Tremor International is buying advertising platform Amobee from Singtel in a deal that will create scaled connected TV and video end-to-end platforms. Top line Tremor said the deal would enhance its technology offerings and business footprint across its core growth drivers, including its self-service demand-side platform (DSP), CTV and video reach. Between the lines The…
It turns out that not enough couples were in tune with Tuned, the couples-focused application released by Meta’s New Product Experimentation team in April 2020. Tuned users began seeing notifications last week alerting them that the app will stop working Sept. 19, and they should download their data from it prior to that date. Sensor…
Brazilian publication Ra?a Magazine celebrates its 25th anniversary with the campaign “The Future is Black (O Futuro ? Preto).” The concept promotes Afrofuturism–a cultural, aesthetic and political movement that manifests itself in literature, cinema, photography, art and music from a Black perspective. Coined in 1994 by sociologist Alondra Nelson, Afrofuturism depicts a future that is…
Inflation is affecting how consumers spend, Walmart’s CEO said.
To enhance online safety, Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram), Google (parent of YouTube), TikTok, Amazon (parent of Twitch) and Twitter agreed to regulate harmful online content in New Zealand today. The tech companies, all of which worked on the initial draft, signed the Aotearoa New Zealand Code of Practice for Online Safety and…
The maker of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark joins the list of companies that have cut ties entirely with Russia over the war in Ukraine.
The newest revenue-sharing option from Meta may be music to the ears of creators on its platform. The company began rolling out Music Revenue Sharing, which enables video creators to include licensed music in their videos on Facebook and earn a share of in-stream ad revenue, while a share of revenue also goes to the…
A new tool, Rights Manager, will also help content owners protect their rights.
TBS has canceled Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, as the show becomes the latest casualty following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The cable network confirmed the news to Adweek, saying that the decision to end the show–which ran for seven seasons–comes as the company continues to shape its new programming strategy. “Full Frontal With Samantha…
Google calls its Pixel 6a “a smarter phone for a smarter price.”
On this week’s episode of To Dine For, host Kate Sullivan is joined by Kanika Tolver, the CEO and founder of Career Rehab. Tolver focuses on helping career transformations for students, professionals and retirees by providing career coaching programs, events, webinars and digital resources to help people reach their career goals. Her book is called…
BeReal, a social media app dubbed the anti-Instagram, has soared in popularity in recent weeks.
Just how easy is MNTN’s self-serve Performance TV platform? According to CCO Ryan Reynolds, it’s so easy that veteran stunt entertainer Steve-O can help you navigate it while a Carolina Reaper sets his internal organs aflame. Today, MNTN released a new ad by Maximum Effort that demos its easy-to-use marketing software for small businesses. In…
Canadian shop names Robyn Morrissey and Jessica Hill managing directors in Toronto othe heels of opening its first international office in New York City.
Many people may have forgotten that before it became a tech and ecommerce behemoth, Amazon started as an online bookseller in 1994. Nearly three decades later, Amazon is celebrating the roots of its business with a major campaign for its books division. The goal of the campaign, titled “That Reading Feeling Awaits,” is to inspire…
While picking up my badge at ISEA2022 in Barcelona last month, I braced myself for 4 days of interesting but intense academic gravity. My first hours at the symposium, however, taught me that the venerable event could be a place for racy ideas. I got a first hint of that during Joan Fontcuberta‘s keynote.
Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021
Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021
Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Throughout his career, Joan Fontcuberta has developed a conceptual photography practice that merges humour with technological experiments and a critical reflection on the concept of evidence. The Age of Monsters, the title of his talk at ISEA, echoes Antonio Gramsci‘s words who, while while he was locked in a prison by Mussolini’s Fascist regime, wrote: Il vecchio mondo sta morendo. Quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri / “The old world is dying. The new one is slow to appear. And in this chiaroscuro monsters are born”. Fontcuberta applied the quote to photography, reflecting on the relationships between analog photography (the old world) and the images generated by AI (the new world). For the artist, we should reassess the photographic medium at a moment when analogue photography has shown its inability to respect its promise of delivering truth and memory while the new photography sides with virtuality, machines and algorithms. The term “monsters” can also be interpreted literally. Most of Fontcuberta’s works, after all, explore the strange and the uncanny.
Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Joan Fontcuberta’s keynote at ISEA 2022. Photo by Joan Casto, Iconna / UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
For one of art pieces he described in his ISEA opening keynote, Fontcuberta collaborated with Pilar Rosado to work with a dataset of video-selfies uploaded online by people while they were having an orgasm. The duo used GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) technology to initiate a process of deep learning aiming to generate false portraits of (non-existent) persons at the moment of climax. This process makes it possible to identify the expressive models characteristic of orgasm and to transfer their expressive typology to any face.
These characteristics were transferred to the faces of four powerful political figures: Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Spain’s former king Juan Carlos I. Each of them has been associated with sex scandals and abuses of power. In the films that Fontcuberta and Rosado made, we see the men experiencing an orgasm in the middle of an official discourse. It’s funny and cringe. Obscene and pitiful. The GAN technology, however, has been applied in a deliberately crude way. The artists’ deep fake experiment was never intended to deceive. What the artists wanted to do with this parody of deep fake was to reveal the mechanisms of deception.
Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021
Joan Fontcuberta and Pilar Rosado, Beautiful agony, 2020-2021
The work is completed by 3D busts of the powerful figures, their faces petrified, as if they had locked eyes with Medusa in the middle of an orgasm.
Unfortunately, the videos are not available online, due to a matter of intellectual property rights. What a pity!
Right after Fontcuberta’s keynote, I attended Ecologies and biotechnical relationships. One of the highlight of the session was Ecopornography in Digital Arts, a paper presented by Zane Cerpina and Stahl Stenslie. Their investigation of “ecopornography” explores how digital arts represent nature in a way that is not explicitly sexual but that nevertheless arouses the viewer and triggers a feeling of excitement similar to the one experienced when exposed to pornography.
Zane Cerpina and Stahl Stenslie, Ecopornography in Digital Arts
According to the researchers, there has been an exponential growth in ecopornographic content in contemporary society and culture due to the massive use of digital media and technologies to the point that nature seems to be a commodity like any other. An example can be found on Instagram where #nature #flowers #naturephotography #wildlife #green are among the most popular hashtags. Similarly, there is an hyperaesthetisation of nature in digital arts. This omnipresence and hyperaesthetisation of nature in nature is not entirely good news because it can lead to a state of exhaustion and indifference.
The objective of the Ecopornography in Digital Arts paper was to call for an in-depth analysis of nature-related content across digital media and media arts. How can digital arts be more critical in exploring and exposing the effect of ecoporn on society? When does ecoporn’s hyperaestheticization of nature lead to an anaesthetic loss of sensation? A new taxonomy of ecoporn can help us reflect on these questions.
Stenslie and Cerpina identified 5 subcategories of ecoporn in digital arts: Nature Pure, Nature Rough, Nature Hurt, Nature Saved and Nature Fake.
Joakim Blattmann, Treverk (9), 2018
Joakim Blattmann<, Treverk 3
Nature Pure can be defined as an idealised representation of nature that aims to appeal and seduce.
The highly popular 360 degrees recreation of Monet paintings, for example. Or Joakim Blattmann, Treverk (Woodwork), a series of installations based on audio recordings of minuscule movements in trees as they are dying.
Studio Rosegaarde, Waterlicht
The Nature Rough enables people to experience the thrills of an instagrammable Apocalypse. Maybe you enjoyed Nature Rough if you were watching the eruption of the La Palma volcano from the comfort of your own home or if you got a chance of being virtually flooded in Studio Rosegaarde, Waterlicht, a large-scale intervention that shows how high the water level could reach as the climate heats up.
Jacob Kirkegaard, MELT
Nature Hurt highlights humanity’s negative impact on nature. An example of that type of nature representation is MELT. In 2013 and 2015, Jacob Kirkegaard travelled to Greenland to make audio recordings of ice melting, documenting how water moves through different aggregate phases, from solid to liquid, changing the combination of molecules irrevocably.
Rihards Vitols, Woodpecker, 2016
In Nature Saved, Man is the hero and saviour of wildlife. Rihard Vithols’s Wood Pecker proposes to replace some of the bird species with artificial ones. He built wooden boxes that replicated the sounds of birds to see if they would scare away the plant-eating insects and help to maintain ecological balance in a forest.
Anna Ridler, Mosaic Virus, 2018
Nature Fake celebrates artificially created nature. As in Anna Ridler’s famous Tulips series.
The researchers also said a few words about the “Ecoporn Personality Test” they are working on. The digital tool for individual self-reflection would allow users to explore their ecopornographic preferences and tendencies.
After Fontcuberta, Cerpina and Stenslie’s talks, life at ISEA got decidedly tamer.
Previously: The long-lost archive of curious animals, Photography Off the Scale: Technologies and Theories of the Mass Image, etc.
Paid advertising is one way to dominate your industry and get ahead of the competition. A PPC agency can help you create and implement an effective PPC campaign that will help you achieve your business goals.
However, with the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve and be aware of the latest trends.
So what does the future hold for PPC in the SaaS industry? Here are the top 6 trends that you can expect to see in 2022:
1. The continued growth of voice search
As more people use voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, PPC campaigns will need to adapt to this new way of searching. Optimizing for voice search will require longer keyword phrases, and using natural language processing techniques.
PPC strategies for voice search should focus on creating conversational ads that are triggered by common questions and queries. These ads should be able to answer the user’s question directly, without them having to click through to a landing page.
Natural language processing or NLP is a branch of AI that helps computers understand human language. NLP algorithms can analyze text to extract meaning. This technology can be used to create PPC ads that are more relevant to the user’s search query.
2. More personalized PPC ads
With the rise of data-driven marketing, PPC ads are becoming more and more personalized. PPC campaigns can now use data from a user’s past behavior to show them ads that are more relevant to their interests.
For example, if a user has searched for “running shoes” in the past, they might see an ad for a running shoe store when they search for “sneakers”. This type of PPC ad is more likely to be clicked on and convert into a sale.
Some of the most popular data sources include web analytics, social media data, customer data, and purchase data. By using multiple data sources, businesses can get a more holistic view of their PPC campaigns. This? can help them ?make better decisions and improve results.
3. Expanded use of remarketing
Remarketing is a technique that allows businesses to show ads to users who have already visited their website or used their product. However, in the past, remarketing has been limited to showing ads on Google’s Display Network.
Now, with the rise of social media and other ad platforms, cross-platform remarketing is becoming more common. This allows businesses to show ads to users on multiple platforms, not just Google.
For example, a business could show an ad for their product on Facebook to a user who visited their website but didn’t make a purchase. Or, they could show a re-targeted ad on Instagram to a user who added a product to their shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
Cross-platform remarketing is an effective way to reach potential customers who might be interested in your product or service. It’s also a good way to boost sales and increase conversion rates.
4. Greater focus on mobile users
Mobile-optimized PPC ads are designed to be seen and interacted with on a small screen. They typically have a shorter length, and they use bigger and bolder fonts. The call-to-action (CTA) is also usually placed above the fold so that it’s visible without having to scroll down.
In fact, according to Google, 61% of users are more likely to contact a business if they have a mobile-friendly website, and 70% of mobile searches lead to action within one hour. This means that if your PPC ad is not optimized for mobile, you could miss out on a lot of potential business.
5. The utilization of advanced tracking methods
Tracking is essential for any PPC campaign. It allows businesses to see which ads are performing well and which ones need to be improved.
In the past, businesses would often use simple tracking methods, such as URL tagging or conversion pixel tracking. However, these methods are no longer enough. With the rise of sophisticated ad blockers and fraudsters, businesses need to use more advanced tracking methods.
Some of the most popular advanced tracking methods include post-click attribution, server-side tracking, and click fraud detection. These methods are more accurate and reliable than traditional tracking methods. They can also provide businesses with valuable insights into their PPC campaigns.
6. Increased adoption of AI and machine learning
Machines have been able to process large amounts of data much faster than humans for some time now. This has led to their increased use in areas such as PPC campaign management.
In 2022, AI-powered tools are more advanced to be used for tasks such as ad copywriting, bid management, and audience targeting. This means that businesses will be able to create and manage PPC campaigns with very little human input.
Machine learning is also being used more frequently in PPC campaigns. It allows businesses to automatically optimize their campaigns based on data and user behavior. As a result, businesses can save time and resources while still getting the best results from their PPC campaigns.
Conclusion
Paid search is constantly evolving, and if you want your business to stay ahead of the curve, you need to be aware of what changes are coming down the pipeline.
As the competition for attention online increases, it will be more important than ever for businesses to take advantage of the latest trends and changes in the paid search landscape. This will help you generate more leads and sales from your PPC campaigns and ultimately grow your business.
The personal finance company’s ‘Smartest Decision’ campaign aims to tackle financial decision-making anxiety.
The NFL is the latest professional sports league expanding into the subscription streaming space. Beginning today, the National Football League is rolling out a new streaming service, NFL+, which features live out-of-market preseason games, live local and prime-time regular games and postseason games (only on mobile and tablet), as well as live local and national…
NFL launches a two-tiered subscription app even as it carves up digital and broadcast rights across TV and streaming partners.
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