Category Archives: Information Seeking & Foraging

You’ve got a Friend in Me – Our Changing Relationship with A.I.

Since Siri first stepped into our lives in 2011, we’re being introduced to more and more digital assistants. We’ve met Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Google Now. We know them, but do we love them?

Apparently, it’s important that we bond with said digital assistants and snappy comebacks appear to be the surest path to our hearts. So, if you ask Siri if she has a boyfriend, she might respond with, “Why? So we can get ice cream together, and listen to music, and travel across galaxies, only to have it end in slammed doors, heartbreak and loneliness? Sure, where do I sign up?” It seems to know a smart-assed digital assistant is to love her – but just be prepared for that love to be unrequited.

Not to be outdone, Google is also brushing up on its witty repartee for it’s new Digital Assistant – thanks to some recruits from the Onion and Pixar. A recent Mediapost article said that Google had just assembled a team of writers from those two sources – tapping the Onion for caustic sarcasm and Pixar for a gentler, more human touch.

But can we really be friends with a machine, even if it is funny?

Microsoft thinks so. They’ve unveiled a new chatbot in China called Xiaoice (pronounced Shao-ice). Xiaoice takes on the persona of a 17 year old girl that responds to questions like “How would you like others to comment on you when you die one day?” with the plaintiff “The world would not be much different without me.” Perhaps this isn’t as clever as Siri’s comebacks, but there’s an important difference: Siri’s responses were specifically scripted to respond to anticipated question; while Xiaoice actually talks with you by using true artificial intelligence and linguistic processing.

In a public test on WeChat, Xiaoice received 1.5 million chat group invitations in just 72 hours. As of earlier this year, she had had more than 10 billion conversations. In a blog post, Xiaoice’s “father”, Yongdong Wang, head of the Microsoft Application and Services Group East Asia, said, “Many see Xiaoice as a partner and friend, and are willing to confide in her just as they do with their human friends. Xiaoice is teaching us what makes a relationship feel human, and hinting at a new goal for artificial intelligence: not just analyzing databases and driving cars, but making people happier.”

When we think of digital assistants, we naturally think of the advantages that machines have over humans: unlimited memory, access to the entire web, vastly superior number crunching skills and much faster processing speeds. This has led to “cognitive offloading” – humans transferring certain mental processing tasks to machines. We now trust Google more than our own memory for retrieving information – just as we trust calculators more than our own limited mathematical abilities. But there should be some things that humans are just better at. Being human, for instance. We should be more empathetic – better able to connect with other people. A machine shouldn’t “get us” better than our spouse or best friend.

For now, that’s probably still true. But what if you don’t have a spouse, or even a best friend? Is having a virtual friend better than nothing at all? Recent studies have shown that robotic pets seem to ease loneliness with isolated seniors. More research is needed, but it’s not really surprising to learn that a warm, affectionate robot is better than nothing at all. What was surprising was that in one study, seniors preferred a robotic dog to the real thing.

The question remains, however: Can we truly have a relationship with a machine? Can we feel friendship – or even love – when we know that the machine can’t do the same? This goes beyond the high-tech flirtation of discovering Siri’s or Google’s “easter egg” responses to something more fundamental. It’s touching on what appears to be happening in China, where millions are making a chatbot their personal confident. I suspect there are more than a few lonely Chinese who would consider Xiaoice their best friend.

And – on many levels – that scares the hell out of me.

 

Why Millennials are so Fascinating

When I was growing up, there was a lot of talk about the Generation Gap. This referred to the ideological gap between my generation – the Baby Boomers, and our parent’s generation – The Silent Generation (1923 – 1944).

But in terms of behavior, there was a significant gap even amongst early Baby Boomers and those that came at the tail end of the boom – like myself. Generations are products of their environment and there was a significant change in our environment in the 20-year run of the Baby Boomers – from 1945 to 1964. During that time, TV came into most of our homes. For the later boomers, like myself, we were raised with TV. And I believe the adoption of that one technology created an unbridgeable ideological gap that is still impacting our society.

The adoption of ubiquitous technologies – like TV and, more recently, connective platforms like mobile phones and the Internet – inevitable trigger massive environmental shifts. This is especially true for generations that grow up with this technology. Our brain goes through two phases where it literally rewires itself to adapt to its environment. One of those phases happens from birth to about 2 to 3 years of age and the other happens during puberty – from 14 to 20 years of age. A generation that goes through both of those phases while exposed to a new technology will inevitably be quite different from the generation that preceded it.

The two phases of our brain’s restructuring – also called neuroplasticity – are quite different in their goals. The first period – right after birth – rewires the brain to adapt to its physical environment. We learn to adapt to external stimuli and to interact with our surroundings. The second phase is perhaps even more influential in terms of who we will eventually be. This is when our brain creates its social connections. It’s also when we set our ideological compasses. Technologies we spend a huge amount of time with will inevitably impact both those processes.

That’s what makes Millennials so fascinating. It’s probably the first generation since my own that bridges that adoption of a massively influential technological change. Most definitions of this generation have it starting in the early 80’s and extend it to 1996 or 97.   This means the early Millennials grew up in an environment that was not all that different than the generation that preceded it. The technologies that were undergoing massive adoption in the early 80’s were VCRs and microwaves – hardly earth shaking in terms of environmental change. But late Millennials, like my daughters, grew up during the rapid adoption of three massively disruptive technologies: mobile phones, computers and the Internet. So we have a completely different environment for which the brain must adapt not only from generation to generation, but within the generation itself. This makes Millennials a very complex generation to pin down.

In terms of trying to understand this, let’s go back to my generation – the Baby Boomers – to see how environment adaptation can alter the face of society. Boomers that grew up in the late 40’s and early 50’s were much different than boomers that grew up just a few years later. Early boomers probably didn’t have a TV. Only the wealthiest families would have been able to afford them. In 1951, only 24% of American homes had a TV. But by 1960, almost 90% of Americans had a TV.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the values of my generation where shaped by TV. But this was not a universal process. The impact of TV was dependent on household income, which would have been correlated with education. So TV impacted the societal elite first and then trickled down. This elite segment would have also been those most likely to attend college. So, in the mid-60’s, you had a segment of a generation who’s values and world view were at least partially shaped by TV – and it’s creation of a “global village” – and who suddenly came together during a time and place (college) when we build the persona foundations we will inhabit for the rest of our lives. You had another segment of a generation that didn’t have this same exposure and who didn’t pursue a post-secondary education. The Vietnam War didn’t create the Counter-Cultural revolution. It just gave it a handy focal point that highlighted the ideological rift not only between two generations but also within the Baby Boomers themselves. At that point in history, part of our society turned right and part turned left.

Is the same thing happening with Millennials now? Certainly the worldview of at least the younger Millennials has been shaped through exposure to connected media. When polled, they inevitably have dramatically different opinions about things like religion, politics, science – well – pretty much everything. But even within the Millennial camp, their views often seem incoherent and confusing. Perhaps another intra-generational divide is forming. The fact is it’s probably too early to tell. These things take time to play out. But if it plays out like it did last time this happened, the impact will still be felt a half century from now.

“Affix Label Here”

Labelability – adjective. Possessing traits, an appearance or personality that makes a person easy to label without knowing him or her well (or at all).

I saw Kate and Will this past weekend. Yes, I’m on a first name basis with them. You might be too. After all, we know them so well. For those of you not in the Royal’s inner circle, you might know them better as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

William is the second-in-line heir to the throne of England. His full name is William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor. But I just call him William – or Will, if it’s just the two of us. He and his wife Catherine (Kate to me) were in town (Victoria, BC) the other day and I swung by to say hi. Okay, so it was me and about 40,000 other people lined up 30 deep in front of the BC legislature building, but we all knew them on a first name basis.

Will is a quiet but smart guy, well mannered and deferential – pleasantly handsome and he’s a good husband and father. He probably inherited many of these traits from his mom, the late Princess Diana. I also knew her quite well.

Kate is undeniably hot but in that elegant, prom princess kind of way. She also seems quite nice and is a doting mom. I think she’s probably smart too.

I like them both. They’re good people.

Both Kate and William have a quality I’ll call “labelability.” It makes us think we know them without really knowing them at all. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had labelability. Ronald Reagan had labelability, as did Bill Clinton. Our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has it.

Richard Nixon did not. Ironically, William’s father; Prince Charles, also lacks labelability. His grandfather – Prince Phillip – certainly doesn’t have it. But as I said, his mother, Princess Diana, had it in spades. She was beautiful, generous and vulnerable. We all knew that. We could see it plain as the nose on her beautiful, generous and vulnerable face.

This open door for us to connect emotionally with a total stranger takes on new import thanks to the world we live in. First mass media and then social media have amplified the power of labelability. When we can connect emotionally with someone without having to invest the time to get to know him or her, we generally jump at the chance. Ground swells of support can form instantly.

The Royals learned a hard lesson about the power of labelability when Princess Diana tragically passed away in 1997. Instantly, all those who “knew” Diana started grieving. In their grief, they were shocked at the lack of emotion that came from Buckingham Palace. The Queen was called “cold,” “heartless” and “aloof.” What they really meant is that the Queen didn’t possess labelability. We don’t know the Queen. We can’t quite pin her down. Sometimes she’s our kindly grandmother and sometimes she can be a real cold-hearted hard ass. She’s funny that way.

The power of Labelability will come into sharp focus as we move towards Tuesday, November 8th. Donald Trump has labelability. Hillary Clinton does not. This is not passing any type of judgment on their actual qualities or lack of same. That’s the whole point. Love him or hate him, we all think we have Donald Trump nailed. What you see is what you get. But there seem to be depths to Hillary Clinton that remain off-limits to us. We’re always holding back judgment, waiting for her to surprise us.

She’s kind of got that Queen of England thing going on.

 

Why Our Brains are Blocking Ads

On Mediapost alone in the last three months, there have been 172 articles written that have included the words “ad blockers” or “ad blocking.” That’s not really surprising, given that Mediapost covers the advertising biz and ad blocking is killing that particular biz, to the tune of an estimated loss of $41 billion in 2016. eMarketer estimates 70 million Americans, or 1 out of every 4 people online, uses ad blockers.

Paul Verna, an eMarketer Senior Analyst said “Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem, affecting mostly publishers, but also marketers, agencies and others whose businesses depend on ad revenue.” The UK’s culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, went even further, saying that ad blocking is a “modern-day protection racket.”

Here’s the problem with all this finger pointing. If you’re looking for a culprit to blame, don’t look at the technology or the companies deploying that technology. New technologies don’t cause us to change our behaviors – they enable behaviors that weren’t an option before. To get to the bottom of the growth of ad blocking, we have to go to the common denominator – the people those ads are aimed at. More specifically, we have to look at what’s happening in the brains of those people.

In the past, the majority of our interaction with advertising was done while our brain was idling, with no specific task in mind. I refer to this as bottom up environmental scanning. Essentially, we’re looking for something to capture our attention: a TV show, a book, a magazine article, a newspaper column. We were open to being engaged by stimuli from our environment (in other words, being activated from the “bottom up”).

In this mode, the brain is in a very accepting state. We match signals from our environment with concepts and beliefs we hold in our mind. We’re relatively open to input and if the mental association is a positive or intriguing one – we’re willing to spend some time to engage.

We also have to consider the effect of priming in this state. Priming sets a subconscious framework for the brain that then affects any subsequent mental processing. The traditional prime that was in place when we were exposed to advertising was a fairly benign one: we were looking to be entertained or informed, often the advertising content was delivered wrapped in a content package that we had an affinity for (our favorite show, a preferred newspaper, etc), and advertising was delivered in discrete chunks that our brain had been trained to identify and process accordingly.

All this means that in traditional exposures to ads, our brain was probably in the most accepting state possible. We were looking for something interesting, we were primed to be in a positive frame of mind and our brains could easily handle the contextual switches required to consider an ad and it’s message.

We also have to remember that we had a relatively static ad consumption environment that usually matched our expectations of how ads would be delivered. We expected commercial breaks in TV shows. We didn’t expect ads in the middle of a movie or book, two formats that required extended focusing of attention and didn’t lend themselves to mental contextual task switches. Each task switch brings with it a refocusing of attention and a brief burst of heightened awareness as our brains are forced to reassess its environment. These are fine in some environments – not in others.

Now, let’s look at the difference in cognitive contexts that accompany the deliver of most digital ads. First of all, when we’re online on our desktop or engaged with a mobile device, it’s generally in what I’ll call a “top down foraging” mode. We’re looking for something specific and we have intent in mind. This means there’s already a task lodged in our working memory (hence “top down”) and our attentional spotlight is on and focused on that task. This creates a very different environment for ad consumption.

When we’re in foraging mode, we suddenly are driven by an instinct that is as old as the human race (actually, much older than that): Optimal Foraging Theory. In this mode, we are constantly filtering the stimuli of our environment to see what is relevant to our intent. It’s this filtering that causes attentional blindness to non-relevant factors – whether they be advertising banners or people dressed up like gorillas. This filtering happens on a subconscious basis and the brain uses a primal engine to drive it – the promise of reward or the frustration of failure. When it comes to foraging – for food or for information – frustration is a feature, not a bug.

Our brains have a two loop learning process. It starts with a prediction – what psychologists and economists call “expected utility.” We mentally place bets on possible outcomes and go with the one that promises the best reward. If we’re right, the reward system of the brain gives us a shot of dopamine. Things are good. But if we bet wrong, a different part of the brain kicks in: the right anterior insula, the adjacent right ventral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. Those are the centers of the brain that regulate pain. Nature is not subtle about these things – especially when the survival of the species depends on it. If we find what we’re looking for, we get a natural high. If we don’t, it’s actually causes us pain – but not in a physical way. We know it as frustration. Its purpose is to encourage us to not make the same mistake twice

The reason we’re blocking ads is that in the context those ads are being delivered, irrelevant ads are – quite literally – painful. Even relevant ads have a very high threshold to get over. Ad blocking has little to do with technology or “protection rackets” or predatory business practices. It has to do with the hardwiring of our brains. So if the media or the ad industry want to blame something or someone, let’s start there.

The Bermuda Triangle of Advertising

In the past few weeks, via the comments I’ve received on my two (1,2) columns looking at the possible future of media selection and targeting, it’s become apparent to me that we’re at a crisis point when it comes to advertising. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the brightest minds and sharpest commentators in the industry contributing their thoughts on the topic. In the middle of all these comments lies a massive gap. This gap can be triangulated by looking at three comments in particular:

Esther Dyson: “Ultimately, what the advertisers want is sales…  attention, engagement…all these are merely indicators for attribution and waypoints on the path to sales.”

Doc Searls: “Please do what you do best (and wins the most awards): make ads that clearly sponsor the content they accompany (we can actually appreciate that), and are sufficiently creative to induce positive regard in our hearts and minds.”

Ken Fadner: “I don’t want to live in a world like this one” (speaking of the hyper targeted advertising scenario I described in my last column).

These three comments are all absolutely right (with the possible exception of Searls, which I’ll come back to in a minute) and they draw a path around the gaping hole that is the future of advertising.

So let’s strip this back to the basics to try to find solid ground from which to move forward again.

Advertising depends on a triangular value exchange: We want entertainment and information – which is delivered via various media. These media need funding – which comes from advertising. Advertising wants exposure to the media audience. So, if we boil that down – we put up with advertising in return for access to entertainment and information. This is the balance that is deemed “OK” by Doc Searls and other commenters

The problem is that this is no longer the world we live in – if we ever did. The value exchange requires all three sides to agree that the value is sufficient for us to keep participating. The relatively benign and balanced model of advertising laid out by Searls just doesn’t exist anymore.

The problem is the value exchange triangle is breaking down on two sides – for advertisers and the audience.

As I explained in an earlier Online Spin, value exchanges depend on scarcity and for the audience, there is no longer a scarcity of information and entertainment. Also, there are now new models for information and entertainment delivery that disrupt our assessment of this value exchange. The cognitive context that made us accepting of commercials has been broken. Where once we sat passively and consumed advertising, we now have subscription contexts that are entirely commercial free. That makes the appearance of advertising all the more frustrating. Our brain has been trained to no longer be accepting of ads. The other issue is that ads only appeared in contexts where we were passively engaged. Now, ads appear when we’re actively engaged. That’s an entirely different mental model with different expectations of acceptability.

This traditional value exchange is also breaking down for advertisers. The inefficiencies of the previous model have been exposed and more accountable and effective models have emerged. Dyson’s point was probably the most constant bearing point we can navigate to – companies want sales. They also want more effective advertising. And much as we may hate the clutter and crap that litters the current digital landscape, when it works well it does promise to deliver a higher degree of efficiency.

So, we have the previous three sided value exchange collapsing on two of the sides, bringing the third side – media- down with it.

Look, we can bitch about digital all we want. I share Searls frustration with digital in general and Fadner’s misgivings about creepy and ineffective execution of digital targeting in particular. But this horse has already left the barn. Digital is more than just the flavor of the month. It’s the thin edge of a massive wedge of change in content distribution and consumption. For reasons far too numerous to name, we’ll never return to the benign world of clearly sponsored content and creative ads. First of all, that benign world never worked that well. Secondly, two sides of the value-exchange triangle have gotten a taste of something better- virtually unlimited content delivered without advertising strings attached and a much more effective way to deliver advertising.

Is digital working very well now? Absolutely not. Fadner and Searls are right about that, It’s creepy, poorly targeted, intrusive and annoying. And it’s all these things for the very same reason that Esther Dyson identified – companies want sales and they’ll try anything that promises to deliver it. But we’re at the very beginning of a huge disruptive wave. Stuff isn’t supposed to work very well at this point. That comes with maturity and an inevitable rebalancing. Searls may rail against digital, just like people railed against television, the telephone and horseless carriages. But it’s just too early to tell what a more mature model will look like. Corporate greed will dictate the trying of everything. We will fight back by blocking the hi-jacking of our attention. A sustainable balance will emerge somewhere in between. But we can’t see it yet from our vantage point.

Sorry Folks – Blame it on Ed

Just when you thought it was safe to assume I’d be moving on to another topic, I’m back. Blame it on Ed Papazian, who commented on last week’s column about the Rise of the Audience marketplace. I’ll respond to his comment in multiple parts. First, he said:

“I think it’s fine to speculate on “audience” based advertising, by which you actually mean using digital, not traditional media, as the basis for the advertising of the future.”

All media is going to be digital. Our concept of “traditional” media is well down its death spiral. We’re less then a decade away from all media being delivered through a digital platform that would allow for real time targeting of advertising. True, we have to move beyond the current paradigm of mass distributed, channel restricted advertising we seem stuck in, but the technology is already there. We (by which I mean the ad industry) just have to catch up. Ed continues in this vein:

“However, in a practical sense, not only is this, as yet, merely a dream for TV, radio and print media, but it is also an oversimplification.”

Is it an oversimplification? Let’s remember that more and more of our media consumption is becoming trackable from both ends. We no longer have to track from the point of distribution. Tracking is also possible at the point of consumption. We are living with devices that increasingly have insight into what we’re doing at any moment of the day. It’s just a matter of us giving permission to be served relevant, well targeted ads based on the context of our lives.

But what would entice us to give this permission? Ed goes on to say that…

“Even if a digital advertiser could actually identify every consumer in the U.S. who is interested—or “in the market” for what his ads are trying to sell and also how they are pitching the product/service—and send only these people “audience targeted ads”, many of the ads will still not be of interest…”

Papazian proposed an acid test of sorts (or, more appropriately – an antacid test):

“Why? Because they are for unpleasant or mundane products—toilet bowel cleansers, upset stomach remedies, etc.—-or because the ads are pitching a brand the consumer doesn’t like or has had a bad experience with.”

Okay, let me take up the challenge that Ed has thrown down (or up?). Are ads for stomach remedies always unwanted? Not if I have a history of heartburn, especially when my willpower drops and my diet changes as I’m travelling. Let’s take it one step further. I’ve made a dinner reservation for 7 pm at my favorite Indian food restaurant while I’m in San Francisco. It’s 2 pm. I’ve just polished off a Molinari’s sandwich and I’m heading back to my hotel. As I turn the corner at O’Farrell and Powell, an instant coupon is delivered to my phone with 50% off a new antacid tablet at the Walgreen’s ahead, together with the message: “Prosciutto, pepperoncinis and pakoras in the same day? Look at you go! But just in case…”

The world Ed talks about does have a lot of unwanted advertising. But in the world I’m envisioning, where audiences are precisely targeted, we will hopefully eliminate most of those unwanted ads. Those ads are the by-product of the huge inefficiencies in the current advertising marketplace. And it’s this inefficiency that is rapidly destroying advertising as we know it from both ends. The current market is built on showing largely ineffective ads to mainly disinterested prospects – hoping there is an anomaly in there somewhere – and charging the advertiser to do so. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a sustainable plan to me.

When I talk about selecting audiences in a market, it’s this level of specificity that I’m talking about. There is nothing in the above scenario that’s beyond the reach of current Mar-Tech. Perhaps it’s oversimplified. But I did that to make a point. In paid search, we used to have a saying, “buy your best clicks first”. It meant starting with the obviously relevant keywords – the people who were definitely looking for you. The problem was that there just wasn’t enough volume on these “sure-bet” keywords alone. But as digital has matured, the amount of “sure-bet” inventory has increased. We’re still not all the way there – where we can rely on sure-bet inventory alone – but we’re getting closer. The audience marketplace I’m envisioning gets us much of the way there. When technology and data allow us to assemble carefully segmented audiences with a high likelihood of successful engagement on the fly, we eliminate the inefficiencies in the market.

I truly believe that it’s time to discard the jury-rigged, heavily bandaged and limping behemoth that advertising has become and start thinking about this in an entirely new way. Papazian’s last sentence in his comment was…

“You just can’t get around the fact that many ads are going to be unwanted, no matter how they are targeted….”

Do we have to accept that as our future? It’s certainly the present, but I would hate to think we can’t reach any higher. The first step is to stop accepting advertising the way we know it as the status quo. We’ll be unable to imagine tomorrow if we’re still bound by the limitations of today.

 

NBC’s Grip on Olympic Gold Slipping

When it comes to benchmarking stuff, nothing holds a candle to the quadrennial sports-statzapooloza we call the Summer Olympics. After 3 years, 11 months and 13 days of not giving a crap about sports like team pursuit cycling or half heavyweight judo, we suddenly get into fist fights over 3 one hundredths of a second or an unawarded Yuko.

But it’s not just sports that are thrown into comparative focus by the Olympic games. It also provides a chance to take a snap shot of media consumption trends. The Olympics is probably the biggest show on earth. With the possible exception of the World Cup, it’s the time when the highest number of people on the planet are all watching the same thing at the same time. This makes it advertising nirvana.

Or it should.

Over the past few Olympics, the way we watch various events has been changing because of the nature of the Games themselves. There are 306 separate events in 35 recognized sports that are spread over 16 days of competition. The Olympics play to a global audience, which means that coverage has to span 24 time zones. At any given time, on any given day, there could be 6 or 7 events running simultaneously. In fact, as I’m writing this, diving, volleyball, men’s omnium cycling, Greco-Roman wresting, badminton, field hockey and boxing are all happening at the same time.

This creates a challenge for network TV coverage. The Olympics are hardly a one-size-fits-all spectacle. So, if you’re NBC and you’ve shelled out 1.6 billion dollars to provide coverage, you have a dilemma: how do you assemble the largest possible audience to show all those really expensive ads to? How do you keep all those advertisers happy?

NBC’s answer, it seems, is to repackage the Olympics as a scripted mini-series. It means throttling down real time streaming or live broadcast coverage on some of the big events so these can be assembled into packaged stories during their primetime coverage. NBC’s chief marketing officer, John Miller, was recently quoted as saying, “The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”

So, how is this working out for NBC? Not so well, as it turns out.

Ratings are down, with NBC posting the lowest primetime numbers since 1992. The network has come under heavy fire for what is quite possibly the worst Olympic coverage in the history of the games. Let’s ignore for a moment their myopic focus on US contestants and a handful of superstars like Usain Bolt (which may not be irritating unless you’re a international viewer like myself). Their heavy-handed attempt to control and script the fragmented and emergent drama of any Olympic games has stumbled out of the blocks and fallen flat on its face.

I would categorize this as a “RTU/WTF” The first three letters stand for “Research tells us…” I think you can figure out the last three. I’m sure NBC did their research to figure out what they thought the audience really wanted in Olympics game coverage. I’m positive there was a focus group somewhere that told the network what they wanted to hear; “Screw real time results. What we really want is for you to tell us – with swelling music, extreme close ups and completely irrelevant vignettes– the human drama that lies behind the medals…” And, in the collective minds of NBC executives, they quickly added, “…with a zillion commercial breaks and sponsorship messages.”

But it appears that this isn’t what we want. It’s not even close. We want to see the sports we’re interested in, on our device of choice and at the time that best suits us.

This, in a nutshell, is the disruption that is broadsiding the advertising industry at full ramming speed. It was exactly what I was talking about in my last column. NBC may have been able to play their game when they were our only source of information and we were held captive by this scarcity. But over the past 3 Olympic games, starting in Athens in 2004, technology has essentially erased that scarcity. The reality no longer fits NBC’s strategy. Coverage of the Olympics is now a multi-channel affair. What we’re looking for is a way to filter the coverage based on what is most interesting to us, not to be spoon-fed the coverage that NBC feels has the highest revenue potential.

It’s a different world, NBC. If you’re planning to compete in Tokyo, you’d better change your game plan, because you’re still playing like it’s 1996.

 

 

 

Where Context Comes From

Fellow Spinner Cory Treffiletti told you last week that data without context is noise.

Absolutely right.

I want to continue that conversation, because it’s an important one. It’s all about context. So let’s talk a little more about context. And specifically how we decide what makes up that context.

You might have seen or heard the hubbub that emerged around a tweet from Neil Degrasse Tyson a month ago: “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence”

Nice thought, but it ignited a social media shit-storm. Which was entirely predictable. Because we don’t want to be rational. We want to be human. Did 79 episodes of Star Trek teach us nothing?

The biggest beef against #Rationalia was that evidence is typically in the eyes of the beholder. It’s all a matter of context. I’m guessing that the policies that come from evidence in the hands of Republicans will not bear much resemblance to policies that come from the evidence of Democrats. The evidence could be the same but the context is different, because Democrats and Republicans think differently.

Like Treffiletti said – evidence without context is just noise. And our context is only marginally based on evidence. And that’s why #Rationalia – as intellectually attractive as it might be – won’t work.

We as humans understand the world through something called sense making. This is the process we use to build context. In 2006, psychologist Gary Klein shed new light on how we make sense of the world. We start with a frame that captures our current understanding of the situation and depending on the evidence presented to us, we decide whether to elaborate our frame or discard it and create a new frame. So, sensemaking is really an iterative loop that is constantly using our current frame as a reference point.

But here’s the thing. What we consider as evidence depends on the frame we already have in place. It’s the filter that determines what data we pay attention to. And much as Neil Degrasse Tyson would like the governments of the world to be totally unbiased in the filtering of evidence, “that dog just won’t hunt.” It can’t – because we can’t consider data without some context to put it in.

Perhaps someday artificial intelligence will advance to the point where it can pull unbiased context out of random data. Maybe computers will be able to do what we’re unable to – make sense of the noise without assuming a pre-existing frame. But we’re not there yet. And even if we were, we would simply look at the conclusions of the computer and decide whether we agree with them or not. As long as humans are in charge, there will always be a biased filter in place.

So back to Cory’s column. If context is so important, think about where that context is coming from. Who is defining the context and what frame are they operating from? That in turn will define what data you consider and how you consider it.

Perhaps the most important decision before considering data is to be totally clear about what the goal is. Goals, together with experience, form the underpinning of beliefs. Frames are then built on those beliefs. Context comes from those frames. And context is the filter we apply to evidence.

When Evolution (and Democracy) Get It Wrong

“I’ve made a huge mistake”

G.O.B. – Arrested Development

The world is eliminating friction. Generally, that’s a good thing. But there may be unintended consequences.

Let’s take evolution, for instance. Friction in evolution comes in the form of survival rates. Barring other mitigating factors over the length of a natural evolutionary timeline, successful mutations will result in higher survival rates and, therefore, higher propagation rates. Those mutations that best fit the adaptive landscape will survive. Unsuccessful ones will die out.

But that assumes a landscape in which survival has a fairly high threshold. The lower the threshold, the more likely it is that a greater number of mutations will “get over the bar”.

Two factors can vary that threshold. One is the adaptive environment itself. It may proved to be “kinder and gentler” for an extended period of time, allowing for the flourishing of “less fit” candidates.

The other is a factor unique to one species that allows them to alter the environment at their will. Like technology, for instance. In the hands of humans, we have used technology to eliminate friction and drag the bar lower and lower – until the idea of survival of the fittest has little meaning any more.

The more friction there is, the more demanding that propagation threshold is. This same phenomenon is true of most emergent systems. What emerges depends on the environment the system is operating in. Demanding environments are called rugged landscapes. There is some contrary logic that operates here. The removal of friction can actually increase the number of mutations (or, in societal terms – innovation). More mutations – or ideas – can survive because the definition of “fittest” is less demanding. But we also build up a tipping point of mediocrity in the gene or meme pool and if something does cause the adaptive landscape to suddenly become more rugged, the extinction rate soars. The reckoning can be brutal.

Lets look at memes. For ideas to spread, there used to be a fairly high threshold of “shareability.” There was a publishing and editorial supply chain that introduced a huge amount of friction into our culture. This friction has largely been removed, allowing any of us to instantly share ideas. This has lead to a recalibration of the shareability threshold – an explosion of viral content that happens to ding our fickle consciousness just long enough for us to hit the share button. Bob Garfield called this “The Survival of the Funnest” in a recent column.

But was the previous friction a good thing? We definitely have more content being produced now. Some of it is very good. This couldn’t have happened under the previous cultural supply chain. But a lot of the content is – at best – frivolous and – at worst – dangerous. That same chain did force thoughtfulness into the filter of content. Someone – somewhere – had to think about what was fit to publish.

Now, one could argue that ultimately the market will get it right. We could also argue that evolution never makes mistakes. But that’s not always true. If the threshold of fitness gets lowered, evolution will make mistakes. Tons of them. I suspect the same is true of markets. If we grow complacent and entitled, we can flood the market with mediocrity. We humans have an unlimited capacity to make bad choices if we don’t have to make good ones

This brings me to the current state of democracy. Democracy is cultural evolution in action. It means – literally – the “people” (demos) “rule” (kratia). It assumes that the majority will get it right. But the adaptive landscape of democracy has also changed. The threshold has been lowered. We are making electoral decisions based on the same viral content that has flooded the rest of our culture. Thoughtfulness is in woefully short supply. There is no shortage of knee-jerk soundbites that latch on to the belief system of a disgruntled electorate. This is an ideological death spiral that could have big consequences.

Correction.

Make that “Huuugggeee” consequences.

 

 

 

Chatting Up a Storm

I’ve been talking about a “meta-app” for ages. It looks like China may have found it in WeChat. We in the Western World have been monitoring the success of TenCent’s WeChat with growing interest. Who would have thought that a simple chat interface could be the killer app of the future?

Chat interfaces seem so old school. They appear to be clunky and inefficient. But the beauty of chat is that it’s completely flexible. As Wired.com’s David Pierce said, “You can, for all intents and purposes, live your entire life within WeChat.” That’s exactly the type of universal functionality you need to become a meta-app.

We’ve always envisioned having conversations with our computers, even going back to Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But we didn’t think out conversations would be carried out in text bubbles on a hand held device. A PEW study found that texting is the single most common activity on a Smartphone. 97% of us do it. So if messaging is the new UI, none of us have to learn anything new.

Graphic interfaces are necessarily tied to a particular task. The interface is designed for a specific intent. But messaging interfaces can adapt as intents change. They can quickly switch from social messaging to purchasing online to searching for an address to – well – you get the idea.

But where texting really shines is when it’s combined with artificially intelligent chatbots. A simple, universally understood interface that’s merged with powerful intelligent agents – either human and machine – allows the user to quickly request or do anything they wish. The functionality of intent specific apps can be called on as required and easily introduced into the chat interface.

In effect, text messaging is doing exactly what Apple hoped Siri would do – become the universal interface to the digital world. Given that speaking would appear to be easier than texting, one has to wonder why Siri never really gained the traction that Apple hoped it would. I think this can be attributed to three reasons:

  • The difficulties of spoken interpretation still restricts the functionality of Siri. The success rate isn’t high enough to completely gain our confidence
  • The use case of Siri is still primarily when we need to keep our hands free. It’s not that easy to switch to interactions where tactile input is required
  • We look like idiots speaking to a machine

All of these are avoided in a chat-based interface. We still have the flexibility of a conversational interface but we still have all the power of our device at our fingertips. Plus, we don’t infringe on any social taboos.

Given the advantages, it’s small wonder that a number of players – primarily Facebook – are seriously plotting for the commercialization of chat based messaging services. There’s one other massive advantage that a stand-alone messaging interface has. The more activities we conduct through any particular interface, the greater the opportunity for personalization. I’ve always maintained that a truly useful “meta-app” should be able to anticipate our intent. That requires interactions across the broad spectrum of our activities. Previously only operating systems offered this type of breadth and because OS’s operate “under the hood,” there were some limitations on the degree of personalization – and through that, commercialization – that was possible. But an app we explicitly choose to use seems to be fair game for commercialization. It’s one of those unwritten social modality rules that advertisers are well advised to be aware of.

Between Messenger and WhatsApp, Facebook has a huge slice of the chat market. They just passed the 900 million user mark for Messenger alone. According to a recent study from the Global Web Index, over 36% of users have used Messenger in the past month, followed closely by WhatsApp at 34%, then Skype at 19%, Line at 10% and Viber and SnapChat at 7% each. These numbers exclude the Chinese market, which is dominated by WeChat, but it remains to be seen if WeChat can expand its base beyond Asia.

And leaked documents from earlier this year indicated that Messenger may soon introduce targeted ads. This hardly qualifies as a security breach. It’s more of a “Duh – ya think?” The rumor mill around the commercialization of Messenger has been going full steam in 2016. If chatting is the UI juggernaut it seems to be, of course we will soon see ads there. WeChat is well down this road, and it seems to be working like a charm, if the recent Smart Car promotion is any example.