Rob

22
Feb
2021
Moderating Campaign Middle East’s AdTech Strategies 2021 Panel

Moderating Campaign Middle East’s AdTech Strategies 2021 Panel

I was delighted to moderate today’s AdTech Strategies 2021 panel for Campaign Middle East. The panelists were from Google, Huawei Ads and MMP WorldWide.

Find out more here and watch it here.

Programmatic after cookies

The cookie is dead. Long live … the what? As Google joins other technology game-changers in their move towards a pro-user-privacy and preference model, programmatic advertising continues to evolve to stay relevant in a world that is now increasingly leaning towards first-party data. Campaign’s panel of industry experts look at the latest updates to programmatic advertising and how clients can make the most of them.

Posted by Rob in Campaign Magazine, Speaking, Tech
17
Dec
2020
Catch me on this week’s episode of The Prof G Show

Catch me on this week’s episode of The Prof G Show

I appeared on this week’s episode of Scott Galloway’s The Prof G Show with an Office Hours question about Facebook’s antitrust challenges:

With all this antitrust pressure facing Facebook at the moment, do you think there’s any chance that – if they are forced to divest one or more of their assets – Mark Zuckerberg could choose to get rid of Facebook, the ‘Big Blue app’ itself, rather than, for example, Instagram?

Some estimates say that, by next year, Instagram could account for up to 40% of the parent company’s advertising revenue, and this has been increasing significantly every year since Instagram started really generating revenue back in 2015. And with some other beefed-up revenue-generating features like shopping also gaining traction on Instagram lately, it’s maybe not crazy to think that, in the next couple of years, Instagram could end up bringing in more “cabbage” than Facebook itself. With all the controversy around fake news and content moderation on the Facebook platform, it might be starting to seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

So, what do you think – could Mark Zuckerberg ever give up his baby for a potentially greater shot at better future revenue?

Check it out at about the 45:35 mark below to see what Scott had to say.

As a follow-up, I posed the same question to long-time Facebook observer, WIRED Editor at Large, and author of ‘Facebook: An Inside Story‘, Steven Levy, and this is what he had to say.

Posted by Rob in Facebook
26
Nov
2020
Serendipity is TikTok’s secret weapon

Serendipity is TikTok’s secret weapon

I originally wrote this article for the Autumn 2020 issue of WIRED Middle East magazine

In the 2001 rom-com Serendipity, a love-struck John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale engage in a cosmic test to measure their compatibility. Instead of simply swapping phone numbers, one of them writes their number on the back of a $5 bill, the other on the inside of a book cover, and they send them off out into the world. If they are meant to be together, fate will dictate that their paths will cross again. Spoiler alert: they are, it does, and they do. While it’s no Citizen Kane, the message is clear: some things in life are best left to chance. A bit schmaltzy, sure. But there’s some truth in there too.

In today’s world where the shows we watch, the things we read, and the products we buy are increasingly influenced by algorithms, these moments of serendipity are becoming rarer than ever. Platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Netflix know so much about us, yet their view of us can be surprisingly narrow. Or at least that’s how it seems when you look at how they act on this information, primarily showing us recommendations based on things that they know we already like. Oh, you liked the Facebook page of a certain politician? Here’s a bunch of Facebook pages for affiliated political groups. Watched a horror movie on Netflix lately? Here’s a hundred other horror movies. Searched for a smartphone on Amazon? Feast your eyes on a thousand similar smartphones that follow you around the web waving at you from every page you visit. Just like the way you might find yourself in an online filter bubble surrounded by like-minded people because of the content you interact with, you can also end up in a loop of the same type of stuff being recommended to you again and again. But we are not as one dimensional as the algorithms might wish we were. Sometimes all we really need is something a bit different. TikTok is one of the few platforms that seems to understand this.

The Chinese video-sharing social network is getting a lot of press these days, what with the US President threatening to shut it down and all. But it’s only got such a spotlight on it because of how big it has gotten so fast. According to the company’s recent numbers, the app has been downloaded over 2 billion times globally, with about 50 million daily active users in the US alone, all in the space of just three years. It’s become such a phenomenon that it’s spawned a raft of copycats, most notably one from Instagram called Reels. But, while some of these imposters might look on the surface to do a similar job as TikTok, they can’t replicate what’s under the hood; the content discovery algorithm. Popular content gets distributed across TikTok in the For You feed which is algorithmically tailored to show clips that suit each user’s interests and behaviour. This is TikTok’s not-so-secret weapon. And serendipity plays a big role in how it works.

Earlier this summer TikTok gave the public a sneak peek at how its algorithm personalises content for each user in a post on the company’s blog. A lot of the signals it takes into account are pretty standard across most social media platforms: your stated interests, the accounts you follow, the content you create and interact with, and whether you watch a video to the end. But one of its tactics stands out – TikTok throws regular curve balls at its users, purposefully putting content into your feed that it has no indication that you might like:

To keep your For You feed interesting and varied, our recommendation system works to intersperse diverse types of content along with those you already know you love. …Sometimes you may come across a video in your feed that doesn’t appear to be relevant to your expressed interests or have amassed a huge number of likes.

This is an important and intentional component of our approach to recommendation: bringing a diversity of videos into your For You feed gives you additional opportunities to stumble upon new content categories, discover new creators, and experience new perspectives and ideas as you scroll through your feed.

TikTok tries to find a balance between suggesting content that’s relevant to you while also helping you find content and creators that you might not otherwise come across based on your previous behavior. Diversity and variation is key in guiding users away from the dreaded filter bubble, not to mention keeping things interesting and fresh. It’s what broadens a user’s horizons and keeps them coming back for more. Many of us will be familiar with the unfulfilling drudge of scrolling through the Facebook or Instagram Feed and seeing the same type of predictable and repetitive content over and over again. But if the feed stops being a surprising and interesting place to be, users will get bored. This is something that TikTok seems to be acutely aware of. And it’s proving to be a significant competitive advantage in getting users hooked on the platform and keeping them engaged. Variety is the spice of life. When it comes to finding something new, sometimes it’s best to roll the dice. Who knows what you might get.

Posted by Rob in Social Media, Tik Tok, Wired Middle East
23
Sep
2020
Interview with Reem Al Marzouqi for WIRED Middle East

Interview with Reem Al Marzouqi for WIRED Middle East

I originally wrote this article for the Autumn 2020 issue of WIRED Middle East magazine

Thomas Edison was a busy guy. The renowned American inventor was responsible for such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. In total, Edison was granted over 1,000 patents in his lifetime – a figure that is regularly used to illustrate his status as a pioneer. And it’s this symbol of the patent that’s such a powerful representation of innovation and originality – a way of quantifying humanity adapting to an ever-changing world. In a typical year, over 300,000 patents are granted in the United States of America alone, and since 1836, 10 million of them have been issued to inventors from all over the world. But until 2013, none of these came from the UAE. All that changed when 23 year-old Emirati engineering student, Reem Al Marzouqi, was awarded a US patent for designing a car for people with special needs that can be driven without using their hands.

The invention itself was a happy accident. The result of a university project to modify an existing device for people with special needs without violating a current copyright or patent, Al Marzouqi misunderstood the task and instead created an entirely original system for drivers to control the steering wheel with just their feet. Inspired by a documentary on armless American pilot Jessica Cox, and motivated by an impulse to help people adapt to challenging environments, Reem dove head-first into the project. While she may not have got the grade she wanted, her teachers were impressed. At first Al Marzouqi didn’t know what a patent was and had to be persuaded to submit her designs by her teachers at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in Al Ain. “I was a student at the time so (my university) did everything from A to Z. I just had to fill some forms and submit my thesis and sketches. And the sketches were so simple. I was in my first year at university, I still didn’t know how to use the fancy software. So it was all hand sketches.”

But it was in working within these constraints that gave her the biggest lesson in creativity – much of the time, simplicity is key. “People need to be more simple. We tend to complicate things in order to look professional and perfect. Yet the reality is the world needs more simpler ways, smarter solutions.” Her invention sprung from a basic idea and a bunch of scrappy sketches that she put together without any prior experience or technical knowhow. It mightn’t have been pretty, but it did the job. As the Silicon Valley mantra goes, “done is better than perfect”. In some cases, a lack of experience can even stand to your advantage. The more entrenched you are in a field, the harder it can be to think outside the box and be creative. But if you don’t know what the rules are, you’re not bound by them. “The less you know about something, the more creative you are. The more you know, the deeper you go into the box, and you will be surrounding your brain with the barriers and saying, ‘No, you can’t’. But if you don’t know it, you will not say that you cannot.” Her message to young people in the region is that you don’t need to be an expert to become an inventor. Anyone can do it, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and get your hands dirty. “People think you have to have a degree, you have to be an expert… to be an inventor. I really thought I’d have to be one of those (people) studying 24/7, reading all the books and knowing everything about everything. That’s the typical idea of inventors. I didn’t think I was one of them.”

When the call came from the University that the patent had been granted she baulked at the attention and actually needed some persuading to show up and accept the recognition. “I first received the call from my university for a photo shoot and I was too lazy to go there and take a picture. I was like, ‘No, just pick anyone and tell them “This is Reem”’. I didn’t realise it until I saw people’s reaction in the media and how the university was taking it as a big deal.” It wasn’t until she read about her achievement in the newspapers that she even realised that she was the first ever Emirati to be granted a patent in the United States. These days Al Marzouqi works with Abu Dhabi Airports, helping to make the new Midfield Terminal become one of the most advanced airport facilities in the world. Meanwhile, the prototype of her car is proudly displayed in the UAEU in Al Ain, a signal to other students that they too can make a difference. All they need is an idea and a pencil.

Posted by Rob in Wired Middle East
16
Jun
2020

Google says that user experience will soon affect your search ranking

I originally wrote this article for Campaign Middle East magazine

Cast your mind back to 2015. It might seem like a lifetime ago for a lot of reasons, but it was also an inflection point of sorts for digital media – social media had finally revealed itself as a pay-to-play platform for advertisers, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands had really started to take off, and mobile internet traffic had started to overtake desktop traffic. By 2015, pretty much everyone had finally gotten themselves a smartphone. But not every brand had updated their website to be responsive. We all remember having to wait forever for pages to load and pinch our screens to zoom-in in order to read tiny text because some websites hadn’t bothered updating to a mobile-friendly design. This was not a good experience. For a platform like Google that made a living by sending people to the right websites this was a problem. If you keep sending users to sites that frustrate them, eventually people will stop using your service. That’s why, with an April 2015 algorithm update, Google finally started punishing websites that still refused to provide a good mobile experience by giving priority to websites that displayed well on smartphones when users made a search on their mobile devices. Websites with large text, easy-to-click links, and displays that resized to fit the user’s screen were given a search ranking boost. And this makes sense. Google wants users to have the best experience they possibly can. For both Google and the end-user this was a win-win. On the flip side, this move effectively deprioritised millions of sites around the world that had yet to optimise for mobile meaning that, finally, brands had to sit up and take mobile seriously. Mobile had ‘arrived’. Something similar is now happening with user experience.

Taking user experience seriously

Last month, Google announced that it will be expanding the set of user experience metrics that are taken into account as factors for ranking search results, so the better your user experience, the better chance you have of Google sending traffic to your site. Google already takes page speed and mobile responsiveness into account when it comes to ranking pages, but these new criteria focus on how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page – how quickly the main page elements load, how they perform when the user first tries to interact with them, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger!). Like trying to move brands away from having unresponsive websites on mobile, Google is now trying to weed out the little things that make the user experience that bit more annoying. These are real and tangible things that your users notice when they come into contact with your site that ruin the experience, like trying to shop at a supermarket with sticky floors, a confusing store layout and long queues at the checkout counter. You’re shooting yourself in the foot by not giving these areas the attention that they deserve.

Having a great user experience should be table stakes for any ambitious brand in 2020. Customers these days have high expectations, and plenty of companies have perfected the art of giving them what they want fast, sometimes anticipating what they want before they even ask for it. This is the standard that you have to meet in today’s consumer landscape. User experience has well and truly ‘arrived’.

Food for thought

Google stressed that these criteria will not affect rankings until next year, but once they do, they will become a significant factor in where you show up in search. Back when the mobile-first algorithm update came into place, content marketing company BrightEdge tracked over 20,000 URLs and saw a 21% decrease in non mobile-friendly sites on the first three pages of search results. If something similar happens with this user experience update, you do not want to be in the 21% of sites that fall off the edge.

Having a fast-loading, easy-to-use website that shows your visitors relevant content and generally gives them a more personalised experience will improve your key site metrics – time spent, pages views and even conversion. And soon it will directly affect your search ranking too. At Horizontal, we believe in the mantra of CX4CA (Customer Experience for Competitive Advantage), and the conviction that brands can build loyalty and increase conversion by removing friction and improving the user experience. Google echoes this belief, and the message from them is loud and clear – if you want to rank highly in search results you better make sure that you have an easy-to-use and intuitive website. If you don’t, your competitor will. Is your site ready?

Posted by Rob in Campaign Magazine, Google, Mobile, SEO