Erica J Myers

Click And Follow: Advertisers Are Getting In Your Head

Online advertisers are watching what you’re doing online to see how you feel about advertising.

Advertisers are tracking your movements online in an attempt to add a value to your social media activity. These metrics are databased and studied for a number of factors. The method of getting the information isn’t really new, but the information and method of response is.

Current Advertising Is Wrong

Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, a data analytics company, published an article last year on Time.com, describing how content creators and marketers were wrong about the behaviors of online users. The click started as the original method of measuring web traffic for online advertisers. Clicking also began a two-decade misunderstanding of online usage, simply applying one action to online content. Haile attributes this click action to creating Internet giants like Google, but also spam and adware.

Haile writes that Chartbeat has looked at user behavior and found that 55 percent of users spend less than 15 seconds on a page.  Also, one in every three visitors barely reads articles they have clicked on. The myths about online usage from Haile and Chartbeat includes scrolling habits and readability for web sites.

Facebook Banking On Your Emotions

One company benefiting from online data research is Facebook. The social media company has increased its 2015 second quarter advertising revenue by 43 percent, a total of over $3.8 billion. The golden key for Facebook is the “Like” button, which in 2010 began with just data-logging. In 2014, Facebook started using the data from likes to target advertisements to users.  While Facebook and advertisers have benefitted from this data, it also took a negative turn.

Facebook currently only has the Like feature available to users. There are no other emotional data for Facebook posts. The only data tracked for advertising is “Like”, seen as favorable content. The user may receive sidebar or newsfeed “sponsored” ads related to the liked content. However, if someone likes a negative post, advertisements related to content of that post may appear. Facebook does not see the negativity of a post’s content. This means ads for relatable content would be displayed as well.

In Sept. 2015, Facebook’s Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Stephen Deadman released in his statement, “We sometimes hear from people that the ads they see aren’t as useful or relevant to them as they could be.” A user could choose to opt-out of Facebook’s advertising within the settings.

Facebook is currently testing more emotional reactions to posts to make available to users. This new data will contour data to be more specific. Deadman continued in his statement, “We are continuing to roll out online interest-based advertising and will now begin including information from pages that use Facebook’s Like button and similar social features, as we announced last year. We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want.”

Web Users Fighting Back

The true test of Facebook and online advertisers is ad-blocking software, such as Blockr, created by Arno Appenzeller. The option to hide Facebook widgets, a limited web-executed app, is the general function of ad blockers.

“The specific point of the like button is that most people know it tracks you even outside of and tailors Facebook ads for you that can be very creepy,” said Appenzeller, in an interview with the Wall Street journal.

Despite the intentions of ad blockers to protect users from annoying ads, smart phones negate their efforts. Ad blockers protect users from web-based ads. Smart phones are another world, using applications for social media, not necessarily web-based.

Facebook’s Early and Current Advertising

Broadcast Writing | Upcoming Stories

TRUMP TREES

Local environmental advocacy group, The Potomac Conservancy, wants 500 trees from Donald Trump. The petition demands replacements from Trump’s National Golf Club expansion.
HEDRICK BELIN [ The president of Potomac Conservancy] SOT: “Trump’s irresponsible actions to cut down trees and destroy water quality for the sake of a golf course show how out of touch he is with the way we do business in Washington, DC.”

METRO-BIKERS

The Metro is giving free perks to green-conscious cyclists. To encourage public transit use, Metro is expanding facilities and offering free, covered and secure storage for bicycles at several of its stations. Metro riders, who ride bicycles, will need to register their SmarTrip card and sign up to use the new facility.

CASH-STRAPPED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Some classrooms in Virginia school districts are overcrowded. According to The Commonwealth Institute, an independent economic focus group, there are over 4,000 teachers “missing”.
CHARLES RONCO [math teacher at Stonewall-Jackson High in Manassas] SOT: “There’s a critical tipping point at right around 30 students. As soon as you hit that 30 threshold, the class dynamic changes immediately.”

Michael Brown FEMA Testimony

RESPONSE TO KATRINA: ‘LESSONS CAN AND MUST BE LEARNED.’

FEMA’s Michael Brown says some criticisms of government response is and is not valid, details the agency’s responsibilities.

The federal government is simply not a “first responder.”

The former head of FEMA defended the agency’s actions today at a House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform hearing. Michael Brown responded to various criticisms of government handling of Hurricane Katrina. Brown said that criticism of FEMA “must be understood in the context of understanding FEMA’s role in responding to disasters…”

Brown explained the function of FEMA as providing the basic “cycle” of standard emergency management: preparation, response, recovery and mitigation. Brown shifted responsibility, saying, “Emergency management begins at the local level.”

Brown said, “The federal government is simply not a “first responder,” has never been, and should never be. The role of the federal government in emergency management is generally that of coordinator and supporter.”

Hurricane Katrina, made landfall in New Orleans, in late August of this year.  Fatalities totaled 1,833 in affected Southern states, with damage totaling $108 billion. The committee required an explanation into the events which involved the agency before, during, and after Katrina.

“Emergency management begins at the local level,” said Brown, deflecting majority of the criticism onto Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Brown said that local government are better at “understanding the vulnerabilities and capabilities of their communities.”

Lastly, he passed responsibility to the affected residents, saying, “Individuals must take personal responsibility for being prepared.”

Brown was appointed in 2003 by President George W. Bush and resigned September 12, 2005.

Journalism Student Devising Plan To Make World Better

Anahid Ali, an American University student in the Interactive Journalism program, is trying to make the world better one place at a time.

Anahid Ali is a cheerful student at American University, located in Washington, DC. Her studies revolve around the Interactive Journalism masters program at AU, but journalism wasn’t always her education focus.

Growing up in Baghdad, Ali dispels some misunderstandings of being a woman in the Middle East. She attended an all-female secondary school, the equivalent of high school in most areas of the United States. “Living in the city was different than living in the suburb areas,” says Ali. Living in the city meant that there was little opposition to her going to school because ‘to everyone, in the city, education was a big deal whether you were male or female.’

Ali’s upbeat personality and warm smile makes it easy for strangers to see why a communications-based study would come easily to her. However, she admits that even though she studied science in high school, English was her favorite subject.

With a degree in translation, Ali worked at the US Embassy in Baghdad, until it was proven unsafe for her, leaving her job and coming to the United States in 2007.

Ali says that she would like to use her degree from American University to unite communities in the Middle East, by providing an Internet outlet for the youth and community leaders to interact towards change.

Book Ban Assignment

LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD PLANS VOTE AGAINST BOOK BAN

Parent association petitions city school board to remove ‘filth’; school board plans to protect First Amendment right.

Today the city school board plans to extinguish a fiery petition presented by the group, Concerned Parents Association.  CPA members petitioned the board two weeks ago, asking for public schools to remove a list of several books. Clara Warniky, head of CPA, said, “Some of these book print downright filth.”

The list includes some classics, such as “Manchild in the Promised Land” by Claude Brown; “Laughing Boy” by Oliver La Farge; “The Fixer” by Bernard Malamud; “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain; “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth; and “Down These Mean Streets” by Piri Thomas.

It would be a crime to keep it from our children.

Five of the seven city school board members agree with a statement released today concerning their decision about the list of proposed banned books. In the announcement, the board states, “ We agree that some of these books are realistic.”  However, this realism the city school board refers to includes the periodic references in opinions and language for the author. With respect to the petitioners and supporters, the school board cites a federal court  decision, stating that a library is ‘a storehouse of knowledge’ and ‘an important privilege created by the state for the benefit of the students in the school.’ In addition, banning books would violate the First Amendment, freedom of speech, if the school board do away with books presently on library shelves.

Reba Carvel, a teacher at Colony Elementary, says that she would continue her fifth-grade students reading “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.  “This is great literature. It would be a crime to keep it from our children,” says Carvel.

One of the five members issuing the statement, Mimi Lieber, asks, “Yet, what good is served by censoring these books?” Lieber also addresses some of the association’s concerns, “I’d agree that small children have no business reading Manchild.”

Warniky says, “Our group will continue to fight to ban this filth from our schools.” Warniky contends that she will take up the task to fight the city school board.  “I intend to make sure not one of them is re-elected,” says Warniky.