Julia Alexander on LinkedIn: Why the FTC's Attempt to Ban Buying Fake Followers Won't Work (2024)

Exactly how valuable is 100 million views? It's a question that I keep coming back to. Why? Because 100 million views on social platforms doesn't mean anything when we can't agree on a benchmark for what a view is.I have a general theory that people care more about top 10 lists in 2024 than they did in 2004 because no one has any idea what’s really popular anymore beyond the NFL and Taylor Swift. More than 43% of Gen Z audiences participate in a fandom that no one in their personal life has heard of, according to YouTube Insights. The report adds that about 53% of Gen Z create content for the niche fandoms they participate in. Teenagers are spending more time within worlds that people in their lives don’t know exist and they’re spending more time creating for those smaller worlds. I was thinking about the importance of these rankings and measurement systems after seeing aRolling Stonereportthat suggested Donald Trump was worried about Kamala Harris’ TV ratings at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. He had good reason: the DNC beat out the RNC each of the major nights by a double figure percentage, with Harris’ speech drawing an audience 22% larger than Trump’s according to Nielsen’s next-day figures.The ego of a former president aside, Trump’s concern tickled me for a few reasons. Core amongst them is that he has spent the last many months pivoting away from traditional television to focus on YouTube podcasters (Theo Von, Logan Paul), Twitch streamers (Adin Ross), and billionaires (Elon Musk on X). The president who won his candidacy on Twitter seemed to embrace that world even more this time around, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his first obsession: TV. Trump understands the importance of meeting his base where they are, but his concern highlights the staying power of third-party validation when it comes to measuring the media we consume. Don’t get me wrong, I’msurehewillboast about his YouTube and X numbers, but his concern over TV ratings restates an unchanged truth: social video metrics are mostly meaningless because there’s no systemic benchmark to signify and validate success the way there currently is in music and TV. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X all define a “view” differently. A view on YouTube consists of at least 30 seconds watched. Three seconds is considered a view on Instagram compared to one second for TikTok. X is my favorite: a view is two seconds of a video watched when the video takes up half the screen. Let me paint that picture for you even more. If you’re scrolling through X and there’s a video playing above a tweet you take a second to read — even if you’re not playing the video above and so long as it takes up half the screen — it’s a view. Even digital creators who spend their time hyperfixating on these metrics think it’s hilarious. What isactuallypopular?My latest on defining the value of a view in a decentralized, fragmented space in the latest Posting Nexus

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Almost everything you interact with is designed to interrupt your day. This is what the battle for attention boils down to: how long can someone or something interrupt you? My most recent Screen Time shows Instagram as my most used app, followed by theNew York Times, X, Messages, Netflix, Spotify, and Gmail. All of these little digital breadcrumbs tell me something interesting about what was able to interrupt my day for an average of five hours and 35 minutes. I sleep for eight hours, I work for eight hours, and more than 65% of the remaining eight hours is spent on unintentional and habitual interruptions. Even when you’re not being interrupted (push notification from TikTok), you’re seeking out interruption (purposely seeking out TikTok). How does that alter how we respond to interruptions throughout the day and, more to the point, how does that alter how companies design our days? Engagement boosts within apps by 88% when push notifications are deployed, and returning users increases by 65%,according to a 2023 Invesp study. Android developers have started to see stronger conversion rates via push notifications compared to Apple developers, even though Apple commands about 58% of the U.S. mobile market, according to data firm MoEngage. Media and entertainment see stronger conversion from personalized push notifications (7.8% versus 7% in Q3 2023) compared to eCommerce, which saw an increase in broader theme push notifications (7.5% compared to 5.7%), according to eMarketer. The average person in the U.S. receives close to 50 push notifications per day, according to Business of Apps. That’s an increase of 284% compared to 2015. We used to seek out content. Now content seeks us out. This is defined by the digital interruptions in our life. Despite this, however, every data point we have suggests that younger generations are revolting against the intrusive reality. People have pushed back against the unneeded intrusiveness practically since push notifications started appearing on phones back in 2010 and 2011. Nearly 80% of Millennials in a 2019 study suggested they’d delete an app because of too many annoying push notifications. Gen Z is the “Do Not Disturb” generation, leaving their devices in focus mode to forcibly silence their digital appendage. My favorite slow-moving-and-then-suddenly-all-at-once development is how this has changed how we control the attention we give. If we can’t control the digital interruptions in our life, we physically avoid them.The Onion is releasing a physical newspaper. Physical book sales are up. Vinyl records continue to see increased market share. Physical media won't replace digital en masse, but I make a case in my latest blog for a strategic return to physical media, focusing on intimately small communities to continue rewarding identity and feed the pressure of "posing and posting" in a digital-connection first age.

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Some kind words — and insightful points — from Khalil on my IPA Matrix. I so appreciate these kinds of posts, especially when trying to launch a new "thing" like Posting Nexus.The most recent Posting Nexus blog gets to the heart of that attention giveth and attention received transaction that's so inherent to every strategy today, as seen through the IPA matrix.https://lnkd.in/e3DFGJCh

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There’s aWSJ storythat occasionally makes its way around again. People just aren’t “posting” as much. Thepiecethrows out a couple of quick stats alongside random quotes to reiterate its thesis — 61% of Americans are more selective of what they choose to post on social media (Morning Consult, 2023); more than half of Americans argue social media has declined over the last five years (Gallut). None of this is new to any of us who spend time online. Social media is more combative, it’s more consequential, and it’s less fulfilling. The issue with posting is that the incentives of major connector platforms like X and Instagram are at odds with the needs of most people. Social media companies benefit from scale. The more information that is fed into systems, the more data is collected, and the more “personalized” it will theoretically feel. But humans don’t want to “scale.” The problem is that apps like Instagram are split into two separate platforms for two separate groups of people: a social connector and an entertainment media center. The goal is to balance incentive enough for the latter to ensure there is enough fodder for the former. How do you encourage people to post while expanding the reach of their circle? You lean away from the social component and toward the media side. Friends morph into audiences. We open apps like Instagram more and more like we do YouTube: Unconsciously, repetitively, for longer periods of time. We may not even recognize many of the people we see, and we think of our time on these apps as a form of wasting time on the internet (that is, leisure) rather than connecting with people in our own lives. We post less to consume more. The fundamental question for executives is does less public-facing posting really matter to their bottom line, and do advertisers only care that Meta continues to increase inventory of content?The answer so far appears to be no. More than 72% of people who use Facebook do so to keep up with friends and family, compared to the 50% of people who use it for entertainment, according to an April report from digital research group GWI. Comparatively, nearly 65% of people use Instagram for entertainment, and thelargest percentage shareof time spent on Instagram is to share photos or videos. That signifies a stronger ratio of posting to consuming versus X (62% of people use it to keep up with news versus 28% of people who post), Reddit (33% of people looking for entertaining content versus 13% of people who post), and even TikTok (80% of people looking for entertainment versus 50% of people who post). The problem is that the reward system has backfired. There aren’t as many opportunities within one solitary platform as fragmentation continues. Attention now leads to hate. Off-platform opportunities aren’t given; they’re taken away. The internet has started to get smaller as people contend with reclaiming some of the control they’ve lost. But how do you do that? More at the link below.

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Some new quick thoughts from me on the shift in value exchange at theaters, and why you're seeing the best DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE online, no matter whether you want to or not. Movies beckon different tradeoffs today. Seeing the movie isn’t enough reward to justify the cost. Social capital used to mean time given to friends in physical spaces where friendship was solidified. It now means attention given to me that can be used to grow personal social followings. The reward of going to see a movie that will be available on a streaming service in a few months, if not on a pirated platform a couple of days later, needs to extend to areas where value is placed — social media. The reward for attention given is attention received. Exhibitors have constantly reimagined themselves as the incentive to get people out of the house and to the movies changed. Arcades were put in the foyer for teenagers who wanted a place to hang out but didn’t particularly want to watch anything.People came to watch something with a community of like-minded individuals. Now the individual comes first as the community experience exists to serve their needs outside the theater. Technology didn’t itself change the culture around theatergoing, but it is responsible for what it enabled over the last many years. If we break it down even further, incentivization is belonging, and belonging in 2024 is a combination of short lived physical events that create a long tail social currency. Barbenheimer was turned into a mini, short lived event that encouraged going to see the moviein order topartake in the phenomena through the subsequent act of posting photos and videos. The viewing experience is secondary to the experience of participating in a larger online trend. If a 23-year-old woman (a demographic that made up more than 60% ofBarbie’s opening weekend audience) spendsenergyon creating the perfect outfit,buystickets, and spendshoursat a theater with the endgame being the online participation that occurs after, the perceived value of that originalcost, energy, and attentionrequiredrises. Think of fandom participation as a hierarchy. The royal we is replaced by the royal me. How does this input (energy, time, and cost) and output (attention, and acceptance) benefit me long-term? If I post a video of being at a Taylor Swift concert, and watch that follower count skyrocket overnight, how does that incentivize my future actions to further participate? And how does that compare to Instagramming a screenshot of a Swift song I’m listening to on Spotify? Both are acts of using fandom to communicate identity, but the former is defined by some level of scarcity, dedication, and action. The latter is defined by passivity. How does my own social growth affect what fandom activities I choose to participate in and which ones I don’t? For more, here's the latest in ~my blog~https://lnkd.in/eWUJUyWw

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Moving into a new phase of my career is exciting, but it doesn't mean I'm ready to give up publicly writing on the internet. Just yet, anyhow. So I'm launching a blog-of-sorts. Posting Nexus is about what the concept of attention really means in a maturing “attention economy.” Dissecting that a little further, it boils down to these two questions: WHY do we do anything on the internet, and HOW does that impact what we do away from the internet? I’ve spent some time trying to come up with a working model to answer the question and, while I’m nowhere close to any real answer, I have devised a system to better guide my approach. I call it the IPA Matrix. Think of it as a triple Venn Diagram with the bubbles representing Identity, Platforms, and Attention. Identity = values and interestsPlatforms = connection and opportunityAttention = validation and acceptance At the center of the IPA Matrix is one word: incentive. If incentive is the emotional prerequisite for action, then action in our digital lives is content. We are presented with incentives every single day. Little signals sending synapses to our brains all in an effort to get us to do something. This isn’t a new structure. The same philosophies and formulas existed well before the internet. Magazine (platform) editors picked the most attractive people to help sell magazines to teenagers around the world, encouraging the shaping of their identities that guaranteed acceptance and attention for the person this whole strategy is designed around — you. There's a visual representation below. What is wholly unparalleled and unprecedented is the scale and speed at which it now happens. Conglomerates use more social psychology to incentivize action, and our actions further incentivize the tools we end up using to communicate with the world, how we spend our leisure time, how we build careers and families, and even how we vote. The nexus of posting is easy to understand. We post so we’re seen. We post so we’re accepted. We post so we connect. And, ultimately, we post because if we don’t then who are we to a world that radically rewards posters? Dating apps, LinkedIn job posts, funny tweets, baby photos on Instagram, or recipes on a cuisine subreddit. Interaction is breathing. Every action we take online exists at the nexus of several layers of psychological and strategic forethought centered on your needs (identity), how you achieve those needs (platforms), and how those needs are met (attention). It’s a humongous topic but there are a million tendrils to pull on. So who is this blog for? It’s for anyone who wants to spend more time thinking about why we do any of what we do. What does that mean for thinking about how we build the shared world we want to exist in together? The internet can be a better place, but first we have to acknowledge that it starts with us and how we are designed to act on platforms we know very little about. https://lnkd.in/eQKY8PwT

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I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Director — Strategy and Insights, Editorial at The Walt Disney Company!

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As this was announced in last night's What I'm Hearing+, I thought I'd share the news with LinkedIn, too. After nearly three incredible years with Parrot Analytics, and nearly two years with Puck News, I'm stepping back from both roles. What marks the end of one era will, hopefully, represent the beginning of a new one. I'm moving into a full time role at a major streaming company, combining all of my interests — strategy, data, insights, and editorial — into a unique, first of its kind role. I'm incredibly excited about it, and promise to share more details when I'm able. If you'll allow me a moment of sincerity, I wanted to use this moment to thank three people in particular: Wared Seger, Samuel Stadler, and Alejandro Rojas. Parrot took a chance on me when I was first introduced to Wared from a person I am so proud to call a friend, and incredibly honored and lucky to call a mentor, Matthew Ball. Wared and I spent more than an hour and a half talking about the attention economy, the state of Hollywood (mid-pandemic, pre-strike), how people's behaviors were constantly changing, the state of technology, and the impact of all of these things on the ability to build new businesses and the side effect on our collective psyche. Through Wared, I was given the rare freedom to explore these ideas through writing, through client work, and through research. Wared continuously reminded me not to accept the first answer that came about and to continuously dig deeper. In a very short time frame, he became a second mentor to me, something that is so rare and something that I am so grateful to have received. But this Parrot journey would be for nought without mentioning Samuel Stadler, whose outstanding leadership skills, empathetic management capabilities, and relentless optimism are the secret sauce to Parrot Analytics. Samuel represents everything that Parrot Analytics is, and I know that it'll be difficult to ever find a leader with his unique ability to not just lead, but listen, reflect, and act. And last but certainly not least, Alejandro Rojas. My New York bestie. My confidant. The smartest man I've ever worked alongside bar none. It's not often you find someone whose brain complements yours, but Ale really did become my other half at Parrot. He is exceptionally kind for someone as brilliant as he is, and exceptionally patient for someone as busy as he is. We became A-Squared at Parrot, and I'll miss his ingenuity the most. The thing about Parrot is that it really is a special place full of uniquely talented people and ambitious problem solvers. They're also just, plainly speaking, so insanely fun. The best memories I have are with Monica Trujillo-Jamison, Lisa P., Amit Devani, Wade Payson-Denney, Tara Quinn, Renee Engelhardt, Brandon Katz and so so many more that I can't fit here. I am so honored to have contributed anything of worth to Parrot, and I can't wait to cheer the team from the sidelines.

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I've seen more than a few comparisons between ESPN and Netflix when it comes to why the National Football League (NFL) would want to go with the streaming giant. The analyses about the NFL needs are strong, but there's one glaring issue with this comparison point: it's apples to zucchinis. To say Netflix has a larger reach (83M subs) than ESPN (~73 million) is to imply that this is a conversation about domestic distribution, domestic audience penetration, and domestic reach. Far from it. The four key words for this NFL-Netflix deal are global, accessible, and unified product. Obviously, the NFL has long-since supplanted baseball to become America’s national pastime. In 2023, the NFL was responsible for 93 of the top 100 telecasts; the NFL averages about 18M viewers per game during the regular season—or about 5.5x as many as the Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL),combined; and the NFL’s most recent rights’ negotiation netted$110 billionover 10 years, which still arguablyundervaluesthe final fixture of American entertainment monoculture. Things are different, however, outside the U.S. Soccer, cricket, hockey, tennis, and volleyball have larger global fan bases when looking at per-capita statistics. The NBA has a stronger presence in international territories. To put things into perspective, licensed NFL merchandise brings in roughly $3B a year, according toSports Business Journal—an eye-popping figure until you consider that the top 20 European soccer clubs’ commercial (non-match day, non-media) revenues hit roughly $5.6B in 2023, according to Deloitte. The NFL’s decision to play games in England, Germany, and Brazil this year may help create activity in those markets, but as of now, there’s no substantial business outside the U.S. This is where I'll note that there's a much larger conversation about the necessity of youth sports particiapation to increase media adoption which is much harder outside the U.S. and is slowing in the U.S., but that's for another column.So what about Netflix? Arguably, Netflix is the NFL of its own domain. The company is the market leader in subscriber count (270 million), free cash flow ($6 billion), quarterly revenue ($9.4 billion this quarter), and churn rate (hovering at 2 percent). Netflix, more than any other service,isTV, and has all the advantages its competitors covet—except, crucially, for advertising and sports rights, the lifeblood of television. For Netflix, figuring out sports and advertising isn’t optional anymore, it’s imperative.And what better way to sell advertisers on Netflix than finding programming where advertising is built in and the limited gross shares of new net adds to the ad-tier — 40 percent in Q1, putting it in sixth place domestically — isn't part of the conversation. Keep this in mind every time you read analyses comparing Netflix’s deal with the NFL to ESPN’s or Amazon's. For more, my latest in Puck

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