Ad spend and other news

3 minutes estimated reading time

Ad spend

Unilever threatens to pull ad spend from platforms that ‘breed division’  – “Consumers don’t care about third-party verification. They do care about fraudulent practice, fake news, and Russians influencing the US election. They don’t care about good value for advertisers. But they do care when they see their brands being placed next to ads funding terror, or exploiting children.”

“They don’t care about sophisticated data usage or ad targeting via complex algorithms, but they do care about not seeing the same ad 100 times a day. They don’t care about ad fraud, but they do care about their data being misused and stolen.” – It is good that both Procter & Gamble and Unilever are independently taking much the same line with media companies and agencies through ad spend. The downside is that Unilever have partnered with IBM to build blockchain technology that will help verify their ad spend

3D printing

Porsche Is 3D Printing Hard-To-Find Parts For The 959 And Other Classics | Jalopnik – not exactly 3D printing but it is additive manufacturing

Business

Under Armour’s (UA) international business grew in 2017, especially in China — Quartz – it will depend on how Under Armour can leverage their NBA stars in China. They also need to get clear space in design between themselves and rivals

European businesses expect UK soft Brexit, Survey suggests | FT  – 2,500 senior executives in the UK, France, Germany and Spain found that a majority of companies believe that Britain’s future relationship with the EU will maintain principles such as the free movement of people and oversight by the European Court of Justice. (paywall) – they should be more cautious

Consumer behaviour

Facebook Losing Friends to Snapchat in the U.K. – Bloomberg – it is worthwhile being skeptical until there is more details on the methodology but interesting nonetheless

Design

Many Siris · Bryan Irace – I think its a focus on context rather than fragmentation

Algorithmic arrangements: an interview iwht Tom Quisel, former CTO fo OkCupid | Logic magazine  – as with many startups, using really advanced algorithms ends up being a second-order optimization. Often, the more effective thing is just to work on getting the user experience right. It’s much easier to do user experience improvements that make larger differences on the dynamics and the site

How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare? – The Pensieve – a catalogue of service design mistakes that weren’t customer focused

Luxury

Saudi Cleric Says Women Should Not Be Forced to Wear Abaya Robes in Public | The Fashion Law – potentially huge for fashion retailers in Saudi and a possible sign of the state moving towards a greater degree of liberalism – in the loosest possible sense. Saudi needs that flexibility to move beyond oil and getting its young people into work

Technology

Foxconn unit to cut over 10,000 jobs as robotics take over- Nikkei Asian Reviewup to 75% of production will be fully automated by the end of 2018. Most of Innolux’s factories are in Taiwan. Tuan’s pledge came a few days after Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou said the company would pour in some $342 million to overhaul its manufacturing process by using artificial intelligence. (paywall) – I am skeptical abut how far this push for robotics can go.

It is worthwhile reading this thread by Steven Sinofsky all the way through