With Europe’s GDPR implemented and California’s CCPA waiting in the wings, third-party data is starting to look like fossil fuel: widely seen as dirty, but also widely used and lobbied for–for now. California may be the U.S. market’s big kahuna, but it’s just one of multiple U.S. states considering legislation that would pressure ad exchanges…
Editor’s note: Industry consultant Shelly Palmer is taking his popular newsletter and turning it into an Adweek article once per week in an ongoing column titled “Think About This.” An invitation to walk in a Labor Day Parade got me thinking about labor law as an alternative path to meaningful data privacy regulation. There is…
Is the truth brand safe? Many brands behave as though it isn’t. Afraid that consumers won’t be able to distinguish between their message and a well-reported news story, they shun publishers of hard news in favor of content more easily controlled: softer stories (or simply audiences) divorced from any consideration of what the audiences are…
A year has now passed since GDPR took effect in the EU, ushering in the most sweeping data privacy protections in a generation and transforming the global marketing and tech space in ways both predictable and unforeseen. As this anniversary fast approached, many of us started asking the same questions. What have we as digital…
This four-part series aims to help executives better understand how to succeed in digital transformation. In part one, we identified three critical pillars of success: The right strategy, culture and partner relationships. The adoption of sophisticated cloud marketing technologies. A direct-to-consumer brand digital commerce channel. Here in part two, we’re focusing on the first pillar:…
We hear so much about protection of personal data and massive data breaches that we are mostly numb to the issue. It’s akin to the Night King’s army of White Walkers marching on Westeros for several seasons of Game of Thrones then, in the end, it had little effect on the final status quo. Be…
Editor’s note: Industry consultant Shelly Palmer is taking his popular newsletter and turning it into an Adweek article once per week in an ongoing column titled “Think About This.” The need to amass the largest, highest quality (classified and categorized to achieve your specific goals) audience is not reserved for for-profit media outlets. The job…
Efforts to root out ad fraud have clearly failed as we’ve continued to see legal issues for agencies and media partners. Brands are now on high alert, and it’s a particular threat for public companies who have a shareholder responsibility to resolve these issues. That’s on top of previous legal actions and recent alarm bells…
When someone says owned media, the first thoughts that probably come to mind are a brand’s website, CRM database, social channels and mobile app. With all the excitement around big data and digital marketing platforms, we often forget about one of the oldest and most impactful forms of owned media: product packaging. Packaging is arguably…
“Alexa, you’re ugly. Alexa, you’re stupid. Alexa, you’re fat.” This barrage of abuse came from my friend’s children, who were shouting at his Amazon device, trying to prompt a witty comeback from the AI assistant. What was just a game to the kids looked a lot like the worst kind of playground bullying, and as…
In 1960, Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt launched the age of modern marketing with a Harvard Business Review article where he wove a powerful argument, saying that companies should stop defining themselves by what they produced and instead reorient themselves toward customer needs. Using the decline of the U.S. railroad industry as an example,…
A competitor has engaged in high-profile false advertising, and your CEO wants to use an enforcement hammer with more weight than a cease-and-desist letter. Or maybe you sent a letter but didn’t get sufficient movement from the other side. Should you pursue a court action or file a challenge with the National Advertising Division (NAD)?…
Just over three years ago, Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest the treatment of African-Americans and minorities in the United States. Although we have come quite a distance from that initial form of protest, the NFL’s current partnership with Jay-Z and Roc Nation appears to be a damage control campaign to restore some of…
Editor’s note: Industry consultant Shelly Palmer is taking his popular newsletter and turning it into an Adweek article once per week in an ongoing column titled “Think About This.” Late last year, I wrote about deepfakes and how, for about 200,000 years, we have relied on our eyes and ears to separate truth from lies…
Massive digital disruption over the last decade has caused many brands to seek a digital transformation strategy, even though management teams struggle to define the term. As co-leaders of a digital customer experience company, we’ve seen how business models across industries are being regularly upended. Why? Consumers now value experiences over possessions, and they do…
Mobile fraudsters are impressively stealing your ad budget, and you likely don’t even know it. These grifters have evolved their trade faster than prevention capabilities can keep up and have turned ad tech into their unwitting accomplices. Ad buyers are losing this arms race, and the bigger your budget, the bigger a target you are….
The FTC fined Facebook $5 billion for various privacy violations in July. After two years of privacy pushback, multiple scandals and public outcry, the social media behemoth is finally being held accountable. This is the largest fine in FTC history, much larger than the $22 million fine imposed on Google in 2012. As trust erodes…
Editor’s note: Industry consultant Shelly Palmer is taking his popular newsletter and turning it into an Adweek article once per week in an ongoing column titled “Think About This.” Amazon says its Rekognition facial recognition software can now identify fear along with seven other emotions including, happy, sad, angry, surprised, disgusted, calm and confused. What…
Martha Stewart shared it. Usher shared it. Top government officials and media execs shared it. As the latest Instagram copyright hoax made its rounds, pixelated and degrading in quality with each repost, others watched in horror as the internet underscored yet again the most glaring vulnerability of our digital age: Fact-checking is an afterthought, if…
Today is Women’s Equality Day, which celebrates the passage of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote on August 26, 1920. Black suffragists like Sojourner Truth, Nannie Helen Burroughs and Ida B. Wells worked bravely to secure their right to vote. However, it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act was passed in…
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