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Welcome to the latest issue of Brandtech News, an update on building brands better, faster and cheaper, using technology. 

It's an occasional newsletter - but we know how busy everyone is, so there's a simple unsubscribe link at the bottom.
Facebook is killing it
 
Facebook almost tripled its quarterly profits and ad revenue soared by 57 per cent, it reported in its first quarter results last week (Wall Street Journal). It just keeps growing and gone are the concerns about how it would translate to mobile (mobile accounted for 82 percent of ad revenue this quarter – that’s how). Facebook says it now has 3 million active advertisers, compared to 2 million a year ago.
 
So how come Facebook is killing it when nobody else is? It’s a great question and discussed extensively in Wired. Other commentaries flagged up concerns that people were sharing less about themselves and their own lives on Facebook, Slate looks at this and suggests Facebook is now much more than a social network.




“Brand hating bastards”
 
You may already know about the Boaty McBoatface saga. If not, catch up here with The Guardian. Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson says this is the latest episode joining the overwhelming evidence that the public would rather humiliate a brand than “engage” with it.
 
We are not sure that people actually hate brands (or all advertising, for that matter) but we do agree with Disney’s head of audience strategy,
Richard Ellwood, who recently observed that people are not walking around thinking about brands all the time. “They are actually thinking about their lives,” he says.
 
It’s amazing this basic common sense fact needs pointing out.




VR – the ideas keep coming

 
Naysayers question the impact of VR by saying there is very little content available as yet. “Yet” is the operative word - remember, you didn't have a smartphone 10 years ago. More is being built on a daily basis – Amazon, for example, is thought to be gearing up to create its own content, reports The Drum and The Guardian published "6x9" a sobering VR experience of solitary confinement. 
 

Campaign covers some interesting VR experiences created by brands and The Verge takes a look at the awesome prototype from Samsung, “Bedtime Stories”, which allows a parent to share a VR story experience with a child from a separate location. 




Is there such a thing as being too popular?
 
There definitely is, according to this article from
Digiday, which takes a look at the relationship between the number of followers an Instagram influencer has and their engagement rate. A study suggests there is a “sweet spot” at between 10,000 and 100,000 followers and predicts a new era of “micro-infliencers” – people with comparatively small followings but enormous influence over that group.



What Elon did next
 
Fresh from his staggering success with pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3 (currently around 400,000),
Reuters reports that Musk’s SpaceX has won a contract to launch a GPS satellite, breaking the Lockheed-Boeing monopoly that has existed for years.
 
Musk also managed to fit in the release of the first batch of software by OpenAI, his new AI operation co-founded with Y-Combinator president, Sam Altman.
Wired takes an in-depth and thoughtful look at OpenAI and its ambition to give AI to the world. Meanwhile, Slate discovers what AI researchers actually worry about – jobs.



Quick chatbot explainer, anyone? 
There's a good one
here
 

News about us:

We're thrilled to announce a majority investment in the influencer marketing technology platform, theAmplify.

Read more:
Wall Street Journal 
 
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