May 2016 - NevilleHobson.com

Ad blocking: reaching a tipping point for advertisers, publishers and consumers

Last week, mobile operator Three UK announced it will block advertising on its network in a trial taking place in mid June. Three’s action marks a new milestone in long-running arguments about online advertising between the online advertising industry, individual web publishers, and consumers who are the targets for much of that content. There’s growing opinion – authenticated, so to speak, by the increasing use of software to block online advertising – that a large proportion of advertising delivered primarily…

Re-imagine IBM

Last December, when I started telling friends that I would be joining IBM as a full-time employee, I received some mixed responses. Of course, all were well-wishing but some came with quizzical looks and the question “IBM? I couldn’t imagine you at IBM!” It turns out that the question was based on a view about me as a communicator, and about IBM and what the company does that was out of date. That view was based on what IBM largely…

In data, small is the new big

Updated on August 7, 2017 Everyone’s talking about big data. Often, it’s Big Data where an initial capital in each word lends the phrase an air of great significance that focuses on size. From gigabytes to exabytes to zetabytes, you’re in no doubt that this is big with an impact on society of equal effect. Yet for most people I know, big data in alliance with size-words does little to help you understand what it means or, indeed, the relevance…

Trust: the key to employee advocacy success

One of the most credible research efforts into trust in organizations is the Edelman Trust Barometer, a report published annually since 2000 by the Edelman PR firm. The 2016 report, published in January, surveyed 33,000 people in 28 countries worldwide and provides rich insights from the analysis of respondents’ opinions on a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella term ‘trust.’ You can read the report for detailed information. I referenced this report in a presentation I gave last…

Are chatbots in the workplace the entry point to cognitive personal assistants?

Like robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning, one topic getting a lot of attention at the moment is chatbots. Much of the news and commentary about these relatively simple computer programs have been on the negative side – Microsoft’s Tay, for instance, and the blanket coverage of the conversational meltdown that happened within days of the chatbot’s public trial in March. Not a good pointer to the utility and value of such algorithms! (I noticed, btw, that the Tay URL…