Mediaboss Marketing

NORTH EAST Andrew Aspden is the owner and sole employee of a business begun as a sideline in December 2020.

Aspden makes high-end stone and wooden pens, wooden cocktail smokers, wooden "flight boards" that hold drinks and other items that he sells online and at shops in North East.

Aspden & Company earned $5,000 in 2020-21, doubled that in 2022 and is on track to earn between $30,000 and $40,000 this year. It's growing so fast that Aspden is considering hiring part-time help this coming summer. He's also considering bypassing college.

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Andrew Aspden is 17 and a junior honors student at North East High School. Between school commitments and games and practices with the Grapepickers baseball team, he works filling orders in a corner of his family's barn.

"When I first started, the business was just a side hustle earning a couple bucks here and there. And that's all I thought it would be," Aspden said. "But it's grown to be an everyday thing. Every day I'm making pens at home, working on the website or just doing maintenance.

"Some days, when I'm swamped, I stay up late to work because of school and baseball. During the holidays, there are nights when I work until midnight or 1 a.m. on school nights. But that's what it takes. Some days and seasons are busier than others."

Aspden got the idea for his business when he was 12 or 13, from a cousin who made pens and sold them at a New York winery.

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"I thought it was a pretty good idea," he said. "I got a lathe one Christmas, but it kind of sat there for a while. Then when COVID hit, I was doing school online and was no longer doing some work for a neighbor. I had free time. So I ordered some parts kits online."

Aspden started making pens, then got a job at the re.FOUND.ry antiques shop in North East, where the owner allowed him to sell his wares.

"After that, I started going around North East and selling to different businesses," including Driftwood Wine Cellars and Courtyard Winery. "I was making sales left and right."

Many of his sales now are via Etsy, an online marketplace for crafts and other unique wares. His ballpoint pens start at $34.99, and cartridge fountain pens at $77.99. His business has a five-star customer rating for workmanship and service.

Aspden found the site through online research. It's also how he finds wood, stone, pen parts and other supplies, mainly from Penn State Industries in Philadelphia.

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He buys marble, jasper and other stone in roughly rectangular prisms.

"I drill it, process it on the lathe to get the cylinder shape, and then polish and press the pieces together," Aspden said. It takes about 40 minutes to make each pen.

Aspden's skills in production, purchasing, marketing, sales and shipping are mostly self-taught, again through internet research.

"I also watched a lot of YouTube videos," he said.

In-person sales and marketing are favorite aspects of Aspden's work.

"I like meeting people and taught myself how to communicate and do business with real business owners," Aspden said. "It's not something I could learn at school or that you can go online and learn. You just have to get yourself out there and do it. It's one of the hardest but most valuable lessons I've learned."

Online marketing, not so much.

"I don't really like interacting on the internet, and I don't like social media," he said. "The problem with trying to make money is that you need to use those tools in order to do it. I've found someone to do that for me, and that was a big relief."

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Aspden met Jason Drohn during North East High School's Entrepreneur and Finance Week this school year when both were invited to speak about their businesses. Drohn, also of North East, is a marketing professional and founder of several businesses, including Leveling Up LLC and DoneForYou.com.

Drohn is developing an online marketing strategy for Aspden and creating an Aspden & Company website that is expected to launch this summer after Aspden turns 18.

In the meantime, his young client already has been able to do what few entrepreneurs and business owners have create products and find a market for them, Drohn said.

"Because Andrew tapped into an already established audience on Etsy and was able to start building a customer base, he's shortcut his path to success substantially.Now he's got an email list, customers and revenue," Drohn said.

Etsy has been a good platform for the business, but at a steep price, Aspden said.

"Etsy takes a ton of money for transaction fees," he said. "Every time I make a sale, a lot of the money goes to Etsy and not a lot to me. I plan on keeping Etsy but am going to be more focused on my own website. That will be more of what I want with less in transaction fees, way less. And it will be more productive."

Aspden had planned to study business in college, and still might.

"If I make enough money with my business, I won't go to college. If I don't, then I will," he said. "The determining factor will be whether I make enough money to do this full time.

"It scares my parents a little when I say I don't want to go to college."

Aspden's dad, James Aspden, works for Penelec. Mom Emily Aspden has her own physical therapy business. Andrew's sisters, Kyla, 14, and Eva, 10, make wire-wrapped stone rings that they sell through his Etsy store.

"They do a very nice job. They're very crafty," Aspden said. "They handle their own end of everything. I just let them sell on my site."

More young would-be entrepreneurs may be inspired by Aspden's talk during Entrepreneur and Finance Week at school, said Dawn Coletta, a North East High School counselor who organized the career exploration event for 10th-graders.

"Hearing from someone so close to their age really resonates with students," Coletta said. "When someone like Andrew has been able to create a business and run with it, other students can see themselves doing it."

Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@timesnews.com.

Read more:
Young entrepreneur is growing a business based in his family's barn - GoErie.com

The Gist

Even though they are almost universally disliked, the use of autoplay videos and animated GIFs has been increasing steadily for years. Why? The reason is simple: They work.

I would say marketers tend to follow the data, said Jonathan Nelson, senior digital marketing manager of growth for the American Marketing Association. If youre worried about clicks to your website, [by using] flashy disruptive ads, you're going to get people to see it, which is like 80% of the battle at this point.

According to the Interatctive Advertsing Bureaus (IABs) 2021 Internet Advertising Report, total digital video advertising revenues, including connected television and over-the-top online ads increased 50.8% since 2020, to $39.5 billion in 2021. Most of that increase was in mobile video ads, although desktop digital video increased from $7.7 billion in 2020 to $12.2 billion in 2021.

The large increase in digital video advertising revenue is a reflection of the record levels of growth seen in mobile and desktop ad revenues, which is likely being partially driven by consumers spending more time with all forms of digital media, the report said.

Although the spike in advertising revenues may have been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, during which people spent more time on their computers and smartphones, this does not detract from the persistence of the trend.

According to Statista, worldwide video advertising has been on a steady upward trajectory for years and will reach nearly $177 billion by the end of 2023. From 2023 to 2027, Statista predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.8% with the vast majority of that spending going toward mobile, connected TV and Facebook.

Even though hard numbers are hard to come by, the increased usage of ad block software on desktops could be used as a proxy for how consumers feel.

Desktop ad blockers are used by 290 million people, according to the 2022 PageFair Adblock Report. This is down slightly from its high of 295 million in 2018, but it has steadily risen since the first quarter of 2020 during the initial phases of the COVID lockdowns. Ad block usage on mobile devices is close to double that of desktop with 530 million users, PageFair said. For its part, Statista reports that 26.4% of US users and 763 million people worldwide employ ad blockers.

Autoplay ads are absolutely universally disliked but, perhaps surprisingly, they continue to be effective, said William Hogsett, CEO of Seota Digital Marketing. People are twice as likely to watch if the video starts playing automatically, rather than having to click a button to start it. Plus, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made it super easy for advertisers to use autoplay video ads, so it's not surprising that they're everywhere.

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According to a 2010 study, The Effects of Animation and Format on the Perception and Memory of Online Advertising, animation in online ads had no substantial effect on attention. What the study did find was animated skyscraper ads (those along the sides of webpages) increased attention while animated banners (those that run across the top and bottom of webpages) decreased attention. The best way to attract attention was to have an animated skyscraper ad and a static banner ad.

Our results concerning spontaneous recall support prior studies in that online consumers are able to mention only very few ads, although they had been exposed to the same ad four times, in banner and skyscraper format presented in animated or static mode, the studys authors said.

It comes down to what your goals are, said Nelson. If its just attention and clicks, then animation isnt a bad idea its just not a good one.

Ive never seen any significant amount of conversions coming from [them], he said. They're not fantastic at selling something. They are good at getting people to accidentally click on them, though. And sometimes you get lucky. Its a throw-the-spaghetti-at-the-wall sort of thing.

Animated GIFs that autoplay and are difficult to turn off may actually do more harm than good if they end up antagonizing a potential customer before they ever do business with you, he said.

Another issue is targeting. If you use an ad network like Google and are not willing to spend big dollars on high-value keywords, your video ad will likely be placed with an article or YouTube video that has little to do with the viewers interest in your product or service.

Related Article: The Real Future of Live Video

A slightly more obscure issue driving the continued use of autoplay is who controls advertising, said Alessandro De Zanche, an independent media consultant.

Too many web properties are made for advertising, he said. Their sole purpose is to sell ads. The media they publish is simply there to attract a certain kind of visitor. This happens when the creatives and editors (who are rewarded for creating quantity content) cede control over how the site is monetized to ad executives.

Autoplay is a function of the quality and/or business transformation levels of media owners, in the evolution of their monetization strategies from mono-channel to multi-channel, De Zanche said.

Regardless of who is in control, the purpose of marketing is selling things and autoplay ads do increase sales over time, said Nelson.

If all you care about is someone remembers your brand ... you have to see a brand 14 times before you ever recognize them, he said. And then, three months later, you forget you saw this ad so much and you're at Home Depot and you need bug spray, and there's the bug spray [you saw in the ad] that's sometimes all it takes to increase your sales.

See the rest here:
The Psychology Behind Autoplay Ads - CMSWire

[AI] really does raise the bar in terms of what people are going to expect from you, our analyst Jeremy Goldman said on our recent ChatGPT and Generative AI panel.

As AI matures, it will become more specialized, automating mundane tasks, ushering in personalization, and changing the way consumers, retailers, and marketers use the internet. Here are eight predictions for that not-so-distant future.

Weve entered a new era of the internet, according to our analyst Yoram Wurmser, but that doesnt mean all that glitters will remain gold.

Right now, a few AI models boast a broad spectrum of capabilities, but in the near future, individual systems will niche down.

AI has the capacity to take over tasks like building spreadsheets, drafting small changes for social posts and retail listings, and compiling data.

AI has the capacity to take customer information and turn it into hyper-specific product recommendations, or even develop products specifically for a given consumer.

AI personalization could present too many options to consumers, resulting in decision fatigue. Or it could creep out customers by predicting their desires.

With current AI models, prompt writing is a need-to-have skill, according to our analyst Dan Van Dyke.

Consumers already have little trust in Big Tech. All these businesses have a big task ahead of them to make sure that what theyre doing in generative AI is very plainly disclosed to the consumers that are interacting with them, said our analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

An influx of AI could result in people expecting that all content is in some way touched by AI, breaking down trust even further.

Or theres a chance consumers will ignore low-quality AI content altogether. If theres more content out there, youre not even going to necessarily notice as a consumer because you don't have any more time to pay attention to it, said Goldman.

AI will eventually overcome many of its shortcomings, but as it stands, humans still play necessary roles in assuring data privacy, accuracy, and authenticity from AI.

One of ChatGPTs limitations is privacy.

AI also risks plagiarism, or even being called a pathological liar.

In addition, AI cant provide high-quality customer service for all instances. The tech also lacks really the kind of emotional intelligence and empathy to deal with situations where the consumer is perhaps getting a bit frustrated or with really nuanced complaints, said Perkins.

Its hard to make accurate predictions about AI in marketing and retail, because the field is changing so fast. With that being said, Auto-GPT, where AI functions autonomously without or with little human input, will transform the way people use AI. Auto-GPT could be able to not only come up with a business plan, but deliver on intermediate tasks, or it could create a collection of image-generation prompts and then actually generate those images.

That far-off use case is maybe not so far off in the future, says Van Dyke. Experiment with the tech now, but keep a hand on the AI pulse.

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8 analyst predictions on the future of ChatGPT and generative AI in ... - Insider Intelligence

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Fox News and the marketing of lies - Financial Times

Are you looking to drive more organic traffic to your website? With many businesses competing in the digital space, knowing how best to draw visitors can take time. Content marketing is essential for boosting visits and increasing visibility for your brand.

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In conclusion, leveraging content marketing can be a powerful tool to drive organic traffic to your site. Follow these six tips to create high-quality, relevant and engaging content for your target audience. Utilise keyword research to find the best search terms to include in your content, optimise it for SEO, promote it across multiple channels and analyse the analytics from each channel. Dont forget the importance of link-building opportunities such as guest blogging and social media sharing. Implementing these recommendations into your content marketing strategy will help ensure you get maximum visibility and increase organic traffic regularly.

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6 Content Marketing Tips To Drive Organic Traffic To Your Site - Tech Guide