GDPR Did Not Hold Back The Digital Marketing Tide

A lot was said about GDPR before it became law. Amid all the calls of catastrophe or “business as usual” from commentators, there was almost an unspoken agreement that the law on processing personal information would be great for above-the-line channels.

However, it’s interesting to see that with the latest figures from AA/Warc for third-quarter 2018 — the first full quarter of GDPR applying — the prediction seems way off the mark, other than in radio and outdoor. As ever, the big winner is online advertising, which grew 12% compared to the third quarter of the year before. Mobile in particular and yet again is the big star, leaping 23%.

Print is, once again, a loser. Clearly, GDPR did not send advertisers competing for above-the-line pages in the national media, which dropped 7% between third-quarter 2017 and third-quarter 2018. Local media was also down, by 5.3%.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was direct mail. It dropped a massive 14% in third-quarter 2018. The first full quarter that GDPR applied, advertisers decided to spend less on letters.

I’m assuming that door drops, aka “junk mail,” is included in this figure? It’s a fair assumption because Royal Mail had predicted that door drops would soar after GDPR because they do not feature an address and, if they do feature part of an address, they are typically marked for ‘the occupier’ or “the bill payer.”

Today’s Royal Mail figures show letter volumes were down 8% and revenue from letters fell 6% in the nine months up to December 2018. They are expecting the decline to continue, and Sky News reveals GDPR is being blamed alongside uncertainty around Brexit.

So there is a question mark around the decline occurring in addressed or non-addressed mail, but for a brand that was bold in predicting the benefits of the doormat over the inbox before May, it’s quite a reversal of fortune.

What actually happened was that internet marketing increased 12% in the same first quarter when GDPR applied fully.

Perhaps the most alarming figure is that not even GDPR could help television to avoid flatlining. It was down just 0.1% in third-quarter 2018. This was one of the channels tipped to be a massive winner from companies that were concerned about email lists getting smaller and question marks hanging over how digital display is traded under new privacy rules.

The same goes for cinema. It was supposed to thrive under tighter privacy rules, but it actually declined 8% in the third quarter of last year.

Elsewhere, it was good news for radio — up 5% — and outdoor, which was up 7%. These channels are enjoying a digital renaissance which appears to have played well with anyone seeking to go above the line while the dust from GDPR settled.

With these two channels that were riding a digital wave aside, the above-the-line boost that many predicted after GDPR just didn’t happen. TV was still flatlining in the first quarter of GDPR fully applied; print was down, as usual; and direct mail plummeted alongside — rather surprisingly — cinema.

It is possible that digital advertising, where the big budget growth is still occurring, may have some bad GDPR news, should it turn out that programmatic trading is a little too murky for regulators or the duopoly is taken to task over the post GDPR positions, as has happened with CNIL’s 50m Euro Google fine.

However, right here and now we can say that GDPR raised serious question marks about whether money would continue to flow at faster rates into digital display. The outcome was that it did.

There were suggestions that tv, cinema and direct mail would prosper, but they did not.

The predictions were not true. GDPR has not held back the digital marketing tide.

Why Britbox Will Be A Brit Flop

by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Are Brits too miserable to see what we have — are we doomed to forever be the ones in the room saying “the only problem with that” or “the trouble is”? It’s a pertinent question as plans to launch Britbox in the second half of the year surfaced yesterday.

BBC and ITV are coming together to pool data in what you might call a British version of Netflix. No sooner had the announcement been made then British media types were online questioning what on earth the joined-up service would offer to persuade people to part with an expected GBP5 per-month subscription fee?

It’s actually a valid question the more you think about it. The trouble with the BBC is that we all feel we own the content already because our licence fee has paid for it.

It’s a pretty tough sell, then, to ask Brits to pay a fiver a month for what they feel they should rightfully have free access to via the BBC iPlayer.

The worm on the end of the hook will be ITV content. A cynic might point out people can get that already for free via the ITV Hub. Mind you, when I just searched on the hub, I couldn’t find any episodes of “Downton Abbey” currently available.

This brings up another “the only problem with that” moment. Hasn’t the balance of power swung toward production companies that hold back on streaming rights so they can make money out of physical box-set deals?

Maybe they could be persuaded to sell streaming rights, but then again, there are the two giants of Netflix and Amazon Prime to bid against here.

I don’t want to come across as a media snob but I’d be hard-pressed to think of many ITV shows I like enough to bother seeking out online or through a smart television.

And just to raise another “the only problem with that is” point — won’t everything current on a joined-up service have already been shown on the television recently? It’s not like Netflix, where a show is exclusive — the only way you’re going to find out what happens next is “Ozark” is to keep on subscribing and wait for Season Three.

Britbox will have to get over the problem it doesn’t have in America of people just watching the shows for free and recording them to their set-top box.

Sorry to raise another “the only problem,” but don’t the BBC and ITV run endless repeats of old material they have access to already on their own channels as well, for the BBC, Dave and W. OK — it’s not on demand, but the content the pair have to offer has been seen many, many times.

There may be some old gems in there that people would love enough to pay for, but if the channels have the rights already to stream them, aren’t they already streaming them? And for free?

Which brings us to the joined-up service piece. A single app or service is going to be a lot easier to search through than loading two apps and typing in what you are looking for. Again, “the only problem with that” is that many households already have Sky.

All they need to do is type in, or say out loud, a programme name and they are instantly offered the chance to click on the show, regardless of which streaming app it comes from.

Sky is an interesting case because it is now integrated with Netflix, making searching across the two platforms far easier. Isn’t this essentially what Britbox is? Couldn’t it not just have been two apps that let you search through both at the same time, without the need to see if people could be bothered to spend a fiver a month for the privilege?

I would love British programming to stand up and take on Netflix, but “the only problem with that” is many producers withhold streaming rights and so a hit show doesn’t always mean you’ll have something to add to the streaming catalogue.

Every show on the new service will presumably already have been televised. Those old gems are likely to have been shown many times on repeat on multiple channels.

It is going to be a very tough sell to convince people to pay a fiver just for the ease of searching in one app when they get free access to content at the moment. Let’s not forget, if you’re talking about going ad-free as a bonus for paying a subscription, there is no advertising on the BBC anyway.

It’s hard to see how this is going to stack up and be a commercial success. I would love it to be, but the only problem with that is that it seems highly unlikely.

Tommy Deleted, Wave Of ‘Martyr’ Hate Speech Will Need Tackling Now

• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, Yesterday

There cannot be a sensible person in adland — no, make that the UK — who won’t be rejoicing the decision from Facebook to ban Tommy Robinson.

The site has come in for constant criticism for not doing enough to police hate speech as well as for not acting quickly enough on harmful content such as self-harm videos, which are dangerous for the vulnerable. In fact, a government report yesterday linked the internet with one in four teen suicides, with the report author claiming the tech giants do not appear unduly bothered by the harm their inaction could be causing. But yesterday, the right side won. Let’s be very clear. Tommy Robinson — or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, to give him his real name — stands accused of repeated hate speech.

Anyone with half a brain would know this is true, but it took Facebook some time to investigate his posts and find the former English Defence League founder guilty of “organised hate.”

Now he is banned from Facebook and Instagram and the BBC has been told he won’t be allowed back on.

The Facebook news comes just a couple of days after he clearly tried to intimidate the corporation by organising a protest outside its Salford headquarters with a large screen showing his film “Panodrama.” The National Union of Journalists denounced the demonstration as nothing more than an attempt to intimidate BBC journalists.

I’m not going to repeat the vile abuse that pours out of Tommy Robinson’s posts. You can read some of it on the BBC story about his removal from Facebook and Instagram here.

Remember, quite apart from contempt of court hearings, this is the guy who received a prison sentence for entering the US on a false passport to get around a previous drugs conviction. It’s also the same guy who pleaded guilty to fraud charges. He has also been convicted of football hooliganism and assault.

Unfortunately, he has a strong following in social media. I got unwittingly involved in a Facebook row when his supporters tried to post racist slurs on a local community site. It had nothing to do with our area, but was the usual stuff about people from another background getting away with murder and your kids will be next. It’s a common theme.

Interestingly, I noticed the people who were slating me for rebutting their claims and asking for a moderator to remove their comments were all unemployed or low-skilled workers. They all made a point of featuring biographies that supported Tommy Robinson and made a habit of spreading his propaganda.

We all want free speech — but not at the cost of peaceful debate. That is why Facebook will need to do more. It cannot do anything about Tommy being seen as a martyr now. Supporters will harp on about him being censored by the media he loves to criticise. That is inevitable and ultimately, he can blog on the right-wing media now, where he belongs — far away from mainstream acceptability.

No — what Facebook will need to do now is tackle the endless tirade of memes and posters his supporters will put up and will now put up with greater frequency, given the deletion of his accounts.

There will be a wave of angry posts, which will inevitably include hate speech and calls to violence. Facebook deserves a pat on the back for finally deleting Tommy’s accounts, but I fear the work has just begun on dealing with the hate speech his Islamophobic machine spews out.