New Year, New Format
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New Year, new format
Previous Websmyth subscribers will notice a slightly different format to this not-so-frequent newsletter. More useful links, more about tech/privacy, and less about freelancing.
The email has a new look because it runs on Buttondown, which is privacy-focused. If you would prefer not to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe at any time.
I’ve written more about the thoughts behind this change on my personal blog.
Thinking
I’m increasingly interested in privacy, both from personal and business perspectives. I’ve been thinking about the implications for small businesses and, in particular, how small businesses can break away from the lure of targeted online advertising.
Facebook and Google allow advertisers to target and retarget their advertising audiences. In practice, this means tracking users across the web, usually without their consent.
If larger advertisers such as the New York Times and the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep’s (NPO) have seen no negative impact from turning tracking off, can small businesses can find a way to do the same thing?
I’m interested in collecting more examples of businesses – large or small – that have bucked the trend and opted for contextual ads over behavioural ones.
If you know of any, hit reply and let me know.
Reading
Interesting links from the web.
What if instead of calling people out, we called them in?
A thought-provoking piece on calling out culture. A great read: thanks to Mac and Moore for highlighting this in their newsletter.
Facebook: Free as in BS
John Gruber’s take on Facebook’s anti-Apple adverts:
“This whole ad reads more like an ad for Apple’s privacy initiatives than against them.”
The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising
A great read on the statistical incompetencies that underpin online advertising.
Clean advertising
Jeremy Keith carefully dismantles the arguments that justify the use of tracking in online advertising.
Working
As 2020 draws to a close, I feel incredibly grateful to have had work throughout 2021. I know lots of people had no work and no support.
A few weeks ago, I launched the new Websmyth website. The content has been stripped back and I can now add recent work without writing a case study. That should encourage me to keep it more up-to-date and add projects that could be difficult to highlight (such as the work I did for Typewolf).
Along with this, I also committed to pledge 1% of turnover to the planet. I feel I’m a little slow on the uptake here, but it seems like a good organisation to support.
Interested in working together? I have availability from February.
If you have related links that might be of interest, or thoughts on any of these topics, I’d love to hear from you: just hit reply.
Thanks for reading and all the best for 2021,
Dave