TJ Leonard, WWDC, and why blocking ads isn’t the answer – VB Engage

This week, Travis and Stewart interview TJ Leonard on why video content is so engaging and what marketers can do to leverage the opportunity. In the news segment, they discuss what Apple’s WWDC event means for marketers, why the HomePod might not be the most attractive smart speaker option, and what it will mean if we block all ads, all the time, across all devices. Spoiler alert: This is not a future anybody should want.

• Welcome to VB Engage episode 55! [00:05]
• There was no episode last week, due to a lack of internet connectivity for Mr. Stewart Rogers. [00:45]
• Stewart does not want to generalize about Austrian internet. [01:00]
• Apple’s WWDC was this past week. [01:15]
• If Travis ever had a developer conference it would be called the TWWDC. [1:35]
• There will be an all-new app store on iOS coming soon with iOS 11. [2:10]
• The new app store will make app store optimization more challenging. [02:45]
• Once the iPhone launches in the color red and runs Android, Stewart will buy one. [03:45]
• What do you think of HomePod? (The “One More Thing” of this year’s WWDC.) [04:35]
• Moving forward, Safari will block third-party advertising trackers from its browser. [05:55]
• Chrome will have ad-blockers in 2018 as part of the Coalition For Better Ads. [07:15]
• Brave is an alternative browser that is very fast, cuts off all advertising, and eliminates JavaScript. [08:45]
• Safari has about 15% market share of desktop browsers. Chrome has about 60% market share. [09:40]
• Mobile browsing is taking over. And 94% of all ad-blocking happens in Asia. [10:40]
• If ad revenue is completely taken away, it will have a major impact on quality of content being created. [11:30]
• We’ve received over 1,400 entries in our competition, but the winner has not responded yet, so we wait. [12:00]
• We will make an announcement when we get an actual winner!  [12:45]
• Let’s get into this week’s interview with T.J. Leonard of Video Blocks. [13:15]
• AI has uses throughout the entire customer funnel. [14:45]
• They use Slack heavily at Video Blocks, and they have their own bot, QBot. [15:45]
• FuBot is his counterpoint. It can seek and find memes and quotes, and it even tracks ping-pong analytics. [16:15]
• What are some things that are helping Video Blocks grow and acquire customers? [16:45]
• It’s important to grow customers, but it’s crucial to retain current customers. [17:30]
• Video Blocks is using AI to take these segments and do predictive analytics to create new segments. [18:15]
• Facebook is used for audiences, as well as cluster analysis to find affinities. [19:05]
• Video Blocks will acquire new content based on predictions from those clusters. [20:00]
• The MarTech 5000 was released near the time of this recording. [20:30]
• All of these technologies allow us marketers to be more creative. [21:40]
• Video is one of the more engaging elements of business. [22:45]
• Video Blocks uses its content in its marketing videos. #DogFooding [23:30]
• Initial impression and great storytelling are important. [24:20]
• Have a big set of options, never stop tinkering, never stop testing, and keep pushing because nothing will work forever. [25:00]
• TJ can be found on Twitter @TJ_Leonard and @VideoBlocks [25:35]

Next week, we chat with David Berkowitz, who is one of the top thought leaders in digital and emerging media. David has led marketing at places like 360i and MRY. He is currently the CMO at Sysomos, which is a fabulous enterprise social media platform.

In case you missed the last episode, we interviewed Taylor Freeman of Upload, who told us all about the future of VR, AR, and every other kind of reality you can think of. In fact, we had so much fun with this guest, we didn’t want to return to actual reality.

As always, thanks for tuning in. Please subscribe, rate, review, and generally spread the word about VB Engage. We’ll subscribe, rate, and review you too.