Apple invented a new type of viral advertising that can track users in social media | ||
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Apple has been granted a patent for a new viral advertising management system that can track ads or media content as it is shared via different methods, such as email, texts and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The patent also says that it can store users' names, addresses, and age in a database. This does not mean that Apple is going to launch a viral advertising product — the company has a long history of focusing on devices and apps, not advertising. Nor does it mean that Apple is going to start tracking your consumption of social media. But it is interesting that Apple is even thinking about the topic, given the company's recent renewed interest in increasing its advertising business. Here is the context:
Apple's new viral ad tracking method — in theory — could be used in iAd. The system proposes to gather data about people who share ads or content with their friends from Apple devices: The UUID database 235 can also contain demographic data associated with each entry in the UUID database 235. For example, demographic data can include a user's name, address, age, likes, dislikes, previous history, etc. The demographic data can be received from a user of a user device 215 or inferred from data collected by the content delivery server 205. For example, user likes and dislikes can be inferred from a user's previous requests for invitational content and user interaction with the invitational content. We've reached out to Apple for comment but have not heard back, yet. Apple files a lot of patents simply because it wants to own the technology and prevent others from using it. Most patents do not become products. And just because the patent has the ability to track user data does not mean Apple will actually do that. Usually, advertisers and publishers go to lengths to avoid dealing in unique identifying information. They would rather that data be "hashed" (meaning re-coded in a random way to make it anonymous), and tracked in aggregate as bundled statistics, until they actually make a purchase on a web site. But it's ironic that that Apple now has a method of tracking users across multiple devices and in multiple media after CEO Tim Cook made a series of speeches in which he criticised Facebook and Google for doing exactly that. "Some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it. We think that's wrong," he told an audience in Washington D.C. recently. Apple says its new viral "invitational" ad tracker is "an improved method of implementing a viral campaign." This is how Apple believes an ad with an invitation to "share this" with your friends might appear on a phone or desktop, as part of a newsfeed stream:
Apple envisions a suite of sharing buttons that would allow the user to share the ad on Facebook or Twitter, or email, or by text:
A chart of how an advertiser might manage a budget promoting the campaign:
This schematic flow chart shows that each time the ad is forwarded, it would generate a unique identifier, allowing the advertiser to track the success of the ad:
When the link to the ad is received by one of your friends, this is the tracking decision tree that Apple proposes:
Here's a diagram of the hardware and circuitry on the device needed to support the ad:
How Apple sees those devices sitting within the viral ad ecosystem:
Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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This startup just raised the biggest Series A round in UK fintech so far | ||
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Chinese technology company Beijing Kunlun just invested £22 million ($34.2 million) in peer-to-peer mortgage lender LendInvest in the biggest Series A round so far in British fintech. LendInvest's mortgage marketplace matches people looking for quick, short-term mortgage funding with people hoping to get a better return on the money they lend. Because online lenders let savers lend money directly, borrowers pay less interest, and lenders get a better return. The company was officially launched in May 2013, when it was spun out of short-term mortgage lending business Montello. Since then, it has financed over £300 million worth of mortgages. Cutting out the middleman lets LendInvest give both sides a better rate, CEO Christopher Faes told Business Insider, and means that they can get applicants their money in just two weeks, compared to the three months banks usually take. He added: "LendInvest are re-thinking the whole mortgage process, and using technology to provide an unrivalled experience for borrowers, and a superior return for investors. Peer-to-peer is a relatively broad church, and it has made significant inroads in the consumer and SME lending space already, and now we're using it to disrupt the mortgage market in the UK." A Financial Times report hinted that an IPO might be on the cards in the next year. Faes told us that he can confirm the company would like to move towards one, but an IPO is not something that's imminent. Chinese technology company Beijing Kunlun was listed on the Shenzen Stock Exchange earlier this year, and was originally backed by Sequoia Capital. The company's self-made billionaire CEO, Yahui Zhou, will also join LendInvest’s board of directors. Beijing Kunlun's investment in LendInvest, however, is still subject to regulatory approval by the Chinese government. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup that tackles them in an unorthodox way (GOOG) | ||
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Ad blocker use is on the rise. More and more ways of letting people block ads are being introduced to market. Apple, for instance, will allow ad blocking on iPhones, and there is a mobile phone service carrier plan to allow ad blocking across entire networks. Ad blocking poses an existential threat to publishers and big sellers of digital ads like Google — which is reported to have lost as much as $6.6 billion in revenue to ad blockers last year. Now one former Googler is fighting back against the blockers. Sourcepoint is launching Thursday with $10 million in Series A investment funding. The company's CEO and co-founder is Ben Barokas, the former general manager of marketplace development at Google. He moved to Google in 2011, when it acquired his online advertising optimization company Admeld for $400 million. Speaking to Business Insider, Barokas explained that to solve the existential crisis ad blockers pose to publishers, Sourcepoint wants to help the publishing community solve two problems: It has the technology to punch through "all the ad blockers." And it wants to help publishers have a more open dialog with readers about the transaction that takes place when they consume content: The implicit (but often over-looked) understanding that publishers serve ads in exchange for content being presented for free. And that a transaction needs to take place in the first place because content requires investment. Barokas explained the "lightbulb moment" that led to creating Sourcepoint: "When I was at Google, a number of publishers, especially in Germany and France, said: 'Can you fix our ad block problem?' The feedback from publishers was: 'You own the biggest browser in Chrome, and we are feeling a lot of pain, can you fix this problem?'" But Barokas said Google decided not to prioritize ad blocking in its roadmap, adding that it is a company that promotes user choice. Indeed, earlier this month, Google CEO Larry Page downplayed the threat of ad blocking when he was asked a question about it earlier this month, saying it was instead up to the industry to make better ads that people wouldn't want to block. So, having spent around three years at Google, and hungry for new opportunities, Barokas set about on his mission to build a company that could provide a solution to ad blockers. He has brought on board former AppNexus CTO Geir Magnusson, former COO of LiveRail (the ad tech platform acquired by Facebook) Brian Kane, and serial entrepreneurs Jeroen Seghers, JP Carlucci, and Matt Adkinsson. Its investors include Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Greycroft, and Accel Partners Europe, as well as a number of advertising and tech executives including Millennial Media CEO Michael Barret, Mediamath CEO Joe Zawadski, Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart, and LiveIntent CEO Matt Keiser. How Sourcepoint plans to solve digital publishing's existential problem
The other part is that Sourcepoint is taking a different approach. There are many other "ad blocker blocker" solutions already in market for publishers, but Barokas says these only solve half the problem, and often just provide "unsophisticated solutions" that just replace a publisher's intended ad with a lower-quality alternative. Barokas told us: "The more I thought about it, this was less about just ad blocking. Ad blocking has accelerated through the crisis digital content is facing — the inability to monetize, and the lack of monetization in the migration to mobile." "The biggest problem is that content consumers and content creators don't have a transparent transaction that occurs on a regular basis so that each of them knows where they sit in the ecosystem," Barokas added. Here's how Sourcepoint works: It will let a publisher decide how to present a message to a web visitor that has an ad blocker installed. The publisher could choose to circumvent the ad blocker and serve the ad, or it could say to the visitor "our ads pay for your content, how about you choose to allow them," or it could allow the user to choose their advertising experience (three ads for three stories, for example,) or the publisher could ask them to pay to subscribe.
Barokas said Sourcepoint is working on a number of "sophisticated" subscription options that are designed to take away the friction that usually comes with subscribing to a website's paywall. We put it to Barokas that someone in favor of ad blockers might argue that if advertising on websites wasn't so irritating, people wouldn't choose to block it — so an ad blocker blocker, or messaging that persuades a user to view ads, might be damaging the experience that user intended. Barokas referred to the fact that ad blockers charge big digital media companies hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get their ads whitelisted: "It's blackmail. It's extortion. It's not fair. That being said, [ad blocking] is not against the law, it's legal in Germany, the US, the UK ... but at the end of the day it's also legal for publishers to give people messages and say you can choose ads. It's not fair for journalists like you not to have food at your table, it's not fair not to have a roof over your head. It goes back to transparency and fairness ... if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal." For now, Sourcepoint is offering its services to "two dozen top 100 comScore publishers" for free. That not only includes the ad blocker circumvention software, but also analytics tools for publishers to establish who their ad blocking audiences are. Further down the line, Barokas is exploring different business models including a software as a service-type licensing option, an advertising recovery service which would take a cut of ad revenue returned to the publisher, taking a percentage from new subscriptions the publishers sign up, or a mixture of the three. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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Barokas says Sourcepoint's technologists have the expertise to stay one step ahead in the cat and mouse game of blocking the ad blockers.
GOLDMAN: December (USD, TLT, SPY) | ||
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Goldman Sachs now believes the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December. In a note Wednesday, the firm pushed back its forecast for the first hike in eight years from September to December following the Federal Reserve's monetary policy update and press conference. In its statement, the Fed maintained its outlook for inflation, cut its forecast for GDP growth, and raised its unemployment expectations for the year. The FOMC's updated "dot plot," showing their preferred trajectory of interest rates, indicated that fewer members are anticipating a rate hike this year, though the median dots still indicate 2 interest rate increases this year. Taking all this into account, however, Goldman's Jan Hatzius wrote that the Fed chair Janet Yellen has shifted the FOMC's "center of gravity," writing: We had viewed a clear signal for a September hike at the June meeting as close to a necessary condition for the FOMC to actually hike in September, but the committee did not lay that groundwork [on Wednesday]. Our new call moves our forecast for what the FOMC will do closer to our longstanding view of what the FOMC should do, in light of risk management considerations. The Fed has emphasized all along that it is glued to incoming economic data, and will use these as the basis for its policy decision. According to Goldman, the "data hurdle" appears to be too high for a hike in September. Further abroad, Janet Yellen touched on the debt crisis in Greece in her press conference, noting that the US economy has "limited direct exposure" to any fallout. However, she said there could be a spillover effect that could affect their assessment of the economy. With Greece's debt unresolved, Goldman still sees some threat to the US economy. Hatzius again: A hike in September could again become our baseline if we were to see much stronger than expected activity or inflation data over the next few months, a sharp easing of financial conditions, or a combination of the two. But that said, we think a December liftoff date is both more likely and better policy than September. Here's a chart comparing the Fed's current year-end forecasts for interest rates to where they were in March.
SEE ALSO: The Fed just slashed its economic outlook Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Economist Jeff Sachs reveals the biggest threat to the human race  | ||
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Apple invented a new type of viral advertising that can track users in social media | ||
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Apple has been granted a patent for a new viral advertising management system that can track ads or media content as it is shared via different methods, such as email, texts and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The patent also says that it can store users' names, addresses, and age in a database. This does not mean that Apple is going to launch a viral advertising product — the company has a long history of focusing on devices and apps, not advertising. Nor does it mean that Apple is going to start tracking your consumption of social media. But it is interesting that Apple is even thinking about the topic, given the company's recent renewed interest in increasing its advertising business. Here is the context:
Apple's new viral ad tracking method — in theory — could be used in iAd. The system proposes to gather data about people who share ads or content with their friends from Apple devices: The UUID database 235 can also contain demographic data associated with each entry in the UUID database 235. For example, demographic data can include a user's name, address, age, likes, dislikes, previous history, etc. The demographic data can be received from a user of a user device 215 or inferred from data collected by the content delivery server 205. For example, user likes and dislikes can be inferred from a user's previous requests for invitational content and user interaction with the invitational content. We've reached out to Apple for comment but have not heard back, yet. Apple files a lot of patents simply because it wants to own the technology and prevent others from using it. Most patents do not become products. And just because the patent has the ability to track user data does not mean Apple will actually do that. Usually, advertisers and publishers go to lengths to avoid dealing in unique identifying information. They would rather that data be "hashed" (meaning re-coded in a random way to make it anonymous), and tracked in aggregate as bundled statistics, until they actually make a purchase on a web site. But it's ironic that that Apple now has a method of tracking users across multiple devices and in multiple media after CEO Tim Cook made a series of speeches in which he criticised Facebook and Google for doing exactly that. "Some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it. We think that's wrong," he told an audience in Washington D.C. recently. Apple says its new viral "invitational" ad tracker is "an improved method of implementing a viral campaign." This is how Apple believes an ad with an invitation to "share this" with your friends might appear on a phone or desktop, as part of a newsfeed stream:
Apple envisions a suite of sharing buttons that would allow the user to share the ad on Facebook or Twitter, or email, or by text:
A chart of how an advertiser might manage a budget promoting the campaign:
This schematic flow chart shows that each time the ad is forwarded, it would generate a unique identifier, allowing the advertiser to track the success of the ad:
When the link to the ad is received by one of your friends, this is the tracking decision tree that Apple proposes:
Here's a diagram of the hardware and circuitry on the device needed to support the ad:
How Apple sees those devices sitting within the viral ad ecosystem:
Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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What are traders chatting about this morning? Greece. (DIA, SPX, SPY, QQQ, IWM, TLT) | ||
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Via Dave Lutz at JonesTrading, here's what traders are chatting about this morning. Good Morning! S&P futures are 70bp better than Germany's, as the $ drop + Greece + Ukraine weigh on our European brethren. Get ready for Headline Bombs - FinMins are arriving for the Eurogroup meeting - A post-meeting press conference should be around 12ET. Yanis Varoufakis has made clear he is coming to Luxembourg with no new proposals, while Greek papers spew “Chowder” that debt relief plans are being drawn, causing Athens to rally 4% from morning’s lows (but rolling back). Consumers and Financials continue to weigh on Europe’s bourses, with volume tracking 20-30% heavier than normal. Over in Asia, Shanghai dropped almost 4% amid IPO and Margin concerns – The Stronger Yen hit the Nikkei 225 for 1.1% ahead of the Bank of Japan tonight – The KOSPI eeked out a small gain as MERS fears subside, while Aussie dropped 1.3% as financials saw renewed weakness and miners struggled in the wake of a sharp drop in iron ore prices. The US 10YY remains under pressure, testing 2.26% in the overnight on several occasions – while 30’s get closer to a 3% test. German Bunds seeing some “haven” buying on Grexit concerns, while Greek debt’s weakness is bleeding slightly into the peripheries. With the DXY nearing 4week lows, we have a sharp bid for commodities – led by a 1.8% pop in Silver, followed closely by Gold (which failed a $1200 test overnight). The Oil complex has rallied overnight for 1%, but there were heavy US Sell tickets going out yesterday – so let’s see what floor trading brings in Crude. Scheduled Catalysts Include Weekly Jobless Claims at 8:30, along with US CPI and Current Account Balance. At 10 we get the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook and Leading Index – ahead of 10:30 Natty Inventory release from the DOE. Inflation players will be focused on the TIPs re-opening at 1. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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IMF's Lagarde says 'no period of grace' for Greek debt payment | ||
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Luxembourg (AFP) - International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde warned Greece on Thursday that it would get no extra time to make a huge 1.6-billion-euro debt payment due at the end of the month. "There will be no period of grace," Lagarde told reporters in Luxembourg where eurozone finance ministers are meeting, adding: "No delay of one month or two as I heard; it's due June 30." Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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This startup just raised the biggest Series A round in UK fintech so far | ||
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Chinese technology company Beijing Kunlun just invested £22 million ($34.2 million) in peer-to-peer mortgage lender LendInvest in the biggest Series A round so far in British fintech. LendInvest's mortgage marketplace matches people looking for quick, short-term mortgage funding with people hoping to get a better return on the money they lend. Because online lenders let savers lend money directly, borrowers pay less interest, and lenders get a better return. The company was officially launched in May 2013, when it was spun out of short-term mortgage lending business Montello. Since then, it has financed over £300 million worth of mortgages. Cutting out the middleman lets LendInvest give both sides a better rate, CEO Christopher Faes told Business Insider, and means that they can get applicants their money in just two weeks, compared to the three months banks usually take. He added: "LendInvest are re-thinking the whole mortgage process, and using technology to provide an unrivalled experience for borrowers, and a superior return for investors. Peer-to-peer is a relatively broad church, and it has made significant inroads in the consumer and SME lending space already, and now we're using it to disrupt the mortgage market in the UK." A Financial Times report hinted that an IPO might be on the cards in the next year. Faes told us that he can confirm the company would like to move towards one, but an IPO is not something that's imminent. Chinese technology company Beijing Kunlun was listed on the Shenzen Stock Exchange earlier this year, and was originally backed by Sequoia Capital. The company's self-made billionaire CEO, Yahui Zhou, will also join LendInvest’s board of directors. Beijing Kunlun's investment in LendInvest, however, is still subject to regulatory approval by the Chinese government. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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Charleston police release picture of suspect in church shooting | ||
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Washington (AFP) - Police in Charleston, South Carolina released images Thursday of the man suspected of killing nine people in a shooting at a historic black church. Security camera footage shows a slender young white man with dark blond or brown hair in a distinctive bowl-type haircut, and wearing a grey sweater. Police said he is about 5 foot, 9 inches tall and is in his early 20s. The suspect was seen leaving the church in a black sedan, police said. The gunman was on the run Thursday after fatally shooting at least nine worshippers, including the pastor, in a predominantly black church in downtown Charleston, in what police called a hate crime. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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10 things you need to know before the opening bell (SPY, SPX, QQQ, DIA, ORCL, FIT, AAPL) | ||
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Here is what you need to know. Greece's stock market is crashing. The Athens Stock Exchange General Index slumped to a fresh three-year low on Thursday. The index has fallen 18% in the past week as a debt deal between the Greek government and its creditors remains elusive. Greece must pay the International Monetary Fund 1.6 billion euros on June 30. Chinese home prices ticked up. Chinese home prices fell 5.7% year-over-year in May but saw their first monthly advance since April 2014. Prices edged up 0.2% compared with April and saw notable improvements in Beijing and Shanghai. According to CNBC: "Shenzhen was the top performer, recording the second consecutive month of year-on-year rebound, up 7.5% following a 0.7% rise. New home prices in Shenzhen rose 6.6% in May from April." China's yuan was unchanged at 6.2081 per dollar. Thursday was a busy day for central banks. Norges Bank cut its benchmark interest rate 25 basis points to 1.00%. Norway's central bank noted further rate cuts were most likely on the way because of the drop in oil prices. Elsewhere, the Swiss National Bank held its key rate at -0.75% but suggested the franc remained "significantly" overvalued. Finally, Bank Indonesia kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 7.50%. All of the decisions were expected. Hong Kong's legislature voted down Beijing's electoral-reform plan. Prodemocracy lawmakers voted down the plan because it would have allowed Beijing to exclude anyone it deemed unacceptable from running for office. Joshua Wong, the face of last year's "Umbrella Revolution," said: "This is no cause for celebration. We have defeated a bogus voting plan, but we will have to shift from playing defense to playing offense to get the election that we desire." Hong Kong's dollar finished little changed at 7.7524 per dollar. Oracle's quarter was disappointing. Oracle announced adjusted earnings of $0.19 per share, which missed the Wall Street estimate by a penny. Revenue fell 5.4% to $10.7 billion and was shy of the $10.9 billion analysts were expecting. The company projects earnings of $0.56 to $0.59 per share in the first quarter, compared with the Wall Street estimate of $0.61. Apple Watch sales estimates are out. Reuters reports that data obtained from Slice Intelligence shows Apple Watch sales are estimated at 2.79 million units through mid-June. The data also shows approximately 20% of buyers are splurging for a second band, which has extremely high margins. "People are trying to get two watches in one," said Kanishka Agarwal, Slice's chief data officer. Fitbit IPOs today. The fitness-device maker priced its IPO at $20 per share, above the $17-to-$19 range that was expected. The IPO has allowed Fitbit to raise $732 million, giving the company a $4.1 billion valuation. The stock will trade under the ticker FIT. Airbnb is reportedly raising money at a $24 billion valuation. The home-rental company is said to be in talks to raise $1 billion at a $24 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. The valuation is higher than Marriott, which has a market cap of $21.1 billion. Only Uber has a higher valuation among startups, if the funding is completed. Stock markets around the world are mostly lower. China's Shanghai Composite (-3.7%) was hit hard in overnight trade, and France's CAC (-0.8%) paces the decline in Europe. S&P 500 futures are higher by 6.50 points at 2,095.75. US economic data is heavy. Initial and continuing claims, CPI and the current account balance are all due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. They will be followed by Philadelphia Fed and leading indicators at 10 a.m. ET. Natural-gas inventories are set for release at 10:30 a.m. ET. The US Treasury will reopen $7 billion worth of 30-year TIPs at 1 p.m. ET. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Fitbit Is Going Into Nike Territory With This Inspiring Ad  | ||
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In Macedonia, EU-bound migrants cycle to better lives | ||
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Demir Kapija (Macedonia) (AFP) - Fleeing their trouble-torn countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, streams of EU-bound migrants are driving an unexpected trade in a quiet town in Macedonia -- bicycles. Thousands have arrived in Demir Kapija, a few kilometres (miles) from the Greek border, after journeys by foot, train and boat. But in this picturesque town it is bicycles they seek for the next leg. The migrants aim to head north across the small, land-locked Balkan state into neighbouring Serbia and finally a European Union country, where they hope to build better lives. In Macedonia, authorities ban migrants from using public transport but they tolerate walking and cycling -- which has seen the price of two-wheelers quickly double in this town of about 3,500 people. Walid Amoud, a geography professor from Damascus, looked over dozens of bicycles -- new and old -- lined up outside a small shop in the centre of Demir Kapija before negotiating to buy one for 125 euros ($140). "I'm travelling with my four daughters, my son and a five-month-old baby," he told AFP. The family's dream destination is Germany, which they believe is their best chance for a new start. Like Amoud, the vast majority of migrants arriving in Macedonia are Syrian, but some hail from Afghanistan or restive African states.
- 'Die on the road' -
Near the town's old train station, a group that walked all the way from Thessaloniki on Greece's Aegean coast, a trek of 130 kilometres (80 miles), rested in the shade. While Greece is part of the EU, its grave economic crisis has prompted the migrants to try their luck elsewhere. "We fled death to die on the road. Our situation is getting worse every day," said 37-year-old Bara, an English language professor from Homs in western Syria, travelling with her four daughters. The youngest one, a five-year-old brunette with blue eyes, is autistic. Bara said they had faced little interference from authorities in the areas they crossed -- Turkey on foot, the Aegean Sea by boat to Athens, Greece by train to Thessaloniki and then again on foot to Demir Kapija. "To us everything is forbidden, but nevertheless they let us continue our journey," she said in tears. The price of bikes ranges from 120 to 200 euros and acquiring one spares migrants the other option -- walking across the country. A local trader, declining to give his name, told AFP that the price of bicycles had "doubled within a week". "One has to live," he said simply, referring to the ex-Yugoslav state's own troubles as it faces a political crisis and ethnic tensions involving its Albanian minority. On Macedonia's main north-south road, groups of several dozen migrants cycle up the Vardar valley, bearing meagre backpacks with all their belongings. The route is long and dangerous: in late April, 14 migrants from Somalia and Afghanistan died when they were hit by a passenger train while sitting too close to the tracks.
- Smuggled into Serbia -
Once they reach the town of Kumanovo in northern Macedonia, migrants sell their bikes for at most 50 euros -- now an unnecessary burden since crossing into Serbia is done secretly in operations negotiated by smugglers. According to the latest report by EU border agency Frontex, Macedonian smugglers charge between 120 and 200 euros for passage to the Serbian border. While authorities tend to turn a blind eye to the cyclists and pedestrians, interior ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski said they were targeting the smugglers since they "earn a lot of money from illegal immigrants". Last week police arrested four suspected smugglers and detained 128 migrants hiding in houses in the northern village of Vaksince as they waited to cross the border. If the migrants make it into Serbia, the country has land access to three members of the 28-nation EU -- Croatia, Hungary and Romania. With the massive flow of people trying to reach Europe, the number entering Hungary shot up from 2,000 in 2012 to 54,000 this year so far, with 95 percent of them arriving from Serbia, according to official figures. Hungary reacted Wednesday, saying it was building a barrier on its border with Syria to keep them out -- triggering "surprise and shock" in Serbia whose prime minister said it "can't be responsible for the situation created by the migrants". The move was announced as Pope Francis hit out at nations that "close the door" to those seeking a safe haven from war, poverty and persecution. Macedonia's parliament is due to vote next week on a law that would enable migrants to use public transport legally. Now, "all those whom we detain are expelled to Greece, hundreds every day, but their number is too high," said spokesman Kotevski. So for now the migrant continue to cycle, with hundreds every day visible winding their way up the Vardar valley. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup that tackles them in an unorthodox way (GOOG) | ||
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Ad blocker use is on the rise. More and more ways of letting people block ads are being introduced to market. Apple, for instance, will allow ad blocking on iPhones, and there is a mobile phone service carrier plan to allow ad blocking across entire networks. Ad blocking poses an existential threat to publishers and big sellers of digital ads like Google — which is reported to have lost as much as $6.6 billion in revenue to ad blockers last year. Now one former Googler is fighting back against the blockers. Sourcepoint is launching Thursday with $10 million in Series A investment funding. The company's CEO and co-founder is Ben Barokas, the former general manager of marketplace development at Google. He moved to Google in 2011, when it acquired his online advertising optimization company Admeld for $400 million. Speaking to Business Insider, Barokas explained that to solve the existential crisis ad blockers pose to publishers, Sourcepoint wants to help the publishing community solve two problems: It has the technology to punch through "all the ad blockers." And it wants to help publishers have a more open dialog with readers about the transaction that takes place when they consume content: The implicit (but often over-looked) understanding that publishers serve ads in exchange for content being presented for free. And that a transaction needs to take place in the first place because content requires investment. Barokas explained the "lightbulb moment" that led to creating Sourcepoint: "When I was at Google, a number of publishers, especially in Germany and France, said: 'Can you fix our ad block problem?' The feedback from publishers was: 'You own the biggest browser in Chrome, and we are feeling a lot of pain, can you fix this problem?'" But Barokas said Google decided not to prioritize ad blocking in its roadmap, adding that it is a company that promotes user choice. Indeed, earlier this month, Google CEO Larry Page downplayed the threat of ad blocking when he was asked a question about it earlier this month, saying it was instead up to the industry to make better ads that people wouldn't want to block. So, having spent around three years at Google, and hungry for new opportunities, Barokas set about on his mission to build a company that could provide a solution to ad blockers. He has brought on board former AppNexus CTO Geir Magnusson, former COO of LiveRail (the ad tech platform acquired by Facebook) Brian Kane, and serial entrepreneurs Jeroen Seghers, JP Carlucci, and Matt Adkinsson. Its investors include Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Greycroft, and Accel Partners Europe, as well as a number of advertising and tech executives including Millennial Media CEO Michael Barret, Mediamath CEO Joe Zawadski, Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart, and LiveIntent CEO Matt Keiser. How Sourcepoint plans to solve digital publishing's existential problem
The other part is that Sourcepoint is taking a different approach. There are many other "ad blocker blocker" solutions already in market for publishers, but Barokas says these only solve half the problem, and often just provide "unsophisticated solutions" that just replace a publisher's intended ad with a lower-quality alternative. Barokas told us: "The more I thought about it, this was less about just ad blocking. Ad blocking has accelerated through the crisis digital content is facing — the inability to monetize, and the lack of monetization in the migration to mobile." "The biggest problem is that content consumers and content creators don't have a transparent transaction that occurs on a regular basis so that each of them knows where they sit in the ecosystem," Barokas added. Here's how Sourcepoint works: It will let a publisher decide how to present a message to a web visitor that has an ad blocker installed. The publisher could choose to circumvent the ad blocker and serve the ad, or it could say to the visitor "our ads pay for your content, how about you choose to allow them," or it could allow the user to choose their advertising experience (three ads for three stories, for example,) or the publisher could ask them to pay to subscribe.
Barokas said Sourcepoint is working on a number of "sophisticated" subscription options that are designed to take away the friction that usually comes with subscribing to a website's paywall. We put it to Barokas that someone in favor of ad blockers might argue that if advertising on websites wasn't so irritating, people wouldn't choose to block it — so an ad blocker blocker, or messaging that persuades a user to view ads, might be damaging the experience that user intended. Barokas referred to the fact that ad blockers charge big digital media companies hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get their ads whitelisted: "It's blackmail. It's extortion. It's not fair. That being said, [ad blocking] is not against the law, it's legal in Germany, the US, the UK ... but at the end of the day it's also legal for publishers to give people messages and say you can choose ads. It's not fair for journalists like you not to have food at your table, it's not fair not to have a roof over your head. It goes back to transparency and fairness ... if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that would be illegal." For now, Sourcepoint is offering its services to "two dozen top 100 comScore publishers" for free. That not only includes the ad blocker circumvention software, but also analytics tools for publishers to establish who their ad blocking audiences are. Further down the line, Barokas is exploring different business models including a software as a service-type licensing option, an advertising recovery service which would take a cut of ad revenue returned to the publisher, taking a percentage from new subscriptions the publishers sign up, or a mixture of the three. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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Here are the most expensive places in the world to buy petrol | ||
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Britain is back in the ranking for the top 10 most expensive places in world to buy petrol, with the price per litre at 121 pence, according to Santander 1|2|3 Credit Card research. Ranked in seventh place, Santander's analysis shows in the chart below that Britons spend on average 9% of their income on petrol at £145.52 ($228.89) per month. Norway is number one in the chart after locals pay 152 pence per litre and spend on average £182.81 ($287.52) on petrol a month.
However, while the price per litre in Norway is the most expensive for locals, other countries spend a much more massive portion of their monthly income on paying for fuel. The average Turk spends 39% of their income on petrol per month while Portugal spends 25%, and Greece spends 24%.
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The 3 best tie knots for the office | ||
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Need to bust out a tie for an important meeting? You may remember some of the classic knots, but these 3 will keep you looking sharp at the office. Produced by Justin Gmoser. Special thanks to Devan Joseph. Follow BI Video: On Facebook
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