Twitter is switching its in-app browser to Apple’s Safari View Controller, which enables ad blocking and an ad-free Reader mode. Twitter is cleaning up its look and enabling people to clear out ads on web pages opened within its iOS apps. On Thursday, Twitter began rolling out a redesign of its mobile apps, sites and TweetDeck to make the social network look less cluttered. While many of the changes are cosmetic, potentially the most consequential update is that Twitter’s iOS apps’ in-app browsers will now open links using Apple’s Safari View Controller. As a result, when iPhone and iPad owners are viewing a web page within Twitter’s in-app browser, they will now be able to block ads and tracking cookies that the page is trying to load, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed. Apple’s Safari View Controller makes in-app browsers work the same as Apple’s native Safari browser. For example, if someone uses AutoFill on Safari to automatically fill out forms using information stored with Apple — like contact information, usernames and passwords — they can now use it when viewing a web page within an app like Twitter without Twitter being able to access that data. It also enables cookies stored on the native Safari browser to be accessed within the in-app browser, so if you’re signed in to a paywalled site like The Wall Street Journal on Safari, you’ll already be logged in when opening a WSJ link on Twitter and won’t hit the paywall. But Apple’s Safari View Controller also makes it easier to view web pages within apps without ads. People can switch to Safari’s Instapaper-style Reader mode, which eliminates ads from a page, and Twitter is giving people the option to set the app to always open links using Reader mode. And since Apple’s Safari View Controller began supporting mobile ad blockers in 2015, people who have installed and activated a content-blocking app on their iPhones and/or iPads can have that app remove or disable ads, cookies, autoplay videos and other elements from web pages opened using Twitter’s in-app browser. Decluttering Twitter’s design While Twitter’s switch to Safari View Controller appears to be the biggest change Twitter is making on Thursday, it’s not the only one in a redesign that sweeps across...
Read MoreWhile machine learning itself is nothing new, the speed at which data can now be processed, analysed and actioned has completely changed the machine-learning game. Readily affordable computing power, the quantity of data available, and algorithms we never thought we could use are now possible. While the fundamental concept remains the same, machine-learning is now far more sophisticated, efficient and easily deployable – and the potential it offers to revolutionise customer experience is truly exciting. Harnessing machine learning allows businesses to revolutionise the way we all engage with their store or use their service. Forget product recommendations as we know them today, this takes us far beyond that, into the realms of much more hyper-personal and sophisticated experiences. Identify, think.. go! Not only can machine learning automatically process vast quantities of data to understand customer behaviour and identify where the opportunity lies, we can now action these findings as well. Machine learning might identify that a Swiss travel company has high traffic from the UK, with people looking at ski trips near the end of the season, but lower conversion than expected. Concerns from this segment about the level of snow at the end of the season could be addressed by showing the local weather report or a snow tracker. Alternatively, an online retailer can identify that people are browsing through party dresses on a Thursday or Friday night, but not clicking further to make a purchase. Concerns from these shoppers around whether it will arrive in time for an event on the weekend can be mitigated by moving the delivery proposition onto that page to showcase same day or next day delivery options. Identifying customer segments and creating personalised propositions in this way is an opportunity to banish meaningless customer experiences forever. This is important because we live in a world where delivering customers the content they are looking for in the very first couple of seconds is critical. If you don’t, the chances are they are going to get bored, distracted, and leave. Tinder’s ‘swipe-right, swipe-left’ mentality is driving change across all sectors. As always, “millennials” are the ones driving demand for hyper-personal sophisticated experiences. This younger generation values experiences over commodities, and are driving a change...
Read MoreAt the Digiday Programmatic Summit in Palm Beach, Florida, last month, attendees from agencies and brands were asked to jot down their biggest challenges in programmatic advertising. The mind map (below) lays out their major concerns. Among the big programmatic issues for brands and agencies are the number of vendors, the gap between creative and programmatic, audience overlap and more. Answers are below, edited for clarity: Problem #1. Telling the difference between vendors “Right now, we are doing managed services for all clients, so we constantly get proposals back from vendors and hear the same reporting, capabilities and brand safety. We are sifting through which one is the best in the sandbox,” said a senior media planner from a digital agency. “We are a small team, so I really see vendors as an extension of my agency. I have worked with many vendors who see really high turnover. When new people come in, the attention to the campaign completely falls off, and the performance of the campaign just goes away with it.” “I started doing programmatic back in 2009,” said an associate media director for a Boston-based agency. “Everything was easier at the very beginning because there were fewer players, but now there are just so many vendors with the same recipe. Everyone can be a demand-side platform. How to identify the best one is my challenge.” Problem #2. Bridge the gap between programmatic and creative “Creative is a challenge, and production is a bigger challenge. Our creative team may say, ‘OK, you need to make five different banners for this programmatic campaign,’ and our media team is like, ‘No, that’s not enough.’ Volume aside, you have certain creative freedom in programmatic, and there’s a difference in producing native, social and video content,” said a media director for a digital shop. “From an agency perspective, it’s our responsibility to give brands the best creative recommendations. But there are many clients who want to play creative director, which directly affects the initial idea of a campaign. Too many clients put their hands on the creative: They change the headline, the copy and images, etc. And in some cases, it’s the agency that gets hit when things go wrong.” Problem #3....
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2016 will be remembered as a landmark year for many reasons, but for the mobile industry it will be remembered for enabling us to refocus our energies on metrics that define campaign results. A few of the biggest worries in the industry this past year were ad fraud and measurement discrepancies. The good news for advertisers is that it is possible to ensure human engagement with mobile campaigns if those who are paying shift their mentality and demand zero-tolerance on money wasted on fraud. Today consumers everywhere are spending more and more time on their mobile devices, with mobile expected to drive digital ad spending, which is expected to grow 12% in the UK this year, according to the eMarketer State of the UK Digital Ad Market report. However, as large investments are increasingly at stake, brands need to make sure that mobile advertising efforts are actually engaging users to provide added value. If this is not the case, users will have their say and ad blockers will be here to stay. Advertisers are not blind to this problem and many are already calling for an end to the idea of walled gardens for example. For the mobile advertising industry to progress, we need transparent and impartial measurements across our campaigns that count human activity such as landing page arrivals or app installs. We know that there are too many incentives for fraudsters to bring an end to ad fraud, but it is very possible to identify it when it occurs within mobile campaigns. Human engagement is the most important metric So what does it take to evaluate mobile campaign success based on these new and more indicative metrics? Advertisers need to insist on only paying for human engagement. This way technology will follow to keep up with demand and will become more sophisticated at flagging fraud. Shifting to this mentality is simple, advertisers just need complete visibility into what goes on in a mobile campaign and understand what they should and should not be paying for. For example, we know that ten thousand bid requests will not deliver ten thousand fully delivered impressions on smartphones for various reasons including connection type, device model, creative formats being too heavy...
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Two years ago, the media dined out on stories of in-store fights over cheap televisions. As a result, last year we saw more web-based campaigns – an attempt to avoid in-store pressure and panic. But that brought strains of its own, as retailers’ websites buckled under the weight of demand. We’ve also seen Amazon launch Black Friday offers early and other retailers following suit by extending offerings to week-long periods to get around the mayhem. Despite retailers’ best efforts to evolve and take pressure away from a one-day event, the fact remains: last year it still produced better-than-expected sales figures and this year it’s predicted shoppers will spend £4bn in total and £2.3m a minute at peak times. It’s safe to say Black Friday is here to stay now that customers expect it. But, with more and more disgruntled customers and retailers, how will the day evolve in the future to ease pressure on stores and keep shoppers happy? And what’s our advice on how to best leverage Black Friday in the coming years? Use innovative solutions Using different marketing channels and innovating with technology to control the customer journey is a great way to ease the pressure across the shopping event. The key to finding solutions to the panic of Black Friday is to use insight on how people behave In 2015, House of Fraser launched ‘shoppable windows’, which allowed customers to scan product information and access augmented reality features using the House of Fraser mobile app. The campaign helped to drive digital traffic over the Black Friday weekend and is a fantastic example of aligning in-store and digital and avoiding those detrimental website crashes. Move away from Christmas or create your own event We’ve already seen retailers taking a more measured approach to Black Friday so as not to cannibalise Christmas and January sales. It’s an approach that’s likely to continue. Retailers should begin to make Black Friday its own event, moving it away from any association with Christmas. By merging the two, retailers are losing out on two separate shopping events. By marketing Black Friday as a last-minute time for customers to buy for themselves rather than for others, retailers can help to disassociate the two...
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