Google And Facebook Find Common Ground; IBM Moves Toward Digital

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The Power Index

Last Friday, Facebook started allowing Google to crawl and index across its mobile app. The partnership, though narrow, is notable because of how rarely the two alpha competitors from the web and app world find common cause. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google searches can now display relevant Facebook profile info and will deep link users directly to the app. Other app-discovery startups have tried to step into the vacuum Google leaves in the space, and an early partnership with Facebook (on top of existing integrations with Twitter) could quash what little room there is for competition. Read it.

Learning The New Playbook

IBM is one of the world’s corporate giants, with 370,000 employees and a market cap over $180 billion, but there are sharp, swerving changes underway for the tech titan. The company has invested in new technology that is “design-focused” (which is not actually focused on design, but on products built to fit the end user). To stem the tide of business toward digital and away from legacy services, NYT reporter Steve Lohr says IBM is pushing internally to “talk a lot about “iteration cycles,” “lateral thinking,” “user journeys” and “empathy maps.” More.

The Greater Good

Google is closer to having its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) – an answer to Facebook’s Instant Articles – in fighting shape. The company is framing the product as a kind of digital community service, with publishers eagerly on board. But (anonymous) publishers have their concerns, including paywall gating and analytics – as Google strips tags. “The AMP format in effect makes Google the gatekeeper on ad formats and analytics scripts,” writes Capital NY’s Ken Doctor. “This will allow it to prevent heavy ads and intrusive scripts from being deployed on mobile, both of which are vital if the rise of ad blockers is to be stemmed.” Read more.

Traditional CTV?

According to new data from eMarketer, IP-connected TV may end up looking a lot like…linear TV. Primetime accounted for 22% of CTV’s daily ad requests in Q2 2015, according to Tremor Video. To be fair, that figure is vendor-specific, but Nielsen data also found share of US audiences for CTV peaked during primetime. Translation? CTV resembles consumption patterns of traditional broadcast TV in contrast to a channel like mobile where consumption is more dispersed. More.

But Wait, There’s More!