Happy's marketing news - 15.09.17
It’s been a busy week in the marketing world, here’s what has caught our eye!
Apple has revealed a high-end smartphone with an “edge-to-edge” screen that has no physical home button. The iPhone X – which is referred to as “ten” – uses a facial recognition system to recognise its owner rather than a fingerprint-based one. Apple said FaceID can work in the dark by using 30,000 infra-red dots to check an identity, and was harder to fool than its old TouchID system. It is Apple’s most expensive phone yet. A 64 gigabyte capacity model will cost £999 when it goes on sale on 3 November. A 256GB version will be priced at £1,149.
Journalists, financial firms and anti-doping bodies could receive special exemptions from new laws to protect personal data, the government has said. These “safeguards” would protect the freedom of the press, help prevent fraud and “maintain the integrity of professional sports”. The proposals are part of a new Data Protection Bill, published on Thursday, which will overhaul UK data laws. It will impose much heavier fines on those who do not protect personal data. In most respects the bill, which will come into force next May, will transfer the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation into UK law. The legislation will also be maintained after Brexit.
The UK ad industry is changing its approach to digital advertising as it deals with issues such as brand safety and ad fraud, according to a new report. The Media Quality Report, conducted biannually by measurement and analytics company Integral Ad Science (IAS), looks at trends around viewability, brand safety and ad fraud across UK desktop, video and mobile advertising. The report analysed nearly 300 billion global impressions from advertising campaigns that ran between 1 January and 30 June 2017. It found that brand safety risk – the likelihood of adverts being served next to inappropriate content – continues to fall on desktop in the UK, falling 3.1 percentage points from 6.8% in the second half of 2016 to 3.7% in the first half of 2017.
Social media giant Facebook is introducing new controls over where advertising appears and around the type of content that can be monetised as it tries to allay marketers’ fears over brand safety, measurement and viewability. The changes, which were unveiled at Dmexco on 13 September by Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson, will apply new standards to the type of content that can be monetised around in-stream ads and its Instant Articles feature. Facebook will also begin to provide advertisers with both pre-and-post campaign reporting. The former means advertisers will now be able to see which publishers are monetising their sites and apps and therefore create lists of publishers they might want to exclude. The latter means brands will also be able to see exactly where their ads ran rather than having to make assumptions and if, for example, they had run on controversial websites such as Breitbart.
Newsquest has announced that it will be publishing a new weekly newspaper in Oldham. It comes following the closure of the Oldham Evening Chronicle, which went into administration earlier this month. “Oldham is a great and vibrant town which deserves to have its own dedicated newspaper. We believe there is a sustainable publishing future in Oldham as a weekly print brand and as a daily online news provider. A community of this size warrants a credible news title and we encourage both readers and advertisers to support this exciting new launch,” said Nick Fellows, Newsquest North West’s managing director. The paper will provide “news, sport and comment on the local community” as well as a weekend leisure guide and TV guide.
