Emotional Intelligence

I found a great essay for you to read as it conveys how the current workday planning may no longer be applicable to your ongoing successes. Let me know how this works for you and send me your thoughts at drphilipjay@gmail.com...Have Fun!

The 8-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

The 8-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labor that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor. This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work two hundred years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today.

Like our ancestors, we’re expected to put in 8-hour days, working in long, continuous blocks of time, with few or no breaks. Heck, most people even work right through their lunch hour!

This antiquated approach to work isn’t helping us; it’s holding us back.

The Best Way to Structure Your Day

A study recently conducted by the Draugiem Group used a computer application to track employees’ work habits. Specifically, the application measured how much time people spent on various tasks and compared this to their productivity levels.

In the process of measuring people’s activity, they stumbled upon a fascinating finding: the length of the workday didn’t matter much; what mattered was how people structured their day. In particular, people who were religious about taking short breaks were far more productive than those who worked longer hours.

The ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work, followed by 17 minutes of rest. People who maintained this schedule had a unique level of focus in their work. For roughly an hour at a time, they were 100% dedicated to the task they needed to accomplish. They didn’t check Facebook “real quick” or get distracted by e-mails. When they felt fatigue (again, after about an hour), they took short breaks, during which they completely separated themselves from their work. This helped them to dive back in refreshed for another productive hour of work.

Your Brain Wants an Hour On, 15 Minutes Off

People who have discovered this magic productivity ratio crush their competition because they tap into a fundamental need of the human mind: the brain naturally functions in spurts of high energy (roughly an hour) followed by spurts of low energy (15–20 minutes).

For most of us, this natural ebb and flow of energy leaves us wavering between focused periods of high energy followed by far less productive periods, when we tire and succumb to distractions.

The best way to beat exhaustion and frustrating distractions is to get intentional about your workday. Instead of working for an hour or more and then trying to battle through distractions and fatigue, when your productivity begins to dip, take this as a sign that it’s time for a break.

Real breaks are easier to take when you know they’re going to make your day more productive. We often let fatigue win because we continue working through it (long after we’ve lost energy and focus), and the breaks we take aren’t real breaks (checking your e-mail and watching YouTube doesn’t recharge you the same way as taking a walk does).

Take Charge of Your Workday

The 8-hour workday can work for you if you break your time into strategic intervals. Once you align your natural energy with your effort, things begin to run much more smoothly. Here are four tips that will get you into that perfect rhythm.

Break your day into hourly intervals. We naturally plan what we need to accomplish by the end of the day, the week, or the month, but we’re far more effective when we focus on what we can accomplish right now. Beyond getting you into the right rhythm, planning your day around hour-long intervals simplifies daunting tasks by breaking them into manageable pieces. If you want to be a literalist, you can plan your day around 52-minute intervals if you like, but an hour works just as well.

Respect your hour. The interval strategy only works because we use our peak energy levels to reach an extremely high level of focus for a relatively short amount of time. When you disrespect your hour by texting, checking e-mails, or doing a quick Facebook check, you defeat the entire purpose of the approach.

Take real rest. In the study at Draugiem, they found that employees who took more frequent rests than the hourly optimum were more productive than those who didn’t rest at all. Likewise, those who took deliberately relaxing breaks were better off than those who, when "resting," had trouble separating themselves from their work. Getting away from your computer, your phone, and your to-do list is essential to boosting your productivity. Breaks such as walking, reading, and chatting are the most effective forms of recharging because they take you away from your work. On a busy day, it might be tempting to think of dealing with e-mails or making phone calls as breaks, but they aren’t, so don’t give in to this line of thought.

Don’t wait until your body tells you to take a break. If you wait until you feel tired to take a break, it’s too late—you’ve already missed the window of peak productivity. Keeping to your schedule ensures that you work when you’re the most productive and that you rest during times that would otherwise be unproductive. Remember, it’s far more productive to rest for short periods than it is to keep on working when you’re tired and distracted.

Bringing It All Together

Breaking your day down into chunks of work and rest that match your natural energy levels feels good, makes your workday go faster, and boosts your productivity.

Do you notice your energy and focus waxing and waning according to the cycle described above? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. 

The Westwood One Advertiser Guarantee

Radio Ink

October 26, 2017

Advertisers just want their advertising to work. They judge those results by how much sales increase. Advertisers sort of believe radio works, but without the kind of instant ratings they get with TV, and instant data they get with digital, radio can be kind of a crap shoot for them. Is Westwood One about to start a trend to change all that? Will this lead to more revenue for radio? We asked the person who introduced the new program, EVP of Corporate Marketing for Cumulus Media and President of Westwood One Suzanne Grimes.

Radio Ink: Guaranteeing advertising is a major step, a big deal. Why do this?
Grimes: We have seen stunning radio ROI data across the board and are convinced of radio’s ability to generate a positive return, so much so that we are offering the ROI guarantee to our advertisers. Given secular trends across the media landscape, brands are deeply concerned over ad fraud, viewability, and questionable metrics.

This is not our first foray into data. We have partnered with best-in-class data and insights companies such as Nielsen Marketing Cloud, NextRadio, and MARU/Vision Critical. The launch of Westwood One’s One Way has focused our holistic approach to smart targeting, testing and proving attribution, sales results, and effectiveness. We know we have the tools and the strength of the medium to prove radio’s sales growth.

It’s clear marketers demand solutions to target customers and generate results. The reason we are doing this is to elevate radio as the targetable, measurable mass-reach medium that, simply put, delivers.

Radio Ink: Specifically how will you know the ads worked? How can you guarantee results?
Grimes: Ads work when there is positive ROI. For this program, positive ROI is at least a noted return improvement on an advertiser’s media investment. For every dollar invested in radio, there will be positive incremental sales per a Nielsen Return on Advertising Spend Study.

We can guarantee results because there is strong and proven evidence of radio’s powerful ROI. Nielsen has conducted 23 return-on-investment studies over the past two years for radio. So we know AM/FM radio works. We know the results are significant.

Radio Ink: Is this all based on sales increase with the clients?
Grimes: Yes, ROI will be based on the return of advertising spend across the entire radio industry. Nielsen will measure the ROI sales lift of the entire radio media schedule (spot radio and network radio) to show the industry-wide impact of the medium. The return on advertising spend will be based on the entire radio campaign across all vendors in network and national spot.

Radio Ink: How will you test the commercials?
Grimes: We will be pre-testing all creative before the campaign. Half of ROI and sales lift impact is due to creative, so ensuring the existing creative works is crucial. Westwood One will require creative to be pre-tested to ensure that ads at least meet average audio creative benchmarks. All commercials will be tested for likability, relatability, memorability, and relevance.


Radio Ink: What is a qualifying advertiser? How many do you expect there to be?
Grimes: Both new and existing advertisers are welcome. In order to qualify for the Westwood One ROI guarantee, a new advertiser would have to spend at least $2M gross for a Westwood One campaign over a 20-week period. New advertisers are defined as those who have not been using the Westwood One Network in the last two years. For existing advertisers, we will take a more customized approach and discuss possible inclusion in this program. Any advertisers must have existing customer purchase databases that can be utilized by Nielsen.
This is the first time we are guaranteeing ROI so we’re excited to see how many advertisers will take us up on our offer.

Radio Ink: What happens if the ROI is not met?
Grimes: If the Nielsen return on advertising spend study shows an ROI shortfall, the proportion of the ROI shortfall will be used to determine the make-good media schedule.

FCC Paints TV Focus For Pai’s Proposed Ownership Rule Order

Radio & Television Business Report

By Adam Jacobson -   October 26, 2017

Two senior FCC officials have disclosed the key points of Chairman Ajit Pai‘s proposed Report and Order on ownership modernization, which all broadcast media owners have been eagerly anticipating.

The language of Pai’s Order is set for release today, along with a Nov. 16 Open Meeting agenda that will also see a vote to approve the ATSC 3.0 next-gen television transmission standard, which the officials declined to comment on.

There’s much more clarity on what is set to transpire, and there’s not much change on the way for radio industry ownership rules. But, they can now own TV stations in the same market as radio stations — and that could spur a whole new array of deals.

Speaking to members of the press, the FCC senior officials spoke in lock-step of Pai’s plan, noting that it will “clear a path for more competition, innovation, and investment in the media sector.”
Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel may not agree.
As expected, the Order would eliminate the FCC’s newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, in force since 1975. One senior FCC official reiterated comments made by Pai and Republican Commissioner Michael O’Rielly in noting that the 42-year-old rule “does not reflect the current media marketplace.”

There are two big reasons for the push to rid the media industry of this restriction, in the eyes of Pai. First, “the rise of the internet and all of the new diverse voices that come with it” have vastly changed the media landscape in the U.S.

Then, there are the present-day struggles of the newspaper industry. “In the world of 2017 do we need to have this rule to foster diversity, or is it inhibiting the news-gathering abilities of media?,” one of the senior FCC officials asked. “It is an outdated relic from a past time and there is no reason to prevent broadcasters from investing in and owning newspapers. In this day an age, if you want to own a newspaper, you should be thanked.”

MOSTLY STATUS QUO FOR RADIO
What will the immediate future look like for radio broadcasting companies?
If they wish to merge with a TV broadcasting company, they have a clear path to doing so without fear of violating the Commission’s radio/TV cross-ownership rules, should Pai’s plan see its expected approval.

The local ownership rules for radio remain intact: One company will continue to be limited to ownership of eight radio stations in a market with at least 45 AM and FM stations.
For TV, if adopted on Nov. 16, one company may own a maximum of two TV stations per market.
Asked by RBR+TVBR to clarify what this means for cross-ownership, one senior FCC official hinted but did not confirm that ownership of two TV stations and eight radio stations in a top market will now be allowed.

Answering another reporter’s question, the official clarified that the FCC will look at local radio AM and FM “sub-caps” upon its next quadrennial review of its ownership rules, per the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This is expected in early 2018.

‘EIGHT VOICES’ SILENCED
The TV ownership rules presently allow one company to own up to 2 TV stations in the same market, but only if at least one is not ranked among the top 4 stations and at least 8 independently owned stations remain in the market following the purchase.

That formula is set for erasure, thus eliminating the “eight voices test.”
A senior FCC official commented that, in Pai’s view and that of the Republican majority, there is “no economic basis and no evidence whatsoever that supports this rule.” The official added that there is “no other market that we are aware of where any government agency has said you need eight competitors in the market for it to remain competitive.”

Another reporter asked about waivers, and the end to the Top 4 prohibition. What’s Pai’s plan? To “chart a middle course.”

One senior FCC official said, “Some wanted to keep it as it is, and there are others who said get rid of it in its entirety.”

What the chairman has chosen? “A hybrid approach where there will be a case-by-case review,” the official confirmed.

That could clog the Commission with review after review, in DMA after DMA, should media brokers be circling the wagons now ahead of an all-out blizzard of asset purchase agreements hits the FCC’s CDBS database via Form 314 filings come late December or early January 2018.

Also in the Pai proposal is language that would strike a “party-line decision” made in 2014 by a Commission led by Democrat Tom Wheeler on Joint Sales Agreement (JSA) attribution. The FCC officials say this would return the FCC’s to the way they were until three years ago, and echoed GOP views that a JSA is not the same as outright ownership of a station. They considered the rule change “a tremendous mistake,” and noted that a JSA in Joplin, Mo., allowed for the purchase of a Doppler Radar system ahead of devastating tornadoes that ravaged the community. Additionally, a JSA in Wichita allowed for the debut of a local Hispanic TV station, the senior officials noted.

There will be no changes to the placement of shared service agreements in a station’s online public file.

Lastly, as reported on Wednesday, Pai’s order notes that there will be the creation of an incubator program tied to an effort “to create new voices and create diversity” in media ownership.
What about the national TV ownership rule, and the controversy surrounding the return of the “UHF discount,” which has allowed Sinclair Broadcast Group to seek a merger with Tribune Media?
The rule is not part of the FCC’s quadrennial review of its ownership rules. The senior FCC officials note that this is part of a “holistic review” and hopes to have a NPRM in place by the end of the year.

WHEN WILL THE OWNERSHIP RULE CHANGES BEGIN?
Meanwhile, Pai’s Order will likely pass by at least a 3-2 vote, with Commissioner Rosenworcel perhaps a fourth vote — although that seems unlikely.

Then, the Federal Register would need to publish the order following the Nov. 16 vote. Once this is published, the rule changes would go into effect 30 days later.

That’s, of course, assuming that a Federal court does not step in to block the new rules. This is very possible, as groups opposed to the changes may very well sue the FCC to prevent them from occurring.

On Nov. 16, the FCC will technically be voting on an action based on a Petition for Reconsideration the NAB filed after the Commission under former Chairman Tom Wheeler reviewed the ownership rules in 2016 — and let them stay as is.

Upon a likely 3-2 affirmative vote, groups such as Free Press could then move to seek an immediate stay of the deregulation and seek review of the FCC action by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

“That’s a court that has been hostile to broadcast ownership relief since 2002, when it threw out then-FCC Chair Michael Powell’s attempt to reform broadcast ownership rules,” a source close to the matter tells RBR+TVBR. “This book has a few chapters left to be written. Who knows if the Third Circuit will reject the Pai Commission’s attempt at getting rational ownership relief for broadcasters?”

As of now, there are no groups actively seeking to stop what many have long sought — an end to rules put in place when “Jive Talkin'” by the Bee Gees was No. 1.

What Will You Do When Advertising Disappears?

Radio Ink

October 23, 2017

(By Eric Rhoads) Dan Kennedy, one of the world’s great marketers and direct response copywriters, often talks about how rapidly businesses can change and the status quo can be disrupted. In his long career, he has watched entire industries disrupted by one swift signature on a contract or the development of a new technology.

Kennedy often talks about how his firm was raking in millions of dollars in the infomercial business, until everything changed dramatically when Congress passed a law that prohibited many things infomercials were doing. Overnight, his cash cow became anorexic, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Kennedy talks about how, in most industries, revenue is based on a single source of income — he refers to it as “single pillar.” Picture the Parthenon, but instead of multiple pillars, it’s being held up by just one. When that pillar goes away, it all comes crashing down.

Radio, for the most part, is a single-pillar business. It lives or dies based on advertising. Though many stations and companies have alternative revenue streams, none comes close to matching the revenues or the wide margins of advertising.

What if radio’s single pillar were to go away?

“Oh, that will never happen, Eric. Advertising has been around forever and will always be there.”
That’s probably correct. But the reason for my question is to get you to consider the huge vulnerability of your business, and to consider what you would do if everything changed.

In my publishing business, I had two revenue streams: advertising and subscriptions. Then, because of nervousness over radio consolidation, I thought both could dry up, so I added conferences. Now I had three pillars. But how many more could I come up with?

In doing this exercise, I discovered something very important: Your behavior changes when you don’t have all your eggs in a single basket. Your decisions are different, and you’re less likely to take bad deals because you need the money.

What would you do if, one day, advertising disappeared completely, or almost completely? You still have your debt, your costs, your employees to pay. You would have to scramble to find a solution fast. So why not scramble to find a solution now, when there is time?

Though advertising isn’t likely to disappear (I doubt Congress is going to outlaw it any time soon), one never knows what else could happen. For instance, I’m hearing a lot of stories of big and small markets that are seeing significant declines in advertising because clients are enamored with Google and Facebook. At our own Forecast conference last November, a major agency head told us his clients were shifting nearly all of their ad budgets to those mediums. And we’ll find out soon, at this year’s Forecast, what things are looking like for next year. If advertising does dry up, you still have to survive.

Get some beer, bring your staff to a relaxed location, and pose the question: What would we do if we could no longer sell advertising? How would we generate X dollars annually? See where it goes, see what they come up with, and don’t discount any idea. Don’t leave the meeting without 10 solid ideas.
Every business should go through this, if for no other reason than to explore new business opportunities. I guarantee it will be worth a day of your time with your staff.

Eric Rhoads is Chairman of Radio Ink magazine and can be reached at bericrhoads@gmail.com

Young subscribers flock to old media

POLITICO

Shunning Trump, the millennial generation does what it once resisted: pay for news.

By JASON SCHWARTZ

Updated 10/23/2017 10:55 AM EDT

2017-10-23T10:55-0400

Between 2016 and 2017, the share of Americans aged 18-24 who paid for online news vaulted from 4 percent to 18 percent, a new study shows. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As President Donald Trump wages daily war against the press, millennials are subscribing to legacy news publications in record numbers—and at a growth rate, data suggests, far outpacing any other age group.

Since November's election, the New Yorker, for instance, has seen its number of new millennial subscribers more than double from over the same period a year earlier. According to the magazine's figures, it has 106 percent more new subscribers in the 18-34 age range and 129 percent more from 25-34.

The Atlantic has a similar story: since the election, its number of new subscribers aged 18-24 jumped 130 percent for print and digital subscriptions combined over the same period a year earlier, while 18-44 went up 70 percent.

Newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times typically do not share specific subscriber data, but according to a Post spokesperson, its subscriber growth rate is highest among millennials. A New York Times representative relayed that the paper was “seeing similar trends” in subscriptions and pointed to public data on digital traffic that showed its online reach among millennials to be up 9 percent from the same period a year ago.

Even The Wall Street Journal—not a paper usually known for being left around dorm rooms—said that it has doubled its student subscribers in the last year. And a spokesperson for the famously staid Economist reported, “We are seeing that the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups have been key drivers of new subscriptions.”

Oft derided as pampered, avocado-toast-eating layabouts, millennials have long been seen as unlikely to pay for news.

“Information wants to be free,” the cliché went, and, not long ago, headlines like, “Why Millennials Still Won't Pay Much For The News” were easy enough to find. But according to Nic Newman, the lead author of the 2017 edition of the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, two major things have changed.

The first is that subscription streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Spotify have conditioned young people to be more willing to pay for quality content.

The second is Trump.

According to the Reuters Institute report, which surveyed more than 70,000 people in 36 countries and was published last summer, the United States was the only country studied that over the last year saw a major increase in the proportion of people who paid for online news, jumping from 9 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2017—and millennials were a big part of the reason.

Between 2016 and 2017, the share of Americans aged 18-24 who paid for online news vaulted from 4 percent to 18 percent, the study said; the age group 25-34 rose from 8 percent to 20 percent. Those two age groups, Newman said, collectively represent about 30 percent of the market.

To be sure, the “Trump bump” has existed across all age groups—the New Yorker reports 100 percent year-over-year increases in new subscribers for every demographic—but, in the Reuters Institute study, the millennial age brackets grew at a rate three times greater than any others, and no other age group boasted as high a percentage of people paying for news online.

“The big boost we saw in subscriptions in the U.S.,” Newman said, “is driven by people on the left and younger people are more likely to be on the left. That is really a lot of what’s driving it: young people who don’t like Trump who subscribe to news organizations that they see as being a bulwark against him.”

Newman said that 29 percent of Americans responded to the survey that their reason for paying for news was, “wanting to help support or fund journalism,” which was twice the average for all countries included in the study. Americans on the political left were four times more likely than those on the right to cite supporting journalism as their reason for paying, Newman said.

According to Sam Rosen, the Head of Growth for the Atlantic, the magazine has seen steady growth in millennial engagement over the last four years, but numbers surged after the election. Last July, Rosen ran a survey on the magazine and was struck by the results. “I noticed a really strong engagement in terms of enthusiasm for the brand among the 25-34 year old demo, as well as 18-24. And it was striking to me, because from a print standpoint, typically the Atlantic skews a bit older,” he said.

That brand identification is important, according to Stephanie Edgerly, a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism who has studied how young people engage with news. “This is why the NPR tote bag is a big deal, this is why the New Yorker had a tote bag that was viewed as a hot commodity,” she said. “News is a brand and it stands for certain types of values you want to associate yourself with and that becomes even more important in this political climate.”

“By values I don’t want to just mean liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican,” she continued. “It’s a lot more complex than that. These stand for lifestyle values, this stands for how you see yourself, whether you want to be identified as a socially conscious intellectual who value the arts or a snarky contrarian who knows obscure political arguments.”

Rosen, from the Atlantic, said that, for younger people, he’s seen this type of broadcasting on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. “We’ve heard from even high schoolers who share Atlantic content on social media that, when they share the Atlantic, they know that they’re signaling that they’re thinking more deeply and critically about the world,” he said.

That signaling can also be a stand against Trump. Dwayne Sheppard, the vice president of consumer marketing at Condé Nast, which owns the New Yorker, said that he’s also observed a sense of brand identification—but said that, for millennials, it extends beyond social media and into the real world. Those subscribing to the New Yorker can choose between a print and digital subscription or a less expensive digital-only option; Millennials, he said, are opting for print at a rate 10 percent higher than older demographics.

“Millennials are choosing print overwhelmingly, or digital and print,” he said. “It’s a physical manifestation of the relationship. You’re on the subway or you’re in the airport and you’re carrying your New Yorker, that’s another signal of what you care about and what you choose to read.”

In the age of Trump, a dog-eared New Yorker or Atlantic may serve as a small token of resistance, but the question remains whether this trend of younger people paying for news is sustainable. Newman, from the Reuters Institute, said that even when the Trump effect wears off, millennials’ embrace of subscription services is a positive sign for the industry.

There was a strong correlation in his study, he said, between people willing to pay for streaming services for music and video and those willing to pay for news. “Other online services have basically given people the grammar by they can understand what subscription is,” he said, in terms of offering different levels of subscriptions and various types of insider benefits. (Newman acknowledged, though, that part of the connection was simply having disposable income).

Both Rosen and Sheppard are bullish that the trend will continue. Shortly after the election and around Trump’s inauguration represented the biggest surge, but “We’re not seeing a downshift or a quieting of interest in subscriptions,” Rosen said.

For all the good news, the truth remains that those willing to pay for journalism still represent a relatively small group—according to the Reuters Institute study, 84 percent of Americans do not pay for online news. Subscriptions are not cheap, and Newman pointed out that there is danger in quality journalism becoming an increasingly elite product. “The danger is that you get a two-tiered system,” he said.

Still, for an industry that has been pummeled for more than a decade by terrible financial news and, for the last 10 months, by the President of the United States, the growing willingness of millennials to open their wallets is welcome news.

“It’s not going to save journalism,” Newman said of the past year’s millennial surge, “but it’s a hopeful sign that people are prepared to pay for quality.”

Will Mobile Become The Dog Wagging TV Advertising's Tail?

Commentary

• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

The following post was previously published in an earlier edition of Media Insider:
There is no question that the adoption, use and impact of smartphones among U.S. consumers continue to grow. There is no question that advertising and marketing on mobile devices continue to grow, and will for some time. There is no question that mobile advertising will someday -- perhaps in five to seven years -- overtake television in overall U.S. ad spend.

However, I think that it’s quite likely that mobile will become the dog wagging TV advertising’s tail well before it becomes the largest platform for U.S. ad spend. Here is why:

Data will power the future of TV. Television advertising will be increasingly data-driven and data-optimized. This is playing out now. TV audiences are down, but it’s still the largest- and fastest-reach medium by far. However, if networks want to charge more for less, they will have to deliver it in packages that are more targeted and more data-optimized to perform for advertisers. This is playing out today with initiatives like Linda Yaccarino’s NBCU and Fox, Turner and Viacom’s OpenAP initiative.

Mobile has the best data. No device is, or will, output as much valuable data for ad targeting and optimization as mobile devices. Today, more of the data powering audience-based advertising on TV is coming from TV set-top boxes, but set-top box data is limited to TV viewing. Mobile data tells you everything about its owner, from location to digital content consumption to purchase to household membership.


Combining TV data and mobile data is like adding 1+1 and getting 5. For advertisers wanting to close the loop between their TV ads and store visits – think retail, restaurants, movies – there is no data better to target and close the loop than with mobile data. For advertisers wanting to coordinate their TV campaigns with their Facebook campaigns to achieve a cross-platform kicker-effect, there is no data better to do it with than mobile data.

They will make measurement better together. When it comes to multi-platform advertising impact attribution, TV and mobile combined will rule the roost. Increasingly, advertisers are seeking trusted cross-platform attribution. First, they represent the two biggest ad channels. But, more importantly, mobile data will become the centerpiece and anchor of Multi-Touchpoint Attribution (MTA). MTA needs lots of data. MTA works best when the data is personal, not just “householded.” MTA also works best when you can directly link behaviors, and mobile data can now be linked with TV viewing data at scale, the rationale behind AT&T’s proposed merger with Time Warner and Verizon’s plans with Oath.
All of this convinces me that mobile will dominate how TV advertising is targeted, measured and optimized well before it dominates TV in share of ad spend. Basically, the tail of mobile data will wag the dog of TV advertising. Do you agree?

U.S. Local Advertising Spend To Increase 7.6% In 2018

• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

Local advertising in the U.S. will increase 7.6% in 2018, up from 0.4% in 2017, according to new data from Borrell Associates.

Estimates for 2018 U.S. local ad expenditures highlight billboards as one of the only traditional media to show growth in the coming year as the sector moves toward digital, Gordon Borrell, founder of Borrell Associates, said during a webinar Wednesday.

Compared with 2017, rising sectors in 2018 include telemarketing at 1.4%, out-of-home, 2.8%, local TV, 14.6%, and online, 16.8%.

Directories will fall by 10.1% in 2018 compared with the prior year. Newspapers will fall 10.3%; while other print will decline 7%; radio, 3.0%; direct mail, 2.8%; cable TV, 2%; and cinema remaining flat.

The study, conducted between April and July 2017, analyzed responses from 3,511 respondents. About 22% of advertisers participating in the study consider themselves master marketers; 56%, novice marketers; 35%, apprentices; and 7%, practitioners.

When marketers were asked what type of media used were most effective, marketers said social, broadcast television, search, email marketing, and cable TV. Behavioral targeted advertising followed, along with event marketing, geotargeting, native ad formats, postal mail, and video ads.
While 76% of respondents said they are using some type of digital advertising, on average only 26% of the dollars spent go to digital media such as social, search, and email.

Marketers say social media is important, but marketers will only invest about 4% of their budget there.

Email marketing is used by 47% of respondents, but less than 1% of the budget goes to this media.
Broadcast TV is used by fewer respondents, but those who use the media spend the most of their ad budgets there. Even with fewer marketers using broadcast TV, marketers say the value outpaces other widely used media.

Borrell estimates 5.9% as the average of gross revenue spent on advertising. Broadcast TV takes 22%, cable TV, 12%; radio, 11%; search engine marketing, 8%; outdoor, 6%; postal, 6%; event maketing, 4%; social media, 4%; magazines, 3%; display ads, 3%; impression-based, ROS ads, 2%; and 18 other types, 12%.

Smartphones Are Killing Americans, But Nobody’s Counting

Bloomberg

Amid a historic spike in U.S. traffic fatalities, federal data on the danger of distracted driving are getting worse.

By 

Kyle Stock, 

Lance Lambert, and 

David Ingold

October 17, 2017, 2:00 AM MDT

Our Social Media Accounts Are Driving Us Crazy

Jennifer Smith doesn’t like the term “accident.” It implies too much chance and too little culpability.

A “crash” killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event. 

“He was remorseful,” Smith, now 43, said. “He never changed his story.”

Yet in federal records, the death isn’t attributed to distraction or mobile-phone use. It’s just another line item on the grim annual toll taken by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration [NHTSA]—one of 37,262 that year. Three months later, Smith quit her job as a realtor and formed Stopdistractions.org, a nonprofit lobbying and support group. Her intent was to make the tragic loss of her mother an anomaly.

To that end, she has been wildly unsuccessful. Nine years later, the problem of death-by-distraction has gotten much worse.

Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don’t explain the surge in road deaths.

There are however three big clues, and they don’t rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent.

The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, we’re pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the day—all activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice. By 2015, almost 70 percent of Americans were using their phones to share photos and follow news events via social media. In just two additional years, that figure has jumped to 80 percent.

Finally, the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians—all of whom are easier to miss from the driver’s seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUV—especially if you’re glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road. Last year, 5,987 pedestrians were killed by cars in the U.S., almost 1,100 more than in 2014—that’s a 22 percent increase in just two years.  

Safety regulators and law enforcement officials certainly understand the danger of taking—or making—a phone call while operating a piece of heavy machinery. They still, however, have no idea just how dangerous it is, because the data just isn’t easily obtained. And as mobile phone traffic continues to shift away from simple voice calls and texts to encrypted social networks, officials increasingly have less of a clue than ever before. 

Out of NHTSA’s full 2015 dataset, only 448 deaths were linked to mobile phones—that’s just 1.4 percent of all traffic fatalities. By that measure, drunk driving is 23 times more deadly than using a phone while driving, though studies have shown that both activities behind the wheel constitute (on average) a similar level of impairment. NHTSA has yet to fully crunch its 2016 data, but the agency said deaths tied to distraction actually declinedlast year.

There are many reasons to believe mobile phones are far deadlier than NHTSA spreadsheets suggest. Some of the biggest indicators are within the data itself. In more than half of 2015 fatal crashes, motorists were simply going straight down the road—no crossing traffic, rainstorms, or blowouts. Meanwhile, drivers involved in accidents increasingly mowed down things smaller than a Honda Accord, such as pedestrians or cyclists, many of whom occupy the side of the road or the sidewalk next to it. Fatalities increased inordinately among motorcyclists (up 6.2 percent in 2016) and pedestrians (up 9 percent).

“Honestly, I think the real number of fatalities tied to cell phones is at least three times the federal figure,” Jennifer Smith said. “We’re all addicted and the scale of this is unheard of.”

 

In a recent study (PDF), the nonprofit National Safety Council found only about half of fatal crashes tied to known mobile phone use were coded as such in NHTSA databases. In other words, according to the NSC, NHTSA’s figures for distraction-related death are too low.

Perhaps more telling are the findings of Zendrive Inc., a San Francisco startup that analyzes smartphone data to help insurers of commercial fleets assess safety risks. In a study of 3 million people, it found drivers using their mobile phone during 88 percent of trips. The true number is probably even higher because Zendrive didn’t capture instances when phones were mounted in a fixed position—so-called hands free technology, which is also considered dangerous.“It’s definitely frightening,” said Jonathan Matus, Zendrive’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Pretty much everybody is using their phone while driving.”

There are, by now, myriad technological nannies that freeze smartphone activity. Most notably, a recent version of Apple’s iOS operating system can be configured to keep a phone asleep when its owner is driving and to send an automated text response to incoming messages. However, the “Do Not Disturb” function can be overridden by the person trying to get in touch. More critically, safety advocates note that such systems require an opt-in from the same users who have difficulty ignoring their phones in the first place.

In NHTSA’s defense, its tally of mobile phone-related deaths is only as good as the data it gets from individual states, each of which has its own methods for diagnosing and detailing the cause of a crash. Each state in turn relies on its various municipalities to compile crash metrics—and they often do things differently, too. 

The data from each state is compiled from accident reports filed by local police, most of which don’t prompt officers to consider mobile phone distraction as an underlying cause. Only 11 states use reporting forms that contain a field for police to tick-off mobile-phone distraction, while 27 have a space to note distraction in general as a potential cause of the accident.

The fine print seems to make a difference. Tennessee, for example, has one of the most thorough accident report forms in the country, a document that asks police to evaluate both distractions in general and mobile phones in particular. Of the 448 accidents involving a phone in 2015 as reported by NHTSA, 84 occurred in Tennessee. That means, a state with 2 percent of the country’s population accounted for 19 percent of its phone-related driving deaths. As in polling, it really depends on how you ask the question.

“Crash investigators are told to catch up with this technology phenomenon”

Massachusetts State Police Sergeant Christopher Sanchez, a national expert on distracted driving, said many police departments still focus on drinking or drug use when investigating a crash. Also, figuring out whether a mobile phone was in use at the time of a crash is usually is getting trickier every day—proving that it precipitated the event can be even harder to do.

Prosecutors have a similar bias. Currently, it’s illegal for drivers to use a handheld phone at all in 15 states, and texting while driving is specifically barred in 47 states. But getting mobile phone records after a crash typically involves a court order and, and even then, the records may not show much activity beyond a call or text. If police provide solid evidence of speeding, drinking, drugs or some other violation, lawyers won’t bother pursuing distraction as a cause.

“Crash investigators are told to catch up with this technology phenomenon—and it’s hard,” Sanchez said. “Every year new apps are developed that make it even more difficult.” Officers in Arizona and Montana, meanwhile, don’t have to bother, since they allow mobile phone use while you drive. And in Missouri, police only have to monitor drivers under age 21 who pick up their phone while driving.

Like Smith, Emily Stein, 36, lost a parent to the streets. Ever since her father was killed by a distracted driver in 2011, she sometimes finds herself doing unscientific surveys. She’ll sit in front of her home in the suburbs west of Boston and watch how many passing drivers glance down at their phones.

“I tell my local police department: ‘If you come here, sit on my stoop and hand out tickets. You’d generate a lot of revenue,’” she said.

Since forming the Safe Roads Alliance five years ago, Stein talks to the police regularly. “A lot of them say it surpasses drunk driving at this point,” she said. Meanwhile, grieving families and safety advocates such as her are still struggling to pass legislation mandating hands-free-only use of phones while driving—Iowa and Texas just got around to banning texting behind the wheel.

“The argument is always that it’s big government,” said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “The other issue is that … it’s hard to ban something that we all do, and we know that we want to do.”

“We all know what’s going on, but we don’t have a breathalyzer for a phone”

Safety advocates such as Smith say lawmakers, investigators and prosecutors won’t prioritize the danger of mobile phones in vehicles until they are seen as a sizable problem—as big as drinking, say. Yet, it won’t be measured as such until it’s a priority for lawmakers, investigators and prosecutors.

“That’s the catch-22 here,” Smith said. “We all know what’s going on, but we don’t have a breathalyzer for a phone.”

Perhaps the lawmakers who vote against curbing phone use in cars should watch the heart-wrenching 36-minute documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog made on the subject. Laudably, the piece, From One Second to the Next, was bankrolled by the country’s major cellular companies. “It’s not just an accident,” Herzog said of the fatalities. “It’s a new form of culture coming at us, and it’s coming with great vehemence.”

Adkins has watched smartphone culture overtake much of his work in 10 years at the helm of the GHSA, growing increasingly frustrated with the mounting death toll and what he calls clear underreporting of mobile phone fatalities. But he doesn’t think the numbers will come down until a backlash takes hold, one where it’s viewed as shameful to drive while using a phone. Herzog’s documentary, it appears, has had little effect in its four years on YouTube.com. At this point, Adkins is simply holding out for gains in autonomous driving technology.

“I use the cocktail party example,” he explained. “If you’re at a cocktail party and say, ‘I was so hammered the other day, and I got behind the wheel,’ people will be outraged. But if you say the same thing about using a cell phone, it won’t be a big deal. It is still acceptable, and that’s the problem.”