AdTech/MarTech

Everyone wants to work for your company. You receive hundreds of resumes every day. There are simply too many for humans to read. So, like many companies, you use a service that ingests the resumes and uses AI to score potential candidates against job descriptions. From your perspective it is the perfect use case. It’s fast. It’s efficient. And the candidates who make it through the system are pretty high level. This sounds awesome – but what happens to the candidates who don’t make it through the system? Continue Reading →

Stats in a new report from Blockthrough suggest that more than 750 million devices (mobile and computer) were running ad blockers in Q4 2019. The increase is pegged at roughly 64% over the past three years. Continue Reading →

If data-driven storytelling were only about data, then every original show on Netflix or Prime Video should be a smash hit. But Netflix, Prime Video, and every other original production done by the “data rich” tech organizations have about the same production-to-hit ratio as professionally programmed old-fashioned, “data poor” networks. How can this be? Shouldn’t the data-driven programmers be better at predicting what stories will best fit an audience? What actor or actress will resonate? What music will work better? What story arc? Or at least knowing what an audience might be more likely to want? Continue Reading →

Over the past couple of weeks, Google has made some unsubtle changes to its search results pages. To say that the line between paid ads and organic search results has been blurred is to understate in the extreme. Continue Reading →

This past week, I sat with my friends to count our blessings and rejoice in the season of winter festivals. It will not surprise you to learn that we had some unexpected guests including the President of the United States. Not in person, of course, but he was “in the house.” I won’t bore you with the general split. You already know everything you need to know about the topic and what each side believes. But here’s what I didn’t know. The people who are most influenced by sockpuppeted, bot-influenced, social media-infused, AI-generated, deepfaked content are the ones who are the most certain that they are not influenced at all. Continue Reading →

Here's some fun stuff you can do on your year-end holiday vacation: learn to use AI to read and understand your documents or email messages. It’s so easy that anyone can do it. Continue Reading →

Robocalls are so universally hated that the United States House of Representatives (a group not known for their bipartisan approach to legislating) passed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED) 417-3. I am wondering what the three representatives who did not vote in favor of the bill like about robocalls... Continue Reading →

Snapchat will launch on December 18 a new feature called Cameo that will allow you to put your face onto short looping videos. This is a "shallowfake," meaning that you know it's fake, and so does everyone else who is watching. There is no attempt to fool anyone. It's basically a better version of Elf Yourself. Continue Reading →

Cyber Monday is supposed to be an awesome online shopping day. It is. I've seen estimates as high as $9 Billion for today. However, I've also seen estimates from NBC News and Radware that as much as 97 percent of online traffic today will be bot traffic. Continue Reading →

In honor of the holidays – and the beginning of ski season – I decided to cut the cord, cancel my Comcast cable package, and go internet-only in VT. There are some lessons learned – some serious, some not so much. Continue Reading →