Demographics, platform escapology and regulation

This week in 60 seconds…

Snapchat Stories can now be shared outside of the platform, but only if they’re posted by verified users, in a role reversal that sees the little white ghost copy a feature from Instagram Stories
Speaking of which, if you fancy adding a new dimension to your Insta Stories, or just want to plaster them with flying hamburgers, you can now decorate them with moving GIFs – for business or for pleasure
Although, if you’re hoping to target women over 50, this new feature won’t be of much use given that nearly three quarters of women between 53 and 72 shun all advertising
Apparently we should all be giving social media and technology a good shunning, according to Salesforce chief Marc Benioff who says they should both be regulated… like cigarettes
Although, if we do that, we’ll never get to experience Apple’s augmented reality tool which can now detect walls and superimpose 2D images onto them in beta

A final thought…

The Elastic Generation: The Female Edit report on women’s attitudes towards advertising, featured in The Drum, stated that 91% of women over 50 wished advertisers would treat them as people and not as stereotypes. On this, it’s easy to get carried away with demographics in the age of paid media and targeting. However, be careful not to generalise or dumb down people’s individuality – the backlash can be fierce.

SHARE News

In case you missed it, this week we announced our exciting new partnership with SETHER (a blockchain social marketing platform) to improve the future of client/agency relationships. The platform allows clients to govern all engagements with agencies and suppliers using a fixed automated smart contract. If you want to learn how the platform could help you as a client, check out our press release on all things SHARE x SETHER right here.

Data Dose

Ageism in advertising is also closely related to gender stereotypes prevalent in the industry, with women still being significantly more likely to be portrayed as younger than their male counterparts. However, there’s still hope! 57% of marketers admit that last year’s ASA’s report influenced their choice of ad images, pointing to a small step in the right direction.