This summer is flying by. We skipped Two Truths last week, largely because I was at the BlogHer Creators Summit for 2 days and the atmosphere was bustling! Way too noisy to record a Facebook Live show with my minimal equipment. I’d probably forget to plug in the mic again š
When IĀ started pulling together the posts for tomorrow’s episode, I realized I never posted the August 2d one. So, here it is, very late, but oddly the content is still timely.
The Truths
1. Both YT and FB blocked Alex Jones this week, but it seems like a drop in the bucket for the fake news problem and advertisers concerned about the context in which their ads might appear.Ā Brand Safety is cited by advertisers as a top concern; consumers care about fake news / want to trust social platforms. but FB and Twitter both took a hit in their stock price because user growth dropped and resources were applied (however grudgingly) to these areas. This implies that taking an action / stance on privacy/data integrity has a cost beyond simply the expense of doing the āthing.ā
2. Influencer platforms are rushing to release their āfraudometersā to show the integrity/quality of their networks. We discussed some of the models, but there is no standard for this. Everyone’s just applying their own opinion, whether human or machine derived, to define “fake” follower. In the end, it is also the wrong question. Understanding the fraudulent followers is an exercise to tick off a box. What we really want to understand is what percentage of an audience engages with the content, and then if we are a brand, what percentage of THAT engages with us.
Myth
Brand Safety is a myth. You cannot control all aspects on digital and social. You can get closer with advertising with ad tech tools and things like ads.text, private marketplaces, and guaranteed programmatic, but on social media? People are messy. You canāt control the comments or reshares and sometimes even your influencers go off script and do wacky stuff. Think PewdiePie and Logan Paul. On social, relationships are the keys to brand safety.
Resources mentioned in the show: Five Charts Explaining the State of Brand Safety