Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

One of my biggest pet peeves in the digital media space is a lack of understanding about metrics. For example, impressions can — but don’t always — equate to campaign success. And defining engagement as anything from a click to a 3-second video view can be easily misleading. That’s why I was pleased to see that the Media Ratings Council is inching closer toward creating standards around how marketers measure the success of video content.

In Other News …

• This time last year, everyone was talking about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, which severely impacted email marketing. One year later, Digiday takes a deep dive into the impact of the regulations and their effect on advertising revenue.
• Have you ever tried to make a mundane purchase on Amazon (pet food, cleaning products, or something else) and been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options? The Atlantic dives into the fatigue and anxiety that comes with having over 200,000 choices of clothing hangers.
• What is Facebook’s role in regulating fake videos that spread online? This question arose after a heavily doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was shared by President Trump, spiking the popularity of the video on Facebook.
• In other Facebook news, people are spending less and less time on the site. According to a study by eMarketer, people spend 3 minutes less on Facebook per day than they did in 2017, while they spend 2 more minutes on Instagram.
• Today in “this will not end well” news, Amazon has filed for a patent that asks to capture audio before trigger words (e.g., Alexa) from its smart home devices.
• Pride Month is almost here! Instagram is joining the celebration by adding a new color ring to its Stories in June that will appear when you use Pride-related hashtags.

Fun Resources

• Starting a new Instagram account in 2019? Get ideas for building an audience — like going live, using Stories and responding to comments — from Neil Patel.
• Need some summer reading recs? The Washington Post’s tech reporters and editors have you covered.

Finally …

Why exactly do I listen to two separate podcasts about RuPaul’s Drag Race? I’m just part of the trend! If you are feeling a little lost in the 700,000+ podcasts available right now, read about the state of the podcast “ecosystem” in 2019.