Full Disrupt SF agenda posted
We have an amazing slate of speakers stopping by TechCrunch Disrupt SF this year, including two full days scheduled for the debut of our Extra Crunch stage, which will focus on how founders can overcome the challenges they face through discussions of tactics with some of the most successful founders and leaders in our industry.
Want to learn how to raise your first dollars with Russ Heddleston at DocSend? How to get into Y Combinator with YC CEO Michael Siebel? How to iterate your product with the chief product officers of Uber, Tinder, Okta, and Instagram? How to evaluate talent with Ray Dalio? These and almost two dozen more panels are waiting for attendees on the EC stage.
Be sure to grab your tickets soon. And if you are an annual EC subscriber, be sure to use your 20% membership discount by emailing extracrunch@techcrunch.com.
How to get your ads working, and whether PR is worth it
Growth expert Julian Shapiro of BellCurve.com launched a new series of articles for Extra Crunch members on how to grow your startup using battle-tested growth hacks and techniques from heads of growth across Silicon Valley. His first piece came out on Friday on how to work with influencers, and now in this second edition, he investigates advertising and how to evaluate the value of PR firms.
How to make Snapchat ads profitable
Based on insights from Tim Chard.
- Snap has niche audiences you’ll want to take advantage of. Examples include “people with digestive issues.” Facebook doesn’t have that. Plus, ad clicks on Snap can be cheap ($0.30 USD isn’t uncommon).
- However, Snap traffic typically converts poorly once it arrives on your site or app.
- Here’s a technique to mitigate that: cross-target your Snap traffic. Meaning, use unique UTM tags on your Snap ad links. Then, in Facebook/Instagram, detect that unique UTM to create a custom audience of Snap visitors. Finally, retarget those visitors with FB/IG ads, which tend to convert much better than Snap.
How to get people to open your emails
In Julian’s third edition of the Growth Report, he offers even more tips on how to increase open rates, whether you should use Bing Ads(!), and whether and how to handle multi-touch attribution.
Should you run Bing Ads if you have Google Ads working?
From Neal O’Grady of Demand Curve.
- I tested Bing on many clients for whom Google Ads worked. With Bing, however, volume is very low for the same terms. I find conversion rate is also lower (CPC’s were lower, however, so it can net out okay). Rarely was Bing a significant revenue driver, BUT you can have Bing Ads auto-sync with Google Ads. So it’s set-it-and-forget-it. Might as well test it and see.
- Also, keep in mind the ‘average user’ on Bing skews older and less technically sophisticated. If that aligns with your target demographic, great.
IEX’s Katsuyama is no flash in the pan
Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys made a huge splash when it was released a few years ago. Yet despite the book’s popularity and trenchant criticism of high-frequency trading, retail investors continue to face the consequences of the microstructures of major trading exchanges. As Extra Crunch FinTech columnist Gregg Schoenberg writes:
Five years later, some of the worst practices Lewis highlighted are things of the past, and there are several attributes of the American equity markets that are widely admired around the world. In many ways, though, the realities of stock trading have gotten more unseemly, thanks to sophisticated trading technologies (e.g., microwave radio transmissions that can carry information at almost the speed of light), and pitched battles among the exchanges, investors and regulators over issues including the rebates stock exchanges pay to attract investors’ orders and the price of market data charged by the exchanges.
Gregg interviewed Brad Katsuyama of IEX to discuss the development of his exchange, the shifting sands of regulation in the equity markets, and what will happen next to the public markets.
Katsuyama: Let’s talk about it in terms of priorities. When the exchange operators made the decision to prioritize speed, and basically sell things like co-location, high-speed market data, microwaves—
Schoenberg: —Which IEX does not do.
Katsuyama: Right. But when you sell such distinct advantages to one group that really can only benefit from that, it leads to the question of why anyone would want to trade on that market. It’s like walking into a playing field where you know that the deck is stacked against you.
What startup CSOs can learn from three enterprise security experts
TechCrunch’s security editor Zack Whittaker interviewed a trio of enterprise security experts for our Sessions: Enterprise event, including Wendy Nather of Duo; Martin Casado, GP of A16Z; and Emily Heath, CISO at United Airlines. He compiled his discussions with these three experts into useful lessons for startup CSOs.
Your company may have a killer idea, a plan to execute, and sensitive corporate secrets. But security is something that shouldn’t be secret or proprietary.
“Talk to your peers and find out what they are really seeing and exchange as much as you can with them because that’s where you’re going to get the real good threat intelligence,” said Nather.
It’s that threat intelligence that companies use to bolster their defenses against new and emerging threats, and can be useful in understanding what security products, services and solutions are required to protect against them.
Not only that, having the visibility of knowing what’s in your enterprise is critical to understanding what needs securing.
In a social media world, here’s what you need to know about UGC and privacy
Brett Zucker of Monotype writes in with a guest analysis for EC members on how to handle privacy around user-generated content when it comes to brand building. With privacy concerns mounting across the world after one scandal after another, startups need to tread much more carefully in how they handle this material and use it in their marketing.
Savvy marketers are aware of the distinction between UGC and influencer-generated content (IGC) when it comes to marketing strategy, but may be less aware of differences when it pertains to compliance with privacy regulations. To put it simply, UGC is a gift from the consumer but the brand can’t control the quality; while IGC is professionally sourced and directed at the brand’s target audience.
Per the FTC, “where there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement such connection must be fully disclosed.” A material relationship could be cash payment, a free product or trip, or could exist if an individual works for and is paid by the company. In the case of influencer posts, brands should ensure any partners they work with on social media are denoting their sponsored posts with #ad, #sponsored, or something similar.
Ten years after Adobe bought Omniture, the deal comes into clearer focus
Finally, our enterprise reporter Ron Miller looks back on a decade since Adobe bought Omniture, a blockbuster deal that would set Adobe down the marketing cloud path for years to come.
John Bates, who is Director of Product Management at Adobe today, was working for Omniture at the time of the acquisition. He points out that Adobe was actually an Omniture customer in those days, so was not entirely unfamiliar with the product, but he said he was still surprised when he learned that Adobe was acquiring the company.
“I remember hearing about it from the news and people sort of mentioning it in the hallways before the official email came out internally. I had thought of a lot of potential suitors, but Adobe was a bit of a surprise,” Bates told TechCrunch in an interview about the anniversary of the acquisition.
Thanks
To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.