As the CCPA deadline approaches, there are multiple companies offering tools for compliance. The latest comes from trade group Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). The DAA is a consortium of industry associations and responsible for the “ad choices” icon that appears on most online display ads.

Like ‘ad choices.’ Conceptually similar to ad choices, The DAA will enable online users to opt out of the sale or transfer of their personal data “across all of the DAA participating companies integrated into the new tools, from a single website or app.” There will be a comparable system for in-app advertising.

The advantage for consumers is that they can opt-out once and have that choice be recognized across the DAA advertising ecosystem, where the following logo appears.

Source: DAA

Components of the approach. The DAA says the tools will include:

  • A text link and new green icon for publishers to display on their web and app-based digital properties.
  • A publisher-hosted notice that will provide user information and control.
  • The capacity for consumers opt-out of the sale of data collected across websites and mobile apps participating in the DAA initiative.

The DAA says the opt-out tools will be available in English and Spanish and that “over the coming weeks” the organization will educate its members and the broader industry about how to implement them.

It’s not entirely clear how the DAA tools will interact or integrate with the IAB compliance framework. The IAB is a member of the DAA, as are the American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertiser, Better Business Bureaus National Programs and the Network Advertising Initiative.

Why we should care. By most accounts, the ad choices initiative has been unsuccessful with consumers due to a lack of understanding and engagement. However the prominent “do not sell my info” text could make this effort much “more successful” — success for consumers may mean the opposite for publishers and MarTech companies.

While the tool will address CCPA’s consumer opt-out requirements, the DAA counsels publishers to “seek their own technical tools to help them meet their requirements under the DAA’s guidelines and the CCPA itself.” In other words, the internal record-keeping and disclosure requirements CCPA imposes.

Related reading on our sister site MarTech Today:



About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.



figma-introduces-smart-animate-and-advanced-transitions

Today, we’re introducing new prototyping features that will open the door to new transition possibilities in Figma. They’ll help bring more of your interaction design ideas to life:

  • Smart Animate, a new transition type that automatically animates similar objects and improves existing transitions
  • Drag, a new interaction type that lets users control a transition with a drag of their finger

Watch this product tutorial to get all the details and learn how to get started, or check out this help article.

Features to help achieve advanced transitions like Smart Animate and Drag have been on our minds for a while. They’ve been on our customers’ minds for even longer. If you’re a fellow designer or someone who works closely with design teams, you’re probably all too familiar with the challenges of designing for a highly requested customer feature, one where users may have pre-existing expectations for how it might work. Click ahead to dig into the features and see real examples of Smart Animate in action. Or continue reading to see how we designed Smart Animate…

As we kicked off design discovery for our first release of Smart Animate, we began to look for answers starting from a familiar place—our users.

Understand users who are experiencing pain

When working on a hard design problem, talking to users is always a great start and you don’t have to be a big company to set up systematic ways to do qualitative user research. One of the ways we continuously gather feedback is through in-product NPS surveys. (Surprise! We do read the comments and take action.) Our support team replies to many responses directly, but we also categorize the NPS comments into meaningful groupings. This makes it easy to keep a pulse on specific topics and can serve as a starting point for user feedback when we’re ready to kickstart design for a new feature.

Here are some things we heard about prototyping in Figma…

Speaking of animations, I would love simple things like dropdown lists, buttons hovers, varied and smooth appearance of pop-ups, switching tabs, and so on. It is not about complex animation…”

“When I am designing screens where animation plays a big part in the experience, we need other tools to show what we want from our developers. E.g. a click shows an advanced transition from one screen to another. I would like to not use another tool for my creations.”

“I was wondering if you plan to add more prototype transitions? It would be nice to have an auto-animate as well as a drag/slide transition.

The value of the NPS surveys does not lie in the score. For us, it’s in having an open feedback channel where we can hear from customers who are experiencing “pain”. We’re able to talk to them directly to get ideas on what features they’re looking for and understand what they like and don’t like about how they animate prototypes today inside and outside of Figma.

Fun fact: Many of these NPS survey respondents became our first beta customers. Special shoutout and thank you to all of them!

Zoom out to uncover patterns across use cases

Because a feature like Smart Animate needs to support a variety of use cases, we can’t just design Smart Animate with one specific use case in mind. Otherwise, it’ll be too limiting and not useful for the majority of our users. To make sure that what we design can scale for a multitude of use cases, we had to zoom out and search for common design patterns.

We gathered all the animation examples we could find through our conversations with customers. We also did our own research into interactive interfaces we use in our daily lives. Then we explored how someone would prototype this in Figma and what challenges they would face when doing so.

This process led us to two major patterns that you’ll see in today’s first release of Smart Animate.

Pattern #1: An object appears, disappears, or changes while the user stays on the same screen

You probably see this pattern everyday, like when you hover over a video and the playbar appears, when you hover over a navigation item and a dropdown expands, or when you swipe an object away and new content emerges from underneath.

Pattern #2: Several UI elements stay fixed while the majority of the content on the user’s screen changes

You’ll find this common pattern in a tabbed navigation. This slightly more complex animation appears when you drag content left or right and the tab bar indicator moves in the opposite direction.

Upleveling beyond individual use cases allowed us to focus on common denominators. Pinning down these two patterns helped us keep the feature scope focused while still addressing many of our customers’ use cases.

Find the Figma way (or your way)

We’re not the only ones trying to solve these design challenges for our customers. However, we wanted our implementation of the solution to ‘feel’ like Figma. That meant making sure Smart Animate and Drag felt well-integrated with existing prototyping features. Sometimes, building new features requires a re-examination of what’s currently there.

First at the most fundamental level, we wanted the auto-animation of layers to work out-of-the-box as best as possible. So we revisited the basics, like layer naming. We didn’t want to completely reinvent the wheel, but this seemingly small update took countless hours to get right. I’ll spare you all the details, but essentially we updated how we automatically name and rename objects on creation or duplication, so layers that match up based on hierarchy, naming, and order will auto-animate. Additionally, in cases where something wouldn’t work, we wanted to make debugging of that situation a lot easier! That’s why you’ll get visual feedback on hover and selection to quickly check if layers match up correctly. Now when you hover over the layer you’re trying to animate, you’ll see every matching counterpart on other frames.

The other thing we wanted to make sure we got right is enabling users to combine the new Smart Animate transition with existing transitions. For transitions you already use today like Push, Move, or Slide, you’ll now see an additional setting called “Smart Animate Matching Layers”. This automatically detects matching layers between two screens and animates them separately from the other objects. This little checkbox enables you to build more complex animations, faster, while minimizing the number of duplicative layers you previously needed to create to express such an animation.

For us, designing new features also means making sure the new additions work seamlessly alongside existing features and doesn’t add unnecessary product complexity. It’s not just about building more new stuff; it’s also about making sure the stuff that’s already there still works great and continues to support new capabilities.

Prototype examples to help you get started

Now to help inspire ideas and give you a few real examples, our team got together to create a bunch of new animated prototypes you can view and duplicate. Check out some examples of what you can create with Smart Animate and Drag. And get the source file to see how our team built it.

Simple card expansion

Page transition with Material Design


Tab transition with multiple animating elements


Swipe to remove animation


Prototype for your favorite devices, like Apple Watch and TV

We can’t wait to see what you create in Figma prototypes! Tweet @figmadesign with your prototype examples, and email me at niko@figma.com for thoughts on how we can continue to improve prototyping in Figma. There’s so much more that we want to do!

microsoft-introduces-xlookup-in-excel-–-and-it’s-a-big-deal-for-data-reporting

For those working in ad operations and PPC, the VLOOKUP function (and HLOOKUP – its horizontal counterpart) has been a tried-and-true staple of data manipulation in Excel. Now, after more than 34 years as a cornerstone lookup function, VLOOKUP is making way for a new successor.

Microsoft has announced the rollout of XLOOKUP – a powerful new function designed to address many of the known limitations of VLOOKUP. For advertisers and marketers, this means more efficient reporting with less time spent performing workaround functions.

How it works

XLOOKUP function is able to search sheets both vertically and horizontally, which wasn’t a possibility with VLOOKUP alone. XLOOKUP requires only three inputs in order to perform the most common exact lookup:

XLOOKUP(lookup_value,lookup_array,return_array)

  • lookup_value: What you are looking for
  • lookup_array: Where to find it
  • return_array: What to return
XLOOKUP takes aim at the following VLOOKUP limitations outlined by Microsoft:

Defaults to an “approximate” match: Most often users want an exact match, but this is not VLOOKUP’s default behavior. To perform an exact match, you need to set the 4th argument to FALSE. If you forget (which is easy to do), you’ll probably get the wrong answer.

Does not support column insertions/deletions: VLOOKUP’s 3rd argument is the column number you’d like returned. Because this is a number, if you insert or delete a column you need to increment or decrement the column number inside the VLOOKUP.

Cannot look to the left: VLOOKUP always searches the 1st column, then returns a column to the right. There is no way to return values from a column to the left, forcing users to rearrange their data.

Cannot search from the back: If you want to find the last occurrence, you need to reverse the order of your data.

Cannot search for next larger item: When performing an “approximate” match, only the next smaller item can be returned and only if correctly sorted.

References more cells than necessary: VLOOKUP 2nd argument, table_array, needs to stretch from the lookup column to the results column. As a result, it typically references more cells than it truly depends on. This could result in unnecessary calculations, reducing the performance of your spreadsheets.

Why we should care

For advertisers and marketers who rely on Excel for day-to-day reporting, the new XLOOKUP function will reduce the time it takes to match and analyze data from varying sources, such as from ad platforms, servers and CRMs.

XLOOKUP will be able to replace VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and INDEX/MATCH by enabling the selection of two columns (instead of the whole range) and allowing columns to be inserted into the desired data range without needing to change the column numbers.



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skype-introduces-new-draft,-bookmarks,-and-media-preview-features-on-mobile-and-desktop

Skype used to be the go-to messaging app several years ago until it got gradually dethroned by competitors like WhatsApp and Messenger. However, Microsoft has been working on making its software more appealing lately, thanks to new features such as SMS messaging and screen sharing. The company is continuing to improve the app, as it’s gaining new abilities, including the option to save drafts, bookmark messages, and preview media.

The first one is so basic I’m surprised it’s just been released: We’ve all started writing a long message and left the app for some reason, only to realize it’s gone before we got a chance to send it. Thankfully, Skype will now save unsent drafts, so they’re still waiting for you even if you close the app and come back at a later time. These will be easily identifiable thanks to the [draft] mention in front of the text you’re previously written.

You’ll also be able to long-press a message to bookmark it, so you can review it whenever you need to. I use this a lot in WhatsApp to save important items I know I’ll want to read again.

Talking about WhatsApp, Skype is also introducing a similar preview option to review media you’re about to send. It will display a thumbnail of the files you’ve selected so you can identify if you’re about to send inappropriate photos to the wrong recipient. You’ll also be able to write an accompanying description with the files you’re sending to add more context. Similarly, media is now grouped when displayed in a conversation, instead of being shown one by one, just like what the competition does.

Lastly, split window chat on desktop is rolling out to Linux and macOS, after already being available on Windows for a few months. This is quite convenient if you want to avoid messaging the wrong person when talking to several people at once.

These features are definitely useful, and despite not being revolutionary, they bring Skype on-par with some of the competition’s offerings. That being said, Microsoft’s solution also has a set of features that aren’t found on most apps, such as the ability to get a landline number or SMS texting, which make it a very relevant contender on the market.

These new capabilities are already available in the latest apps, and all but split window are compatible with the mobile versions.

Skype - free IM & video calls

Skype - free IM & video calls

facebook-introduces-new-policies-for-political,-social-issue-ads-ahead-of-2020-elections
ad policies for political advertisers and anyone running electoral or social issue ads. The new policies, which include new disclaimer requirements for political advertisers and updates to the company’s list of social issue topics in the U.S, were introduced on Wednesday and apply to ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Disclaimer requirements for political, electoral and social issue ads. Beginning mid-September, any advertiser running political, electoral or social issue ads will need to give Facebook more details about their organization. Advertisers will have five options to provide further information:

  • A tax-registered organization identification number (EIN).
  • A Federal Election Commission (FEC) identification number.
  • A government website domain (.gov or .mil) that matches the advertiser’s email.
  • For smaller advertisers or local politicians that may not have an EIN or FEC number, or a government-run website, they can submit their organization name along with a verifiable phone number, mail-deliverable address and business website along with an email address that matches the business website domain.
  • Small advertisers can also rely solely on their Facebook Page admin’s legal name that is attached to a their personal identification document. (Advertisers using this option will not be able to use a registered organization name in their ad disclaimer.)

Any advertisers running political, electoral or social issue ads who fail to comply with the new requirements by mid-October will have their ads paused.

New ad labels. Facebook is also updating its labels for political, electoral and social issue ads. Now, when a user taps the “i” icon that includes either the “Confirmed Organization” or “About this Ad” language, they will see the information Facebook has confirmed. For example, a “Confirmed Organization” label will show the EIN or FEC number provided by the advertisers. The “About this Ad” label will include the organization’s phone number and email address.

“This will allow people to confidently gauge the legitimacy of an organization and quickly raise questions or concerns if they find anything out of the ordinary,” writes Facebook Public Policy Director Katie Harbath and Product Manager Sarah Schiff.

Social Issue ad categories. Previously, Facebook assigned its social issue ad topics to 20 distinct subject areas. The company is revising how it categorizes social issue ads with a new list of ten categories for the U.S.:

  • Civil and social rights
  • Crime
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Environmental politics
  • Guns
  • Health
  • Immigration
  • Political values and governance
  • Security and foreign policy

Facebook said it purposely made this list of categories broad so that it can be refined over time and that the categories are evolving and may be narrowed or expanded over time.

“This list is meant to be fluid to reflect the public discourse around social issues on and off Facebook that seek to influence public opinion through advocacy,” writes Harbath and Schiff.

Why we should care. These updates apply not only to marketers managing ad campaigns for political candidates, but also anyone overseeing ads for an organization attached to political causes that may be running social issue ads.

As we near the 2020 U.S. election cycle, the number of political, electoral and social issue ads will only increase — which means more ad dollars being allocated to Facebook. Marketers responsible for running political, electoral or social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram will need to stay on top of the company’s ad policies to make sure their ad campaigns run smoothly.



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twitter-introduces-6-second-viewable-video-ad-bids

Twitter is rolling out a new video ad bidding option that allows advertisers to run 15-second or shorter video ads, but only be charged if the ad is viewed for a full six-seconds with pixels at 50% in-view.

Twitter called it a “Flexible option for advertisers who care about the completed view metric, but are ready to lean into the mobile-first paradigm and develop short-form assets optimized for in-feed viewing.”

Why we should care

This new six-second video ad bidding option takes a page from YouTube’s 6-second bumper ads but offers the flexibility of running longer creatives. It should appeal to brands focused on substantive view rates.

“This six-second video ad solution, paired with compelling creative, increased our view rate by over 22%,” said Alice Oliveira, the CSB Brazil marketing director for Dell, who had early access to the video ad bid option.

Short-form videos with the sound-off that included clear branding delivered a significantly better ad recall and message association on mobile compared to linear TV-styled videos, according to a Twitter-sponsored study by EyeSee.

More on the news

  • Twitter is rolling out the new video ad bidding option globally on Monday.
  • It is available for Promoted Video, In-stream Video Sponsorships and In-stream Videos Ads that include assets at 15-seconds or less in length.
  • In April, 2018, Twitter accounted more than half of its ad revenue to video ads. The company reported on Monday that video ad formats continue to be its fastest-growing ad format.


About The Author

shopify-introduces-native-chat-tool-for-e-commerce-sites-on-the-platform

Shopify launched its new Shopify Chat tool on Wednesday. The consumer-facing native chat function can be implemented on Shopify e-commerce sites at no additional cost.

Once the new feature is enabled, the chat tool will display on all pages of the merchant’s online store and is compatible with all browsers and operating systems.

Why we should care

By adding a chat function to its array of features, Shopify is giving merchants the ability to communicate with their website visitors without the added cost — or extra layer — of new technology.

A recent survey of more than 1,000 online shoppers by Drift and SurveyMonkey showed a top priority for shoppers is the ability to quickly communicate with a brand when there is a customer service issue. For e-commerce sites, being able to quickly resolve issues and answer questions can be the determining factor of whether or not a site visitor completes a transaction.

Shopify Chat integrates with Shopify Ping, the company’s mobile messaging app for merchants that already integrates with Facebook Messenger and Apple Business Chat. Merchants will be able to chat with customers across these platforms, including their own websites, from a single interface.

More on the news

  • Shopify Chat is Shopify’s first native consumer-facing chat application for merchant websites.
  • Shopify Ping, launched last year, is a merchant-facing messaging tool for Shopify customers that allows them to consolidate communications on one platform. The company added Apple Business Chat to its Shopify Ping integrations in June.
  • The Drift and SurveyMonkey sur found consumers expect the same response time from a chatbot as they do from face-to-face interactions with a brand.


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sugarcrm-introduces-new-capabilities-for-cx-applications

CRM provider SugarCRM has announced an extensive list of new capabilities for customer support agents with the release of Sugar Serve. According to SugarCRM, Sugar Serve will create an integrated experience for customer support agents as they work with customers, helping to improve the customer experience.

Why we should care

Customer support agents are typically standing on the front lines when it comes to helping our customers. But agents who aren’t provided the necessary customer data during their interactions often struggle to resolve issues in a timely manner, resulting in poor customer experiences.

Sugar Serve’s Service Console brings the necessary data points for the agent into a single console to easily view during the interaction. The data points, determined by the SLA, include the customer’s information, account activity history and case details and help the agent determine the next best action based on this information.

“This introduced extensive new capabilities for customer service agents unlike any application on the market today,” said CEO Craig Charlton. “With our Service Console, we’ve put all the critical information for resolving a support case into a single panel, helping our customers reduce case resolution times, improve SLA achievement, increase customer satisfaction and improve support experiences. And that puts them on the path of cultivating customers for life.”

By arming customer support agents with the necessary information and improving interactions, marketers have opportunities to learn more about their customers and identify the best type of content for follow-up interactions and automated campaigns.

More on the news

In addition to the Service Console, SugarCRM also introduces a number of new features:

  • SLA Management: Prioritizes work, ensures SLA achievement, and measures support performance through the coordinated management of complex SLAs, multi-region business centers, and business hours
  • SugarBPM Automation: Leverages out-of-the-box workflows and SugarBPM to prioritize work intelligently; route, reassign, and escalate cases; calculate follow-up dates; and send notifications
  • Self-Service: Enables users to resolve issues and find answers to questions with an easy-to-use customer portal and knowledge base
  • Reporting and Analytics: Provides support center managers deeper insights into the metrics that matter with over 60 pre-packaged reports and dashboards
  • Tile View: Provides a pivot table-like organizational structure to the opportunity pipeline, including managing opportunities by sales stage and expected close date
  • Sugar Mobile Enhancements: Brings drill-down insights, enhanced collaboration, and a better quoting experience for multiple currenciesSugarBPM Advanced Email Handling – Monitors and triggers email-based actions within a workflow and allows setting “From” and “Reply-To” email addresses in automated emails


About The Author

google-introduces-app-+-web-for-unified-reporting-in-google-analytics

The customer journey has become increasingly complex over time, with users often switching back and forth between desktop and mobile and various channels before buying. It is thus fairly challenging for marketers to gain an accurate and complete view of their customers’ paths to purchase.

Two great tastes. Google has historically had two separate tools for web and app analytics: Google Analytics and Google Analytics for Firebase, for mobile apps. Now the company is combining their capabilities in a new property that seeks to provide a more unified view of customer data: App Web for Google Analytics.

Director of Product Management for Google Analytics, Jesse Savage, said that he hopes the new offering will help marketers and brands improve the customer experience by giving them “a single, consistent set of metrics for more integrated reporting and a more comprehensive view of the customer journey” (on Google properties). Starting today, App Web will begin rolling out to all Google Analytics and Analytics 360 users for free.

Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google .