Category: Articles

For Canadians, the internet looks different today than it did last week. June 1st marked the release of Accelerated Mobile Pages on Canadian domains. Varied browsing habits and histories mean everyone will notice changes at different times. If you haven’t seen it yet, trust us, it’s real. For a quick example, Wikipedia was one of the first sites in the world to opt in.

Before:

After:

You’ll also start seeing more ‘carousel’ listings on the front page of search results that will link directly to a specific video or article:

So what happened exactly? For more than a year it’s been common knowledge that most internet activity now takes place on mobile devices. Google is leading an initiative to change how the internet is built to accommodate our new browsing habits. It’s called ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’ or AMP. Google has been encouraging websites all over the world to adopt AMP,rewarding early adopters with more favourable positions in search results. Though technically confined to mobile, AMP is currently impacting desktop searches as well. Popular sites like Wikipedia, as well as major news publishers from around the world, partnered with Google in developing and introducing the technology. The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and Global News are some of the Canadian outlets involved. The project was announced last fall and launched in ten countries before going live in Canada last week. So far, there are more than 120million AMP pages online from a source of 650,000 partnered publishers.

Accelerated Mobile Pages does exactly what its name suggests. AMP is a new way to code web pages to load faster and better align with mobile browsing habits. It’s a logical development, recognizing the massive shift in web usage away from desktops towards smartphones and tablets. With Google backing the system, AMP will inevitably affect all future search results.. Accommodating the shift towards mobile on such a fundamental level and wide scale, officially ends the era where digital content is primarily designed for stationary browsing on traditional desktops. The so-called mobile revolution has never been a secret. Google partnering with major publishers around the world makes AMP a point of no return: anyone looking to circulate content online without first considering the mobile experience may need to completely alter their strategy.

The best way to introduce something on a massive scale is to make it benefit a lot of different people and to not give others a choice. AMP is no exception. A leaner design is the most obvious takeaway from the Wikipedia example, which will be the same for every participating website. For users, this means AMP-enhanced content will load up to four times faster,using far less data. This should cause people to gravitate towards AMP sites and incentivize more publishers to opt in.

AMP’s leaner format excludes some types of mobile ads, mostly flashed based, that users likely find invasive, yet are still relatively common. While perhaps initially frustrating for advertisers and media planners, there is the potential to create new types of ad units customized to specific devices, integrating ad content more naturally into the new ‘accelerated’ mobile display. There are even rumors AMP will make it easier for publishers to introduce paywalls on their digital content. Though re-coding sites may be costly for smaller publications, AMP acts as a kind of SEO reset. Those that neglected their search footprint now have an obvious place to start in order to reach one aspect of the industry standard.

The partnership between Google and major news outlets is key to AMP’s success. Yes we can already call it a success — at least the launch portion, anyway. The country’s biggest news content creators collaborating with the most popular search engine for news (and everything else) means, strictly from a search visibility perspective, other outlets looking to get their website displayed on the first few pages have no choice but to convert. Until Google says otherwise, Canadian web developers will be forced to get familiar with the new system. Eventually publications not directly involved in the rollout will switch or find a way to replace traffic from Google.

Is all this work really worth it? Yes. AMP is undeniably intended to make mobile search and by extension Google easier to use for both users and publishers. This might be Google’s biggest priority going forward. The smartphone has won out over the traditional computer as the preferred device for consuming media, yet controlling how people access media on mobile platforms is still up for grabs.

Google has enjoyed a practical monopoly on search traffic long enough to become the verb for it. Unfortunately for Google, searching for content is not the only way to access information on mobile devices. In fact, one could argue smartphones and tablets are better designed for apps, where users bypass search to get information right from their favourite publishers. One study found users spend 90 per cent of their mobile device time on apps, leaving only ten per cent for the browser. Google has noticed.. By integrating into Windows 10 and Microsoft Surface devices, Bing recently leveraged user’s preference for mobile to make some dents in Google’s worldwide dominance in total search traffic.

While Bing may be slowly carving out a share of organic search, Facebook is the only company seriously competing with Google in terms of overall Internet traffic. The rise of mobile browsing— where users are accustomed to setting up social media alerts and devices are designed for scrolling through app news feeds than typing search queries—gives Facebook an early advantage in becoming the Google of smartphones. In fact, one study found that Facebook already passed Google in terms of total referral traffic by five per cent. And that was before Facebook rolled out its new Instant Article Service, which allows major publishers—some of the same ones involved in their country’s initial AMP rollouts—to bypass search engines and place articles directly in targeted users’ news feeds. AMP can be seen as Google’s counter measure, intended to ensure its general dominance over how people find content online continues as browsing shifts to phones and tablets.

Internet trends move fast and a lot can change in a short time. AMP is the first of what will likely be many Google-backed initiatives to affect how digital content is created and disseminated, now that mobile browsing is solidified as the preferred way to access the Internet. How users and publishers respond to things like AMP and Instant Article Service will ultimately determine the extent to which either Google or Facebook are able to control how mobile content is circulated. With those two companies currently accounting for 76 per cent of online advertising revenue in the US , the battle between search and apps is very much a two-horse race. Chances are Google and Facebook will be working just as hard to keep it that way as they will at actually winning it.

There’s a reason Snapchat is the fastest growing social media channel. After downloading the app, users soon realize it is the most immersive, unique and simply fun social media platform out there. With the ability to follow your friends, celebrities, brands, media outlets and politicians, it provides a personal glimpse into users’ adventures and observations.

For those unaware of how the platform differentiates itself from the linear nature of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Snapchat is only available for mobile phones and pushes videos and photos directly to your friends (‘Snaps’) or all your followers (‘Stories’). Users are able to personalize their content with texts and drawings, and string them together to effectively create a highlight reel of their day. However, what makes Snapchat truly unique is that its content expires: Snaps disappear after a maximum ten seconds of viewing and stories are removed 24 hours after they are published. This ‘fleeting’ feature quickly captivated users, enabling them to share content inappropriate for permanent social channels – be it mundane but amusing moments, jokes or even nudity.

Unlike the passive nature of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat encourages its users to send photos or videos by automatically turning on your camera when opening the app. Further, Snapchat does not emphasize engagement metrics like followers and interactions, but useage. Snapchat scores its users on how many snaps they send and receive and awards trophies usage and feature. Milestones.

In January 2015, Snapchat began positioning itself as a media platform for brands. With the launch of its ‘Discover’ feature, brands and media outlets could create their own channels and curate daily content accordingly. CNN, The Comedy Network and National Geographic, amongst others, now serve up fresh video and print content alongside advertising. Like individuals’ photos and videos, this content expires and is more immersive than traditional web articles or videos. Ultimately, Discover enables users to experience, more than just consume, content like news or cooking tips.

 

 

Celebrities and politicians have taken to Snapchat too. DJ Khaled has emerged of a Snapchat star of sorts, using the app to broadcast his haircuts, promote merchandise, or showcase his night at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Additionally, politicians like President Obama, Prime Minister Trudeau and interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose are using Snapchat to broadcast events or provide light or informal glimpses into their days.

Beyond this, Snapchat’s filters are its latest feature captivating users. Introduced in late 2015, these ‘lenses’ scan faces and allow them to, among other features, vomit rainbows, swap faces with a friend or age 50 years. These lenses include on-screen prompts like ‘open your mouth’ or ‘raise eyebrows’ to animate the filter. With these lenses updating frequently, often incorporating holidays or events, users have fresh reasons to engage and share.

Having tested these features with my young niece and nephew, I can attest that they will make you a hit with kids as well.

Combined, these fun and personal features have attracted 200 million to Snapchat since the company was founded in 2011. On average, users post 9,000 photos and videos per second. This totals to over ten billion daily views, on par with Facebook’s video platform. And unlike Facebook’s stagnating engagement, Snapchat claims that nearly two thirds of its daily users create content daily. Additionally, Snapchat users are the demographics advertisers most crave. The platform boasts that more than 60 per cent of mobile phone users between the ages of 18 and 34 use Snapchat.

Snapchat’s immersive content and captive audiences enables brands to engage with their fans in new and creative ways. For example, the latest Alice in Wonderland movie has a sponsored lense where fans can make themselves into the Mad Hatter. Other features that bring brands to Snapchat include work with influencers, product announcements, leverage sponsorship rights with events, contests, coupons and special offers. By creating content designed specifically for Snaphat, brands are approaching consumers in a manner that makes traditional print or television ads seem archaic.

However, Snapchat’s advanced features pose significant challenges for advertisers – without captivating creative content, their message will surely be lost to the wider public. Despite this, Snapchat remains a great way to engage your existing core audience because you do not need the infrastructure or resources of Red Bull to reach and grow your base. While not always appropriate, smaller brands can use Snapchat to promote or leverage their existing events and insert themselves into wider pop culture discussions. Potential content could include a stirring testimonial on the importance of the arts, a story detailing the the struggles of a worker locked in a wage dispute, or a Snap of a company’s charitable efforts in action. No matter the budget, brands of all types can measure the consumption of their content through video views and story completions.

The rise of Snapchat showcases the evolving nature of social media and reinforces the need for brands to continually refine their approach. Experimenting with new platforms, content and targeting provides campaigns with the insight they need to optimize their advertising budgets. In the age of cord cutting and smartphone addiction, marketers must understand the tools and techniques to best tell their story.

From passive to active

Even though it is a behemoth today, YouTube started from humble beginnings. Former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim launched the service from an office above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. Originally created from a need to easily find video clips of Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl incident, it is now a household name. In May 2005, 15 months after its pizzeria and Japanese restaurant days, the service launched its beta version. By September of that year, YouTube had its first one-million view video: a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho. And today, YouTube is still huge, but it faces some stiff competition for video advertising.

A low-resolution point-and-shoot camera captured footage of soccer star Ronaldinho pulling spectacular stunts with his new Nike cleats. The video clip met the quality standards of the time. As far as we know (although even this became a point of debate on discussion forums), there was no post-production work. In an era where most online video clips were shaky and grainy at best, it was a perfect fit.

But it signalled something much more important: a major international brand was prepared to experiment with an unknown platform that housed sub-par amateur videos, before the platform even officially launched. It wouldn’t take long before other brands followed suit. And since that pivotal moment (though not because of it), YouTube became the Internet’s number one destination for video and has held that spot ever since.

YouTube remains the perfect place if you’re looking for specific video clips. It’s the main reason we use it and why it’s now the second-largest search engine. It’s where consumers go to actively search and watch videos they want to consume at that specific moment, on a specific topic. It’s a user-controlled process that facilitated the shift from passive to active video viewing. Want to see The Daily Show poke fun at Canadian politics? A quick search will return plenty of content to consume, notably this most recent gem:

From active to passive

While YouTube will continue to serve as the Internet’s number one choice for active viewing, the growth and omnipresence of Facebook video has brought passive viewing back from the brink. What’s old is new again. For half a century, we consumed video content in the form of television (and television ads – usually 30 second spots we were forced to watch between segments of Gilligan’s Island or The Golden Girls). With the world spending 20 minutes per day on Facebook, and mostly on mobile devices, it is the platform of choice for marketers and communicators. But, while you can pay to have your video appear in your audience’s newsfeed, you can’t force people to watch it. A swipe of a thumb, and your video is out of sight and out of mind. And that means you need to write and produce your creative specifically for the platform on which it will air.

For example, take a look at that 2005 Nike video clip and ask yourself whether it would have any chance of gaining traction on Facebook in 2016. The first thing you’ll notice is how long it takes to get to the point. We have to watch a Nike rep walk onto the field, present the cleats to Ronadlinho, then watch the star tie up his cleats before he finally takes the soccer ball and get started with his impressive performance. It’s a slow and boring start. It takes FOREVER. It demands a level of patience people no longer have with the newsfeed experience.

From 30 to three seconds

Let’s be honest, after seeing the first three seconds of the video, you’d scroll down the feed in search of your dopamine hit—it is utterly boring in those first three seconds (which is the length of time Facebook uses to count a view). By Facebook’s own account, people spend 1.7 seconds with a piece of content on mobile. Every second matters. In fact, it takes only 0.25 seconds of exposure for people to recall content they saw on their mobile feed. These initial seconds can make a profound impact. When people watch the first three seconds of a Facebook video, 65% watch the next seven seconds, and 45% make it to the 30-second mark. It’s a rude awakening for those of us used to producing 30 second spots to get our message out. In an environment that allocates a whopping 1.7 seconds to make a lasting impression, we must adapt, meet people’s evolving expectations, and stop the thumb. So, how can we stand out in the news feed?

How to make three seconds count on Facebook

1. Storyboard with mobile in mind

Keep the mobile experience in mind from the moment you begin storyboarding and scripting your video. If you don’t have the luxury of starting from scratch, modify your existing or planned creative to connect more effectively with mobile users. It works. Facebook tested this theory with select brands, putting a TV version of the ad against a mobile-optimized version. The latter moved the brand mention 25 seconds earlier and saw a seven-point increase in ad recall; a 68% increase in the number of three-second views; and 136% increase in 10-second views, compared to the original.

2. Capture attention right away

Use brand colours and imagery in the first frame to help people connect to your brand immediately. If you’re selling a product, start your video with a product shot. If you’re selling a political candidate, put your candidate at the start of the video. If appropriate, use action scenes to capture people’s attention from the get-go.

3. Tell a story

Video is an emotive medium. It evokes emotions and connects people with your brand, your product, or your campaign. If you’re going to promote your video on Facebook, you need to keep the (palm-sized) screen in mind and the reason people are on Facebook to begin with: they want to connect with people and consume content about people.

4. Frame for mobile

As much as I prefer a widescreen format to tell a visual story, it just doesn’t work well inside the boxy dimensions of mobile newsfeed frames. If you are framing the story for mobile feeds, you are giving due consideration to dimensions, crops, zoom and visual composition that work best in that box. Tell your story for the super small screen, not the silver screen. Doing so could give you a three-point increase in ad recall and an eight-point increase in message association.

5. Use visual cues and subtitles

Most people listen to Facebook videos with the sound off. They will only turn their sound on if your video captures their attention. If you can’t achieve that through visual composition and brand imagery at the start of the video, consider adding subtitles so users can see what the video is all about without having to turn on the sound. Facebook found that 76% of videos require sound to be understood. Make your video understandable without sound and you’ll be leading the pack.

6. Test and iterate

All the theory in the word will only take you so far. You’ll never fully understand how your audience consumes video until you put video in front of them. So, get to it! Test your concepts, make some tweaks and test some more.

As part of its internship program, Navigator asks its interns to write a blog post about the intersection of communications and an area of personal interest. This week’s post is from Connor Whitworth.

Do you gamble? With gambling, you make a bet on a potential outcome. If you’re correct, you are rewarded for predicting that outcome. You get some money. You feel like you won. The more certain you are of a particular outcome, the more money you’re willing to bet. People bet on all kinds of things — on horse races, on sports games, on cards.

Prediction markets differ from traditional market research. Rather than asking questions like, ‘what do you prefer,’ or ‘which would you rather,’ prediction markets ask, ‘what do you believe is going to happen,’ or ‘which product do you believe has a greater likelihood to succeed.’ In this scheme participants in the market, play with real money and invest in their opinions.

Essentially, prediction markets are bets to see who is ‘the most right’. Participants form a market by agreeing to wager their predictions against each other for a predetermined amount of time. When that time passes the ‘market’ closes and their scores are tallied. Once closed, predictions end with a numeric value that relates to the other predictions or derivatives. If you invest early, aka predict early, and others make the same prediction, you see an increase in profit. Conversely, those who predict incorrectly see the value of their investment decline.

Outside of finance, prediction market principles can be applied to analyze public expectations.We’ve already seen the wisdom of crowds harnessed to predict political outcomes. In 2013, David Rothschild, an economist from the Wharton School of Business, published an academic study with some interesting findings. Over the last 60 years, poll questions asking people which candidate they believe has a better chance of winning consistently act as a better guide to the outcome of the presidential race than polls that simply ask people for whom they plan to vote (for interest’s sake, Bernie is currently going off at 16/1 on popular European betting site PaddyPower.)

In politics, predictive markets are powerful tools but they’re not new. In fact, prediction markets are among the oldest exchanges in America. Over the last decade we’ve seen a resurgence of prediction markets in Canada after they fell out of favour in the late 1990s. The Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia operates a political prediction market covering a wide range of events. It has four objectives:

1. Accurately predict the outcomes of political events;
2. Learn about trader behaviour in a controlled environment;
3. Engage traders to follow the political process more intensely; and
4. Teach participants about financial markets and trading strategies.

Its predictions are often more accurate than public opinion polls. In the October 2015 Canadian federal election, the Sauder Political Prediction market was the most accurate body using models to predict the Canadian popular vote, it operated with a margin of error equaling only 2.3%. The next closest body, a scientific polling firm, had a margin of error of 4%.

And now, individuals are capitalizing on collective intelligence to better large corporations. An increasing number of companies are turning to predictive markets to gauge the future success of products, concepts, promotions and campaigns.

The California Institute of Technology found that Hewlett-Packard’s masterful use of prediction markets produced forecasts that were closer to the actual outcome for 6 out of 8 events in its model. HP’s data scientists were able to distill large business problems into a series of smaller, easier to conceptualize questions. Running simultaneous prediction models of those smaller questions allowed them to understand how the larger issue was most likely to unfold. Hewlett Packard is only one corporation using prediction markets today. Companies such as Motorola, Intel, Best Buy, Microsoft, Google, and Pfizer all use internal prediction markets to determine which new products will be among their best sellers, as well as other initiatives.

So, can scientific-polling be manipulated to include the accuracy of prediction markets? Perhaps Dr. Rothschild is on to something. Prediction markets could be used to guide companies, rather than making decisions on gut-feelings or educated guesses. In the United States, prediction market sites have had legal difficulties with The Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Some consider prediction markets a form of gambling since they allow people to earn money by predicting the outcome of future events. That said, whether or not people decide to bet on a prediction has no impact on that prediction’s accuracy. Prediction markets can still be a valuable prognostication tool, regardless of how they are regulated.

Whether Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic Nominee for President of United States in 2016 is a political question that is sure to interest many corporations. More importantly, it is the type of question that can be easily applied to a predictive market. Assuming the prediction is Sanders will be the nominee, the derivative would be redeemable for a certain amount if Bernie wins a number of Democratic primaries but worthless if he is not chosen as the eventual nominee. Up until the convention on July 25th, this derivative or bet can be traded on a prediction market and, as such, will command a fluctuating market price. In this case, Sanders’ performance in the primaries leading up to the convention affects the derivative or how much you would win for betting that, yes, he will be the eventual nominee at a given point in time. If Sanders is doing well in the primaries, betting on the prediction that he will be the nominee is safer and therefore pays less, while a poor primary performance would make that prediction riskier with a higher derivative and larger payout.

American politics actually has a rich history of prediction markets. By the 1870s political predictions had evolved into a semi-formal financial market. The Economist suggests that trading volume began to approach that of actual shares: in 1916 $10 million ($218 million in today’s prices) was wagered on the photo-finish presidential race between Wilson and Hughes. While the markets were wrong that year, incorrectly predicting a win for Hughes; they were correct in accurately forecasting the next 11 contests. In an era without reliable polling, the newspapers diligently reported on presidential betting odds, publishing the lines five-days-a-week in the months before an election.

Crackdowns on unauthorized gambling drove political bookmakers into the ground. However, the final nail in the coffin for political prediction markets was reputable, scientific public-opinion polling. Other forms of gambling were also a factor: the Economist highlights that when betting on horses became legal it allowed ‘punters to slake their thirst for action dozens of times a day rather than once every four years, without any risk that a bookie would fail to pay out.’ By the 1940s what was once an eight-figure market place had nearly disappeared.

Today the internet makes it very easy for political junkies to bet on campaigns. Most of these are traditional betting markets where the wager is on the eventual outcome with relatively stable odds. Prediction markets where wagers are placed on a given opinion of what an eventual outcome will be have much less stable odds and probably do exist somewhere online. With corporations beginning to apply prediction markets to situations outside of politics, the potential for prediction markets is endless.

So what happens if prediction markets become a go-to source for forecasting data? With improved predictive capabilities, companies and organizations could fine-tune their marketing and targeting even more. Being able to accurately predict the next trend, the best-selling product, or the next political leader, would have big implications for a number of industries and sectors. Being able to wager on those predictions opens up a whole other can of worms in terms for ethical, legal, and profit lines. That said, if the data surrounding predictive markets continues to be more accurate than traditional polling, they will no doubt experience a resurgence in popularity.

Since crystal balls went out of style, pollsters, marketers, weatherman, and shamans have been looking for the newest way to accurately peek into the future. Maybe today it’s prediction markets? There likely will not be a return to 1870s style ‘what if’ gambling. Prediction markets could become the next big thing. Wanna bet on it?

Photo: John Hoey, Thisonesforruthie

Sometimes events take place deep inside the Ottawa political culture that are telling indications of where a political party is heading. While these events often play out in press events, the House of Commons, and other public venues, they are often missed by the general population but give keen observers insight into the future.

Today, Aaron Wherry from the CBC writes a very good piece on the use of time allocation motions in the House of Commons. Wherry is no stranger to this topic having written articulately on the issue previously in Macleans.

Time allocation, also known as Standing Order 78, or closure motions, are typically introduced by the governments of all stripes to limit debate on a government bill. Also typically, these motions are introduced by the government to cries of foul behaviour and the death of democracy by opposition parties of all stripes. While they have never been introduced by the NDP, and are consistently bemoaned by the NDP, we don’t have any data points on how they would behave if they were the government for obvious reasons.

Outside of Ottawa, perhaps even outside of Wherry and myself, there are few people paying attention to the Liberals’ new found re-discovery of time allocation motions. The Liberals made much use of Standing Order 78 when last in power, and the Conservatives were legendary addicts to closure motions.

The reader may rightfully ask ‘So what?’ at this point. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives do it in government, and every party complains about it when it is done to them in opposition. This is clearly not news.

But it is. As I alluded to at the outset, this could be an indicator of issues to come for keen observers.

Immediately after the recent federal election, our research professionals fanned out across the country to conduct research on why people voted the way they did and what they expect from the government. Our research report can be found here.

One of our key findings was that voters expected this government to behave differently than what they perceived to be the insular previous government. They had little knowledge of specific policies proposed by Trudeau and, frankly, did not care to know. What voters we spoke with were focused on was the way in which Trudeau would govern. They were, and are, looking for a different approach.

‘Canadians expect better, and Trudeau promised better. They want to see respect restored to governing. They want collaboration. There is a strong desire for consultation.’
— Back to the Future — Ensight Canada’s Post Election Research

Trudeau campaigned on running a more accessible, open and transparent government, and this pledge struck a chord with voters. Canadians told us they crave a government that is more civil and less exclusive, and they will be watching Trudeau closely on this issue.

Unlike Harper, who believed he would be judged on how many of his promises he could accomplish, Trudeau will be judged on his behaviour in implementing change.

Liberals constantly, and consistently, stood in their place in the House of Commons and complained about time allocation motions. Their protestations worked. Canadians now see various mundane procedural motions such as closure, prorogation, and in camera meetings as negatives in politics due in large part to the Liberals themselves in opposition. Ironically, as they use these same legitimate tactics themselves, it is their own success in driving their message then that will cause them problems now.

To date, the Liberal talking points have been ‘they did it too’ or ‘we do it less’. From a political point of view these messages are a dangerous tactic. Like a refrain from The Who song ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’, it only serves to hurt the very core of the brand that brought Justin Trudeau to 24 Sussex — that he is different than the guy they just booted out.

At the end of the day, will a time allocation motion cause the government to be defeated at the polls? No. Time allocation motions are a legitimate part of our system, just as prorogation and closed door committee meetings. I support the need for them and the use of them regardless of the party in power. What we are seeing, however, is a party that is transitioning from the true believers in the third party adjusting to the realities of governing. How they make that adjustment now will set the stage for how they are judged later.

And the name of that song from The Who?

‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’