| Activist hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. has taken a stake of about $1 billion in Twitter Inc. with plans to replace CEO Jack Dorsey, among other changes to the company’s governance, reports Bloomberg. Twitter co-founder Dorsey, who does not have voting control of his company’s stock, angered some investors with a tweet in November saying he planned to live in Africa for three to six months this year, as his company’s share price lags behind competitors.
A State Department agency compiled a report of 2 million tweets focused on coronavirus hoaxes, reported the Washington Post, making up 7% of the total tweets surveyed by the government. Misinformation included pinning the creation of the virus on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and saying the Chinese government developed it as a bioweapon.
In related news, Facebook has put restrictions on ads in an effort to keep people from profiting from the coronavirus. Facebook said it is working to support the work of the World Health Organization in multiple ways, including taking steps to stop ads for products that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. “For example, ads with claims like face masks are 100% guaranteed to prevent the spread of the virus will not be allowed,” said the company.
In more Facebook news, concern over the coronavirus outbreak prompted Facebook to cancel its annual F8 software developer conference, scheduled to take place May 5-6 in San Jose, California. “This was a tough call to make – F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world – but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” said Facebook Director of Platform Partnerships Konstantinos Papamiltiadis in a blog post. “We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.” Facebook plans instead to connect with developers via locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content.
Netflix is “an obvious beneficiary” if people stay home because of fears about coronavirus, wrote BMO Capital Market analyst Dan Salmon in a research note. Amid a fierce Wall Street sell-off February 19-27, Netflix shares dipped 3.7%, versus double-digit drops for Facebook (-12.8%), Amazon (-13.2%), Alphabet (-13.8%), Apple (-15.5%) and Microsoft (-15.5%).
Apple blocked an iPhone app from facial recognition startup Clearview AI for violating the terms of its enterprise developer program. Clearview AT had been offering access to its facial recognition software to external clients through the program. “We are in contact with Apple and working on complying with their terms and conditions,” said Clearview AI founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That. “The app cannot be used without a valid Clearview account. A user can download the app, but not perform any searches without proper authorization and credentials.”
Sylo, the third-party verification and measurement platform for influencer marketing, has joined the Nielsen Connect Partner Network. Through the partnership, Sylo is leveraging proprietary retail sales and shopper marketing data from the Nielsen Global Connect business to deliver insights on which influencers are influencing sales. The agreement scales Sylo’s campaign monitoring tool, Tracker, to Nielsen’s customers, to streamline influencer measurement in line with that of paid measurement.
Influencers marketing is “no longer the hot young thing making a splash at the party scene,” notes Linqia’s State of Influencer Marketing Report. Among the highlights: Influencer marketing is continuing to trend with 40% of marketers running six or more campaigns and 57% of marketers planning to increase their influencer budgets; micro-influencers (5-100K followers) continue to grow in popularity, while celebrity influencers are in decline; and being able to determine ROI from an influencer campaign remains the concern #1 among marketers.
Comscore scored a deal with Comcast that is “a game-changing moment in the history of television measurement,” said Bill Livek, CEO of Comscore. The agreement calls for Comscore to integrate set-top-box viewing data from Comcast homes into its local and national measurement services. Comcast cable systems have over 21 million subscribers. “This agreement is significant because it strengthens Comscore’s already-massive scale and eliminates uncertainty around TV measurement,” said Bret Leece, Global Chief Data & Innovation Officer at Havas Media Group. “For Havas, this combination gives us the confidence to use Comscore as we help grow our client’s business.”
Chinese-owned social video app TikTok, launched in the US in 2017, now has over 45 million users, according to estimates from eMarketer. Last year, TikTok grew 97.5%, but is on pace to grow a small-by-comparison 22% in 2020. While the stickiness of its scrolling video format, is “incredibly popular among teens at this point,” said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, older generations haven’t been so quick to jump on the bandwagon. And apprehension among marketers about censorship, data privacy and brand safety issues, as well as competition from newcomers like Legacy as well as Instagram and Facebook, are slowing momentum.
Amazon Transcribe, the automatic speech recognition service launched in 2017, now supports automatic redaction of personally identifiable information. If instructed to do so, the service will automatically identify PII like social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank accounts and email addresses. Users will also get a redaction confidence score, as well as start and end timestamps.
Revenue from streaming music services increased nearly 20% in 2019, to $8.8 billion, according to a report from RIAA – in fact, the US streaming market for the year was larger than the entire US recorded music market two years ago. Subscription services accounted for the largest share of revenues, up 25% to hit $6.8 billion.
Startup Clearview AI, compiler of photos for facial recognition technology, was hacked by an intruder who gained access to its customer list, the company informed its customers, which include law enforcement agencies and banks. “Unfortunately, data breaches are a part of life,” the company’s attorney said in a statement, adding that servers were “never accessed.”
Most consumers are okay with sharing personal information with government agencies if it means shorter wait time and better service, according to a study from Accenture. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they see benefits from using AI-enabled assistants or chatbots, and 47% say they would like to complete some transactions using virtual agents.
US consumers spend more time with TV than all other ad-supported platforms, according to preliminary results from the 2020 Media Comparisons Study from GfK in collaboration with TVB. The top medium for consumers was local broadcast TV, on-air and digital, found the study, with Adults 18+ spending 5 hours and 17 minutes with television daily; social media clocked in at 1 hour and 6 minutes. TV was also the top advertising medium influencing purchasing decisions – 63% higher than the number of those surveyed who cited social media. “Competition for consumers’ attention grows by the day, and yet television continues to stand tall as the medium with which people choose to spend most of their available time,” said Steve Lanzano, TVB President-CEO. “That continued dominance translates to dependable clout for advertisers across the marketing landscape. And at a time when accusations of ‘fake news’ fly from all corners of the media and social ecosystem, local TV in particular remains far and away the most trusted medium and source of information.”
A partnership between Verint Systems’ The Customer Engagement Company and Adobe is aimed at supporting more personalized customer journeys by combining experience data from the Verint Experience Cloud along with data from the Adobe Experience Platform. Verint customers can magnify their Adobe digital analytics outcomes with Verint’s predictive model to increase customer satisfaction.
Turner Mexico and Turner Colombia engaged Parrot Analytics to acquire insights from a continuous study of consumer behavior, after Turner Colombia invited Parrot Analytics to share relevant trends for the Latin American media ecosystem at a recent meeting of the Latin American Media Advertising Council. According to the study that was made public at the event, titles with brand associations now comprise a significant portion of new releases in Latin America, as well as in the U.S. and Europe, with one out of every five new titles having branded content elements. Further, the titles with brand associations drive higher demand in all regions. For more, go here. |
