Optimera

tisdag 17 januari 2017

Google graduates ‘Show fewer ads’ feature out of AdSense Labs

Google today announced an update to its AdSense service for showing ads on websites: The “Show fewer ads” feature, which lowers the number of ads on a given website, is no longer tucked away in the “AdSense Labs” tab that’s accessible from the “Optimizations” tab. Now it’s visible to all publishers, under the “My ads” tab. And now the feature goes by a new name, “Ad balance.”

By only showing your best-performing ads, you may see a minimal drop in your earnings. However, these changes may result in an overall earnings increase, since an improvement of the user experience often leads to users staying longer on your site and engaging with more of your content.

http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/13/google-graduates-show-fewer-ads-feature-out-of-adsense-labs

måndag 16 januari 2017

Can Cava Convince the World It’s Worth $200 a Bottle?

For years, the best winemakers complained about cava’s downscale fizz image. There are reasons for that. First of all, two huge companies, Freixenet and Codorníu, dominate the category, and they churn out a lot of inexpensive wine. Second, the definition of cava is pretty loose. Even though the cool Penedès region in Catalonia is cava’s home territory, sparkling wine in places as far-flung as Rioja can also use "cava" on the label.

The potential for top wines has always been there, in grapes and winemaking method. Cava is made the same way Champagne is: Winemakers bottle a basic still wine and add a yeast mixture so the wine referments in the bottle, creating bubbles. But since most top producers use one or more local grapes—macabeao, parellada, and xarel-lo, which brings body and structure—the taste and style are different from Champagne.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-13/best-cavas-from-spain-are-as-good-as-luxury-champagne-what-to-buy

Study says there are three types of selfie-takers - which are you?

Researchers at Brigham Young University performed a study on what different factors drive people to take photographs of themselves. Is it an act of egotism? A statement? A way to connect? Or something else entirely?

Communicators

Communicators share selfies as a way to connect with and open a dialogue with their followers. "They're all about two-way communication," explained co-author Maureen Elinzano.

Autobiographers

Those who fall into this category use selfies as a tool to document their lives and log significant moments and memories. The study describes autobiographers as people who want to share their photos in the public realm so that others may see them, but who aren't seeking the feedback and engagement that communicators are.

Self-Publicists

Despite the commonly held belief that selfies are symptomatic of an ego unbound, self-publicists is actually the smallest of the three groups. "[Self-publicists] are the people who love documenting their entire lives," said co-author Harper Anderson. "And in documenting and sharing their lives, they're hoping to present themselves and their stories in a positive light." Think celebrity social media stars like Taylor Swift, Gigi and Bella Hadid, and, of course, the Kardashians.

http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/culture/news/a39354/three-types-of-selfie-takers-says-study/

The new thundering herd

Jun 16th 2012

There are over 450 “crowdfunding platforms”, including four in China, up from under 100 in 2007, with Kickstarter America's largest.

Crowdfunding is well suited to industries that create intellectual property, says Hal Varian, Google's chief economist. Instead of today's approach of restricting access to content using copyright, crowdfunding facilitates an alternative, whereby the creator agrees to provide content if enough people commit themselves to paying for it. Mr Varian argues that this overcomes the free-rider problem, a particular pain for makers of online content because it can often be reproduced at zero cost.

For big companies, raising money matters less than gaining information about customers or even good PR. For many smaller firms, money matters most.

http://www.economist.com/node/21556973

Spotify, Netflix, LINE, Pandora & HBO NOW top the list of 2016’s biggest apps by revenue

According to a new year-end report from Sensor Tower detailing the top apps of 2016, streaming services dominated when it came to which apps, outside of games, pulled in the most revenue over the past year. At the top of the list is Spotify.

Throughout the year, said the report, there were more than 80 billion new app downloads in total.
The lists were compiled were compiled by app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Its findings may ultimately differ from rivals, like App Annie, because of the way these firms generate their data.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/13/spotify-netflix-line-pandora-hbo-now-top-the-list-of-2016s-biggest-apps-by-revenue/

fredag 13 januari 2017

How We Found All Of Optimizely’s Clients

For those who aren’t familiar with Optimizely, they are a leader in the growing A/B testing industry.

With one simple query we uncovered a total of 577,395 sites containing that Optimizely JavaScript library.

That’s a lot of clients! But, we wanted to dig even deeper and find all distinct Optimizely CDN URLs which contain their Optimizely client numbers. Using a regular expression search we were able to extract a list of over 12,000 URLs used on the top 1 million sites.