tl;dr: back-end or full-stack dev. (third hire) at YC Seed-stage API startup in construction.
What we’re looking for:
– Back-end or full-stack dev. with experience building complex systems quickly.
– Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, multi-tenant systems, and building dev. tools (e.g. APIs).
– Self-motivated, high ownership, low ego; desire to work on a fast-paced, intense, fun team.
– Excited to be our second Eng. hire; passion for building a world-class Eng. culture, on par with Stripe.
More about us:
– We’re a data-integration API and analytics platform for the $12T construction/real estate industry.
– We’re a team of 6 who worked together for 8 years, first at Graphiq (acq. by Amazon) then at Alexa.
– We just raised $3M from YC, Accel (Facebook, Slack, Cloudera, Segment, etc.), founders of Plaid and Mailbox, and founders/execs at Procore, Autodesk, PlanGrid, Fieldwire, and others.
Generally Intelligent is an AI research company working directly on building human-level general machine intelligence that can learn naturally in the that way humans do. Our mission is to understand the fundamentals of learning and build safe, humane machine intelligence. Here are our open roles: ML Research Engineer (SF, Full-time): https://jobs.lever.co/generallyintelligent/c2f4a435-1eef-489… ML Engineer (Remote, Contract … Continue reading Generally Intelligent (YC S17) Is Hiring Remote Machine Learning Engineers
Investigative journalist Rana Ayyub was targeted with a deepfake pornography video to discredit and silence her.
With so much negativity around the tech, is there any chance of it bringing good into the world?
Yes! The possibilities when you combine AI technology with marketing are exciting and can change how we speak with our customers forever.
When used with positive intent, they are a potent marketing tool.
Below, I’m breaking down exactly what these videos are, the drawbacks of using them, and the different ways marketers are currently using deepfakes to create stronger campaigns.
What Are Deepfakes?
Have you seen a YouTube video of Barack Obama calling Donald Trump a “complete dipshit?” What about Jon Snow apologizing for the disastrous season finale of Game of Thrones?
If you answered yes, you’ve seen a deepfake video.
The term “deepfake” was coined in 2017 and is a combination of “deep learning” and “fakes.” It uses deep learning technology (a branch of machine learning) to create the dupe.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) learns what the source face looks like at different angles and then superimposes it onto an actor’s face, essentially creating a mask.
Hollywood has already taken advantage of deepfakes by transposing real faces onto other actors. The most notable example is bringing Carrie Fisher back to life for a short scene in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
While many fear the technology being used for nefarious ends (more on this below), deepfakes offer a range of intriguing possibilities. You can create apps to try a new hairstyle or use it to help doctors with medical diagnosis.
The Drawbacks of Using Deepfake Technology
With the rise of deepfake technology, it’s not hard to understand why some people are skeptical and even terrified of it becoming widely adopted.
After all, the advances in this technology make it harder to distinguish what is real and fake.
It can lead to serious dangers like fake news, putting words in politicians’ or celebrities’ mouths, and ruining someone’s life with fake pornography.
Lack of Trust
Deepfakes can breed a culture of mistrust and not knowing what to trust. If the president holds a press conference inciting violence, but it’s a deepfake, how do you know what to believe?
For example, a deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg made the rounds on the internet. The video shows Facebook’s CEO giving a speech about how the platform “owns” its users and crediting an organization called Spectre for Facebook’s success.
Increase in Scams
Another con is the opportunity it provides for scammers. Audio deepfakes have already been used to defraud people out of money.
The core message for both examples is not knowing what is real.
Consumers are already doubting what they are reading online with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, adding fact-checking processes to content. Deepfakes can create more distrust of everyone around us and make us question everything we are seeing and hearing.
7 Ways Marketers Can Use Deepfakes
With all the backlash and potential pitfalls of deepfake technology, can marketers use it for good?
The answer is yes!
Some of the world’s biggest brands are already experimenting with deepfakes and using them to create unique and engaging content.
As long as you’re transparent about using the technology, you can create a more dynamic consumer journey.
1. Dynamic Campaigns With Influencers to Increase Reach
Imagine having an influencer agree to an ad campaign and only provide you with 20 minutes of audio content and a few video shots.
No lengthy photo shoot or filming days required.
Not only does it help you save time, but it opens the door to creating dynamic campaigns, a.k.a. microtargeted ads at scale.
Case in point: David Beckham’s 2019 malaria awareness ad. The deepfake had the soccer star speaking in nine languages and is an excellent example of how this technology can increase a campaign’s reach.
Translating an ad into multiple languages also allows brands to enter new markets seamlessly and speak to consumers in their native tongue while still benefiting from the influencer or celebrity’s likeness.
2. Hyper-Personalized Campaigns for Your Audience
While some people want to ban deepfakes because of how they can be used to deceive people, it’s a creative and groundbreaking technology for marketers when used for good.
If you’re in the fashion industry, you could easily show models with different skin tones, heights, and weights.
With the average person seeing thousands of ads per day, using this tech to create psychological ownership and see the product as an extension of themselves is vital to cut through the noise.
It also helps marketers create hyper-personalized ads. The benefits of creating a shopping experience catered to multiple segments mean you can reap the rewards of personalized marketing.
3. Product Ownership to Increase Sales
Another way to create ownership with deepfakes is using the technology to create personalized videos of your clients using or wearing your products.
For example, Reface AI lets users virtually try on the new Gucci Ace sneaker as part of a virtual try-on haul. Users can browse through the footwear options and view it on foot by pointing the phone at their feet.
Savvy marketers know the likelihood of a sale increases if people feel like they own the product. It doubles down on the sensory experience where the longer someone spends looking and holding a product, the more likely they will buy it.
Deep learning can help stimulate the same experience with a deepfake of the customer behind the wheel of the latest BMW or a makeup look with the newest MAC eyeshadow palette.
4. Host Exhibitions and Events Anywhere in the World
For the events and art industries, deepfakes open up a world of exciting possibilities. The technology can help you recreate objects or people anywhere in the world at the same time.
An example is the DalíMuseum in St. Petersburg, Fla., which uses a deepfake of Salvador Dalí to greet guests. It creates a more engaging experience for visitors and brings the surrealism master back to life.
Dalí’s video was created by using over 6,000 frames of video footage from past interviews and 1,000 hours of machine learning to overlay it onto an actor’s face. What makes the deepfake even more impressive is that Dalí is interactive. The video has more than 190,000 possible combinations depending on a person’s answers.
While we already have holographic concerts for iconic musicians like Michael Jackson, deepfakes would create a more hyper-real experience for attendees. Art exhibitions can use the technology to display artworks around the world simultaneously.
Marketers can take it one step further and create deepfakes of products prelaunch (like the new iPhone) to generate buzz and create an interactive Steve Jobs to answer questions about the latest device.
5. Use Deepfakes to Entertain Your Audience
Marketers can use deep learning to create ad campaigns we would have never been able to do 20 years ago.
State Farm is leading the pack with its ad for The Last Dance, an ESPN documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
The campaign’s concept was to create awareness around Zalando now delivering Top Shop fashion to people in the most remote parts of Europe.
With a single video shoot, they created 60,000 bespoke video messages for every tiny town and village in Europe using deepfake technology to produce alternative shots and voice fonts. Then using Facebook’s ad targeting, they showed users the specific video which mentioned their hometown.
The campaign received more than 180 million impressions, and Top Shop sales increased by 54 percent.
This can help marketers eliminate further customer generalizations or affinity grouping and create content that speaks to people on a more individual level.
7. Educating Consumers With Deepfakes
Do you have a product with a learning curve? You can use deepfake technology to educate your customers on how to use it and improve their skills.
For example, if you’re a camera brand like Canon, you can use an AI instructor to help novice photographers learn faster. The technology can point out compositional mistakes, advise on camera settings, and help them slowly master their device.
At trade shows, you could have potential customers practice taking photos, learning from the AI, or testing their skills against the deepfake. It can help create an interactive experience, put the product in the person’s hands, and start building brand loyalty.
Conclusion
Of course, there’s always going to be a few bad apples. While some people are causing mayhem with deepfakes, there are plenty of golden opportunities for marketers.
This technology allows you to create hyper-personalization, duplicate your marketing efforts instantly, increase brand loyalty, and use product ownership to increase sales.
What are your thoughts on using deepfakes in marketing? Do you think its potential to do good outweighs the bad?
In our modern digitally enhanced world, data and information underpin all of our activities. But are you making your data work for you, or is it something that you are yet to take full advantage of? For many business owners and marketers, analyzing and deploying data can be an intimidating prospect. For that reason, analytics …
The SERPs (search engine results pages) are the listings you see whenever you type a query into a search engine.
For most of us (63%, plus 90% of mobile searches), that search engine will be Google, so if your website does well in Google’s SERPs, you’re going to see a lot of organic traffic.
When it comes to digital marketing, organic traffic is something of a Holy Grail. Why? Because as opposed to paid advertising, where you pay to get eyes on your content, organic clicks = free clicks.
However, the SERPs aren’t as straightforward as they once were, and there are several ways they can influence the amount of organic traffic you get.
So, let’s take a look at some of the different forms of traffic, how the SERPs affect them, and how you can get your website noticed in SERPs.
What Types of SERP Results Are There?
When you look at a Google SERP or any other search engine results page, you will see two types of results: organic and paid.
The results in the red box are paid listings, and all the green ones are organic listings. Each has its positives and negatives, and its influence on the SERPs.
Paid Search Results
Google AdWords allows websites to show up at the top of the SERPs for their chosen keywords, and they pay Google every time someone clicks their ad.
These results display at the top and bottom of the SERP and have “Ad” written in bold letters next to the URL.
Our example search term of “CRM software” shown above shows the variety of ways a site can earn organic traffic from the SERPs.
We’re all used to the traditional organic listing of a meta title and description, but Google has added more SERP features in recent years. These features, such as the Featured Snippet and Knowledge Pack that you see in the example, can significantly impact organic traffic.
Whereas paid ads are a quick way to the top of the results pages (the highest bidders will generally win), competition for organic results is fierce and more complicated.;
The SERP is where the vast majority of an SEO’s hard work plays out. SEO is responsible for ensuring that your website shows up in the SERPS, gets its fair share of clicks, and ensures users find what they are looking for once they click-through to your website.
The SERPs and SEO are intrinsically linked. The steps you take in this area are the keys to building organic traffic and achieving your traffic goals.
You can reach the top positions in the SERPs, and you can build a significant volume of organic traffic; you’ve just got to be consistent with your SEO and follow the right steps.
Small Changes in the SERP Results Make a Big Difference to Your Traffic
Google and the other search engines’ primary objective is to provide the user with the perfect search query results. To do this, Google uses algorithms that employ hundreds of different factors to determine each person’s best possible search results.
This level of personalization means the SERPs can vary greatly. Here are some of the key aspects of the SERPs that can largely impact your organic traffic.
Ranking on Page One
When you get to a results page, do you ever make it to page two? Or do you skim the top handful of results to see which will help you?
On a rare occasion, we might click to the second page to see what’s there, but most of us choose from the top results, which is why there’s a massive drop off in traffic between page one and page two of the SERPs.
On page one, listings earn 88.7% of all clicks, leaving all the other pages to fight it out for the remaining 11.3%. This difference just goes to show the importance of ranking on page one — most people never make it to page two.
Not All Positions are Created the Same
So you are thinking, “That’s great, if I make it to page one, then I’ve got everything sorted.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.
Although getting to page one of the SERP is a great start, it’s only part of the challenge. There’s a massive variance between the click-through rate (CTR = number of clicks divided by the number of times your listing is shown) for the top three results and the CTR for ones lower down. These positions influence your organic traffic.
You may have reached page one, but there’s clearly a huge incentive to get to the top.
What Aspects of the SERP Can Hold Your Organic Traffic Back?
In the last section, we mentioned that 88.7% of clicks go to page one results, but this doesn’t mean that 88.7% of all searches go to organic listings.
What are the major obstacles to getting more organic traffic?
Paid Traffic
Paid ads feature prominently in the SERPs, so it’s no surprise that they attract plenty of clicks. This traffic is significant, but it only actually makes up around 3.58% of all clicks.
The reason for this is that paid ads don’t appear for every search term.
Generally, there are three types of searches: informational, navigational, and transactional. Advertisers pay for every click and want a good return on their investment, so they tend to focus on transactional search terms with the highest buyer intent.
While it’s still possible to get organic clicks for these transactional search terms, it’s a good idea to use Ubersuggest to figure out which search terms are more likely to have a high share of paid clicks.
If you look at the cost per click (CPC) of your keyword, you can see which keywords are likely to be dominated by ads. As you can see in the results below, “CRM tools” has a high CPC, which means there are likely lots of people competing for it, and a higher likelihood you’re going to be competing with ads.
You can still gain organic clicks from these search terms, but you risk being pushed down the page by paid ads.
This search for “how to use CRM software” is a prime example. There are no organic results before the fold other than a video, meaning you have to scroll down before seeing even one traditional organic listing.
To do well in SERPs, you’ve got to be very focused on your keyword research to find the search terms with a realistic shot of gaining a prominent position in the SERP.
No-Click Searches
Google and the other search engines are always working to create a better search experience for their users. One way they have done this by introducing SERP features such as Featured Snippets and Knowledge Panels, giving people quick access to basic information.
In this search for “why use CRM,” we can see the power of the featured snippet.
With the Featured Snippet, Google gave the user a cursory answer without having to click on a link. That means that even though Salesforce has won the snippet, and SuperOffice has the first traditional organic listing, neither got the click. It’s a no-click search because the user can read the Snippet.
Of course, lots of people are going to be curious enough to click to Salesforce or SuperOffice to find out more, but some users’ curiosity is going to be satisfied by the Featured Snippet. No-click searches account for 49% of all searches.
How Can You Use the SERP to Get More Organic Traffic?
Despite the competition with paid ads and the numbers of no-click searches, there’s still more than enough organic traffic to go around. However, you’ve got to know how to use the SERPs to your advantage.
Every SERP has its leader of the pack, and these folks put a lot of work into maintaining that position, so you’ve got to work hard to unseat them.
So, how do you do that?
The great thing about SEO is you’re in complete control of the content you put out and how you appear in the SERP. If you use this wisely, you can significantly boost your CTR and positively influence your organic traffic. Here’s how.
Produce High-Quality, Relevant Content
Google wants to provide users with the most relevant answers to their search query. To rank higher, your page has to accomplish two critical things. First, it has to be relevant for the search query, and second, it has to be high-quality content.
If you’re not achieving these two goals, then Google has no incentive to put you on page one because you’re not helping searchers achieve their goals.
This element is where your keyword research comes in handy to help you figure out precisely what your audience wants to see. When you know what your target audience is looking for, then you can provide the hyper-relevant content that attracts people to your website.
The more people who click to your site and engage with the content, the more the search engines will reward you for helping them do their job.
Make Your Listing Stand Out
You have complete control over what your listing looks like in the SERP. You can edit your title, meta description, and use other aspects like structured data, so use this opportunity to stand out from the crowd.
If you’re ranked number three for a search term, then the top listing has an advantage over you. But you can turn that around by crafting a more engaging, more relevant title and description. (Google usually uses the page’s chosen title and description but does occasionally modify it.) Your listing is out there competing for clicks, so treat it like an advert and work to entice users.
Get Those SERP Features
Google will keep using those “extra” SERP features, so you might as well embrace it and make sure your website is featuring in them.
The SERP features might lead to a higher percentage of no-click searches, but they can also lead to much higher CTRs when you win them. Hubspot found that sites that land featured snippets have a dramatically higher click-through rate.
Featured Snippets, Knowledge Panels, Local Packs, Shopping Results: they all stand out and draw in users. If you can snag those features, you’ve got an excellent opportunity to boost your organic traffic.
A SERP is simply the results page users see when they type a query into Google or any other search engine, but it has the power to help you unlock the full potential of your website.
While they might seem complicated, there are tangible steps you can take to rank well in the SERPs and bring in the organic traffic you crave. While the search engines are always changing the SERPs, SEO and high-quality, relevant content can help you stay on top.
Now that you’ve got a good understanding of what the SERP is, it’s time to start optimizing your SEO to help your website achieve its goals.
What goals will more organic traffic help you reach?
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