Facebook ads are very often a very good thing.

For every scare story about Facebook ads "creepy" targeting, there's a thousand more of how it changed the life of a business owner, who can, if they wish, advertise around the world at a fair price. Millions more are seeing ads that are increasingly relevant to

The secret to making Facebook ads work

Facebook might be the most accessible and affordable platform, but the only way to knock it out the park is to start with the right ingredients. (We'll come on to what can happen when you get that wrong later in this post.) * You have a great service or

What do journalists get wrong when reporting on Facebook advertising?

Reporters are right to hold Facebook to account so political influence isn't brushed under the carpet. Unfortunately, reporters are also missing some facts about how the platform works, and jumping to conclusions about what's really happening. This is totally understandable - it can seem like a

Questions the Observer journalists could have asked about Facebook advertising

* What was the 'lookalike' audience based on? Did they even use this feature correctly? A lookalike can only give you a fixed percentage of people in the country. Depending on the source audience, it might give you the top 1% in the country, but skewed towards people in

How might the Conservatives be giving their ads an unfair advantage?

For balance, here's a few thoughts on how the Conservatives might have genuinely pushed out the Labour ads. Look at the engagement numbers just above the comments in this picture. 2.5k reactions. 987 shares. 1k comments. That's huge engagement. And almost certainly not all from

How "fake news" exploits Facebook's preference for engagement

There's a catch to optimising for engagement, despite all the benefits above. If something is controversial, or sensational for the wrong reasons, this can get unnaturally high engagement and be rewarded with cheaper delivery and therefore greater reach too. It's no wonder "fake news"

Every song ever recorded, in surround sound?

You're probably yet to hear the most disruptive music software in the world. So I'll tell you about it here. I recently had the pleasure of hearing Penteo 4, which takes any stereo audio track and converts it into full glorious surround sound. Penteo 4 isn&

From creative writing to creative marketing

I just realised my whole biography and personal profile is way out of date, so it's worth putting on record what has changed for me over the past year after freelancing for my entire adult life. What has changed 1. I do proper marketing and business development for

My talk on HTML and web audio at the London Music Tech Fest 2013

I was invited by Mint Digital to talk at the London Music Tech Fest last Friday. With an audience full of developers and audio professionals, I wanted to highlight the growing potential for these two disciplines to collaborate now that HTML5 audio is supported in several major browsers. There'

Jonathan Ive on on how Apple names its products

I've found an extra clip from Jonathan Ive's appearance on beloved British children's programme Blue Peter, which you can see below. He discusses how Apple approaches naming new products, and the psychological effect that those names can have on the design process. Barney asks