Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

In Drive, Pink attests that the key to fulfillment at work, at school, and at home is the profoundly human need to coordinate our own lives, to learn and make new things, and to improve ourselves and the world around us. This book uncovers the mismatch between how science knows and what business treats how that influences each part of life.

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein 

Nudge is about decisions, the way in which we create them and how we can improve them. Drawing on many years of examination in the fields of behavioral science and economics, authors Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein offers another viewpoint on the mistakes we make and shows us how reasonable “choice architecture” can effectively “nudge” people toward the best decision.

Outliers: The Story of Success, Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell has produced several best-selling books and these are three that I couldn’t put down. 

In Outliers, Gladwell takes us on a journey through the world of “Outliers” – the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful. He asks the question: What makes high-achievers different? 

In Blink, Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”, filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables. 

The Tipping Point is when a thought, pattern, or social conduct crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. It’s similar to a single sick person who can start an epidemic or the popularity of one TikTok becoming a viral trend. In this book, Gladwell explores the tipping point phenomenon and how it can change the way people think about selling products and developing ideas.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

From drinking coffee to exercising, from purchasing a vehicle to romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. In this book, Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Our behaviors are not random or senseless. In fact, they’re the opposite – we’re predictably irrational. 

Literally anything by Michael Lewis

No, that isn’t a book title. ​​It just so happens that I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read by him. Michael Lewis is an American author and financial journalist, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance. You can find his full books here.

I plan to do some of my own reading as well in 2022. In fact, I’m in the middle of Think Again by Adam Grant which is good so far and finishing up The Premonition by Michael Lewis on audio book. 

Here’s what’s next on my list:

• Be 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier
  BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective.

• The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
  The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain.
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
  Time is our biggest worry: There is too little of it. Olivier Burkeman, acclaimed Guardian writer, offers a lively, entertaining philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favor of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life.

• High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley
  New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.

• The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
  The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, best-selling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.

I hope I inspired you to pick up a good book. If you have any book recommendations, feel free to shoot me a message on LinkedIn. I’m always looking to add to my reading list.

The post Kurt’s Picks: Top Books to Read in 2022 first appeared on Freestar.

In these unprecedented times, it is hard to go more than an hour without reading an article, having a discussion or watching a story about COVID-19. As we are all aware, this pandemic is causing declines in stock markets and putting the global economy at unparalleled risk. In a time of uncertainty, it is natural for those of us in the advertising industry to wonder about the impact on digital media spend, especially publishers who rely on advertising as their main source of income. We want to dig into what we are seeing, and how we expect things to shake out.

Where are we now?

Advertisers depend on user behavior to determine their spending habits. As is well documented (see, e.g.,Business Insider and Digiday), during this time, advertising spend will vary wildly depending on the specific industry. Certain verticals – Sports and Travel for example – are seeing a major decline in consumer spend, as leagues around the world have paused operations and travelers are cancelling planned trips and hesitant to plan future travel. Looking at some specific advertising verticals, the difference in volume and price trends are fairly staggering.

Here’s a look at some trends for Travel advertisers over the last 30 days:

Unsurprisingly, Travel impressions and CPMs are down pretty drastically – over 40% – in the last 30 days. We are not sure if this is the “bottom”, but it’s clear that this segment of advertisers have already pulled back spend significantly. Other verticals have not been hit as hard, such as the Jobs vertical. That likely aligns with what’s happening in the world as employment in certain industries is unfortunately being hit very hard and people are quickly looking for new work.

Here’s a view of the Jobs advertising vertical over the last 30 days. While still a drop in CPM, this isn’t nearly as significant at 13% while impressions are climbing rapidly.

Where are we going?

With COVID-19 being a once-in-a-century global health crisis, it’s impossible to know the impact this pandemic will have on our industry. The long-term effects are obviously uncertain, but we can look to what happened in our industry during the last economic downturn and the early results of this year. In 2008, the recession led to a 13% decrease in ad spend overall, but only accounted for a 2% decrease in digital ad spending. In China, the early epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, commerce has been down 20% in the first two months of 2020, but eCommerce was actually up 3% according to GroupM. Finally, overall U.S. digital media traffic has been increasing rapidly over the last several weeks as people are spending more time at home.

Overall, impressions are up and we anticipate they will likely remain fairly strong as more internet users remain home for longer periods of time.

Broadly speaking, we have seen a mild decrease in CPMs at Freestar in the last two weeks while overall traffic has increased. However, we have a very diverse mix of websites we work with and there are some verticals that have been hit hard in both volume and CPMs while some other verticals are reaping the benefits of materially increased traffic. Overall, impressions are up and we anticipate they will likely remain fairly strong as more internet users remain home for longer periods of time.

With regard to price, CPMs for Freestar publishers as a whole started a slight downward trend this past weekend, as you can see below:

We know the expectation is that March should be a stronger month than February, but through Sunday, March 15th, CPMs were down slightly month-over-month. This week, we have started seeing more of an impact with CPMs down 13% month over month. We should put this in context though, as this is the first full week where much of the U.S. workforce has shifted to working from home, and most of the nation’s schools have closed. This initial shock to the system is expected, given the chaotic state of the world.

It’s tough to say if this is the new normal or if we’ll see the market further adjust. As people settle in and we expect the stock market’s volatility to start calming down after the worst selloff since 1987, advertiser budgets will certainly shift going into Q2. But we believe they will be shifting in our favor. In the last decade, both consumer attention and advertiser spend have shifted dramatically toward digital media, with 2019 expected to be the first year where ad spend on digital media exceeds traditional media. As a result, we are cautiously optimistic that digital spend, particularly via programmatic channels, will weather the storm far better than traditional media. The large budgets that have already been allocated to sports, other live events and out of home advertising will, at least in part, be moving to other advertising mediums. Programmatic is the obvious choice to benefit from that shift given its drastic advantage in targeting, measurement and ability to optimize toward specific outcomes in real-time.

What we know is what we can control

As always, we are staying in very close contact with our advertising partners; we want to know what they know, and we want to know it now to stay ahead of the curve. The less uncertainty, the more we can use data and our vast experience to steer this ship through choppy waters. For our publisher partners, we are here to talk business, see how you are holding up, and provide you tips on how to keep your kids busy while you work at home (here’s a fun idea, for instance).

Now is not a time to panic and we at Freestar certainly are not. While the world around us continues to change every day, for the most part, it is business as usual for us. Our staff has been largely remote well before the pandemic hit and, as many of you know, video conferencing has been a way of life for us for years. Our typically office-based employees have adjusted seamlessly to working from home and it has been quite fun to see the artwork and ceiling fans in their homes! We also have not stopped adding incredible talent to our team with two new yield managers and our first General Counsel starting in the next two weeks to provide you even more support and guidance.

We always strive to be proactive versus reactive and deliver the best customer experience our partners have ever had, so our account teams have been doubling down efforts to reach out and connect with our publishers. Knowing that more users are at home and likely spiking traffic, we are also keeping a close eye on site speed in order to ensure user experience is top-notch.

There is no telling what is going to be the reality in the upcoming months, but what we can say is that we are all in this together. If there is anything at all we can do to help support you, professionally or personally, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Kurt Donnell, Freestar CEO

The post We Are All In This Together first appeared on Freestar.