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Thoughts on User Data, Privacy & the Global Data Supply Chain
Do you enjoy niche data supply research and trying to stay on top of various user data news and privacy laws? Check out some of the content below or follow Zach Edwards on Twitter for up-to-date ramblings.
My favorite 46 Google Remarketing Lists
I keep losing these links so I'm just sharing my favorite 46 Google Remarketling lists here so that they are handy! 🙂 A bunch of these were created by other people, but I added a bunch of demographic lists. List 1 List 2 List 3 Click those links, it will open in a new tab and then you select the Account/Property you want to append the remarketing lists to. ((Featured image on this post from JoeTheGoatFarmer.com))
Google Domains + Google Analytics = Match Made in Heaven
By far, the most popular analytics platform on the market is Google Analytics. It's easy enough for beginners, but packed with sophisticated tools for pros. The biggest problem with Google Analytics is the fact that it can be setup wrong. If you have subdomains, all of your root traffic could merge (among other problems) and many people would have no idea. If you have infinite scrolling websites, you could have it setup wrong and not understand behavior. If you hard code your websites,...
Twitter serves up “make money fast” sponsored tweet
Facebook has stringent rules for advertisers to keep newsfeeds from turning into "make-money-fast" pyramid schemes. Basically, they protect against potential fraud by banning claims that can't be substantiated, especially when it comes to financial claims. I just got served this wonderful sponsored Twitter post... apparently the same rules don't apply for Twitter ads: How I make $200K a month in my coaching business (and you can too) http://t.co/IKPB2tmArO — Russell Ruffino (@RussRuffino)...
Knowledge-Based Advertising: A Profitable Opportunity for News Organizations
Yesterday, the New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan wrote a refreshingly honest piece about the 17 Hopes and Dreams for the Times in the New Year, and touched upon their desire to find "A brilliant new revenue scheme to capitalize on the popularity of mobile devices." News organizations need to help advertisers deliver more effective online ads. These ads need to have higher click through rates, they need to be more engaging, and most importantly, they need to...
Fear of Failure
When was the last time you read an article about Twitter's "algorithms" screwing people over? Hurting businesses? Affecting users? When was the last time you saw that LinkedIn was finally punishing spammers, or tweaking their platform to reduce abuse of profile crawling? Facebook is a so-called "shit-show" because they aren't afraid to test, to experiment, and to change their winning equation. Google is always "changing their results" because they constantly change their algorithnms in order...
Why do huge advertising platforms from Facebook and Twitter still rely on pixel tracking? Why don't they develop an internal Zapier-like tool that connects their ad platform to various email services, databases, opt-in tools, etc. A few tweaks to the "Login with Facebook" or "Login with Twitter" functionalty and both of these companies could have a 1:1 sync between FB/Twitter ads and a FB/Twitter opt-in. There are hundreds of thousands of people using Facebook ads, and probably tens of...
Twitter Continues to Ignore Engagement Goals as Facebook Innovates
Facebook generates nearly all revenue from ads. Twitter generates nearly all revenue from ads. Facebook makes it nearly impossible to browse the site without viewing ads. Twitter users on 3rd party platforms can avoid ads. Users on Twitter.com barely notice ads and click through rates are abismal. The majority of Facebook "power" users use Facebook. The majority of Twitter "power" users use 3rd party apps. Facebook optimizes their newsfeed for engagement. Twitter does no...
Google’s explanation of serving geo-targeted content based on IP address
TL;DR version -- as long as you serve Google bot the same variation as any other user connecting from that geographic area (City/Region/State) then the site won't be negatively weighted in search results.
Newspapers innovating with API’s the way you’d expect newspapers to innovate with API’s
Where can developers see A NEWSPAPER API BREAKDOWN AND PROVIDE FEEDBACK?Metered-digital paywalls, restrictive Terms of Use, and data-limited API’s present problems for newspapers trying to enter the 21st centuryIf you had a time machine and went back to the early 1990’s, I bet you could sit in a conference room with newspaper executives and hear them talk about the Internet as though it were merely a series of tubes — something that a dump truck could quite literally get stuck in — and nothing...
What poker can teach you about A/B tests and iterative website optimization
Testing is the poker tell of the digital worldDuring the online poker boom of the mid 2000’s, I was a professional poker player for nearly three years, living in Las Vegas and grinding out a living playing mostly Omaha Hi/Lo poker online and in person. While I was playing full-time, I read dozens of books and poker magazines, and became a student of the math behind poker as well as the psychology behind people’s motivations. I also wrote in a diary almost every day, and I still have hundreds...