#app advertising

[blogpublication]

How to Use Content Marketing to Convert Website Traffic into Leads

In today’s digital age, generating website traffic is essential for businesses, but traffic alone does not guarantee success. The real value comes when visitors are converted into leads—potential customers who express interest in your product or service. One of the most effective strategies to achieve this is content marketing. By providing valuable, engaging content, businesses can nurture relationships with their audience, build trust, and ultimately encourage them to take action.

Know about your audience

Before diving into content creation, it’s crucial to understand who your audience is and what they are looking for. Conducting audience research will help you determine their needs, pain points, and preferences. Tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer feedback can provide valuable data on your target demographic.

Segment them - Create buyer personas to represent different segments of your audience. This helps tailor your content to specific groups, making it more relevant.

Identify their stage in the buyer’s journey - Visitors might be at different stages of awareness—some may be discovering your product for the first time, while others are ready to purchase. Cater your content to each stage.

Create high-quality, targeted content

The foundation of successful content marketing is creating high-quality content that addresses your audience’s needs. Here’s how you can do that:

Blog posts and articles

Blogging is a core element of content marketing. Create blog posts that solve problems, offer expert insights, or provide valuable information related to your product or industry. Blog posts are especially effective at driving organic traffic through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Make sure your posts:

Address common questions or concerns your audience has.

Use keywords strategically to increase search engine visibility.

Include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that prompt readers to subscribe, download a guide, or request more information.

Ebooks and whitepapers

For visitors in the consideration stage, ebooks and whitepapers can provide in-depth information. These long-form content pieces allow you to offer more detailed solutions to your audience’s problems. Because these resources take more effort to create, they can be gated behind a lead capture form, allowing you to collect contact information before the visitor downloads the content.

Videos and webinars

Video content is engaging and highly shareable, making it an excellent tool for lead generation. Explainer videos, tutorials, or customer testimonials can showcase your expertise and provide valuable insights. Hosting a webinar also allows you to offer expert knowledge on a specific topic, engage with potential leads directly, and collect leads through registration.

Infographics

Infographics are visually appealing, easy-to-digest content that can be used to break down complex information into manageable chunks. Infographics can attract a broad audience, increase social shares, and serve as a top-of-funnel content piece to draw visitors in.

Optimize content for lead generation

Creating valuable content is important, but if it doesn’t guide visitors toward a conversion, its impact will be limited. Here’s how to optimize your content for lead generation:

Include strong CTAs

Every piece of content you create should have a clear CTA. Whether it’s encouraging users to subscribe to your newsletter, download a resource, or sign up for a free trial, a CTA provides a direct path for visitors to become leads. Position CTAs strategically:

Within blog posts (mid-way or at the end).

As pop-ups or slide-ins.

In the sidebar or footer of your website.

Make sure the CTA aligns with the content and provides relevant value to the reader.

Use lead magnets

A lead magnet is an incentive you offer to potential leads in exchange for their contact information. This could be a free ebook, checklist, template, or exclusive webinar access. Lead magnets are effective because they provide immediate value to the visitor while allowing you to gather email addresses for future communication.

Ensure that your lead magnets are:

Relevant to the content the visitor is already engaging with.

High-quality and worth the exchange of information.

Easy to access, with minimal form fields for download.

Build effective landing pages

When a visitor clicks on your CTA, they should be taken to a landing page specifically designed to convert them. A landing page is a standalone page that focuses on a single offer and encourages visitors to take action. To build an effective landing page:

Keep the design clean and focused.

Clearly explain the value of your offer.

Minimize distractions (no navigation bars, side links, etc.).

Use concise, benefit-driven copy.

Include a simple form that collects only the necessary information.

Nurture leads through email marketing

Once a visitor has converted into a lead, your job isn’t done. The next step is to nurture them through email marketing. Automated email sequences, also known as drip campaigns, allow you to engage with leads over time, providing additional value and keeping your brand on top of your mind.

Segment your email list

Not all leads are the same. Some may be interested in learning more about your product, while others are further from making a decision. By segmenting your email list based on behavior, engagement, or demographics, you can send personalized content that resonates with each lead.

Offer additional resources

Continue providing value by sending additional content related to the lead’s interest. If they downloaded an ebook on a specific topic, follow up with blog posts, case studies, or customer stories that dive deeper into the subject.

Include CTAs in emails

Like your content, your emails should have clear CTAs. Whether you’re driving leads back to your website, offering a demo, or promoting a product, make sure your CTAs encourage action and are easy to spot.

Leverage social media to promote content

Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to distribute your content and drive more traffic to your website. By sharing blog posts, videos, and other content on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, you can reach a wider audience and attract more visitors.

Engage with your audience

Social media is more than just a broadcasting tool—it’s an opportunity to interact with your audience. Engage with followers by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions. The more engaged your audience is, the more likely they are to visit your website and convert into leads.

Use paid social media advertising

If you want to amplify your reach, consider using paid social media ads to promote your content. Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn offer advanced targeting options, allowing you to show your content to people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

Measure and refine your content strategy

Finally, it’s essential to track your results and adjust your content strategy as needed. Use tools like Google Analytics or marketing automation platforms to monitor how well your content is performing and whether it’s converting visitors into leads. Keep an eye on metrics like:

Bounce rate (how quickly visitors leave your site).

Conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become leads).

Time on page (how long visitors engage with your content).

By regularly reviewing these metrics, you can refine your approach, create more effective content, and continuously improve your lead generation efforts.

Content marketing is a powerful tool for converting website traffic into leads when used strategically. You can build a robust lead generation system by understanding your audience, creating valuable content, optimizing for lead generation, nurturing leads through email, and promoting content on social media. Over time, this approach will help you not only increase website traffic but also turn that traffic into long-lasting customer relationships. If you are looking for services like Turning website traffic into leads, M3 Media Digital is the best one. You can contact them by calling 973-532-6558.

[maf-ad]

App Monetization Trends in 2024: What Developers Need to Know

As the mobile app market continues to grow, 2024 presents new opportunities and challenges for developers seeking to monetize their apps. Staying ahead of trends is crucial to driving revenue without compromising user experience. Here are some key trends shaping app monetization this year:

1. Subscription Models on the Rise Subscriptions continue to dominate, offering steady revenue streams. More apps, including those outside traditional categories like media and fitness, are adopting subscription models. Developers are leveraging tiered pricing and freemium approaches to increase user retention and lifetime value.

2. In-App Purchases (IAPs) and Microtransactions In-app purchases remain a powerful monetization tool, especially for gaming apps. However, 2024 sees increased sophistication in how microtransactions are integrated. Personalization and AI-driven recommendations are helping developers offer more relevant in-app content, driving higher conversion rates.

3. Ad Personalization and Privacy Balance Ads remain a top choice for free apps, but the balance between personalization and privacy is critical. With ongoing changes in privacy regulations, such as GDPR and Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT), developers are adopting privacy-conscious ad targeting solutions, like contextual advertising, to maintain ad effectiveness while respecting user privacy.

4. Super Apps and Integrated Ecosystems The rise of super apps, which combine multiple services under one platform, is becoming a new monetization frontier. Developers can explore partnerships and integrations that allow for multiple revenue streams within a single app environment.

Staying agile and responsive to these trends will help developers capitalize on new opportunities while delivering value to users in an increasingly competitive landscape.

[webzininc]

Mobile Marketing: Strategies And Benefits

In today’s fast-paced digital world, mobile marketing has become a crucial tool for businesses to reach their target audience effectively. From SMS campaigns to mobile apps and location-based targeting, the opportunities are endless. In this blog post, we will explore the various strategies and benefits of mobile marketing that can help your business thrive in the competitive landscape of the modern market. So grab your smartphone and let’s dive into the world of mobile marketing!

Introduction To Mobile Marketing

Welcome to the digital era where smartphones have become an extension of our lives. Mobile devices are no longer just for communication; they have evolved into powerful tools for marketing. In this blog post, we will delve into the world of mobile marketing, exploring its importance, key benefits, top strategies, and how you can measure success in this dynamic field. Get ready to unlock the potential of reaching your target audience wherever they are – right in the palm of their hands!

Why Is Mobile Marketing Important?

In today’s digital age, mobile marketing is paramount for businesses to stay competitive. With the majority of consumers using smartphones and tablets, reaching them through mobile channels is essential. Mobile marketing allows companies to connect with their target audience in real-time, making it a powerful tool for engaging customers on the go.

Moreover, mobile devices are personal and always within reach, providing a direct line of communication between businesses and consumers. By leveraging mobile marketing strategies such as SMS campaigns or in-app advertising, companies can create personalized experiences that resonate with their audience.

Additionally, mobile marketing enables brands to gather valuable data about consumer behavior and preferences. This information can be used to tailor future campaigns and drive more targeted outreach efforts. Ultimately, embracing mobile marketing is not just important—it’s imperative for business growth in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

Key Benefits Of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing offers a plethora of benefits for businesses looking to reach and engage with their target audience in today’s digital world. One key advantage is the ability to reach customers on-the-go, anytime and anywhere. With almost everyone owning a smartphone these days, mobile marketing provides a direct channel to connect with potential customers instantly.

Another benefit is the high engagement rates that mobile marketing campaigns typically generate. By leveraging personalized messages, push notifications, and interactive content, businesses can effectively capture the attention of their audience and drive meaningful interactions. Moreover, mobile marketing allows for precise targeting based on factors like location, demographics, behavior patterns, and interests.

Furthermore, the cost-effectiveness of mobile marketing compared to traditional advertising channels makes it an attractive choice for businesses of all sizes. By optimizing strategies such as SMS campaigns or in-app advertising, companies can achieve higher ROI while maximizing their budget efficiently. Overall, embracing mobile marketing can lead to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and ultimately drive sales growth.

Understanding Your Target Audience For Mobile Marketing

Understanding your target audience for mobile marketing is crucial for success.

First, conduct thorough research to identify key characteristics of your ideal customers. This includes demographics like age, location, and interests.

Next, analyze their behavior patterns when using mobile devices. Understanding how they interact with content and make purchasing decisions on mobile can help tailor your strategies effectively.

Consider the unique needs and preferences of different segments within your target audience. Personalization is key in engaging users and driving conversions.

Utilize tools like Google Analytics to gather valuable data on user engagement with your mobile marketing efforts. This information can guide future campaigns for better results.

Incorporate feedback from customer interactions to continuously refine your approach and stay relevant in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Top Strategies For Effective Mobile Marketing

In the fast-paced world of mobile marketing, having effective strategies in place is crucial for reaching your target audience and driving engagement. One key strategy is investing in a responsive website design that ensures a seamless user experience across all devices. This creates a positive first impression and encourages visitors to explore further.

Another powerful tool is utilizing SMS and MMS campaigns to deliver personalized messages directly to users’ phones. This direct approach can help increase brand awareness and drive conversions. In-app advertising is also a great way to reach users while they are engaged with specific content, making it more likely for them to interact with your ads.

Location-based marketing takes advantage of geotargeting technology to deliver relevant offers or promotions based on a user’s physical location. By tailoring your messages based on where customers are, you can increase the chances of conversion. Integrating social media into your mobile marketing strategy allows you to engage with your audience on platforms they already frequent, boosting brand visibility and customer loyalty.

– Responsive Website Design

Responsive website design is crucial for mobile marketing success. With more people accessing the internet through their smartphones and tablets, having a site that adapts to different screen sizes is essential.

A responsive website ensures that users have a seamless experience regardless of the device they are using. It helps in reducing bounce rates and increasing user engagement, ultimately leading to higher conversions.

By incorporating responsive design elements such as flexible images and fluid grids, you can create a visually appealing site that is easy to navigate on any device. This not only enhances the user experience but also boosts your SEO rankings.

Having a mobile-friendly website is no longer just an option – it’s a necessity if you want to stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. So, make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices to effectively reach your target audience and drive results through mobile marketing efforts.

– SMS And MMS Campaigns

When it comes to mobile marketing, SMS and MMS campaigns are powerful tools that allow businesses to connect with their target audience directly on their smartphones. By leveraging the popularity of text messaging, companies can send out personalized promotions, alerts, and updates to engage customers in a more intimate way.

SMS (Short Message Service) is perfect for sending concise messages that grab attention instantly. Whether it’s a flash sale announcement or a special discount code, SMS allows businesses to reach customers wherever they are. On the other hand, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) takes things up a notch by enabling the inclusion of images, videos, and audio clips in your messages.

With high open rates and quick response times, SMS and MMS campaigns offer a direct line of communication with consumers. By crafting compelling content tailored to your audience’s preferences, you can drive engagement and conversions effectively through mobile messaging strategies.

– In-App Advertising

In-App Advertising is a powerful mobile marketing strategy that allows brands to reach their target audience while they are actively engaged with an app. By strategically placing ads within apps, businesses can increase brand awareness and drive conversions.

These ads can be in the form of banners, interstitials, or native ads seamlessly integrated into the user experience. In-App Advertising offers a non-intrusive way to connect with consumers and deliver personalized messaging based on their behavior within the app.

Moreover, this strategy enables precise targeting options, allowing advertisers to tailor their campaigns based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This level of customization leads to higher engagement rates and better ROI for businesses investing in mobile marketing.

Overall, incorporating In-App Advertising into your mobile marketing mix can significantly boost brand visibility and drive meaningful interactions with your target audience.

– Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing is a powerful strategy that allows businesses to target consumers based on their geographic location. By leveraging GPS technology, companies can deliver personalized content and promotions to potential customers in specific areas.

This type of marketing is especially effective for brick-and-mortar stores looking to drive foot traffic and increase sales. For example, a coffee shop can send out special offers to people within a certain radius, enticing them to stop by for a cup of coffee.

With the prevalence of smartphones equipped with location services, businesses have the opportunity to reach customers at exactly the right place and time. This hyper-targeted approach not only increases engagement but also enhances the overall customer experience.

By incorporating location-based marketing into their strategies, companies can create more relevant and impactful campaigns that resonate with their audience on a personal level.

– Social Media Integration

Social media integration is a crucial aspect of mobile marketing in today’s digital landscape. By seamlessly incorporating your mobile marketing efforts with social media platforms, you can amplify your brand’s reach and engagement levels.

Utilizing social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allows you to connect with your target audience on a more personal level. By sharing relevant content and promotions across these platforms, you can drive traffic to your mobile site or app.

Encouraging users to share their experiences with your brand on social media not only boosts brand awareness but also enhances credibility among potential customers. Leveraging user-generated content through hashtags and challenges can create a sense of community around your brand.

Engaging with followers through comments, likes, and direct messages builds trust and loyalty. Responding promptly to inquiries or concerns shows that you value customer feedback and are committed to providing excellent service.

Measuring Success In Mobile Marketing

Measuring success in mobile marketing is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns. One way to measure success is through tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversions, and app downloads. By analyzing these metrics, you can determine what strategies are working well and which ones need improvement.

Another important aspect of measuring success in mobile marketing is monitoring user engagement. This involves looking at metrics like time spent on site, bounce rates, and social media interactions. Understanding how users interact with your mobile content can help you optimize your campaigns for better results.

Additionally, utilizing analytics tools like Google Analytics or Appsflyer can provide valuable insights into user behavior and campaign performance. These tools allow you to track traffic sources, demographics, and conversion paths to make data-driven decisions for future mobile marketing initiatives.

Challenges And Solutions In Mobile Marketing

As with any marketing strategy, mobile marketing comes with its own set of challenges. One common challenge is ensuring that your messages are optimized for various mobile devices and screen sizes. This can be particularly tricky when trying to maintain a consistent brand image across different platforms.

Another hurdle in mobile marketing is the issue of data privacy and security. With regulations like GDPR in place, businesses must be careful about how they collect and use customer data for personalized marketing efforts.

Additionally, standing out in a crowded digital landscape can be tough. Competition for consumer attention on mobile devices is fierce, so it’s important to find creative ways to engage your target audience effectively.

Conclusion

As mobile usage continues to soar globally, the future of mobile marketing looks promising. With advancements in technology and consumer behavior evolving rapidly, businesses must stay ahead of the curve by embracing innovative strategies and personalized approaches. Mobile marketing is no longer just an option; it’s a necessity for brands looking to connect with their audience on a deeper level.

By understanding the importance of mobile marketing, leveraging its key benefits, implementing effective strategies such as responsive website design, SMS campaigns, in-app advertising, location-based targeting, and social media integration – companies can create impactful campaigns that resonate with consumers.

[arizonaconservativegal]

This is your random reminder that your local library likely has a free app (or multiple!) where you can download all kinds of goodies for free. Books, audiobooks, movies, music, television shows, magazines, the list goes on. All free and you don't even have to leave the house to get them. I have borrowed and read like 200 books the last couple years from mine and didn't pay a dime. It's awesome. Go get your library app now!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO "an illegal airline price-fixing service"; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal. I regret the error.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who benefited from a service that helps airlines set prices. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[thelailasblog]

[threelargeelefants]

I realised I don’t have any games on my phone anymore and I’m wondering if it’s age thing or a general trend so:

[gh0stcav3]

tumblr stop giving me advertisements for dating apps i am not an adult and also have a boyfriend

[variksel]

youtube ads becoming first one 5-second ad then two 5-second ads in a row or one 15-second ad then a million unskippable ads in the middle of videos instagram quietly inserting one ad in-between every 5 or 10 ig stories then 2 in-between 4 ig stories not to mention the new reel- and explore page ads. a quiet tumblr ad banner at the top of your dash then photo ads in-between posts then video ads then video ads in-between every 3 or 5 posts that play audio automatically while youre trying to read a textpost. the most popular, paid subscription, news apps adding ads between their articles, then in articles, then paywalling new articles further with a new "news +" subscription and putting ads in those as well. once every 15 tweets there being an ad, then every 5, then theres also an ad if you scroll to the replies. you cant look at tweets without logging in anymore, theres just no option for anon scrolling. facebook ai mining on instagram, facebook ai profiles hyping up ai generated photos im fucking going insane ai temu ads and gallery app ads and printer app ads and higher subscriptions while still seeing ads and i cant fucking do this anymore!!!!! its fucking shameless and worst of all its silent and nobody talks about how half the things we see anymore are fucking ads and we dont own a single thing we pay for and companies can just randomly raise their prices through the roof and nobody says anything about it

[starryeyeddreamer21]

The fact that Vox could be Santa Claus and actively chooses not to is the reason I can't fuck with him on a fundamental level

[worlds-smallest-epsilon]

listen I oppose the death penalty but if I ever find find out who made my apartment’s laundromat need an app I will end up on the fucking news

[grape-souffle]

GUYS I GOT COMMISSIONED AGAIN BY @fancybendyboi LET'S GOOO

LOVE DRAWING UR CHARACTERS

[liquidstar]

How is tumblr going to ban porn and then show me ads where two triceratops are straight up having sex

[synthaphone]

im obsessed with the snowman suit in acpcc