J udging Covers, Story Ads and Forget Push Notifications
Why Do So Many Book Covers Look the Same? Blame Getty Images
By Cory Matteson from Eye on Design
- “Clamer wasn’t aware that an image he took 15 years ago was ubiquitous in a different, perhaps more permanent, universe. It’s titled, ‘Naked Woman Sleeping on Gravel,’ and can be found on the Getty Images website, along with 1,612 other Clamer images available for rights-managed exclusive usage. It also serves as the dominant art on the cover of at least 11 books.”
- “‘People buy the usage,’ Clamer said. ‘Depending on all the figures, they determine the usage price. If you are an uber-famous author, and you’re going to sell 3 million copies and it’s going to be worldwide and it’s going to be in 24 languages, then they ask for more money. But if it’s an unknown author and some random book in Poland, it’s cheap.’”
- “‘Stock can be cost-effective, readily accessible, and easily incorporated into a design,’ Wilder said. ‘Success of the overall design depends on the strength of concept and execution.’ And it can be beautiful, he said, pointing to the cover of Elif Batuman’s ‘The Idiot,’ which was designed by Oliver Munday and features a Getty Images-licensed stock photo of a rock.”
What’s the trick to Story Ads that work?
By Amy Gesenhues from Marketing Land
- “…brands need to be persistent and adopt a test-and-learn approach, building an iterative process to test variations of things like overall video length, fast versus slow pacing, content localization, color schemes and user generated content.”
- “Instagram Story Ads have had a sizeable head start over Facebook Story Ads as they were launched more than a year before Facebook’s ad unit. Foxwell said his agency isn’t even recommending Facebook Story Ads to any clients right now since they haven’t proven to be a reliable source for direct-response conversions yet.”
- “History shows that Story content is likely to draw the attention of more people, regardless of their age. In 2017, when Instagram first launched Story Ads, the company reported 150 million users were engaging with Stories. Two years later, that number is now up to 500 million.”
People absolutely hate your push notifications
By Mark Wilson from Fast Company
- “According to a new survey, the number one reason people delete an app is because they receive too many irrelevant notifications, which make them a real liability for overzealous businesses.”
- “Push notifications are the most reviled form of communication in general. They are the least preferred way people want to be contacted—only 15% of people surveyed chose it as their preferred method of communication, while email performed the best, garnering 46% of preference.”
- “if you don’t run an email app, a social media company, or a banking institution, your brand should think long and hard before blasting push notifications out to your customer’s phones. Just because people are eminently reachable doesn’t mean you’ve earned their attention.”
Nick Cotton is a project manager based out of Los Angeles, California. He’s got a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his talent at online messaging to extol the virtues of content marketing, interactive fiction and sentences measuring 280 characters or less.
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