Let's all play ball (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)
Bots never sleep
Bots are not just a problem on social media. Fake humans – essentially algorithms – that can mimic human online activity are everywhere. However, it never occurred to me how they could be used to pump up ad impression numbers.
Websites and online activities often appear free, but someone is paying for all those server hours, design, development, and writing staff. It’s usually advertisers who place ads all around your favorite content, in search results, and on retailer websites where they’re always trying to turn your head away from your original purchase intent.
Advertisers measure the performance of these ads through views and clicks. If the ad loads on a page you’re viewing, the advertisers know it. If you click on it (more valuable), they know that, too.
The problem is that bots can open pages and click on ads and links, too. One researcher, though, found that the bot farms aren’t even hiding their chicanery. They simply do it when we’re sleeping. So, at a time in the day when advertising performance should be going down or be, at least, light, it’s as high as daylight hours. The bots are awake and doing their work and advertisers don’t even seem to care. They just count the bot traffic as real ad performance.
I suspect that eventually, bot activity will outstrip human online activity. Eventually, these bots will become sentient, start meeting up with other bots on virtual dating sites, and produce little bot babies so the cycle can continue.
Fly Buy
Amazon is set to start making drone deliveries in one town in California. It’s a slow start for a program that Amazon’s been trying to get off the ground (ahem) for years.
It sounds kind of cool. Amazon Prime customers can order from a select group of products and then the drone flies (while being watched by a pilot) to your backyard, lowers the package, and then drops it onto the grass from a couple of feet off the ground. That’s probably gentler than some of the handling I’ve seen by people launching packages onto your front porch.
Do we need drone deliveries? Average people don’t but they could be lifesavers in the event of medicine and healthcare deliveries. Earlier this year, a drone delivered a life-saving defibrillator. So, there’s is a good reason to do this and, maybe practice for the times when it does matter.
On the other hand, if you can walk to your local CVS to buy your beauty products, maybe you do that instead of summoning a drone.
Musk What?
Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition attempt is still in play and it’s not clear to me that Musk did himself and this quest any favors with last week’s all-hands meeting Q+A.
In one story, Musk was described as lacking knowledge about Twitter technology, policy, and operation.
This doesn’t surprise me. I know Musk is smart, but his pronouncements about the state of Twitter have always struck me as off base. He’s been using his edge-case experience with bots, for instance, to define the entire platform. While Twitter finally agreed to show Musk all its bot data, it’s not clear Musk has seen it.
Others at the meeting described Musk as “rambling.” I’ve seen Musk at some events where he goes off on odd tangents or is so consumed with the drama on his phone that he cuts a press conference short to attend to it.
He remains unpredictable and I still don’t see him doing anything to make Twitter’s employees comfortable with what’s likely to come with a Musk/Twitter acquisition.
I will say that his intention to make Twitter more interesting is a good one. Twitter has been trying to attract people outside its media/brand marketer/celebrity bubble for years. It’s just not as broadly interesting as, say, TikTok. Musk would like Twitter to be more like TikTok. This is funny because Twitter already tried that with Fleets (which were terrible) and failed spectacularly.
Musk will try again, I guess and hope for a different result.
Stay well
See you soon