Articles by: "Rande Price, Research VP – DCN"

Most academic, media and political analysts forecast the likelihood of disinformation playing a large role in the upcoming 2020 presidential election. The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights echoes this projection in its new report, Disinformation and the 2020 Election: How the Social Media Industry Should Prepare. In fact, the analysis predicts that more disinformation will be generated state-side than the volume generated by foreign entities.

What to expect from disinformation

Deepfakes increase in volume. Deepfakes are easier to produce now due to advancements in deep-learning and editing systems. A deep-learning system produces a persuasive fake video by studying photographs and videos of a target person and merging them with images of an actor speaking and behaving in the same manner as the target. Once a preliminary fake is produced, a method known generative adversarial networks (GANs) makes it more believable. The GANs process detects any inaccuracies and corrects them. After a few rounds, the new fake video is complete and ready for amplification.
Disinformation spreads to the political left. While domestic disinformation comes most often from the political right, the left is also engaging in its creation and spread in social media.
Misled American staged events. Americans are now being recruited by Russian organizations to stage real-life activities to spread of disinformation. From deceptive IRA social media personas to anti-Muslim and pro-Muslim demonstrations, these events are promoted online to American followers to attend and draw media coverage.
Instagram, owned by Facebook, will be used more to spread disinformation. Image and video services are ideal for spreading disinformation via memes; photos combined with short, punchy text, and video clips.
WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, will be used to amplifying disinformation. WhatsApp was used to send false content to large populations in the elections in Brazil and India. It could be a very active force in the U.S. 2020 presidential elections.
Increased international activity. Not only is Russia involved in the creation and spread of falsehoods but Iran and China are also suppliers of disinformation.
Digital voter suppression continues as a threat in 2020. Election manipulation to continue in 2020. According to the University of Wisconsin, users tried to suppress voter turn-out in 2018 creating Twitter campaigns. One post tried to tell Trump opponents incorrect voting day information. Another tried to intimidate liberal voters by saying that NRA members and Republicans are bringing their guns to the polls.

Responding to disinformation

Social media companies put a few new measures in place since 2016 and 2018. They are now communicating more with each other, the government, and outside experts in an effort to address disinformation. Regardless, more has to be done to prepare for 2020. The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights suggests the following recommendations for social platforms:

Detect and remove deepfakes. Improve efficiency in removing deepfakes before they do their damage.
Remove content that is provably false. Purge content that is definitively untrue.
Hire a content overseer. Hire a senior official to oversee the process of guarding against disinformation.
Make changes at Instagram. Act assertively to protect users from disinformation. Instagram doesn’t remove or down-rank a user’s main feed if disinformation is found. While the service does make it harder for new users to access the false content, it’s not a forceful enough action to stop the problem.
Limit the reach of WhatsApp. WhatsApp now limits the reach of a message to 1,280 users (5 chat groups x 256 members in each) versus the previous maximum reach of 66,536 users (265 chat groups x 256 members in each).
Defend against for-profit disinformation. Social platforms need to pay close attention to false content distributed by corporations, consultants, and public relations firms. Many companies specializing in clickbait manage successful businesses alluring naïve and intrigued consumers attracted to conspiracy theories and fake items.
Support legislation on political ads and voter suppression. Push the Senate to approve the Honest Ads Act, to include political disclosure standards to online ads.
Improve industry-wide collaboration. Form a permanent inter-company task force devoted to fighting disinformation.
Teach social media literacy to the public. Educate users about questionable content and what to do if they come across it.

NYU cites findings from The Oxford Internet Institute and from four universities, Princeton, University of Exeter, Washington University and University of Michigan. This body of research shows a decrease in disinformation between 2016 and 2018. However, with the 2020 being a presidential election year, all anticipate intensified interference by both foreign and domestic U.S. actors. Continued efforts are needed to combat disinformation and protect the electoral process.

Industry-Research

Disinformation is profitable. That needs to change.

August 21, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

The business of publishing disinformation, inaccurate information spread purposefully and/or maliciously, is more profitable than ever according to a new study from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). Analyzing website traffic and audience information from 20,000 domains it suspected of disinformation, GDI estimates the sites generated at least $235 million in ad revenue. GDI is a nonprofit that evaluates and rates websites’ risk of spreading disinformation.

A fertile environment

The existence of disinformation predated the internet. However, social platforms offer a new level of amplification. Social media coupled with a programmatic marketplace provided the perfect environment for malevolent actors looking for reach, a target audience, and revenue.

Ad-tech companies’ opaque practices make the environment even more attractive. Some connect buyers and sellers while others collect, aggregate, package and sell data. The result is a black box of operating systems. These shifts in the digital ecosystem offer a golden opportunity for marketers of fraud and disinformation.

Focused approach

Disinformation actors rely on each another to amplify their messages. Interfering with one actor could potentially make it more difficult for the others to spread their disinformation. However, despite their inter-reliance, disinformation actors each have a distinct focus:

State actors include governments as well as state-linked actors to spread inaccurate information and promote government propaganda. They are centralized actors using digital virality to amplify their message.

Private influence operators are for-hire companies (e.g. Cambridge Analytica) that run commercial marketing and public relations campaigns that aim to disinform the public. They use targeted campaigns to identify a specific psychological, behavioral or politically affiliated audience to amplify their message. Their misleading and false content sites look professional. These ad-supported domains mimic traditional journalism.
Grassroots trolls are individuals or groups that band together for a specific issue or cause. Their content and activities often focus on hate speech or try to push a false narrative. Their messaging often starts out on forums like 4chan or 8chan, move to other intermediate platforms like Reddit and then finally into mainstream media.
Pure rent-seekers are all about clickbait. They churn out sensational disinformation to drive visitors (and bots) to click on their site in order to collect revenue.

It’s not surprising that today’s digital marketplace offers an effective delivery system for disinformation actors. Unfortunately, the internet is filled with disinformation that is rapidly amplified via social media. And it is human nature to find drama attractive. Disinformation is loud content that demands our attention. It also claims advertising dollars in an efficient and expedited programmatic manner. As an industry, we need to de-incentivize disinformation actors by removing financial and amplification motivators.

Advertising | Industry-Research

What Pew’s latest industry stats say about the media marketplace

August 7, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Pew Research Center has just released its latest State of the News Media report, which provides an annual briefing of the news media marketplace. Pew aggregates data from reputable experts to produce a concise industry profile. It offers a succinct yet comprehensive analysis of the media industry.

This year’s highlights include:

Newspaper circulation decline. News outlets today offer several digital options to reach consumers, including apps, newsletters, podcasts, and aggregation platforms like Apple News. Unsurprisingly, the majority of U.S. adults now get at least some of their news online. As a result, compared to 2017, total daily newspaper circulation declined, revenue from print circulation was flat and ad revenue from print declined 13%.

Digital revenue growth. Overall, digital advertising registered strong revenue growth year-over-year. Reflecting on the total digital ad market, revenue grew 23% from $88 billion in 2017 to $109 billion in 2018. Driving this revenue growth was mobile advertising revenue’s increase from $57 billion in 2017 to $71 billion in 2018, comprising almost two-thirds (65%) of all digital advertising revenue. Digital ad revenue for news publishers also grew and closely resembled the total digital ad market.
Cable news revenue growth. Cable news (Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC combined) continued to experience revenue growth this year. It’s one of the only sectors, outside of Local TV, to register a revenue increase (4%) in 2018. Further, since 2015, cable news revenue grew 36% and ad revenue grew 58%.

Usage flat for news sites. For the second year, both newspaper sites and native news sites usage remained flat (4Q 2016, 4Q 2017 and 4Q 2018). Time spent also declined on news sites (newspaper and native). It appears consumers now engage with news brands offsite using apps, newsletters, podcasts and aggregation platforms like Apple News or Flipboard and other platforms.
Local news viewership decline. Local news audiences are on a decline across multiple dayparts. According to Comscore StationView Essentials data, the average audience for local news declined 10% for morning news and 14% for late night and evening news. However, over-the-air ad revenue for local TV rose 12% to $19.3 billion in 2018, on par with a midterm election year.

Digital native employee growth slowing down. In 2018, reporters, editors, photographers or videographers in the newsrooms of digital-native now equal 13,500 employees with a median annual salary of $62,000 according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics (OES).

The key data points included in Pew’s State of News Media point to the continued shift in audience consumption of digital news and information and the challenges of monetization. With mobile now the access point for 24-hour news coverage, it’s no wonder that print and local news usage declined. Further, digital is no longer limited to onsite consumption, which creates new opportunities and challenges. News publishers have several touchpoints – including newsletters, podcasts and their content on aggregation platforms to – reach and engage consumers.

Advertising | Featured Post | Industry-Research | Perspectives

The halo effect is real: New research confirms that ads perform better in quality contexts

August 1, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Media companies have long declared that it matters where advertising campaigns run. Unfortunately, when the ability to micro-target users at scale became available, particularly on massive social media platforms, it was simply too attractive for advertisers to ignore.

Despite countless media reports on the risk for brands running alongside toxic, user-generated content on YouTube or Facebook, behavior has never changed for the long-term. Instead, many advertisers used unsophisticated keyword blocking strategies or stopped advertising in the news category and considered themselves “safe.” Regrettably, that something amounted to little more than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Last week, however, two new research studies released last week clearly demonstrate why this short-sighted strategy needs a serious rethink.

Reports from World Media Group (WMG) and Integral Ad Science (IAS) found that digital ads viewed on trusted editorial sites generate a more engaged audience for advertisers. These reports confirm comScore’s 2016 research that showed ads viewed within a premium publisher environment drive significantly better advertising effectiveness, particularly for mid-funnel consideration.

comScore’s independent research came at a time when the industry was in the midst of proving the basics to the market: that ads were being delivered to real computer screens and being seen by humans, not bots. comScore’s empirical research showed that running ads on “premium” publisher sites had significant impact on brand effectiveness and the lift to advertiser brands was attributed to the “halo effect” from the premium environments.

Quality context delivers real results

Fast forward to 2019 and WMG, a global alliance of a dozen leading news and media companies (e.g. The Atlantic, Bloomberg Media Group, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post) commissioned Moat, a digital marketing measurement service, to conduct research on the quality and engagement towards premium inventory across desktop display, mobile display and desktop video.

The findings showed that premium digital inventory running across quality content brands in Q3 2018 outperformed Moat’s benchmarks by between 13% and 144%. WMG’s research also concludes that the primary driver of increased engagement is the “halo effect” that comes from the value of the contextual environment in which the ads are seen.

Key performance metrics

Desktop display ads viewed achieved an active page dwell time of 66 seconds, 39% higher than the industry average. The in-view rate (where 50% of the ad is viewable for 1 second) and in-view time both exceeded Moat’s benchmarks by 27% and 25% respectively.

Mobile display performed 35% more interactions than average. Viewability rates were 32% higher than the benchmark and engaged consumers for 13% longer.
Desktop videos viewed achieved 22% higher-than-average rates for viewability. Consumer attention to videos was also high, with audible and visible completion rates at 144% higher than the Moat Q3 2108 benchmarks.

People react to context

Additional biometric research by IAS, a technology company that analyzes digital advertising placements, identified the impact of high quality and low quality mobile environments on people’s reactions to digital ads. This neurological research – looking at the brain centers responsible for positive and negative affinity – further substantiates that the environment in which an ad appears has significant impact on consumers’ reactions to that ad.

IAS’ research found that ads viewed in high-quality mobile web environments are perceived 74% more favorably than the same advertisements seen in low-quality environments. Advertising in high quality content environments resulted in 4% greater favorability, 20% greater engagement, 7% greater emotional intensity, 29% memory encoding detail, and 30% memory encoding global.

For several years now, advertisers have struggled to use digital advertising to grow demand and desire for their products, particularly as direct-to-consumer brands and other low-cost, “brandless” options (see Amazon Basics) are starting to flourish. Like the earlier comScore Halo Effect research, these new studies prove that advertising on high quality content sites drives higher brand attention and engagement for both display and video advertising. Context matters and research continues to prove this: Ad performance is better in a premium content environment.

The only question is when brands will act.

Industry-Research

Highlights and Insights from Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report

June 25, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

In total, more than half of the world (51%) or 3.8 billion people were internet users last year, up from 49% in 2017. Overall, internet growth slowed to about 6% in 2018. In response, sales of smartphones—a a primary internet access point—are declining since most of the world is already online. These are just a few of the major headlines from Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report 2019.

The highlights

The report identifies market growth and concerns across the different business sectors. Highlights and trends include:

Americans are a mobile-first society. In fact, U.S. consumers spend more time their mobile devices than they do watching TV. YouTube and Instagram are gaining the most online platform time (up 27% and 19% respectively in Q4 2018), and digital video now comprises 28% of the average daily viewing time.
People increasingly communicate visually using images captured on their cellphones. More than 50 percent of Twitter impressions now include images, video, or other media.
Marketing spend is necessary to attract new customers. However, Meeker believes these acquisition costs are unsustainable and, in some cases, surpass the long-term revenue of the customers. She suggests using cheaper ways to acquire customers like free trials and unpaid tiers. Both enable more usage, engagement and social sharing compared to premium models which drive monetization and product innovation.
Concern over problematic digital content continues to climb as 42% of U.S. teens report some type of bullying online. YouTube also remains central for recruitment of radicalized terrorists and social media still serves as a playing field for political polarization.
Google and Facebook continue to register steady ad revenue growth. Overall, Internet ad spend is up 22% in 2018, slightly higher than the 21% growth in 2017.
On-demand products and services increased from about 40 million in 2017 to 56 million in 2018. Online marketplaces are the most popular, followed by transportation, housing, food delivery and health/beauty.

Digital data and insights can improve user experience

Meeker believes that the use of digital data and insights can improve the user experience. She outlines the following plan:

Collect Data

Understand customer wants and improve business processes
Increase customer input/improve products
Manage direct customer/subscriber relationships
Improve consumer decision-making

Manage Connection

Organize internal and external communication
- Communicate with customers via multiple channels
- Organize customer data across all systems

Optimize Data

Improve analytics/recommendations/personalization
- Respond to customer events at scale
- Discover business insights and optimize fulfillment
- Manage data growth and eliminate inefficiencies

Meeker sources industry research throughout the report to support her findings and offer forecasts in the tech and venture capital world. She continues to examine the marketplace as an analyst would, identifying the new trends, companies, and business models for investment and her report is an annual industry-insider must-read.

Industry-Research

How people find news and what they’ll pay for

June 19, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

While consumers look to reputable news organizations and quality brands for trusted news and information, many still use search, social media, and aggregators to find and consume news content. In fact, according to Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, just under one-third (29%) of consumers worldwide prefer direct access to a website or app for their news and information compared to 55% who prefer search engines, social media, or news aggregators.

However, this behavior varies by country. In the U.S., consumers regularly take a number of different paths to access news content. Reuters refers to this as the “pick and mix” model with 27% of U.S. consumers preferring direct access, 20% preferring search, and 25% using social for their news content. Regardless of the route taken, 26% of people rely on “more reputable” news sources (40% in the U.S.). An additional 24% also report they stopped using sources with a less accurate reputation. Others stopped sharing reports with potential inaccuracies (29%).

Trust

Trust remains an important factor in selecting news content. Overall trust for mainstream news sources is 42% globally and 32% in the U.S. Trust in news sources people sought out themselves is 49% globally and 50% in the U.S. Trust in news found in distributed environments such as search and social media is much lower.

While the news media faces challenging times, people believe it’s doing a better job at keeping them up to date (62%) and helping them to understand the news (51%). Unfortunately, almost one-third of consumers report actively avoiding the news because of its negative effect on their mood (58%) and say that they feel powerless to change events (40%).

Reader revenue

Subscriptions are gaining momentum in the U.S. Reuters reports almost one in ten (8%) of their U.S. sample are digital-only subscribers (up from 3% in 2016). Notably, The New York Times now has over 3 million digital subscribers, the Washington Post has about 1 million, and the Financial Times has more than 700,000 digital-only subscribers.

These subscription models—plus alternative ones like the Guardian’s membership model—are strong performers for the year. Each employed successful marketing strategies, be it ongoing payments, unique product offerings, or bundles.

Reuters does raise concerns about subscription fatigue. Defined as the idea that people are becoming frustrated with being asked to pay separately for lots of different services online. The average (median) number of news subscriptions per person among those that pay is one in almost every country. This is the same even among the most interested in news, the wealthiest, or the most educated.

Further diversification

Notably, podcasts are gaining traction and adding a fresh new audio component and on-demand access to gathering news and information. In fact, 35% of U.S. consumers listened to a podcast last month. The Guardian, Washington Post, The Economist, and the Financial Times are among the forerunners of news publishers that have launched successful daily podcasts in the last year.

It’s important for news publishers to continue their strong branding efforts to differentiate their quality and reputable journalism from the misinformation on the internet. Further, while subscription revenue is important, there are also other avenues to try for revenue diversification. This is a good time for news publishers to test new formats (podcasts, videos, live, group chats, etc.) and communicate their brand personality to a younger audience.

Industry-Research | Innovation

The future of media will be personal, according to PwC

June 12, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Consumer interaction on digital platforms is a key driver of revenue for entertainment and media companies. With increasing affordability and availability of broadband, mobile continues to be a strong contributor to the growth of this segment. However, according to the new PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023 Report, further innovation and personalization will significantly change how we access and use the Internet.

PwC predicts that creative new offerings and business models will increasingly revolve around people’s personal preferences. New applications will involve artificial intelligence in combination with digital assistants. Media companies will strive to build products that empower consumers to set their individual preferences and curate their own context.

The PwC Outlook Report cites personalization as a central theme in overall entertainment and media revenue growth. Global spending is expected to rise 4.3% over the next five years, with revenues hitting $2.6 trillion in 2023. The report provides a strong and notable resource for revenue estimates in the both the US and global markets.I

Additional forecasts from PwC’s Outlook Report include:

Subscription TV revenue in the U.S. will experience a 2.9% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) decline to from $94.6 billion in 2018 to $81.8 billion in 2023. Much of the loss comes from cord-cutting and SVOD competition. Interestingly, the US remains the biggest Pay-TV market accounting for 46% of the total global revenue in 2018.
SVOD’s continues its popularity as more streaming services are introduced and unbundling continues to grow. Newcomers to the market will need to differentiate themselves to attract subscribers.
The OTT market is also dominated by the U.S., contributing to more than half (55.6%) of global OTT revenue in 2018. OTT video revenue in the US reached $14.5 billion in 2018 and is set to double by 2023.
The U.S. virtual reality (VR) market registered $934 million in revenue in 2018 and is expected to grow at a 16.6% CAGR to reach S$2 billion by 2023. Gaming remains the primary application of VR, accounting for 57.4% of total VR revenue in the US in 2018. VR video, however, will see the most growth in the forecast period, climbing at a CAGR of 22.4% to reach $861 million in 2023.

There’s an important effort in today’s entertainment and media marketplace to meet consumers where they spend their time and to deliver what they need wherever they are. These sorts of personalization efforts cut across OTT, SVOD, and VR. While evolving business models around customer behavior is far from new, the renewed focus amplifies the importance of placing consumers at the center of the media experience.

Industry-Research

The podcast market is booming. Research offers insights into monetization and the marketplace

June 5, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Podcasts are not a niche market. One-third of Americans listen to podcasts monthly with one-quarter of these listeners tuning in on a weekly basis, according to a new report Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 from Andreessen Horowitz. In fact, listeners now spend over six hours each week on podcasts, consuming approximately seven episodes per week.

While the term podcasting was first coined in 2004, it wasn’t until the creation of the iPhone podcast app in 2012 that podcast listening captured mainstream appeal. To date, Apple has 27M monthly active podcast users in the U.S. and accounts for the majority of podcast listening.

The five segments of podcast producers are:

1. Media Companies

Larger media companies with a variety of content formats (broadcast radio, newspaper, magazine, etc.), which monetize podcasts primarily through ads. Other monetization channels include circulation revenue (e.g. iHeartMedia, The New York Times, NPR, Slate, The Washington Post).

2. Podcast-Only Production Companies

Podcast production studios create their own content and distribute on other listening platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. They monetize podcasts through ad revenue, licensing to TV/film and exclusives with listening platforms (e.g. Wondery, Gimlet, Cadence13, WaitWhat).

3. Large Indies

These are primarily personality-driven talk shows with celebrity/influencer hosts. Often these podcasts are monetized mostly through donations, ads, and merchandise (e.g. Joe Rogan, Sam Harris and Tim Ferriss).

4. Non-Media Businesses & Non-Profits

Most often these have a stated goal behind their podcasting initiative. These are largely brand-building marketing efforts, rather than focused on driving revenue and are often reliant on working with a 3rd party.

5. Hobbyist Creator

Any individual creating and posting content. Often unmonetized.

Monetization

Podcasts are primarily monetized via ads, sponsorships, listener donations, membership, and subscription models. However, ad revenue is quite small (0.3B), as compared to other media revenues. I

Currently, podcast advertisers pay per guarantee per download. While this can work for direct response advertisers, it is not effective for brand advertisers that want to form an impression on consumers over a period of time. The accounting in this report shows that 56% of podcasts use dynamic ad insertion.

Still, podcasts are an attractive environment for a hard-to-reach audience. Some podcasters charge listeners for early access to content, ad-free listening, or exclusive bonus episodes. Apple Podcasts does not yet enable this, which has led to some creators to turn to iTunes or third-party sites to sell their content. Podcasting is still in the very early stages of developing monetization strategies for long term growth.

A new model of monetization comes from a company called Patreon, a membership-based platform that provides the tools needed for creators to run a subscription content service. The system allows podcasters to receive funding directly from their fans, aka patrons, on a recurring basis. Patreon charges a commission of 5% for each donation and 5% in transaction fees, leaving the podcasters with 90% of the donations. While a positive model for podcasters, profitability at this time appears limited.

Apps and the larger marketplace

Interestingly, the report suggests that users do not feel passionately about their podcast app. At the end of the day, the audio content is the core element users are engaging with, not the application. The app is a utility and, while Apple maintains the largest share of listeners, its market share dropped significantly last year from over 80% to 63% with the launch of Google Podcasts.

However, apps are being developed that offer new approaches to enhance the podcast market. For example, Castbox offers translation and transcription. This means that consumers can search within podcasts via the transcribed text. Other apps are add context with visual links to the podcast. Entale is a “visual podcast app” that uses AI to showcase relevant visual links for uses to view as the podcast is playing. Further, podcast publishers with larger follower base are creating their own platforms for distributing content. Slate Plus and The Athletic are great examples of using an established fan base to build a strong brand extension. Clearly, there’s an opportunity to build a network of creators and listeners.

New interactive podcasts talk shows and call-in shows, with social elements, are part of podcasting’s future. However, for the podcast market to flourish, podcasting needs to concentrate on finding new and easier ways for creators to distribute their own content, own their customers, and to monetize through alternative sources besides advertising and off-platform donations.

Industry-Research

Social media must step up its game against disinformation

May 22, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Disinformation comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether it takes the form of a text-based article, a meme, a video or photo – they are designed to go viral across message boards, websites and social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And, its polluting the internet. In fact, an Oxford Internet Institute study found that in the 30 days leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, a full 25% of Facebook and Twitter shares contained misleading and deceptive information claiming to be real news. Addressing concerns about domestic disinformation, Paul Barrett, of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, identified the steps social platforms need to take to stop the problem in a new report, Tackling Domestic Disinformation: What the Social Media Companies Need to Do.

Disinformation epidemic

In the Report Barrett cites a MIT study that analyzed every English-language news story distributed on Twitter over an 11-year period and then verified the content of each story as either true or false. The study found that, on average, false news is 70//5 more likely to be retweeted than true news. Where are all these falsehoods coming from? A Knight Foundation study found that 65% of fake and conspiracy news links on Twitter could be traced back to just 10 large disinformation websites (e.g. Infowars).

First Amendment

Domestic disinformation is a constant in today’s digital experience. While there are many who call for its removal, others believe that it’s difficult to differentiate it from ordinary political communication protected by the First Amendment. Importantly, Barrett does not suggest that the government determine what content should be removed from social media. He believes social platforms can make better choices determining if content is accurate, and also how they promote and rank it.

Practices in place

Social platforms use machine learning to improve their ability to identify false stories, photographs, and videos. In addition, while Facebook previously flagged content to warn readers that it was potentially false, they now offer “Related Articles,” a feature that provides factually-reliable context about misleading stories. YouTube offers a similar program. When a user searches for topics that YouTube identifies as “subject to misinformation,” they preface video results with a link to information from reliable third parties. Even with these efforts, disinformation remains available on these platforms for anyone to view and share. Social platforms’ current practices are not enough in their fight to reduce disinformation.

Barrett’s recommendations:

Remove false content. Content that is proven to be untrue should be removed from social media sites, not just demoted or annotated.
Clarify the principles for content removal. Offer insight and transparency into what constitutes facts and rational argument versus the manipulation of information for disinformation purposes.
Hire a senior executive who has company-wide responsibility for combating false information.
Establish a more robust appeals process. Offer an opportunity for an appeal to a person or people not involved in the initial content removal decision.
Step up efforts to purge bot networks. Increase efforts to eliminate automated accounts that imitate human behavior online.
Retool algorithms to reduce monetization of disinformation. Doing so will diminish the incentive and therefore the amplification of fake news.
Provide more data for academic research. The platforms have an ethical and social responsibility to provide data they possess to facilitate studies and tracking of disinformation.
Increase industry-wide cooperation. Establish a data exchange and offer best practices across platforms to ensure common challenges are addressed.
Support initiatives for digital media literacy. Teaching people to identify digital literacy and how to be more discriminating of online content should remain a priority.
Sponsor more fact-checking and explore new approaches to authenticate news content. Continue fact checking efforts, a crucial first step to distinguish between truth and falsehoods.
Support narrow, targeted government regulation. Identify specific content regulations similar to the degree of disclosure for online political advertising currently required for traditional broadcast media.

Barnett concludes that “neither the First Amendment nor international principles protect the lies on social media.” It’s essential for social platforms to step up their role in self-governing to ensure disinformation is not monetized or worse, used to manipulate people and trigger violence. Importantly, humans must remain in control of platforms, overseeing the impact of AI in all its forms. Scrutiny and transparency are key in uniting efforts to dismantle the prongs of disinformation.

Industry-Research

Ad fraud growth slows for the first time in four years

May 8, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) once again measure bot fraud in the digital advertising ecosystem in their fourth study, 2018-2019 Bot Baseline. They found that illegitimate traffic sourcing is declining and that the marketplace is working better than ever before to fight digital fraud.

Importantly, this year fraud is down 11% from 2017, accounting for a $5.8 billion revenue loss globally. The rates for desktop ad fraud are the lowest historically: 11% in 2014, 9% in 2016–17, and 8% in 2018–19. Fraud attempts account for approximately 20 to 35 percent of all ad impressions. However, actual fraud happens in a much smaller percentage. Still, ad fraud continues to be a problem, taking shape in new, creative, and hard-to-detect forms.

Successful implementation

The digital ad fraud fight has had help from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). TAG provides best practices to reduce fraud activity and encourages transparency among participants. TAG also requires the use of ads.txt, which helps reduce domain spoofing. The fact that traffic sourcing has become more difficult and expensive is helping to reduce retail bot buying on the web. However, to keep the numbers moving in the right direction, marketers and agencies must ensure that all ad spending is highly scrutinize and comes with a high level of validatability.

Challenges Ahead

Less than Half of All Impressions Are Fully, Transparently Validatable

In fact, validatability is critical moving forward. White Ops reviewed more than 50 billion third-party ad server impressions in this study. Less than half of the impressions meet the highest standard of third-party validatability. Some impressions do not support a dynamic fraud detection tag via JavaScript, others offer limited third-party validatability by design (e.g. walled gardens). Selling media under conditions that do not support high third-party validation offers opportunities for fake inventory.

Best practices

Increased ad fraud awareness has made it a higher priority among marketers, which has helped slow its growth. It’s important that everyone in the supply chain talks to vendors to find out how they measure for invalid traffic (e.g. using general detection methods, or uses sophisticated IVT detection methods, etc.).

Other best practices include:

Work with vendors who have implemented ads.txt.
Use an MRC-accredited anti-fraud vendor.
Decline to buy a “tonnage” of inventory.
Include language on non-human traffic in your terms and conditions to ensure your company only pays for non-SIVT or non-IVT impressions.

Fraudulent impressions are now detected before they are paid for due to DSPs and SSPs filtering out these bid requests. Unfortunately, fraud continues to evolve in new formats. However, if the industry continues its efforts to make this practice unprofitable, there is less incentive to supply ad fraud.

Advertising | Industry-Research

Better machine decision-making, rethinking digital ads, and smart cities will improve the health of the internet

May 1, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

Mozilla’s newly released 2019 Internet Health Report offers insights from more than 200 experts examining what’s key to a healthier internet. The report is an open source compilation of research that tracks the internet and general technological progress. The findings center on three key areas: the need for better machine decision-making, rethinking digital ads, and the rise of smart cities.

Better machine learning

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are the next generation of computing. They enable more powerful automation, prediction, and personalization. As AI intelligence works its way into our daily lives, we need to question the ethical decisions and potential risks associated with it.

Industry experts are concerned that the large tech companies that control social media and e-commerce, are also shaping the AI agenda. Given Facebook’s, Amazon’s and Google’s ability to gather large quantities of training data, they are developing powerful AI technologies. An ethical assessment of their algorithms is important to ensure the consumer’s fundamental rights are protected.

Rethinking digital ads

Digital ads monetize online content and services and are the key driver of the advertising economy. Many researchers contributing to this report are alarmed by Google and Facebook’s combined control of approximately 84% of the global digital ad market outside of China. Their access to user data as a source of global market power in business negotiations is a major concern. Targeted ads used by these companies exploit their users. A scandal uncovered a few months ago included ads on Facebook demographically targeted to exclude people of a certain race from housing ads. Another example, also on Facebook, allowed advertisers to use available data on the service to create an affinity group to target ads to “Jew Haters.”

Some brands and marketers are stepping away from YouTube and Facebook but many still purchase their inventory for targeting campaigns. As a result of these scandals and others, users want to take control of their data. New software initiatives are being explored to offer a decentralized solution, giving consumers control over who has access to their personal data.

Rise of smart cities

Smart cities exist when the internet and connected devices are applied to solving problems from energy efficiency, transportation to government services. Similar to rethinking digital ads, collecting neighborhood data must be thought about carefully. Smart cities face challenges with regards to establishing policies and processes to guide the usage of local data with regards to privacy and transparency.

Steps to a healthier internet future

Many of today’s biggest internet companies still access users’ clicks, likes, friends, emails and downloads to fuel their business models. However, some companies are thinking about alternative business models and new technologies to give users control of their data. One such initiative is Purpose Foundation. It promotes “steward-ownership,” a legal structure to prioritize a mission over profit revenue model. It involves users in the ownership of the company to ensure consumers benefit in the economic growth. Importantly, involving consumers in internet innovation and safeguarding personal data are key steps to a healthier internet.

Industry-Research

Internet growth accelerates and social continues to climb, but there are changes brewing

April 24, 2019 Rande Price, Research VP – DCN

New global insights from the Digital in 2019 report show internet penetration is accelerating. More than 360 million people came online for the first time in 2018. New users are growing at a rate of more than 11 per second or one million new users each day. The report, from Hootsuite and We Are Social, is based on a selection of reliable third-party sources.

Mobile is the key driver of internet growth. Smartphones now account for two-thirds of global mobile connections. Approximately 5.5 billion smartphones are in use across the world each day. Additional key global findings include:

There are 4.4 billion internet users in 2019, an increase of 366 million or 9% percent compared to 2018.
There are 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world today, up 100 million (2%) in the past year.
There are 3.5 billion social media users, an increase of 288 million or 9% versus same time last year.
There are 3.3 billion people use social media on mobile devices, up 297 million new users or 10% compared to 2018.

Internet users , on average, spend 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day, on par with one year ago. Users appear to follow similar usage patterns worldwide; Google sites dominate, Google.com ranking #1 and YouTube at #3 and in between is Facebook at #2.

Social media

Social media users grew to 3.5 billion users in 2019, driving global penetration to 45%. GlobalWebIndex reports that the average social media user now spends 2 hours and 16 minutes each day on social platforms, up slightly (one minute) compared to last year. Roughly one-third of the total internet time is spent on social media.

Social usage appears to be dominated by Facebook and Instagram. Despite numerous data breaches and privacy practice violations, Facebook remains the top-ranking platform with 2.3 billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. Instagram, owned by Facebook, also has a strong audience base with 895 million actives uses, growing by more than 4% in the last three months.

Twitter and Snapchat both showed declines in their global users. Twitter’s total addressable audience at 250.8 million fell 1.5% and Snapchat’s 306.5 million total addressable audience declined 10% since October 2018.

What’s next

We Are Social predicts more attrition and consolidations in social platforms, especially for Twitter and Snapchat. The report also predicts that social platforms will continue to evolve and center on decentralization and privacy. One example of this is a new innovative platform called Solid. The platform does not live in any one place. The user registers an identity and gets a POD on a Solid server, anywhere in the world. Users decides what data to store on their POD which can include almost anything from documents, photos, calendar events to recipes. The user controls the destiny of the information, where it’s stored, who can access it and who write comments about it. As global consumers grow more tech savvier, they take hold of their social reigns and manage the controls.

As the internet becomes more pervasive, it continues to shape global culture. Moving forward, internet growth will come mainly from developing countries. The internet powerhouses, Google, Facebook and Amazon, will look to user-friendly interfaces to serve these new users. Voice controlled devices will serve well, especially for those countries with lower levels of literacy.