23rd September 2016
A conference highlight of my year is Dots: Connecting Ideas ,which takes place in Brighton in September. Special bits this year included talks from NESTA on digital anthropology, Google on genre roles and a wonderful punk/folk musician who performs in a restored Victorian workhouse. This write-up is particularly good as it has Golden Insights from each talk.
Another fine conference I attended last week, was one of the Google Firestarter evenings curated by @neilperkin and hosted at Google HQ. This was on The Future of Digital Advertising and had a stellar line up including, Ian Leslie, Tom Goodwin, and Tracey Follows. Lots of great stuff to enjoy in this write up.
Are you taking this into account in your search marketing strategy? Google says 20 percent of mobile queries are now voice searches. Here are some suggestions from Search Engine Land. ‘The range of virtual assistants, such as Siri, Cortana, Google Voice Search/Now, Viv, Amazon Alexa, and now, Google Home, are collectively training people to search using their voices and to become more “conversational” with search and mobile devices.’
Google gets into the messaging space with Allo. This looks like a tough gig as Facebook’s Messenger dominates the market. The fact that Google thinks it is worth it , highlights just how important this space is and will become. (from FT.com)
A huge surprise…? Facebook has formally conceded, in a post in its Advertiser Help Centre, that is has been vastly overestimating average viewing time, for video ads on its platform.
This a rather wonderful initiative. The homes of famous LBGT individuals are finally being recognised. Locations associated with greats including, Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten and the Chevalier d’Eon have been identified by Historic England.
The continuing importance of Email (despite many predictions of its demise). Interesting research from @emarketer shows that, despite all the noise around social media, only You Tube was a more popular channel than Gmail in June 2016, amongst US teenage internet users.
Let the arguing begin. From Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest TV Shows Of All Time. I won’t ruin the surprise, to see the winners, just scroll to the bottom of this page.
The National Geographic annual photographic awards are open, with a entry deadline of 4th November. If you fancy getting involved, here are some of the amazing images you will be up against.
Slow Friday afternoon? Motorsport fan? I think you’ll rather enjoy these uncannily accurate car impressions by Daniel Jovanov from Australia’s Got Talent.