Blogbook
National Geographic does a deep dive into captive wildlife tourism, which often does little for conservation and has animal abuses. Via National Geographic:
Wildlife tourism isn’t new, but social media is setting the industry ablaze, turning encounters with exotic animals into photo-driven bucket-list toppers. Activities once publicized mostly in guidebooks now are shared instantly with multitudes of people by selfie-taking backpackers, tour-bus travelers, and social media “influencers” through a tap on their phone screens. Nearly all millennials (23- to 38-year-olds) use social media while traveling. Their selfies—of swims with dolphins, encounters with tigers, rides on elephants, and more—are viral advertising for attractions that tout up-close experiences with animals.
For all the visibility social media provides, it doesn’t show what happens beyond the view of the camera lens. People who feel joy and exhilaration from getting close to wild animals usually are unaware that many of the animals at such attractions live a lot like Meena, or worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrIiPcv4_iY
Checked out the Batwoman trailer yet? Ruby Rose looks awesome as the (cousin?) of Bruce Wayne. Action and setting looks solid too.
Old Town Road has dropped its hotly anticipated music video, which features a whole host of celebrity cameos, including from Chris Rock. Via Vice:
A little over a month after it was denied its place on the country charts, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” is still standing triumphant atop the Billboard Hot 100, which means, of course, that it’s time for a big-budget video. The Atlanta meme-maker-turned-rapper hinted that the visual for the song sparking the discourse for the “yeehaw agenda,” otherwise known as the bridge between hip-hop and rap, would be a movie and we should have listened. The credits for “Old Town Road” boast stars like Chris Rock, Diplo, Vince Staples, and Rico Nasty, but Lil Nas is truly the star of the show. The beginning of the five-minute video carries subliminal shots at this controversy surrounding his place on Billboards charts. “The last time I was here they weren’t too welcoming to outsiders,” he says to Billy Ray. One could gather the comment is a reference to the discussions of who was allowed to make country music when Lil Nas released the original version. “Eh, you’re with me this time,” Cyrus says. “Everything’s gonna be alright.” The 20-year-old rapper travels through time from Old Town Road in 1889 to Old Town Road of the present day, bringing his horse, spurs, and fringe with him baffling the residents on the block he rides in on.
We’re ready for the end of Game of Thrones. Here’s a low bass, ominous cover of the Rains of Castamere to set the mood. Let’s go.
John Wick 3 is here, and it’s what we’ll be watching this weekend. Gratuitous stylish violence with dogs? Check. Keanu Reeves? Check.
Nike women are the focus of its latest inspirational ad campaign, which in particular emphasises the US women’s soccer team. Kind of ironic given this opinion piece in the New York Times by Alysia Montaño, who was dropped by Nike after she became pregnant:
Sports take a heavy toll on the human body, and sponsors accommodate this with time off for injuries. But rarely do they offer enough time off to have a child.
The four Nike executives who negotiate contracts for track and field athletes are all men.
“Getting pregnant is the kiss of death for a female athlete,” said Phoebe Wright, who was a runner sponsored by Nike from 2010 through 2016. “There’s no way I’d tell Nike if I were pregnant.”
Google is changing how it’s selling programmatic advertising by the end of the year. It’s moving from a second price auction into first price ad auctions, where people bid what they actually want to pay for advertising. It’s… wait. Did you understand any of that? If you did, skip this article. You probably already work in digital advertising and you’re likely already in a panic. Reach under your desk for your emergency stash of hard liquor. You deserve it.
If you didn’t understand it at all, read on.
US$95.4 billion. That’s how much Google made from ads in 2017. Yes, that’s above the GDP of some countries, and it’s long become Google’s main source of revenue. You’d have seen the ads, peppered through Google search and other parts of its “content network”. If you’ve dealt with agencies at all on a digital campaign, you might have given the agency some money to work some magic on the Google search engine that you might not entirely understand, only that it’s leading to more prank calls to your business. You’ve paid some money that you’re pretty sure is going somewhere. Basically, with the immediate changes up ahead, you’re likely soon going to have to pay more for the same. Then prices might stabilise, and miiiight fall during the long run, but we wouldn’t hold our breath, because that’s how life is and Google isn’t a charity.
What the heck is first or second price ad auctions?
Here is a helpful graphic from Google:
As Google puts it, they’re trying to simplify their bidding process. And they’re certainly not the first system to convert to a first price auction, just the largest — big enough to change how the industry works. Even if it just affects display and video inventory sold through Ad Manager. Auctions on Google Search, AdSense for Search, YouTube, and other Google properties, Google Ads and Display & Video 360 are so far not affected.
Wait, you might be saying. I still don’t get it. What is a unified ad auction? Basically, there are two models for programmatic ads: unified and waterfall. Waterfall = Google had dibs on bidding on inventory, followed by the next exchange, and so on. In a unified auction, everyone has access to the inventory at the same time. Having more people bidding at the same time on the same thing can drive up prices, which is the main fear, though 90% of publishers in US/Europe use unified auctions. Most publishers also use Google Ad Manager as their default ad server, so in theory, this system simplifies what currently exists — instead of bidding on an exchange, you can now bid directly into a publisher’s ad server.
Still don’t get it? Here’s the main change on the buyer’s side. Basically, things used to be like eBay. You could bid $100 on something you felt was $1, and if the next highest bid was $2, you’d win but just automatically pay $2.01. Now, if you bid $100, you pay $100.
If you have a strategy for planning or bidding on ads, this might not even affect you much. Or it might even help — it’s more simplified, a lot of publishers already adopted it. The general consensus is that ads will increase in cost in the short term but will likely stabilise again in the long term. Want to know more? Feel free to get in touch for a chat.
The real-life experiments that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the first science-fiction novel written and inspiration behind tons of films. Via Vox:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been reimagined onscreen hundreds of times and is a staple of pop culture. The prevailing takeaway is one of science gone wrong and the dangers of pursuing the unnatural. But contemporary readers were surrounded by Enlightenment-era scientific breakthroughs that were beginning to shift the definition of death. To them, Frankenstein would have read as frighteningly plausible. Electricity was being used in a scientific practice called “galvanism,” which seemed to show some promise in reanimating body parts of recently dead animals and humans. Shelley even references galvanism in the 1831 edition of the book, citing it as an example of how the Frankenstein experiment could be possible.
Detective Pikachu is… surprisingly good. It’s far better than it should be for what it is. Seriously. Catch it in theatres. Via the Verge:
As a piece of storytelling, the live-action Pokémon movie Detective Pikachu fails spectacularly. Warner Bros. has the impossible task of trying to make the film appealing and likable for a movie-going audience that extends beyond nostalgic adults reminiscing over their trading cards, and kids caught up in their current Pokémon obsession.
Detective Pikachu can’t ever hope to achieve what The Pokémon Movie, a 1999 animated classic that saw children drag their less-than-enthused parents into theaters around the country, did for fans of the game. The Pokémon Movie was a rare jewel that found emotional depth in a superficial topic. Detective Pikachu, on the other hand, is an attempt to be more than a video game adaptation that pays homage to Pokémon — the creators clearly want to turn its Pokémon into actual characters, in a world that doesn’t find them exceptional at all.
But in the effort to define Pokémon by something other than their ability to be cute, weird game devices, director Rob Letterman and the film’s five-man story and writing team pull off an undeniably magical feat. Detective Pikachu is the first post-Pokémon movie. It recognizes that people know who Pikachu is, what a Pokémon battle consists of, and how humans interact with their pocket-monster pals. That lets Pokémon exist in the movie’s background, making that existence unremarkable in the process.
If you didn’t like the new Sonic the Hedgehog live action trailer, check out this hilariously surreal animation that’s gone viral on the internet.