Daily Minute Master Series – October 28, 2019

Social Media

Facebook Launches Facebook News, a Dedicated Tab for News Content

After months of testing, and after reportedly securing multi-million dollar agreements with publishers, Facebook’s new, dedicated – trusted – News tab has arrived. Facebook is adding a new tab to the top navigation bar within the app which will take you through to its News content listing. From there, users will be able to view the latest news by topic, hide sections or publications, get a general news update – basically, the tab is designed to cater to your personal news needs every day, with a curated listing of content from approved providers, many of whom, as noted, Facebook has signed partnership agreements with. Thee News Page Index is a listing of Facebook verified news pages, and Facebook says that any Page which primarily creates journalism should seek this verification. And if they want to make it to the News tab, they’ll have to. From a business standpoint, the tab will ideally help Facebook build a better engagement eco-system, encouraging people to discuss these latest news stories on platform, thereby enabling Facebook to serve more ads. It might also help Facebook develop relationships with publishers which could lead to them publishing more exclusive video content on Facebook Watch – with news content potentially a key opportunity for online video providers. The new Facebook News tab will be tested with a subset of users in the US before a broader roll out in the near future. 

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Marketing

Voice assistant study: Microsoft’s Cortana offers most answers, Google Assistant proves most accurate

Perficient Digital released the latest version of its now annual Digital Personal Assistants accuracy study. It compared responses to roughly 5,000 queries on seven devices including Amazon’s Alexa (Echo and Echo Show), Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant (Home, smartphones), and Siri. At the highest level, Google Assistant performed the best, but Cortana attempted to answer the most questions. Alexa also showed improvement in answer attempts. But accuracy declined on all devices, according to the study. Google served up the most snippets, with Google Home beating out the Assistant on smartphones. However, Google Assistant on the smartphone also saw a significant decline use of snippets. Perficient Digital concludes in its discussion of the data that “progress has stalled to a certain degree.” The company explains, “We’re no longer seeing major leaps in progress by any of the players,” adding, “The next significant leap forward will likely require a new approach.” Google may have found that approach in BERT, which helps the search engine better understand the meaning of more conversational queries.

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New Study Seeks to Determine When Consumers are Most Open to CTAs and Ads in Content

Nielsen and Taboola recently partnered on a new study to determine the ‘Moments of Next’, the key points at which consumers are most responsive to different elements when consuming content, and what that means for marketers. The study specifically tested people’s attentiveness and emotional response to various content encounters, and it used AI and virtual reality to analyze unique eye measurements, in order to identify people’s reaction to the content. One of the unique items in this work is the concept of cognitive load – the entire quantity of mental effort used by the working memory. The higher the cognitive load, the harder it is for a consumer to take in new content – however when cognitive load is low, it becomes easier for consumers. The research shows that there’s an 8% lower cognitive load at the end of an article, thus making the consumer more likely to engage with a next action (or CTA) at the bottom of a piece. This is a Moment of Next. The study provides definitive evidence of the value of below the fold space on content, specifically at the end of an article after it’s been read.

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Amazon ad revenue tops $3.5 billion in third quarter, expecting strong holiday season

Amazon advertising revenues hit a new high in the third quarter, reaching $3.6 billion. Overall, the company reported lower-than-expected profits of $2.1 billion on $70 billion in revenue for the third quarter of the year on Thursday. Amazon doesn’t break out advertising revenue, but advertising makes up the majority of an “Other” revenue category in its earnings reports. The other category grew by 45% year-over-year, but the advertising segment of that category actually grew at a rate higher than 45%, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the earnings call. While performance advertising comprises the bulk of budgets going to Amazon, brand awareness campaigns accounted for 42% of spend on Amazon’s DSP in the third quarter, up from just 26% in the first quarter of the year, performance agency Tinuiti reported this week. Amazon’s advertising growth rate underscores the threat it is presenting to Google and Facebook in attracting ad dollars from brands and merchants. The company has been steadily investing in solutions for branding and performance advertising including inventory, ad formats and targeting capabilities.

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