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WaPo Unleashes Bot Army 04/27/2017

No surprise The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is betting big on bots, including automated chat programs  to interact with readers and facilitate internal communications. That's according to WaPo director of product Joey Marburger, who showcased some of the more novel ones in a presentation to the International Symposium of Online Journalism in Austin. One bot, simply titled “Feels,” bowed 30 days before the 2016 presidential election and invited the user to answer a simple question: “How do you feel about the election?” Users could respond by selecting one from a number of emojis, with the ultimate goal of checking in to register their feelings once a day for 30 days straight. The results were displayed in charts every morning.

(via WaPo Unleashes Bot Army 04/27/2017)

[georgewire]

WaPo Unleashes Bot Army

No surprise The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is betting big on bots, including automated chat programs  to interact with readers and facilitate internal communications. That's according to WaPo director of product Joey Marburger, who showcased some of the more novel ones in a presentation to the International Symposium of Online Journalism in Austin. One bot, simply titled “Feels,” bowed 30 days before the 2016 presidential election and invited the user to answer a simple question: “How do you feel about the election?” Users could respond by selecting one from a number of emojis, with the ultimate goal of checking in to register their feelings once a day for 30 days straight. The results were displayed in charts every morning.

[georgewire]

WPP warns of dangerous price cutting by ad agencies

The advertising industry may be in “danger of losing the plot” as growing competition forces the big global agencies to slash prices to retain and win new business, WPP has warned. The warning came as the world’s biggest advertising group reported 3.6 per cent growth in revenues to £3.5bn in the first three months of 2017. Net like-for-like sales — a key measure for the industry — were up by 0.8 per cent, but this was slightly below analysts’ expectations.  Shares fell 2 per cent in early trading to £16.84 after WPP reiterated its forecast that revenues would grow just 2 per cent this year. The shares dropped sharply last month after it said a loss of key clients and global economic uncertainty would weigh on growth at its full-year results.

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Amazon is to create 1,200 new permanent jobs as it opens a new warehouse in Warrington where staff will work alongside the online retail giant’s robots. The US group said the new fulfilment centre, part of a significant expansion across the UK, will take its workforce in Britain to 24,000 by the end of this year. Amazon will be hiring for a range of new roles including operations managers, engineers, human resources and IT specialists. The Warrington site will be one of two, along with Tilbury, due to open this autumn, which will be equipped with advanced Amazon robotics technology.

Amazon creates 1,200 jobs at warehouse equipped with advanced robotics | Technology | The Guardian

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Bob Wootton: How brands lost confidence in media buying – Marketing Week

Media agency consolidation and margin pressure from procurement departments mean kickbacks take precedence over clients’ interests, while online media buying still isn’t transparent enough, says Bob Wootton, principal of Deconstruction Consulting and former ISBA director.

(via Bob Wootton: How brands lost confidence in media buying – Marketing Week)

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You can now play the original Tomb Raider in your browser | TechRadar

When they weren’t able to lay their hands on Square Enix’s original source code for Tomb Raider, a group of hobbyist developers decided to embark on an ambitious project to recreate the early Lara Croft games from scratch. The result is OpenTomb, a browser-based open-source recreation of the original Tomb Raider engine and, after four years, the first playable level is complete, and you can give it a go yourself on Windows, Mac or Linux PCs. And it’s even been reported that the frame rate is higher than the original, thanks to the brand-new web-friendly code.

(via You can now play the original Tomb Raider in your browser | TechRadar)

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Myths of programmatic advertising debunked - Digiday

Programmatic advertising has run into its fair share of problems, from bad ad placement to data quality to slow-loading web pages. At Digiday’s Programmatic Summit in Dublin, Ireland, this week, we gathered over 100 programmatic experts from marketing and publishing to discuss and debunk some of the myths around programmatic. Here’s what we learned on Day One.

(via Myths of programmatic advertising debunked - Digiday)

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How Ranker uses visitors' votes to find readers on Facebook - Digiday

Most publishers that share a story about George Clooney on Facebook would know to target the segment of its audience that’s interested in George Clooney. Fewer would consider targeting the post at people who are interested in Conway Twitty or Cristiano Ronaldo, though.

(via How Ranker uses visitors' votes to find readers on Facebook - Digiday)