This is ME

This feels like an interactive mood board, but I'll try to write and share something from me as well..As I Am..I am changing.. I am working.. I am creating..But maybe not.. we will just have to see how being me turns out..

[thisis-katrina]

@fatfreddysdropnz at #allypally #nofilter #nightout #alexandrapalace #london #fatfreddysdrop #music #gig #nz (at Alexandra Palace)

[geekcomics]

[thisis-katrina]

Feeling bit lost lately.. need to get more excited, inspired and motivated about everything.. so I'm listening to some music and looking up cool visuals..

[mirkokosmos]

Leeloo Dallas Multipass

[thisis-katrina]

This is what I'm listening to at the moment.. heard it last night while watching the Legions.

[thisis-katrina]

#NowPlaying Out of the Black by Billie Marten

[thisis-katrina]

#NowPlaying Want It Back (feat. Patrice & The School Voices NYC) by Guts Getting organised and focused

[thisis-katrina]

Time to get productive again.. #stopwithdepression #london #marblemac #spotify #creative #keepcup #coffee #notebook #workspace #bedandnotes #whoami #usp #lcc #clapham #got3hours #nomoreprocrastination (at SW11)

[thisis-katrina]

[thisis-katrina]

[thisis-katrina]

Week 9 “Advertising, Music and Big Data”

Reading: 'Brands and Bands: The Value Exchange', Available at http://www.wearefrukt.com/insight

Value exchanges

Incremental revenue

Credibility (in terms relevant to brand value)

Big Data

Selling Out

Brand Partnership

Artist Brand Affinity (score)

 Brand Partnership is defined by Wikipedia as co-branding, a form of alliance where they work together creating marketing synergy. In this reading this definition is taken to another level, more of collaboration, so both sides gain from working together.

  Through qualitative and quantitative research this report aims to showcase the benefits of brand collaboration with music artists. The tone of voice being that if it’s done right it is supposed to be the best thing for development and advancement of both sides. The report talks about how partnerships of this kind have adapted to become somewhat beneficial for the artists, particularly because of the decline of income in regular record agencies with the rise of pirated music and free online sources. As well as delving into the benefits of data analytics of the online world and social media. Then going on to kind of sell how these types of partnerships would make the artists work easier. Going on to explain their specific way of calculating a way to build successful partnerships to improve statistics for both sides. It is a call to  stop and think a little bit more before rushing to sign a record deal, think about more than money in the long term. At the same time not losing focus on the profit.

  The report mentions that idea of Selling Out is not such a big deal anymore and that most managers feel like working with brands is essential or necessary. They say that their research suggests that brand partnerships are now an integral part of an artist’s overall career trajectory, fuelled as much by a heightened desire(and necessity) for exposure as direct financial gain. It makes a lot sense with all of the numbers to back it up. But for me music can’t be put into numbers, because how do you account for a feeling? Also wrong combination of brand+band could be very detrimental for both, particular if the artists integrity is called into question. With social media being such a big part of our everyday life a lot of artist keep connecting with their fans by in a bay becoming brands themselves, it’s not brands sponsoring bands to sell their stuff, it has to be equal creative collaboration that would inspire the artist to do better work. For some brands adding music would be no help at all. But many would complete each other. In this blog I have attached some ads of in my opinion either successful or at least interesting and relevant brand partnerships.

   Who would you like to see in a brand and band partnership?

How brand collaboration helps any band be better?

How big data and music work together?

Should we take one companies research as the norm? Is there any data from other sources to support or disapprove the data presented in this reading?

[thisis-katrina]

Week 8 “Meet the Players in the New Advertising Food Chain”

Reading: Turow, J. (2011). Chapter 3: A New Advertising Food Chain. The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. Pp. 65-88

Organic search results

Purchase funnel

Consumer decision journey

CPC and CPA

“Supply side” ad exchange

Publisher impressions

Demand side platforms (DSP)

  Demand-side platform is a term used in regards to digital advertising tools. It is a system that makes it easier to manage many ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface. It takes services previously offered by advertising networks and takes them to a different level, because it has access and is able to process a lot of data very fast. So targeting information, ad tracking and more is in one place thus making third party tracking a lot easier and effective. So most commonly DSPs are used for retargeting.

DSPs are similar to AdWords, only because both are used to create ad campaigns, but AdWords differ in the way that it only allows those campaigns run within Google network.

 This academic reading focuses on Google as a success story in advertising and online world. It shows how Google noticed importance of data, of having a good way of indexing it and analyzing it. It started out as a free service that has evolved into one of the biggest advertising platforms that you can not ignore. It is not surprising that they encourage the marketers to create ads relevant to its users, because it just makes sense that there would be better results if the ads user is seeing are offering something they are interested in. Google is very good at noticing how things are changing and how to stay relevant early on, one good example of that is their insistence, in the early days of public internet (times when you could not take a call and use internet at the same time), that the ads are short, no more than couple lines and informative. It paid off at the time, because their search revenue had a 73 percent share. That’s just one of the examples given to show how fast they  could notice a need for change or adjustment. Google is a smart company that knew early on that the keywords a consumer uses give direct insight into their interests.

  I did not feel like I could understand everything in the article on every level of importance, but it was certainly very interesting piece of history that is very relevant today. Close to the end of the reading there was a quote that felt particularly important to me, an eXelate executive had comented to ClickZ News, “who a user is is becoming more important than where [users] are.” It’s so easy to notice a change in advertising, media platforms and social sites online. There is less and less focus on some peoples accomplishments as long as the “cool” people have the right time of personality or create the right type of content the users will follow. For example, GQ gala had a lot of really interesting people attending it and they attracted users to Snapchat as a platform when they had some of the well known people posting on there as part of their story.

Another, bit less superficial example – VICE Media. They have been around for 22 years, but they are still relevant, because they are good at adapting, most articles are written by people about the same age as their target audience, happy to immerse themselves in the local subcultures, still providing good content, it doesn’t matter that they started out as magazine in Canada and now they are and advertising agency, media publishing platform, digital and physical all around the world, involved in music, film, books and anything else that is important for people usually from 18-27 years old.

 A question for classroom discussion.

Are we becoming lazy by using google?

Where is google going next?

Who is in charge now?

Why is social media taking over our lives?

How can we make advertising better more relatable when tracking already does most of the work for us?

Does the power of internet and digital meant that real creative is dying?

How can you trust your research if you search for answers online?(because of tracking providing tailored results)

[thisis-katrina]

Week 9 “AdBlocking”

For some of my university assignments I’ve had to do a lot of reading, for one of them I’ve tried to do some writing as well, by writing series of short blogs about the themes discussed in the the weekly readings. I’ve not been very good with posting them, I’ve rewriting some of them. But today I plan to post all of them

Reading: Mayer, J. R., & Mitchell, J. C. (2012, May). Third-party web tracking: Policy and technology. In 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (pp. 413-427). IEEE.

Cross-site scripting(XSS)

Widget clickjacking

Supercookie

User choice and self- help technologies

Do Not Track

Epic Marketplace

APIs

FourthParty

  API is an application program interface used for building software applications, it’s a set of routines, tools and protocols. It makes rules in the code for how the application is supposed to react, what it’s supposed to do depending on direction or action. There are different type APIs.

For example Cocoa Touch is a user interface framework for Mackintosh operating systems that is implemented in iOS devices like iPhone or iPad, it supports the use of hardware and features that are unique to these portable devices and are not found in the Computers. Features like gesture recognizers.

  This academic article introduces the background and laws pertaining web, content, its development and laws in USA and EU that are supposed to control and protect private information. At the same time it brings to light the many issues that are rising with sharing of private information online. This paper focuses on situations where a first party website authorizes a third party website to learn about its users. It mentions tracking business models and trends, design process of coding and importance of tracking of data. It is also highlighted that the laws to control or limit tracking have not really developed as fast as the many methods of tracking or collating the data in usable systems, also many countries approach to this subject is quite loose and none of them have the exact same regulations. This in turn makes it quite easy for these tools to be used in many different ways. From advertising, adjusted content, government enquiries to hacking.

  Because many users don’t know about a lot of third party websites or how they influence their lives, those sites can’t really be held responsible, because of this unawareness it is almost impossible to penalize or reward them. At the same time the way a user used the internet to search or visit websites automatically reveals a lot of personal information without much warning. After gaining information such as purchases, travel routes, medical conditions, interests, location etc., it is very easy to start analyzing such data, by looking for patterns, comparing it to other user data with similarities, at the moment there is no need for a person employed to do this there are algorithms designed that with just the inserting the right information can almost give the feeling of predicted future. It seems like a very nice combination of tools to help in the new advertising world, it can improve the advertising to gain better results by fine-tuning the content, location and times advertising is used the reach the users attention and influence them better to suit the advertisers needs.

Because of that the morality of such actions should be questioned. Who’s to say that the people with access to such vast information will stop when they should?

Well in my opinion I don’t think most people will notice a change till it’s too late do much about it. There are many creative works on this theme of power, control and influence. Starting from Orwels written works and ending with TV Shows such as The Black Mirror or Westworld. The way it’s going now I would not be surprised if in the panic of over-sharing your most intimate details some would focus on any way to stop all forms of tracking, at the same time the current trend of Millennials loving to share and experience everything could create a world dependent on devices that encourage sharing, rating and being influenced by the information the devices give you. I think as long as a human factor exists we should be relatively safe from going ovearboard.

  A question for classroom discussion.

How would oversharing change the way we treat the people around us?

Why any type of online tracking should be more controlled?

How could the laws, in regards to the web, be improved?

How can we as future advertisers want to use the advantage tracking information gives us without considering the consequences and ways this type of system influences ourselves?

[idonthaveacontract]

quick refresher on the premise of the show

[thisis-katrina]

I was to feel like any work I do will be fantastical.. and take me or anyone that sees it out of their mind to a different place... filled with wonder.. :)

[thisis-katrina]

[thisis-katrina]

[bookgeekconfessions]

The Purpose of art is to stop time.

Bob Dylan

Book Geek Quote #819

(via bookgeekconfessions)

[thisis-katrina]