, like, let’s definitely connect again in 12 months and see how accurate we were.

(01:14:22.0)

Harry Hawk:

Please AdStage plug podcast.

(01:14:23.8)

JD Prater:

Cool, and I just wanted, if you guys are interested in learning more about AdStage, head over to AdStage.IO. We have a free 14-day trial, and you can give it a quick test run and see what you think, and then if you’re interested in learning more about me, you can connect with me on Twitter. Yes, I’m still one of the few that still uses Twitter, at JDPrater. Yeah, and so we do the PPC show, where we interview some of the best and brightest minds in PPC, and then we also have a this week in headlines, and so where we discuss the latest trends in Ad Tech, usually on like Thursday afternoons or Friday mornings. So, look for those two different episodes.

(01:15:05.9)

Harry Hawk:

This week in Ad Tech is really great because if you’re busy buying ads, there’s really a limit to how many magazines and newspapers and articles you can read, or you catch the headline and you don’t catch the details, and even if you don’t get the show the week it comes out, I think your content is good even for a couple months because I find myself having missed a story, and then all of a sudden you guys have covered it really well, so, big endorsement from me.

(01:15:30.7)

This is Harry Hawk, and you have been listening to Talking About Everything. We’ve been talking with JD Prater from AdStage. JD, thank you, so much, for being here. I hope you have a great week. Bye-bye.

(01:15:42.4)

JD Prater:

See you later, Harry.

(01:15:44.0)

Male Speaker:

My name is Chuck Fresh, and I am being paid to thank you for listening to Talking About Everything, with Harry Hawk. Harry wants to hear from you on Twitter at HHawk or HarryHawk@gmail.com, and now a word from our sponsor, Life Extension Coach and Favorite Chef. Hawk Digital Marketing is focused on bringing brands and people together. We build communities of interest based on trust and transparency, where consumers and brands can converse, learn, discuss, or solve problems together, while creating a long-term connection, entanglement between you and your customers. Once connected, we help you engage, communicate, sell, present, educate, and inform. Evolve your communications with us, HawkSocialMarketing.com.

View Details

Targeting memes with personal data (i.e., Facebook reactions) has been suggested as Cambridge Analytica's low cost "support strategy" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Brands can use the same or similar tools; in this episode I talk with researcher and personal data entrepreneur Paul Dehaye about data privacy, using memes to "collect" and "share" segments of consumers and the monetization of personal data.

Data About You Dr. Paul Dehaye wants to liberate (for your benefit) data accululated when brands track your online activities - @hhawk

Dehaye's Data Liberation Startup

Anonymous Pamphleteers Digital marketing tools used to sell branded products are also used in Elections.

Policies that protect political speech, including "anonymous pamphleteers," (link) can also be used to subvert elections. They say they don't keep that data - Paul Dehaye Anonymous Tracking Policies enacted to protect consumer privacy may also be making it hard for consumers to learn how they are being tracked, monitored, and segmented. Whither Data Privacy? It might seem like the primary goal of data privacy is to keep your information safely in your own hands. Companies "enhance" your personal data and then horde it - @hhawk The reality is that businesses buy and sell your personal data. Then they segment, cluster, and augment your data with historical and real time information. They hide what they know about you - @hhawk The same laws that protect personal data from hackers (and illegal use) also make it hard to discover what large social networks know about you, how they know it, and where the information was found.

Facebook forced to disclose more information about its ad targeting by @podehaye https://t.co/XnQNl4eeiT #adtech pic.twitter.com/v5HgIbjpSz

— Marcus Sarmento (@msarmento42) February 19, 2017

Innertrends: Analytics in RL A few weeks ago I spoke with Claudiu Maraiu (co-founder & CEO) of the SAAS analytics company Innertrends.  Claudiu and I spoke about the ubiquity of tracking and monitoring of consumers. Claudiu took a clear stand that the industry (and our society) has an ethical dilemma it needs to resolve in RL, Real Life. I played Claudiu's observations for Dr. Dehaye hoping that he would be in agreement; (spoiler alert) he was. Paul and I did a "deep dive" on privacy and tracking - @hhawk Marketing - A Force for Good I truly believe that marketing can be a force for good and as beneficial to society as any other profession. What Facebook Advertisers knows about me and the brands I interact with (Harry Hawk) Minimalist Shopping

There are many (on the right and left) who view consumerism and corporate commercialism as scourge.

Yes... we could live in a world with 1 brand of toothpaste, soap, candy, coffee, computers, phones, cars, a single restaurant chain and (for Americans and Swiss) 1 brand of guns.

It may be more efficient and even cheaper since presumably there would be billions saved in marketing and advertising. It might also mess up the economy killing off innovation and freedom - @hhawk Consumer Choice I understand the backlash against consumer choice and 100 brands of coffee, and 15 types of Oreos - @hhawk Freedom to Shop Marketing doesn't always encourage us to listen to our "better angels" - @hhawk

I want to be able to pick my own music, food, movies, and mate - @hhawk Modern Marketing: 1:1 Tracking Modern marketing requires tracking, monitoring and more. The real question is how do we ethically address these issues. [Spoiler Alert] Paul has a plan - PersonalData.IO Marketers and market data companies do want to know what you like or love - but they also want to know what or whom you hate.

Global Issue

The larger issue here is bigger than stores tracking your visit their web pages; they can also track folks who visit their web pages and drive past their physical locations Modern marketing tools are being used in elections @hhawk

View Details

Targeting memes with personal data (i.e., Facebook reactions) has been suggested as Cambridge Analytica’s low cost “support strategy” for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Brands can use the same or similar tools; in this episode I talk with researcher and personal data entrepreneur Paul Dehaye about data privacy, using memes to “collect” and “share” segments of consumers and the monetization of personal data.

Data About You

Dr. Paul Dehaye wants to liberate (for your benefit) data accululated when brands track your online activities – @hhawk

Dehaye’s Data Liberation Startup Anonymous Pamphleteers Digital marketing tools used to sell branded products are also used in Elections.

Policies that protect political speech, including “anonymous pamphleteers,” (link) can also be used to subvert elections.

They say they don’t keep that data – Paul Dehaye

Anonymous Tracking Policies enacted to protect consumer privacy may also be making it hard for consumers to learn how they are being tracked, monitored, and segmented.

Whither Data Privacy? It might seem like the primary goal of data privacy is to keep your information safely in your own hands.

Companies “enhance” your personal data and then horde it – @hhawk

The reality is that businesses buy and sell your personal data. Then they segment, cluster, and augment your data with historical and real time information.

They hide what they know about you – @hhawk

The same laws that protect personal data from hackers (and illegal use) also make it hard to discover what large social networks know about you, how they know it, and where the information was found.

Facebook forced to disclose more information about its ad targeting by @podehaye https://t.co/XnQNl4eeiT #adtech pic.twitter.com/v5HgIbjpSz

— Marcus Sarmento (@msarmento42) February 19, 2017

Innertrends: Analytics in RL A few weeks ago I spoke with Claudiu Maraiu (co-founder & CEO) of the SAAS analytics company Innertrends. Claudiu and I spoke about the ubiquity of tracking and monitoring of consumers.

Claudiu took a clear stand that the industry (and our society) has an ethical dilemma it needs to resolve in RL, Real Life.

I played Claudiu’s observations for Dr. Dehaye hoping that he would be in agreement; (spoiler alert) he was.

Paul and I did a “deep dive” on privacy and tracking – @hhawk

Marketing – A Force for Good I truly believe that marketing can be a force for good and as beneficial to society as any other profession.

What Facebook Advertisers knows about me and the brands I interact with (Harry Hawk)

Minimalist Shopping

There are many (on the right and left) who view consumerism and corporate commercialism as scourge.

Yes… we could live in a world with 1 brand of toothpaste, soap, candy, coffee, computers, phones, cars, a single restaurant chain and (for Americans and Swiss) 1 brand of guns.

It may be more efficient and even cheaper since presumably there would be billions saved in marketing and advertising.

It might also mess up the economy killing off innovation and freedom – @hhawk

Consumer Choice

I understand the backlash against consumer choice and 100 brands of coffee, and 15 types of Oreos – @hhawk

Freedom to Shop

Marketing doesn’t always encourage us to listen to our “better angels” – @hhawk

I want to be able to pick my own music, food, movies, and mate – @hhawk

Modern Marketing: 1:1 Tracking Modern marketing requires tracking, monitoring and more. The real question is how do we ethically address these issues.

[Spoiler Alert] Paul has a plan – PersonalData.IO

Marketers and market data companies do want to know what you like or love

– but they also want to know what or whom you hate.

Global Issue

The larger issue here is bigger than stores tracking your visit their web pages; they can also track folks who visit their web pages and drive past their physical locations

Modern marketing tools are being used in elections @hhawk

Push Memes The 2016 US election and the Brexit vote – Big surprises for many.

What fueled these “surprises?”

The tipping point may have been when campaigns learned to polarize the electorate. Easy polarization means easy segmentation.

Daisy or Daffodil? – a hard “problem” for marketers – @hhawk

Divide and Conquer The “right” memes easily split (segment) the population into clearly defined cohorts.

@hugorifkind I think this is the quote you are looking for @Arron_banks pic.twitter.com/pH2wz2oKg8

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) March 5, 2017

The Power of Hate Knowing which Memes you like or dislike, share or didn’t share, could be used to classify you.

TACDforum17 Cambridge Analytica explains how they use “Likes” https://t.co/6DWeT8LjRJ

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) March 21, 2017

HRC or DJT? – an easy problem because of the strong negative opinions – @hhawk

Memes On Parade DJT may naturally enjoy pushing buttons and speaking previously unspeakable thoughts — but they were a huge benefit in the 2016 election cycle – such polarizing messages filter voters.

A polarizing filter cuts through the glaze to see with clarity 1. Expose people to different memes covering a range of topics: healthcare, regulation, secular organizations, and theology 2. Gauge their reactions 3. You may know enough to:

• push some towards a particular candidate.
• push others to skip the polls
• push conservatives to the right
• push liberals to the left

How ad technology turned against the world cc: @profcarroll https://t.co/HPyJaz33x3 pic.twitter.com/Iq4falX0GY

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) March 17, 2017

You may also learn enough about them to discourage them, give them false hope, or get them all riled up and “mad as hell.” That’s what I call a push meme.

Campaigning for Democracy Political speech, including anonymous speech – is the cornerstone of American democracy.

A 1.3+ Billion Dollar Marketing Campaign – Democracy in Action

Data, data privacy, and monetization are key building blocks for our digital age making online sales from Amazon, Uber, and the local butcher efficient and effective

Paul Dehaye Mathematician Paul Dehaye (PhD Stanford) and I take a deep drive into the digital footprint of the 2016 US Election cycle.

The same tools that make modern markets marvelous may make “Moxie” for malicious meme makers.

This from @GaryCoby is the story everyone missed (so far) out of @CamAnalytica cc @HNSGR @carolecadwalla @Schwartzesque @ninaburleigh pic.twitter.com/JcWm5CzyVm

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) April 4, 2017

Convoluted Truth Who is Cambridge Analytica – they are part of a company that also trains the military for psychological warfare.

Even marketing experts don’t know what is possible or what really happened – @hhawk

America, here we come! pic.twitter.com/if0TfZtYSV

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) April 11, 2017

The 2017 US Election – Really Happened? There is a lot of debate about what happened, how it happened, and more importantly if it did happen – what levers did they pull? What tools did they use?

@profcarroll my actual Adobe Markeing Cloud data: my identifiers across the industry for dozens of companies pic.twitter.com/MKxaQbLWJO

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) March 21, 2017

Protested (& Protected) Data There is no easy answer here to regulating marketing tools when we are talking about political speech.

I wrote a bit about the value of anonymous political speech. https://t.co/n9kkDmYJKF pic.twitter.com/4ckftTB5j7

— Scott Blackburn (@ScottBlackburn2) April 17, 2017

The same law that protects protesters also protects political speakers.

It is possible that Super PACS, Campaigns & Think Tanks shared segmented audiences and used them to support the candidate(s) of their choice.

Hidden Money – Crouching Meme Hillary’s Mixed Messages HRC was frequently “dinged” in the press when using different language, focus among stakeholders.

Imagine two groups of voters (A & B) If voter group A would be discouraged if they learned about Fact X, yet voter group B would be encouraged – we can use segmented audiences to “suppress ‘Face X” to group A while promoting it to group B.

Where did it all start?

We can blame our modern democracy on the ancient Greeks — Cambridge Analytics had an “ah ha” moment when Cambridge University published a study about Facebook “Likes.”

Like, Wow, Haha, Sad, and other Facebook reactions may only make the research more effective – @hhawk

Cambridge FOI If you want to go further down this rabbit hole..

.@LouiseMensch‘s FOI request to Cambridge University about Cambridge Analytica, itself FOI’d pic.twitter.com/SB792hlxyi

— Paul-Olivier Dehaye (@podehaye) March 9, 2017

Links:

• Personal Data.IO (Link)
• Paul Dehaye on Twitter (Link)
• About Paul Dehaye (Link)
• The entire conversation with Claudiu Maraiu (Link)

View Details

Oil Gardner on triggering conversions. Oli shows that customer focused (well timed messages), respectfully giving value can convert at 20% or more; significantly better than aggressive tactics. Great sales people listen; now great web sites listen too.

View Details

Unbounce is asking web marketers to wean themselves off of aggressive pop-ups and start on a journey to use respectful “overlays.”

We have seen our own conversions jump to 20% or more – Oli

Listen to this podcast to learn more about converting users and Unbounce’s overlay strategy.

Invest your time in really understanding your users – Oli Gardner

Three Major Takeaways In the podcast Oli talks about:

1. 20%+ Conversion rates (achievable) via meaningful value (offered)

along each customers’ journey 2. That “You can be delightful and still convert” 3. Major brands using Unbounce’s tools include HootSuite, Thomson Reuters, Shopify Plus, Uberflip, Breather, Campaign Monitor & Buffer

Oli and I had a great time talking

— I think you will enjoy our conversation about conversions – Harry Hawk

Moving Into the Site Moving from it’s landing page only strategy, Unbounce has released a set of tools designed to work on main web sites called Convertibles.

Oli Gardner The Convertibles tool set is already robust but, Oli expects the features and functions to grow over the next year.

Convert more by showing targeted overlays to specific users – Unbounce

Respect The central promise of these tools and Unbounce’s guidance in using them is to treat customers with more respect and to give more value.

Don’t ask the question until they are ready – Harry Hawk

I suggested to Oli that asking someone to convert is much like asking someone to get married. He agreed.

Culturally we spend a lot of time and effort seeking the right place and right time to pop the ‘big’ question – Harry Hawk

A comparison of the best vs. the median conversion rates by industry Conversions Oli says, “Invest time in understanding your consumers journey and wait for ‘just’ the right moment” to pop your question. As seen in the chart above, optimizing your conversion tactics can really have an impact.

Conversion: A conversion can mean many things to many people: an email address, a phone number, a sale… – Unbounce.

Missed Conversions I believe that marketers who lack confidence in their brand proposition (as well as sellers of snake oil) get fixated on the 1x opportunity to capture a lead, and aggressively try to convert before folks are ready.

The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report allows you to compare your conversion rates with tens of thousands of landing pages – Oli Gardner

Rather than fixate on the one opportunity to “convert” marketers should concentrate on giving “extreme value” a term Oli uses often.

What brands desire more than anything is for consumers to invest their time and energy into a dialog and relationship with them. The wrong tactics can have the inverse effect.

By “Popping” the question too fast using loud, obnoxious or over bearing pop-ups site visitors may be “turned off” and discouraged from considering a relationship with your brand.

Missed conversions: … The average number of additional conversions that could have been achieved by each marketer per quarter if their pages were among the highest converting of pages like it – Unbounce.

A good example is one of the triggers in Unbounce’s convertibles restricts overlays to a person’s 2nd or 3rd visit — it seems being patient is a virtue.

The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

During our conversation Oli talked about a pending report on conversions; he was referring to their 2017 report which benchmarks conversions by Industry. A key focus on the report are “Missed Conversions.”

The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report analyzes the behavior of 74,551,421 visitors to 64,284 lead generation landing pages

Pop-ups -vs Overlays Technologically pop-ups and overlays are both modal dialog windows – the difference is in the triggering and in their guidance to, “listen and understand.” The Unbounce guide to modal communication windows is avoid rushing the modal.

Oli encourage marketers to wait for a better perhaps “perfect time” and if an entreaty is rejected – back-off.

No means no! – Harry Hawk

Oli Gardner Oli Garnder is one of six co-founders of Unbounce. He is a well known industry speaker. He is considered one of the foremost experts on landing page conversions, and is an unapologetic supporter of marketing policies that are consumer focused (and friendly).

You can find Oli on Twitter (link)

Visit Unbounce (link)

View Details

Traditional Education is Passive Sitting still at your desk "absorbing" knowledge is passive. Often the only "active" part of a classroom is distracting siren call of smart phones, and watches. Cahoot - usually used in plural they're in cahoots.  He was robbed by a man who was in cahoots with the bartender. - Merriam-Webster Let's Play A Game In Class

It might seem "wrong" (and even a bit odd) that gameplay is a solution that can make classrooms more active & reduce distractions. Kahoot! has reached 1 billion cumulative participating players on the platform - Jamie Brooker With 40 million monthly active users, Kahoot! (a learning company) is happy to be "in cahoots" with students and their teachers to change the way people learn. Gameplay is Active Learning - Harry Hawk 19th Century Learning CUNY's Distinguished Professor Cathy N Davidson (link) has often noted that our current educational system was created in the mid 1800's to train the children of farmers to become efficient factory workers. This is why our educational system "insists" on work done alone, while sitting quietly at a desk without help from anyone else - Harry Hawk 21st Century Learners Today's work place is full of collaboration, and self directed learning in teams with various areas of domain expertise solving problems and creating processes that that span teams, departments, and even multiple businesses. Today workers are expected to band together and solve problems with sustainable multi-stakeholder solutions - Harry Hawk  Kahoot! Knows Games Engage Students Jamie spoke about a number of game elements that were built into Kahoot! to purposely and positively impact classroom dynamics. Kahoot! encourages players to “look up”, creating an engaged, collaborative and loud learning space - Jamie Brooker

Jamie Brooker Founder and CCO of Kahoot! One Game Leads To Another - Which Leads to Learning Learning is almost always more than a single lesson. Similarly, a properly deployed Kahoot! involves multiple games in the same day or over a number of days or weeks, etc.  Gaming Improves Your Classroom Kahoot! encourages students to "look up" -- and while offering some light competition students are also encourages to speak with each other, and to even help each other. Embedding your next video into a game can make it more engaging - Harry Hawk

Kahoot!'s pedagogy encourages learners to make their own games in groups to challenge their peers with, encouraging collaboration and creativity - Jamie Brooker

Making your own game can be a game in itself - Jamie Brooker

Working Together: Gaming + Video If you already have video lectures, short educational films, or just traditional blackboard lectures they can co-exist with Kahoot!

Storytelling is Synthesis Teachers know how hard it is to encourage and coach students so they can pull together a set of facts and personal insight while create an original narrative or research paper. Storytelling as found in game design naturally requires synthesis as "natural by-product" of game development. At their core gaming and video are both environments for storytelling. - Harry Hawk

We tested our gaming environment "Kahoot!" in schools, to prove the engagement model before launching - Jamie Brooker Please Listen: In this conversation with Jamie Brooker the Chief Creative Officer and Founder of Kahoot! as he explains how Kahoot! has grown to offer over 15 Million publicly accessible games and supports 40 Million active monthly users.  Life Long Learning Learning isn't only for young students - Harry Hawk

Businesses that use Kahoot! will enable us to keep the product free to our educational users - Jamie Brooker If you are a business or communications professional try using Kahoot!.  Play a game of Kahoot! with any internal team meeting; if your mission is externally focused  create Kahoot! games around critical topics. A fun learning based game could be part of your onboar...

View Details

Traditional Education is Passive Sitting still at your desk “absorbing” knowledge is passive. Often the only “active” part of a classroom is distracting siren call of smart phones, and watches.

Cahoot – usually used in plural they’re in cahoots. He was robbed by a man who was in cahoots with the bartender. – Merriam-Webster

Let’s Play A Game In Class It might seem “wrong” (and even a bit odd) that gameplay is a solution that can make classrooms more active & reduce distractions.

Kahoot! has reached 1 billion cumulative participating players on the platform – Jamie Brooker

With 40 million monthly active users, Kahoot! (a learning company) is happy to be “in cahoots” with students and their teachers to change the way people learn.

Gameplay is Active Learning – Harry Hawk

19th Century Learning CUNY’s Distinguished Professor Cathy N Davidson (link) has often noted that our current educational system was created in the mid 1800’s to train the children of farmers to become efficient factory workers.

This is why our educational system “insists” on work done alone, while sitting quietly at a desk without help from anyone else – Harry Hawk

21st Century Learners Today’s work place is full of collaboration, and self directed learning in teams with various areas of domain expertise solving problems and creating processes that that span teams, departments, and even multiple businesses.

Today workers are expected to band together and solve problems with sustainable multi-stakeholder solutions – Harry Hawk

Kahoot! Knows Games Engage Students Jamie spoke about a number of game elements that were built into Kahoot! to purposely and positively impact classroom dynamics.

Kahoot! encourages players to “look up”, creating an engaged, collaborative and loud learning space – Jamie Brooker

Jamie Brooker Founder and CCO of Kahoot!

One Game Leads To Another – Which Leads to Learning Learning is almost always more than a single lesson. Similarly, a properly deployed Kahoot! involves multiple games in the same day or over a number of days or weeks, etc.

Gaming Improves Your Classroom Kahoot! encourages students to “look up” — and while offering some light competition students are also encourages to speak with each other, and to even help each other.

Embedding your next video into a game can make it more engaging – Harry Hawk

Kahoot!’s pedagogy encourages learners to make their own games in groups to challenge their peers with, encouraging collaboration and creativity – Jamie Brooker

Making your own game can be a game in itself – Jamie Brooker

Working Together: Gaming + Video If you already have video lectures, short educational films, or just traditional blackboard lectures they can co-exist with Kahoot!

Storytelling is Synthesis Teachers know how hard it is to encourage and coach students so they can pull together a set of facts and personal insight while create an original narrative or research paper. Storytelling as found in game design naturally requires synthesis as “natural by-product” of game development.

At their core gaming and video are both environments for storytelling. – Harry Hawk

We tested our gaming environment “Kahoot!” in schools, to prove the engagement model before launching – Jamie Brooker

Please Listen: In this conversation with Jamie Brooker the Chief Creative Officer and Founder of Kahoot! as he explains how Kahoot! has grown to offer over 15 Million publicly accessible games and supports 40 Million active monthly users.

Life Long Learning

Learning isn’t only for young students – Harry Hawk

Businesses that use Kahoot! will enable us to keep the product free to our educational users – Jamie Brooker

If you are a business or communications professional try using Kahoot!. Play a game of Kahoot! with any internal team meeting; if your mission is externally focused create Kahoot! games around critical topics.

A fun learning based game could be part of your onboarding process – Harry Hawk

Educational Engagement could be part of your Inbound Marketing Program – Harry Hawk

Some of the largest businesses in the world are already using Kahoot! at the highest Level to improve training, professional development and internal communications – Jamie Brooker

Links:

Kahoot! Make Learning Awesome

Jamie Brooker on Twitter

View Details

The hardest part of implementing data analytics is learning to ask the right questions and then having the courage to listen to the answers. Claudiu Marariu walks us through the evolution of a "good" question with real world examples. Claudiu is the CEO of Inner Trends.

View Details

Asking The RIGHT Question It’s easy to think that growing a web site, especially a web business is a constant race to get more and more actionable data.

Often they already have enough data – Claudiu

Claudiu Murariu believes many firms already have enough data, but that they are not asking the right question(s).

Even when they ask the right question and get an answer they don’t act on it – Claudiu

Claudiu Claudiu is the CEO and cofounder of Inner Trends – a data analytics firm that is focused on “transforming growth into more revenue.”

The Experiment Inner Trends recently published a blog post about “The Experiment” a year-long effort to help 7 SAAS (Software As Service) companies by “answering every question they had regarding their user behavior and product usage.”

The Experiment is also the name of Inner Trends monthly newsletter – Harry Hawk

Questions are Harder Than Data A major takeaway from that effort was learning that one of the hardest problems was getting businesses to ask the right questions. Claudiu learned that it was also hard to get them to actually listen to the answers.

When it comes to data, the opposite of “the right question” is not the “wrong question”. It’s an “ambiguous question.” – Claudiu

Our Conversation This episode is the first of several conversations with Claudiu. We learn about his passion for data, and really step-through the evolution of crafting quality questions. I’ve known Claudiu since 2015 when we were both consultants working for HubSpot Labs.

Inner Trends web based analytics software (starting at $299/ M0). Their basic plan can track and segment up to 10k new customers a month.

A More Beautiful Question During the conversation Claudiu recommended a book called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger. The link will take you to Amazon using my affiliate link.

You can also find Claudiu and Inner Trends on Twitter.

View Details

Are there any Universal Truths to eCommerce?

Harry Hawk talks with Kurihara Kohei (@kuriharan) regarding the differences between US and Japanese eCommerce. Kurihara-san details a Japanese fondness for complicated user experiences/interfaces, and how many customers in Japan use cash on delivery (COD) to complete their online transactions.

Kurihara Kouhei

Kohei also details how Japan eRetailers complete not only on price but on speed of delivery with rapid same day delivery a major logistical objective. He also talks about his perception of gender segmented shopping habits.  This was recorded for the benefit of students at Southwestern College (SWCCD.edu) enrolled in the Fall 2016 Principals of eCommerce course (BUS 134).

On Friday Feb. 24, 2017 I will be talking with Kurihara-san again. Once that episode is ready I will be put the link here to that episode.

LINKS mentioned:

Kurihara-san on LinkedIN

Rakuten.co.jp vs. Rakuten.com

mercari.com

About Kurihara Kohei: "I am the co-founder and chief representative of Mangaconnect, an enterprise for the visionary to cultivate their frontiers, based in Japan."

View Details

Anuj Vaidya grew up in India performing drag for his family. His drag has evolved from gender performance to playing with nationality and species. His show, Larval Rock Stars (2016), uses drag to explore nationality, species, and gender.

View Details

Sal is a horror drag performer from Michigan and is 19 years old. He is a polished entertainer and a rising star in the drag community.

View Details

Timothy French is a dancer, choreographer, and fashion merchandiser out of New York City whose drag persona is Stefani Victoria Spears. Timothy discusses the origins of his performance persona in this conversation while also highlighting some of the struggles of being a gender performer as well as the possibilities that he sees within the world of drag and gender performance.

View Details

Harry’s and Austin’s first conversation about the scope of The Draggedy Project. They discuss the differences between how drag is most generally portrayed in mainstream media and the radical possibilities which drag presents. The conversation also focuses on some of the evolutions of drag as an art form, including its movement from small-scale performances at gay clubs to wider audiences in theatres and mainstream media, such as RuPaul’s Drag

The Power of Drag

Harry and Austin start their discussion by talking about the possibilities of drag, especially in how drag is able to comment on several different social issues apart from just gender. Austin believes that drag is able to explore all kinds of themes, including what it means to have a national identity, what it means to grow older, and what it means to be human in general.

Austin Gretiz in a rainbow bowtie

Word Choice

Harry and Austin then discuss some of the terminology used in the world of drag, debating the terminology of “drag” between “gender artistry” or “gender performance,” and the politics of using such terminology within circles of gender performers.

Harry Hawk

The movement from gay bars to more specific arenas for drag artistry is something that has certainly been happening for a while now, but the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race and its subsequent Battle of the Seasons tours has certainly allowed drag to move out of the bar scene and into a scene that is generally more singular in its focus on drag.  However, Austin discusses how there has always been an underground scene which has completely embraced the more political and stand-alone aspects of drag and which has been existing for quite some time as relatively separate from the bar scene. Austin and Harry are also able to discuss how the world of theatre has influenced drag and has in some ways legitimized drag in the eyes of the mainstream media. Learning about Drag

After discussing some of the current trends in the drag scene, Harry and Austin each discuss the first time they were fully aware of the art of gender performance. First drag or gender performance experiences are almost always memorable, and there is no difference for the first drag memories of Harry and Austin. Sharing these memories leads to a discussion on the history of drag, from far-away history to more modern media history.

Trends in Drag The conversation then turns back to more modern trends in the world of gender performance, focusing on different types of gender portrayals—between ultra-glamorous looks to everyday, exceptionally mundane looks.  This turns to a discussion of the binary between the authentic and the inauthentic—can authenticity truly be achieved when using seemingly inauthentic means such as make-up, padding, and clothing choices?

The conversation closes with a discussion of what The Draggedy Project entails—a discussion with gender performers about what their intentions are in their gender performances, the origins of their performance personas, and how the culture of gender performance interacts with the culture in which we live today.

Thanks Be sure to follow Harry and Austin on Twitter at @hhawk and @rainbowsquirtle, respectively. And be sure to follow Talking About Everything and The Draggedy Project on Stitcher Radio and iTunes! Keep checking back to www.draggedy.com for more episodes, pictures of gender performers, and links to more information about the artists we cover. :)

View Details

Ivan Sierra talks about growing up in Mexico with his adoptive parents. For Ivan there is tragedy and joy at nearly every turn.

View Details

Gil (like me) has a real love of food and food culture. We talked about food, family and dishes that he enjoys, makes and shares with friends.

Gil Camargo - LGBTQ Editor @ Time Out Mexico

Gil Camargo is the LGBTQ and Music editor for Time Out Mexico City. You can find him on Twitter @GilCamargo_ and you can find Time Out Mexico City here --> https://www.timeoutmexico.mx/df

View Details

I spoke with Gil Camargo during my January 2016 visit to Mexico City. We talked about gay life, food, culture and so much more. Gil and I had the opportunity to dine at Biko enjoying wine and a 10 course menu. Biko is helmed by European Chefs (Gerard Bellver, Bruno Oteiza, and Mikel Alons) who have made Mexico City their home

View Details

Josefina Santa Cruz is a local who Chef who devoted to Mexican ingredients, but is well known for using them in Global Cuisine. Our global cuisine has many ingredients and techniques are linked to Mexico. Chef Santa Cruz owns Sesame which specializes in Asian street food, and Paprika which served the food of the "Silk Road."

View Details

My final interview with Mr. Juan Pablo Ballesteros. I had the opportunity to try some of the food prepared at Limosneros Restaurant. This included tacos with Crayrish and Cocopaches (an insect). It may might sound creepy or gross but it isn't. The Cocopaches tasted great and well they do look a bit scary but no more scary than the Crayfish..

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Nicholas Gilman who arranged for the meeting with Juan Pablo and through out the conversation added his own insights on the state of Mexican cooking. Please check out one Nicholas's books, and if you are in Mexico City I highly recommend you stop by Limosneros for Lunch of Dinner, for a Taco or Mescal tasting, Etc.

View Details

Many folks know that Tequila is a made from the Blue Agave plant; Mescals are made from the Agave but not just the blue ones, any mature Agave plant can be used to produce Mescal; Tequila is a form of Mescal. Today it's a very commercial process while many Mescals are still made with traditional methods.  Juan Pablo Ballesteros discusses about how in the commercial tequila production process they cut the plant way before it's mature, so they may need to add sugar or other flavors missing from the immature plants.

Nicholas Gilman mentions a few things about Tequila's origin. It's original name is "mezcal de tequila" and it was made in the town of Tequila; Mezcal is identified by the area where it is produced.

View Details

Nicholas Gilman and Harry Hawk speak with Juan Pablo Ballesteros about the food and ingredients used at Restaurant Limosneros in Mexico City. Juan Pablo sources all his ingredients from Mexico including historically wild forged proteins, truly artisan Mescals and ultra modern craft beers and wine. We talk about what it means to create modern Mexican food that is still rooted in tradition while creating new dishes, textures and tastes.

View Details

In early January 2016 I visited Mexico City and followed up with Nicholas Gilman (Episode 38), to talk about and understand the modern heartbeat of Mexican cooking. Nicholas Gilman and I met up at Restaurant Limosneros for several conversations with the owner Juan Pablo (episodes 40, 41 and 42) but before we spoke with him Nicholas and I talked about the history of the area and what Nick means by Modern Mexican Cuisine. The restaurant is located in the central historical district. An area of Mexico City that was heavily damaged by the 1985 earthquake. An area that has slowly been growing, changing and evolving. The area has received lots of investment and redevelopment including funds from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim. Nicholas Gilman is a food critic and author of the book Good Food Mexico City. His blog is also called Good Food Mexico City.

View Details

Today i'm talking with Nicholas Gilman about mexican food culture and about mexican restaurants. He will give us some recomandations of where we should go and when, informations about the price range and the quality of food. Of course, we talked about some tips and tricks for people that are planning to visit Mexico in the near future.

View Details

I love burgers, I love talking about them, I've sold more than 100k of them and I even won an award for the best burger in NYC (in 2008). So I was really excited to talk with FoodieHub Channel Director Sam Lynas about their hunt to find the best burger in NYC. Sam and I spoke with two of their local exports; two guys who also happen to be friends: Joe DiStefano (Queens) and Dave Cook (The Bronx).

We talked about burger culture, the rise of the burger within the food industry and how the burger has influenced both top chefs and cooks from many cultures to start creating their own burgers and burger "like dishes." Sam noted that they have been trying burgers in NYC for months including a special burger at Gramercy Tavern, the NYC WFF's Burger Bash and during the NYC stop of Meatopita. We also talked about McDonalds and their new Create Your Taste "store within a store" concept that has food runners bringing fresh off the grill burgers direct to your table. It seems unlikely this burger will be part of the hunt but you have to stay tuned to fine out. FoodieHub pays for all their own meals and uses local experts to help find the best food in the world. FoodieHub, "searches for, discovers, celebrates and shares the world's most Essential Eats" using their "network of local food experts from over 275 cities." Read more from Dave Cook at Eating In Translation and read more from Joe DiStefano at Chopsticks and Marrow

View Details

New A1200 Cases From New Moulds   I spoke with Philippe Lang of the A1200 Team about their licensed effort to create new cases the venerable Amiga 1200. They are offering the original color, optional colors and even limited edition colors. Made from 3 moulds, the "kit" includes a top and bottom shell, plus new trap doors, and even some hidden mods that will make it easier to work with 3rd party upgrades. The case will support all revisions of the A1200 board and can also support the Raspberry PI if you are just looking for a retro case. The Kickstarter runs until Nov. 1, 2015 and is looking to raise 125,000 Euros. The most affordable option is just to get new trapdoors and other related parts, and screws. They have put a lot of time and thought into this effort and you can see the Kickstarter page for all of the details. They can't offered them without any of their own self built parts, but some sponsor packages include set of coffee mugs with the Amiga logo, the checkmark, and the bouncing ball.

View Details

DJ Science Guy - Kickstarts HIP DJ Channel Talking About Old Men Alexander Str3am is a DJ who lives in Virginia. He is also a research scientist. To kickstart his YouTube channel he did a collaboration (Collab) with popular gay YouTuber Davey Wavey... where he talked about his husband who is much older than himself. Part 1: How To Start A YouTube Channel Harry and Alex talk about how to grow a YouTube channel. This initial part of the interview first appeared on the FIR Podcast Network. The over time discussion which starts about 23 minutes in, is released here "raw and uncut." Part 2: Overtime Dicussion... marketing, EPs and Life as a YouTuber In over time Alex and Harry talk about relationships, marriage, and Alex's work on a forthcoming EP. Harry also gives Alex a mini Inbound Marketing tutorial.    I have highlighted Alex’s channel because it helps demonstrate the power of a single well placed Collab. Other channels have engaged in dozens and even hundreds of Collabs. Alex reports a Collab typically converts 1% (or less) of the viewer to subscribers. Alex’s day job is as a research scientist. Davey’s Raw channel at the time this is being published has 340,885 subscribers and more than 47 Million views. Together his three channels have nearly 1 Million subscribers and over 300 Million views. DAVEY’S CHANNELS ARE: Main ChannelDavey Wavey RawDavey Wavey Fitness LINKS FOR ALEX: Sound CloudFacebookLinkedINTwitterMix Cloud

View Details

Adam Schleichkorn and Harry Hawk talk about the early days of YouTube, the power and lure of the MCN (multi channel networks), and the fight today between YouTube and Facebook.

View Details

Join Harry and Tommy for a farm fresh 1 hour and 40 minute conversation that will leave you wanting to quit your marketing job so you start a farm (just so you can create the marketing for it). 

While being interviewed by Harry Hawk Mr. Alderman expressed interest in Podcasting and has subsequently created a podcast. It is clear that he has a spirit of exploration and is eager to try and experiment with new modes of communication.    Links:Alderman Farms on PinterestAlderman Farms on FacebookAlderman Farms on Google+ The first 20 minutes of this episode appears on the FIR Podcast Network as BUILDING FENCES WITH YOUTUBE YC EPISODE 0001 --  this episode of Talking About Everything is the entire conversation nearly raw and uncut.

View Details

Meet Mike...

In the world of Inbound marketing were quality content rules the roost, you might think that paid advertising and those who earn their living buying or selling ads might feel competitive pressure but Mike makes it really clear that the best place to focus the starting point of a digital promotion is amazing organic content. Mike makes it clear you should be working with your sales staff and agreed with me when I talked about the value of the PR team in terms of storytelling and audience building.

Mike sees organic content as part of the validation or optimization process that every digital effort needs. That is, organic content validates both the message and the audience and proves that there is an alignment between that customer base (or persona) and the message you are delivering.

Mike suggests that you would be wasting money if you start promoting before you have validated your approach. I would add this could go even further in that you should also be testing out the landing page(s), and any follow on efforts you may be making once you have brought people to your site. I’m sure Mike would agree.

Mike was very clear, "once it is working you can double down." Which is a very polite way of saying once it is working you can really start throwing money at the effort.

In my overtime conversation with Michael we get even deeper into how today's PPC efforts work. We talk about lookalike audiences, cost per action (CPA), and other even about how to fine tune a digital ad campaign. We talk about return on advertising spend; how to really understand how much you can afford to spend and understand what your business gains from that. We converse about how to blend different priced ads into a single buy, and also about buying during urgent time frame (near a holiday). We talk budgets and every else.

Links: LinkedIN Pesonal Page Dennis Yu - My interview Dennis Yu - BlitzMetrics Inbound.org

View Details

Official Show Logo

A few weeks ago I spoke with Michael (Mike) McEuen about how to buy and optimize online advertising. Mike really knows this topic because he has worked on all sides of paid advertising triangle. He has been on the sell side with Gannett Papers, on the AdTech side with the company AdStages, and today he is on the buying side at DoubleDutch.

In the world of Inbound marketing were quality content rules the roost, you might think that paid advertising and those who earn their living buying or selling ads might feel competitive pressure but Mike makes it really clear that the best place to focus the starting point of a digital promotion is amazing organic content. Mike makes it clear you should be working with your sales staff and agreed with me when I talked about the value of the PR team in terms of storytelling and audience building. Mike sees organic content as part of the validation or optimization process that every digital effort needs. That is, organic content validates both the message and the audience and proves that there is an alignment between that customer base (or persona) and the message you are delivering.

Mike suggests that you would be wasting money if you start promoting before you have validated your approach. I would add this could go even further in that you should also be testing out the landing page(s), and any follow on efforts you may be making once you have brought people to your site. I’m sure Mike would agree. Mike was very clear, "once it is working you can double down." Which is a very polite way of saying once it is working you can really start throwing money at the effort.

In my overtime conversation with Michael we get even deeper into how today's PPC efforts work. We talk about lookalike audiences, cost per action (CPA), and other even about how to fine tune a digital ad campaign. We talk about return on advertising spend; how to really understand how much you can afford to spend and understand what your business gains from that. We converse about how to blend different priced ads into a single buy, and also about buying during urgent time frame (near a holiday). We talk budgets and every else.

Links: LinkedIN Pesonal Page Dennis Yu – My interview Dennis Yu – BlitzMetrics Inbound.org

View Details

This mini episode was produced with my existing mixer and MXL microphone; pulled into the Chromebook via USB-B. I recorded and edited in Audacity 2.05, and exported as a WAV file. This summary and all post production was done in Auphonic accessed from Ubuntu using the Chromium browser. From Auphonic this episode was directly released to iTunes.

View Details

Talking With Dennis About Reach on Facebook You will hear a lot of people "projecting" their opinions on Facebook's motives for offering paid reach and the reports that organic reach is down. To most it is a conspiracy theory; Dennis (and I) believe that the truth is far different; that Facebook is putting users first and quality organic content still has amazing reach.

Here what Dennis has to say about how to use Facebook to target, message and communicate with your customers, partners and prospective clients. Dennis Yu is the CTO and co-founder of BlitzMetrics.

You can read more about Dennis and BlitzMetics at www.blitzmetrics.com or find Dennis on Twitter @DennisYu

View Details

Josh Ozersky was a friend of mine.. and he was not always present in my life but he was always a presence. He introduced me to 100's of people, from the famous to the infamous. He invited me to a competition where I won the best burger award, and so many other things.   In this interview you will hear from Union Square Hospitality head Danny H Meyer (@dhmeyer), Jean-Paul the Executive Chef at Blue Smoke (@chefjean_paul ), and Patrick Martin (@MartinsBBQ) a champion winning BBQ guy from Nashville Tn. (and one of Josh's best loved BBQ joints).  

Robbie Richter (@RobbieRichter) and I spent the morning of Saturday June 13th walking through the Big APple BBQ talking to folks who were willing to share their memories of Josh. We interviewed Dozens of folks thanks to Robbie's ability to open doors.   This is the first in a series of short releases and a full length episode will come out in due course. You can think of this as a miniseries about memories of Josh! As Josh often said when asked about eating vegetables, "The FAT, that's the meat, the Meat, that's the Vegetables..."   LINKS: Josh Ozersky (Wikipedia)Josh Ozersky was the food world’s master provocateur (Wash. Post) Union Sq Hospitalty Group Martin's Bar-B-Que joint | Official Website Blue Smoke

View Details

I am the ATM, Advertising Testing Manager -- Brian Lenney is our resident Wordsmith and the guy who made my last post.. really pop... When I write I take too long.. Brian has the knack for high quality and fast. Early in the process Brian put together fine, curiously well crafted and curated collection of copy... The first one I call WOLF... This podcast is extended content for my 2nd post.  http://inbound.org/post/view/ppc-part-2-hunting-images-for-ads-with-brian-lenney?utm_campaign=Pod

View Details

This week I talk with TWIP's Lauren Koenig about travel, how people differ in their behavior while traveling, and who makes the best traveling companions.   I have noticed that as I have traveled with people whom I know well and respect… at times that feeling of respect has been replaced with anger, frustration or just  annoyance. We may be friends, family, colleagues or even lovers but well, we are not well suited to travel together.  

Lauren Koenig has has noticed this problem as well.. and many other minor details I hadn’t thought about, from when someone wants to eat breakfast, to what someone wants to do in the evening. Of course Lauren hasn’t just noticed this problem, Lauren has decided to do something about. Her solution is TWIP.co.   TWIP.co is a “pre-launch” mode as I write this and is hopefully coming to the market soon. It is a place for people to find other folks to travel with and/or where they can book tours offered by TWIP with a “curated” group of strangers who like a dating site, have been matched but not for chemistry, but rather for for travel compatibility. Lauren’s Bio: Company founder and Twip CEO, Lauren A. Koenig grew up in the Midwest. Educated at Ball State University while holding a 4-year Presidential Scholarship, she left her hometown of Chicago at the invitation of the French Ministry of Education to teach English. Lauren welcomed the challenge of working abroad; travel became a hallmark of her early and future stage development. Returning to Chicago, she worked for Anita Dee Yacht Charters before joining The International Kitchen, the leading provider of cooking school vacations covering Italy, France and Spain. The travel market is becoming increasingly cluttered thereby enabling TWIP's unique competitive advantage to stand out from the pack. Twip offers travelers the opportunity to travel to the most interesting countries in the world, discovering global events and exciting, exclusive adventures. While importantly, being compatible with each travelers previously identified needs. As of Spring 2015, Lauren is an Alumni of the Women's StartUp Lab Accelerator in San Francisco, California. Lauren can be reached at Lauren@twip.co.

View Details

I am the ATM, Advertising Testing Manager -- I spent a lot of Inbound.org $$$ last month, I took a lot of chances, tried a lot of things... and the results may surprise you! This is a multi part series talking about what I'm doing, pulling out lessons and opening up my work to the community for discussion and feedback. Find the post on Inbound(Org) http://inbound.org/discussion/view/reaching-every-marketing-person-on-earth-can-ppc-help-scale-inbound-org-part-1

View Details

Nathan Thursfield has transformed his face with a nose job, which by itself isn't that remarkable. Yet, because he choose to have his nose remade to look like the Katie Price, a UK Reality TV star and model the media has grabbed a hold of Nathan's story. I wanted to speak with Nathan about his own journey and learn more about the story behind the story, and learn about what makes Nathan live, love and prosper. I am incredibly proud that Mr. Thursfield had the courage of his convictions to make the changes to himself that has helped boost is confidence and grow his happiness. Still I'm amused that the media has made so much of what amounts to a simple nose job, Nathan however has an interesting and compelling journey. During the interview we talked about the Diane Sawyer interview with Caitlyn Jenner who still was identifying as Bruce. He is hard to juxtapose the life long struggle of Caitlin with a teenager who was able to come out and come into his own without waiting decades... but I think is a sign of our times. Happiness awaits us all.

View Details

Harry Hawk and Ken Ruan talk about Taco Bell, Apps, subway system key cards, self driving cars, electric cars, and the Internet Of Things.. talking about how each of those inventions adds to the richness of our lives, and yet, can take away from us some of the freedoms we once had, or at worst, exposes us to some very long tail risks.

A few times a year Harry and Ken fire up Skype and talk about some current issue in society... This sixty minute conversation is all focused on fast food, fast cars and technology failures. From a Taco Bell app that took an order when the store was closed, to a car that has a sensor problem that prevents the brakes from working we are surrounded by amazing technology that presents serious long term (aka long tail) risk.   This episode is a bit longer and a bit more rambling than typical but it's a real genuine conversation and we invite you to listen in. From ordering fast food from your smartphone to cars that brake for themselves or refuse to brake (when asked) our world is a more interesting and complex place. Do we have to accept that from time to time, our technology will have a momentary phase of frailty and abandoning it when we need it most?

Ken X. Ruan Ken Ruan is a writer-editor-researcher-copywriter who views NYC through a pair of sociological lens. He is obsessed with visual design and advertisement composition. Constantly scrutinizing social class, status, law and the inconstancy of our digital age, he has written extensively about urban sociology, millennial angst and class and social status. He is excited to partner with Harry S. Hawk in exposing the shifting landscape of digital marketing.   Links: Taco Bell Tesla Motors Jay Leno Shows a Ford Focus w/ a Ricardo HyBoost (video) Ricardo (web site) Woody Allen w/ Electric Car (Movie: Sleeper (not Bananas) A link to a story about 3D Printing which Ken wanted you to see.

View Details

Everette Taylor Jr. (@Everette) started marketing while he was 18 yo and attending college. To date he has worked with some of the "net's" most famous brands, marketing experts and today is the CMO of Sticker Mule. If you enjoyed EP16 Everette Taylor talks about online sales and growth hacking then check out this contined conversation... new topics and greater depth! 

It's clear that Everette's personal journey in college lead the way to his success. Everette was head of Growth at Growth Hackers and today is the CMO at StickerMule.com (@StickerMule).   Everette's journey from student, to marketing expert really just follows his own passion, for learning, trying, experimenting and do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

In this 48 minute and 56 second overtime conversation we talk about everything from the companies he has worked with, the tools he uses, and the nuts and bolts of optimizing an ecommerce site. Please subscribe on iTunes, or Stitcher Radio -- your honest review is appreciated

View Details

A special BONUS show. Harry Hawk talks with Dr. Freberg about students and social media. How she teaches social media, and how students react to "having" to use social media as part of a classroom activity or as homework, and how that differs from using it with their friends. Karen also talks about how she teaches communications and PR and includes some of the social media lesson plans and exercises in her courses. Dr. Freberg uses Twitter, SnapChat and Facebook in her classroom. Harry and Karen also mention University of Cincinnati President Dr. Ono and his stellar use of Twitter. Dr. Karen Freberg teaches communications, PR and Social Media at the University of Louisville. She is @kfreberg on Twitter. #HighEd

View Details

Everette Taylor Jr. (@Everette) started marketing while he was 18 yo and attending college He was an intern at United Way where old school marketing flourished. Everette helped them implement some digital marketing and with tangible results for United Way and his own personal brand.

It's clear that Everette's personal journey in college lead the way to his success. Everette was head of Growth at Growth Hackers and today is the CMO at StickerMule.com (@StickerMule).

Everette's journey from student, to marketing expert really just follows his own passion, for learning, trying, experimenting and do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

In this 20 minute episode we talk about everything from the companies he has worked with, the tools he uses, and the nuts and bolts of optimizing an ecommerce site. There is a 48 minute and 56 second Overtime episode for those who want to hear more of our talk. Everette talks more about growth hacking and about students and personal branding.

Everettte feels that all students need to work on their personal branding, it's not just about "getting famous" it's about finding jobs, and preparing for the work place of the future.

Both Harry and Everette see that in the future many companies will seek to have their staff amplify their business via their employee's personal branding and personal "platform." Please subscribe on iTunes, or Stitcher Radio -- your honest review is appreciated

View Details

Harry talks with Dr. Karen Freberg who is an Asst. Prof. At University of Louisville  in strategic communications  and an adjunct Prof. Online in the graduate Marketing Communications program at West Virginia University.

I'm excited to talk with Karen about the use of targeted social and socially curated published content as it applies to crisis communications, PR, and reputation management. I'm also interested in talking about how students can make use of social media tools for their personal branding, and her insights on the value of students engaging in the process of crisis management planning for their personal brands. Prof. Freberg has active research in public relations, reputation management, social media and crisis communications.

View Details

How do collge age students "take" to social media studies? They might think it is easy but according to Dr. Freberg, "it's the hardest course they will have to take." It's one thing to snapchat with your friends, it's a totally different matter to be the public interface for a brand. Harry talks with Dr. Karen Freberg who is an Asst. Prof. At University of Louisville  in strategic communications  and an adjunct Prof. Online in the graduate Marketing Communications program at West Virginia University.

I'm excited to talk with Karen about the use of targeted social and socially curated published content as it applies to crisis communications, PR, and reputation management. I'm also interested in talking about how students can make use of social media tools for their personal branding, and her insights on the value of students engaging in the process of crisis management planning for their personal brands. Prof. Freberg has active research in public relations, reputation management, social media and crisis communications.

View Details

Many lessons were learned at the wheel of my custom coupe.

Coupe of Pleasure This one is blue; mine was Gray.. and probably has simplier rims, and no wheel well covers. .. and only a single exhaust. You can see the iconic "Notch" in the rear deck lid and if you can image, the rear and front of the car were of a similar length.. and there was plenty of room in that car to get into trouble. I got mine for $900 in 1977 with about 95,000 miles on it. That car took good care of me, and got me into and out of a lot of trouble from fire and ice, to snow, skiing and amazing full 360 degree skids.. I really learned how to pull myself out of a skid in that car.. let me tell YOU! Which Car Is Mine? It's hard to know (or really remember) what exact model (power train) I had. I recall the car had a 10.5:1 compression but there isn't anything in the specs at that size.. and I recall it was a 2 barrell carb so in the episode I have probally indicated the wrong engine configuration. I think this is the car I had -->> My Impala (1970) 350 Custom Coupe. Also I think I was wrong in the listed stop speed which seems to be 167 for 3rd gear; although this site claims a 112 top speed for one model (and 0-60 in 9.5 seconds). The most I ever did was 115 MPH... which was fast enough. This car is 3968 lbs whereas in the episode I note 4004 lbs.. either way with me the car weighted over 2 tons. My car was more like this one -->

Here is the side view -->

You can see how the back and front are nearly the same size!

View Details

AdTech - Advertising Technology Harry Hawk talks to Kimberly about the future of advertising technology. Learn how AdTech helps build relationships between consumers and brands. Using geographic, demographic and psychographic segmentation consumers can be targeted consistently even if they own or use multiple devices. Kim Glaser talks about the features and functions built into the RunAds.com software.  

AdTech Reaches Across Devices It can be hard to reach someone on a mobile device because they can have or use more than one device and of course more than one desktop computer as well. Runads.com help to solve that problem. While also allowing consumers to opt-out, Runads.com platform fosters brands innovation around storytelling. Understanding AdTech basics is important for everyone including professionals in PR,  marketing and advertising to average citizens. Ad Tech for Public Relations While AdTech can be used to push transactional "buy now" ads... Harry Hawk feels its real value is sharing impactful and relevant stories to different sets of stakeholders. Harry feels thinking about AdTech as only about making sales is like thinking about marriage as only about sex; that would be limiting and short sighted. Overtime After their 20 minute conversation, Kimberly agreed to some overtime discussion which covers even more topics including Entanglement, storytelling and more.

View Details

Teachers Need Peer Review Dr. McKee provides some peer assessment and evaluation of Harry's in-classroom learning. Harry recounts the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of assignments and in-class strategies. Harry is seeking broader acceptance of honest self-evaluation and embracing the failures in pedagogy that leads to learning and improved student learning outcomes. Reach Doug: Teach Better web site (http://teachbetter.co) and Twitter (@TeachBetterCo)

Harry's Notes: "Since the Fall of 2013 I have evolved my approach to teaching with an assortment of pedagogically diverse approaches. I have been seeking a knowledgeable peer with whom I could present a self-assessment; I believe only a frank and honest accounting of my efforts will allow me to continue to grow and learn as a teacher." Thanks Doug! On April 7th, 2015, Dr. Doug McKee took the time to listen to my self-assessment while offering suggestions, insights and lessons from his own classroom. Dr. McKee is the co-host of the Teach Better podcast (http://teachbetter.co/)"

View Details

This is an open BLOG post to Doc Searls (doc@searls.com) & David Weinberger (david@weinberger.org) Dear David & Doc, I heard on the Hobson & Holtz Report (Epi 790) about some feedback you received on your new clue # 66 from Richard Edelman. I'd like to offer my own thoughtful feedback. This is an open letter.   In thinking about your new clues 64, 65, & 66...    To whit, that while there maybe some area of concern with native ads, they are ethically speaking full of disclosure and the standard for them is actively evolving. The problem is not with Native Ads but with Journalism. Journalism is devoid of transparency and disclosure and self certifies that they are a profession and that their professionals are totally ethical.   Your clues (new and old) are filled with a humanistic admonition to interact as people, with people, in conversation and dialogue with transparency, openness, etc. Journalism is the "man behind the curtain" pretending to be the great and powerful "Oz of Ethics"...  Like the Great and Powerful Oz himself, Journalists do not want that curtain opened.     Here are some Journalistic Clues:

When someone (like a Journalist) starts a conversation by telling you that you can trust them because their ethics are beyond reproach doubt their word early and often.  While there might be a problem with Native Ads, there is a serious and proven problem with Journalism. Journalist ethics allow reporters to lie by omission millions of times a year while claiming to be the embodiment of purity and trust.  Journalism is less ethical than native ads because most people agree that ethics of native ads demands disclosure; Journalism pretends to disclose but doesn't. Journalist ethics requires reporters to "shun" whole areas of discussion rather than engage in conversation, community building, and dialogue. Native ads have the potential for abuse and may potentially lack in quality; Journalism wearing an emperor's cloak of ethics has abused reportage and the public trust for over a century. The written code of Journalistic ethics is as byzantine and complex as a tax code, and as straight forward as Orwell's doublespeak. Journalists are told to reveal ALL their sources, and to QUOTE the most primary sources; they speak all day, all week, all year to PR staff who provide them with a myriad of information, privileged access to sources, gifts, meals, insight, locations and data not to mention background "analysis" and more; all of that is left entirely out of the picture (and the story). If someone was paid 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars to influence a reporter, most of the actual public would want to know that; journalistic ethics deems that irrelevant. Journalists are ethical in the same way that dictators care about their people; in name but not deed. 

I hope you consider this an effort to create some conversation around this topic. Understanding that you have written 121 clues and I'm fixated on only three of them, i'd certainly understand if you don't have the time to reply or engage.

For the record I have many friends who are journalists but there are only a few Journalists that I hold in high esteem; I don't know him but Glenn Greenwald is the best example.  Warmly yours,   Harry Hawk @hhawk HawkSocialMarketing.com

View Details

Karl Cooks TakoYaki Karl Palma was the featured Chef in, "Tako NY" ~ A documentary film about Otafuku" (directed by Kris Brearton). He talks to Harry Hawk about cooking TakoYaki, opening up his own restaurant and playing the Taiko Drums. Karl has been a featured Chef at the New York, Chicago and Charleston Food Film Festivals. Karl is of Filipino decent and grew up in Southern region of New Jersey. He attributes much of his success to his relationship with the Japanese Community in NYC.   I have known Karl for a number of years and you will find he is full of passion and energy and that translates to everything he does and to everyone around him. 

Related Video FILM: Tako NY - Dir. by Kris Beardon featuring Chef Karl Palma - filmed at Otafuki [https://vimeo.com/50872389] Karl talking about his balls [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22APK4qfkbA] Keizo talking about Ramen balls [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3znym5WF13o] Food Porn "star" Larry talks about Balls [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXyT1TvgH8] Photos

(Above: Chewbakayaki)  

(Above: Cooking Takoyaki)

(Above: Takoyaki with Octopus)

View Details

An SEO Gig?  I met Mihai through the gig site Fiverr when I was looking for some help with the Blogger site I was creating for this podcast; the site you are currently reading. I needed help making sure all the posts and pages loaded fast, some help understanding SEO and testing to make sure that the blog worked as well on mobile devices as on desktops. Mihai was the 3rd or 4th person I tried. Everyone added a little bit of value but Mr. Vasilan had more to offer, albeit at a higher price. Mihai is a 21 year old college student studying public administration but actually earns his living blogging, and helping others with their blogs.  What is SEO? SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization -- this is the art and science of making a web sites, web pages, pictures or posts easier to appear within a search engine results on Google or Bing. There are legitimate organic ways of doing this and that is known as White Hat SEO; there are some tricks and methods which attempt to "game" the search engines; that is Black Hat SEO. Mihai's SEO journey has evolved from trying all of the SEO tricks (and being penalized (by Google) for that), to becoming a self proclaimed White Hat SEO practitioner. Mihai's specialty is his experience and expertise with Blogging which includes Wordpress, and general web sites, but his true expertise is in the Google owned Blogger platform.  Growing up Romanian  Besides talking about SEO, blogging and other geeky topics I was excited ask to Mihai what it was like growing up in Romania... After all, the fall of Ceaușescu happened in 1989; in Romania the advent of the Internet revolution largely coincided with the fall of Communism. In many ways Mihai discovered the Internet through blogging.  Mr. Vasilan has used his blogging skills to help a few local charities, posts Photoshop CS4 tutorials plus SEO tutorials for blogger and how-to's guides. One of his blogs has scored in the top 100 psychology blogs in 2015 and he reports his readers increase everyday. While is blog is aimed at a Romanian audience (and written in the local Romanian language [Daco-Romanian]) Mihai has expressed interest in creating at least one blog in English.  Blogger or Wordpress? A large percent of the Podcasting community uses and recommends Wordpress, which is a free and open source blogging and content management system. It is highly flexible and is build upon a core platform with 100's or even 1000's of independently created modules known as "plug-ins." Plug-ins don't always work well together and the quality of them varies. While hosting a Wordpress based website can be free, many of the plug-ins are offered for a fee, often on a yearly basis. For a variety of personal reasons I selected Blogger as an alternative to Wordpress, which is certainly a minor (perhaps major) disadvantage for a podcaster; however, the benefits of a stable and complete free platform (thanks Google) appeals more to me than the Podcast friendly advantages of Wordpress. For me, Blogger seemed more affordable, easier to get off the ground; my plan is to slowly adjust and improve this page (with Mihai's help).  l Do you Need to SEO Optimize your website?  Mihai is available for hire and I have already recommended him to a few friends. His starting price is $75 (project basis), but he is willing to work on an hourly basis as well. For one friend in NY State, Mihai is providing weekly SEO training via Skype (by the hour). Organic SEO is always the best approach as Google (and Bing) frequently change and adjust their search algorithms; aggressive SEO tactics are increasingly identified and sites employing them are penalized. Mihai and I talk about this and more in the Podcast. I hope you enjoy listening. How to Find Mihai Vasilan? Blog/Website: Gandim Rational - Dezvoltare Personala  E-mail: noigandimrational@gmail.com

View Details

The continued discussion from part I. We talk about everything from Steve's appearance on America's Got Talent to what he wants to do with his future!

View Details

Steve Price is a Chain Reaction Artist You may know him from America's Got Talent... Steve Price is a full time college student (Junior), and when not in school spends his time thinking about and building complicated constructions of dominoes, chemical reactions and other physical elements that once started "detonate" in one long chain reaction. Here is a great example on YouTube: Steve Price (Sprice) on America's Got Talent. Steve's web site | Steve on Twitter | Steve's YouTube Channel | Sprice Machines on Facebook Help Support STEM ED There is a lot of Science, Techonology, Enginering and Math (STEM) invovled in Steve's creations... It is a way to make STEM very real and tangible for students and of course when a chain reaction detonates it is also a lot of fun.

Kickstart Steve & his 15 Friends Besides trying to support STEM Education, Steve his 15 friend will be trying to create two records. The American Domino record, plus the world record for Rube Goldberg Devices. LINK TO The Incredible Science Machine KICKSTARTER (Ends April 20, 2015).

Some Of Steve's Work:

View Details

Spring 2015 Business leaders in the Spring of 2015 (at the most senior levels) are still not using social media tools themselves (even senior PR Pros). Yet there is plenty of data suggesting that when the C-Suite uses social tools, it helps them and their teams strengthen consumer trust in their company. The sad fact is that often C-Suite executives are unwilling to learn the needed skills or are simply just risk adverse.

Game of RISK: In academic circles these same two issues are often seen as a barrier. There are some who only see social media (especially Twitter) as a tool for youthful and trivial interactions instead of for its untapped potential: a gate-free medium that can facilitate cross generational and cross cultural communications. Santa J. Ono, PhD. Dr. Ono's usage of Twitter has been recognized  as a leading example that academic leadership can harness social media to accomplish personal, professional and institutional objectives. This leadership has been recognized within the UC Community, locally in Ohio, and by researcher Dan Ziaontz.  It takes a bit of fearlessness to present yourself to your stakeholders without a safety net; it is a common perception of social media that a tiny misstep can lead to embarrassment. Dr. Ono's acclaim stems in part from his ability to market himself adeptly in the social media realm. Ono on Social: President Ono recommends that individuals, departments, and companies need to find their "authentic voice." My impression of Dr. Ono is that he considers authenticity of voice to be a critical requirement for using social tools like Twitter. While Dr. Ono makes use of a variety of social networks, his reputation for using Twitter is significant. Students at UC have analyzed his tweets, and he has taken their advice to heart, proving that his use and command of Twitter are both dynamic and evolving. He informed me during the interview that a student in Canada is analyzing his Tweets as part of his PhD. research Biography: "Santa J. Ono is the 28th President of the University of Cincinnati, one of the nation’s top 30 public research universities. An avid user of social media, he is also an accomplished researcher in eye disease.  A new book called #FollowtheLeader (Lessons in Social Media Success from #HigherEd CEOs) says that with his use of Twitter, Dr.Ono “epitomizes the institutional champion” – 'highlighting his university’s achievements, both academic and non-academic, interacting with key stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and partners; and also serving as ‘cheerleader-in-chief’ whenever possible.' "

View Details

Judith survived the "Great" circus fire of July 6, 1944 -- it was rather traumatic for her. 1st escaping from the fire, and then returning home without the loving affection and understanding that is shown to day with young victims of trauma.

View Details

Mike talks about the economic value of information and why the freedom of information should be valued by a free society. Mike talks with Harry Hawk about his previous role as the CTO and VP at The Creative Commons.

View Details

College for America CFA) has designed a new approach to higher education based on skills learned vs. time spent in the class (contact hours). Students do not get letter grades; there is no teacher to beg for a better grade. Students are assessed with either Not Yet or Mastery. They need to fully master 120 skills to graduate. This program is affordable, and students progress through the course at their own pace, while coached by the team at CFA.

View Details

Dan Ziaontz spoke to educational leaders who are using social media as part of their effort to communicate with members of their communities, governing boards and the general public. Published by M. Stoner.

View Details

Angus Malcolm tells Harry Hawk how the Naked Rowers have used nudity and social media to engage, influence, and tell a very unique story about sports and inclusion while raising "nearly £100,000."

View Details

My Love Affair with Burgers: Starting To Flip

Schnack: A Burger Joint (2003 - 2008)

I've helped sell more than 100, 000 burgers and I've cooked them 5x at the James Beard House. I also won the 2008 Burger Battle of the Boroughs. This is my story about my love affair with the hamburger. I've decided to start to tell this story because on Jan 17th 2015 I'll be cooking a burger pop-up in Brooklyn. If you are reading this before that date, you can buy some tickets and taste my burgers --> Jan 17, 2015 Tickets.

You can visit the Schnack Web Site which is still online, or check out the Blog. I mention the Gowanus Yacht Club in this episode, learn more here.

A Juicy well cooked, medium rare slider burger (a Schnackie) on a NY Handmade Breads Brioche bun.

This "Slide" ran at the local Clearview movie theater promoting Schnack burgers and meals.

A view inside of Schnack designed by James Mamary the most amazing restaurant designer I've ever met.

e-Flyer from the 2015 Burger Pop-up

View Details

PUT is the acronym for People Using Television. Since Nielsen started counting broadband only homes in 2013, the broadband only category has grown to be "2.7% of the sample size." That's not a huge number but it is growing and it's bigger when they look at younger viewers where it's down about 7%.

View Details

I was joined by Ken X. Ruan and we talked about society and marketing. This episode was a test of how well we could record together over Skype, testing out Ken's Microphone, and of course getting used to speaking to each other while recording everything we said

View Details

This is my audio promo for "Talking About Everything," a podcast with Harry Hawk offers a wide range of interviews, rants, discussions and more.