News

An FCC vote on Thursday is expected to eliminate net neutrality regulations that require companies to treat another company’s Internet content the same way they treat their own.

Experts expect that Internet connection prices will rise and be treated like cable television–one price for email, another for social media, another for streaming videos. This CBS News story explains the issue well.

Please call your members of Congress and tell them you oppose this action. Congress can write legislation to restore net neutrality. Dial the Capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121 to be connected to your reps.

Highlights

  • It’s a busy week with holiday shopping online events. Anyone selling things to consumers is busy. Plan accordingly. 
  • Internet giants are snapping up content to compete with each other in 2018. 
  • And they’re fighting with each other again. Amazon-Google and Verizon-Mozilla are two big battles.

YouTube launched their TV service earlier this year at barely breakeven rates. Industry watcher Fierce Cable said that the company was spending slightly more in content costs than the subscription price. Big tech companies do things like that. And some analysts are expecting the number of YouTube TV subscribers to reach 2 million next year.

With that successful launch, YouTube is emboldened to again go after the world of streaming music. The company’s Remix music service launches in March. Warner, one of the big three music companies, is already signed. Apple and Spotify are continuing to grow. Spotify’s worldwide user base doubled to 60 million people this year and Apple’s disruption of the music business with the iPod is the stuff of business legend.

Meanwhile Apple announced this week that it would pay $400 million for Shazam, a popular app that identifies music, movies, and television shows from audio clips. Shazam has new technology that hasn’t launched yet, but also generates up to 10% of outside referrals to Apple’s iTunes service. 

Facebook isn’t going to be left out of these content purchases either. The company shocked many by bidding $600 million to livestream cricket. Now, Facebook will be giving a new executive hire a budget of “a few billion dollars” to acquire sports rights, according to Recode.

Could all of this activity be coincidence or preparations for the ability to sell separate services after the FCC’s net neutrality vote?

Consider a new live trivia game called HQ that is attracting a lot of attention. Venture capitalists have told media sources that the company will be valued at up to $100 million after being in business for 6 weeks. More than 300,000 people played in a single game last week. And the app isn’t even available yet for the 50% of its potential audience that uses Android.

And don’t forget that Verizon’s recent purchases of AOL and Yahoo are now bundled in a company called Oath while AT&T sues the government for permission to buy Time Warner.

These battles are going to cause ill will and hyper-competive issues between the major Internet players. Just as Google and Apple healed another of their many rifts, Google announced that YouTube will not be available on Amazon television products. We also learned that the Yahoo unit of Oath is suing Firefox browser maker Mozilla because the company’s search engine was dropped in favor of Google’s.

Expect all of these border clashes and competing services to get worse without net neutrality. As this is being written, there are seven major streaming video services operating in the U.S.–all with different pricing and none with partnership deals.

Learn More: YouTube Remix coverage at Bloomberg, Apple-Shazam coverage at The Verge

A fun link: Digital Music News has created lists of the top songs people used Shazam to identify in 2017.

 

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News

Good morning. It’s Monday, November 6th. Tomorrow is Election Day throughout the U.S. Please vote. Also, Veteran’s Day is Saturday. Many people and companies will observe the holiday on Friday.

Highlights

  • Google’s Local Services program expands
  • Facebook generated $800 million per week last quarter.
  • A new look at voice search shows 20% of mobile Google searches are made by voice. That’s a huge number showing mobile’s acceleration as the device we use.

Google Local Services is the new name of the pilot program called Home Services. The program is open to locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, HVAC, and garage door services. Those categories aren’t new–they were prominent in lead generation businesses years ago and the yellow pages before that. 

Google is broadening the program to 30 markets from the initial 17. Their announcement

Facebook main campus entrance
Facebook had a great and a terrible week.

The financial results are staggering: $10.3 billion in quarterly revenue, which is 47% growth over last year’s revenue. There were 20 million total users ten years ago. There are now 1.37 billion DAILY users.

The terrible part of Facebook’s week came on Capitol Hill, and although they shared Congressonal scoldings with Google and Twitter, most media latched on to the social media company’s advertising of Russian-based messages targeting U.S. cultural divisions. Here is a link to the ads that House Democrats posted online.

After looking them over, head over to Patrick Ruffini’s “Why Russia’s Facebook ad campaign wasn’t such a success” in the Post.

Spotlight Headlines

The best article I’ve read about this industry in years is the NYT’s “How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Start-Ups. Allow some time. It’s 7,000+ words.

Also check out SitePro News’ infographic 10 Essential Holiday Marketing Tactics for 2017 and Summit Hosting’s fun take on “Office Jargon Sentiment”

Monday Coffee Break

Max Lanman shot a video to help his girlfriend sell her 1996 Honda.

He made the video “special” because that’s one of his superpowers. This will be one of the week’s top viral videos. It’s been accelerating (groan) since its launch Thursday.

 

 

News

Spotlight

Silver Beacon’s Weekly Briefing for Leaders

 

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 30th. Stock increases after earnings calls added $181 billion to the market cap of the Big Five online companies. Execs from two of the five and Twitter are headed to DC to testify before the Senate Judiciary committee beginning Tuesday. What happens there will have a big effect on future regulatory oversight.

Highlights

  • Facebook and Twitter are introducing new advertising disclosures for every ad.
  • Google’s “mobile first” index is live and rolling out across the Internet.
  • Want to book a hotel room on Google? How about have Amazon open your front door? Both initiatives launched widely last week.

Questions or comments?  Click the green button below & write George. 

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Facebook says that advertisers will have to verify their identity in the future.The social media company will also include all ads in a searchable archive that lets regular users see every ad an advertiser has created. The age, location, gender, and costs will also be public information.

I shared the news Friday with a group of more than 100 Facebook advertising professionals when it came out. Their reaction was silence mixed with incredulity. Their reaction was similar to mine. None of us seemed to expect Facebook to go that far that fast. 

Facebook Ads VP Rob Goldman: “Starting next month, people will be able to click “View Ads” on a Page and view ads a Page is running on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger — whether or not the person viewing is in the intended target audience for the ad. All Pages will be part of this effort, and we will require that all ads be associated with a Page as part of the ad creation process.” Goldman’s post

Your organization’s ads will also be visible. We’ll all have to adapt and live with this new transparency.

Facebook followed Twitter’s earlier news that Russian government news affiliates RT and Sputnik are now banned from advertising on Twitter. All three companies are desperately hoping that they can sell Congress on self-regulation of online advertising.

This is important regardless of your politics after the MIT Technology Review published “How Tweets Translate into Votes” on Thursday. The study found that two UK elections showed “…politicians with Twitter accounts do get a higher share, though not by much.”

 

Despite announcing a 2018 launch date, Google has launched its “mobile first index” initiative to some websites and will continue adding more, according to Google exec Gary Ilyes at a search conference. Search Engine Land reported the news and quoted Ilyes as saying that this was an expansion of the testing with live sites. (SEL’s coverage)

You need to care about this because Google will be using mobile website information as its primary index for all searches. We’ve long since passed the 50% of search in mobile milestone. You probably work on a computer all day. Your org’s website performs differently on a mobile. Test your website’s speed, appearance, and everything else on mobile. The window to make changes before this shift occurs is narrowing fast.

Google also broadened its “Book Online” feature to include businesses like barbershops (pictured above), salons, yoga studios, and more. Google is treating this like we told you last week that Facebook was addressing food delivery. First, they’ll be a big repository of other companies. Then they’ll presumably take over the industry. Provider list here.

Spotlight Headlines

 

Monday’s Break Time

Pumpkin pie season is upon us once we get past Tuesday’s mini candy bar holiday. And now we learn courtesy of Marketplace that almost all commercial pumpkin pies are actually flavored squash. Cookbook author Stella Parks says that there are no labeling rules for pumpkins vs squash, and we’re not eating a pie made from those big orange things. Read the rest.