Archives par mot-clé : video ads

Senator Berates Twitter Over ‘Inadequate’ Inquiry Into Russian Meddling

Video Marketing, , , ,

Twitter identified only 22 accounts on its platform that were directly tied to the Russian Facebook pages and then discovered another 179 accounts that were “related or linked” to the Facebook accounts. None were registered on the site as advertisers, the company said.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Mr. Warner’s criticism.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was more diplomatic about Twitter’s briefing for House investigators, calling it “good, but preliminary.”

“I think there is a great deal more that we need to know, a great deal more that Twitter needs to find out,” he said. Mr. Schiff said Twitter faced greater difficulty in tracing accounts because its users provide less information than Facebook users when they sign up.

“At the same time, I don’t think we have more than scratched the surface of our understanding of how the Russians may have used that platform,” he said.

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Republican chairman, would not answer questions about the briefing on Thursday, and his spokeswoman declined to comment. Mr. Warner said that he and Mr. Burr would hold a news conference as soon as next week to update the public on their investigation and try to draw attention to the continuing threat by foreign entities to the American political system.

In a statement issued on its blog, Twitter did not address extensive research by outside experts that has identified far more suspected Russian activity during and since the election.

The cybersecurity company FireEye found hundreds of automated accounts linked to Russian hacking groups, which sent out messages critical of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats last year.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Nor did Twitter address a web “dashboard” set up last month by researchers to track and compile statistics on 600 Twitter accounts that the researchers believe to be linked to the Russian government or to have a longstanding pattern of repeating its propaganda. The company’s statement said nothing about still-functioning Twitter accounts of DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, which American intelligence officials identified last year as created by Russian agents to distribute emails and documents obtained by hacking.

Mr. Warner said he was “more than a bit surprised in light of all of the public interest in this subject over the last few weeks that anyone from the Twitter team would think that the presentation they made to Senate staff today even began to answer the kinds of questions that we’d asked.”

He said the company had much more work to do.

“This raises at an even greater level the necessity that the American public has the ability to know when they are seeing a political ad, who’s behind it — particularly if it is being sponsored by foreign agents,” he said.

In its briefings for congressional investigators and its public statement, Twitter did not identify any of the suspect accounts by name. The company said it had suspended accounts that violated its terms of service, suggesting that it had allowed some of the Russia-linked accounts to continue to function.

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent who has tracked suspected Russian activity on Twitter for several years, said the platform had proved especially vulnerable to abuse, in part because the company demands little information from users. Twitter was used for years by the Islamic State for propaganda and recruiting, though much of that activity has now been shut down.

“Bad people can do what they want on this platform,” said Mr. Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “I think they have real problems trying to trace the Russian activity.”

Facebook briefed the two intelligence committees on Sept. 6 and revealed that it had connected 470 profiles and pages to a shadowy Russian company with Kremlin links called the Internet Research Agency. It said the pages had placed 3,000 ads on Facebook costing about $100,000. It found another $50,000 in ads that it believed might have a Russian source.

While some of the pages and ads praised Donald J. Trump and excoriated Mrs. Clinton, Facebook said that most of the material sought to exacerbate divisions over immigration, race, guns, gay rights and other incendiary issues. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote a letter this week to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking the company to look more deeply into the Russian activity.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Congressional investigators want to know more about how the Russia-linked Facebook ads were targeted to specific geographic and demographic groups. Officials familiar with Facebook’s briefings for Congress confirmed a CNN report that Russia-linked Facebook ads promoting the Black Lives Matter movement were specifically targeted at residents of Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., both of which had been roiled by protests in response to police violence against black men.

Mr. Warner said on Thursday that the committee was still waiting for Facebook to deliver a set of ads that it had identified. He said he expected the material to be delivered by early next week.

The Senate committee has asked Google officials to come for a private briefing in the coming weeks, according to a congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The committee has invited Facebook, Twitter and Google to testify on Nov. 1.

The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday that it intended to hold its own public hearing with tech companies next month, but it has yet to announce a date.


Continue reading the main story

Tom Price apologizes for private-charter flights, pledges to repay taxpayers nearly $52000

Video Marketing, , , ,

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price says he will repay the federal treasury for some of his recent travels. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

This post has been updated.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Thursday that he would reimburse the government for a fraction of the costs of his flights on charter planes in recent months, after coming under sharp criticism from members of both parties for the expensive practice.

“Today, I will write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes. The taxpayers won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes,” Price said in a statement, adding that he will no longer take private planes while serving as secretary. “No exceptions.”

The move came as House and Senate investigators are pressing Price, as well as other Cabinet members, to disclose the extent to which they have relied on noncommercial travel to travel across the United States and overseas. The recent revelations about these costly trips on military and private aircraft, at a time when the same officials have proposed dramatic cuts in the agencies they oversee, has put the administration on the defensive.

Price has come under the most intense scrutiny — President Trump chastised him publicly Wednesday and suggested his job was no longer secure — but lawmakers are also demanding probes of travel by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Pruitt has taken at least four noncommercial and military flights since mid-February, according to congressional oversight records, costing taxpayers more than $58,000, while Mnuchin is under investigation by the Treasury inspector general for his use of a government plane to visit Kentucky as well as one for a trip from New York City to Washington.

And a private plane chartered this summer by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, for a flight from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana, cost taxpayers $12,375, according to a department spokesman. Zinke also used private flights during a trip to the Virgin Islands.

Last week, Price’s office explained that he had turned to chartered jets when needed for the most efficient and effective travel in managing his department and maintaining contact with the public.

“This is Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people,” said Charmaine Yoest, his assistant secretary for public affairs.

An HHS official said Thursday that Price would write a check for $51,887.31, which appears to cover the cost of his seat on chartered flights but not those of his staffers. Politico, which first reported on Price’s repeated use of chartered jets, has estimated the total expense of the trips exceeded $400,000 — and it reported early Thursday evening that his White House-approved flights on military planes to Africa, Europe and Asia cost more than $500,000.

Yoest said in an interview that Price needed the military aircraft for secure communications during the overseas trips, which included roughly half a dozen aides. His wife Betty also joined him, she added, but Price covered the cost of her travel.

“Being able to maintain secure communications with the secretary is also something of particular concern without a deputy secretary,” she said, and the number of aides accompanying him depends “on who are the experts he needs have with him.”

Both of Price’s overseas trips addressed issues of global health security. His trip to Africa and Europe in May included stops in Liberia, the site of the 2014 Ebola outbreak; the first G-20 health ministers’ summit in Berlin; and a meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva. His August trip to China, Vietnam, and Japan consisted of meetings with foreign officials and health experts.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said using “military aircraft for cabinet and other essential travelers is sometimes an appropriate and necessary use of resources” and such requests are closely reviewed. Officials have “limited support missions to travel that is central to the White House’s mission.”

Although the secretary said in his statement that his private-charter travel had been approved by legal and HHS officials, he added that he regretted “the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars.”

“All of my political career I’ve fought for the taxpayers,” Price said. “It is clear to me that in this case, I was not sensitive enough to my concern for the taxpayer. I know as well as anyone that the American people want to know that their hard-earned dollars are being spent wisely by government officials.”

Price said he will continue to cooperate fully with the HHS inspector general’s office, which is reviewing the flights. He also said he has initiated his own departmental review to determine if any changes or reforms are necessary.

On Wednesday, Trump was noncommittal about whether he would ask Price to resign. Responding to questions from reporters at the White House, Trump said he was “looking into” details of the secretary’s travels and that “personally, I’m not happy about it, and I let him know it.”

It is unclear whether Price’s gesture to defray part of the flights’ cost will be enough to save his job; the White House did not comment on that matter after his announcement.

At a briefing before Price issued his statement Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president and his aides were waiting to see what happened with the HHS inspector general’s probe and other investigations also underway. House Democrats, who requested the inspector general’s involvement, have said Price’s flights appeared to violate federal law intended to ensure that executive branch officials use the most economical travel available.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Trump on Thursday to impose a government-wide ban on the use of charter flights by administration officials and to detail “what steps the administration has taken to ensure that cabinet secretaries use the most fiscally responsible travel in accordance with the public trust they hold and the spirit and the letter of all laws, regulations, and policies that apply.”

That followed a request Tuesday by the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee that Price and more than 20 other agency heads list all use of private, charter aircraft and government-owned aircraft by political employees since the president’s inauguration.

The Treasury inspector general is reviewing all of Mnuchin’s flights and his travel requests, including one his office made for a government jet to fly him and his wife, Louise Linton, on a honeymoon trip to Europe this summer.

“We’re going through this process, we’re going to do a full review and we’ll see what happens,” Sanders told reporters.

“To be clear, the White House does not have a role on the front end of approving private charter flights at agencies,” she said. “That’s something we’re certainly looking into from this point forward and have asked a halt to be put, particularly at HHS, on any private charter flights.”

Even some of Price’s longtime allies have questioned his frequent use of private aircraft to journey to places where he owns property, such as St. Simons Island, Ga., and Nashville. One trip included a get-together with his son.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, said in an interview Wednesday that the juxtaposition of the secretary’s lavish trips and the budget cuts he i seeking posed a serious problem.

“Optics matter in politics,” Cole said.

Lena H. Sun and John Wagner contributed to this report.

 

It was candidate Trump’s best trick. Now it’s stalling President Trump’s agenda.

Video Marketing, , , ,

After eight months of negotiations, White House officials and Republican leaders last week arrived at a secret, hard-fought compromise: They would push to lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.

On Sunday, President Trump walked alone to a group of reporters on a runway in New Jersey and told them his preference for the corporate tax: 15 percent.

It’s indicative of an approach Trump has employed throughout his presidency: He has taken a hands-off approach to working out policy details, keeping clear of granular discussions and declining to take a stand on the thorniest questions. When plans are almost ready, he has — again and again — demanded that they be, in vague terms, better.

The approach was successful as a presidential candidate: It allowed Trump to promise his presidency would yield big benefits for his supporters. But by not laying out details of how he planned to deliver, Trump left his opponents with little to latch onto.

As president, however, it has yet to yield a major legislative victory — despite Republicans controlling both the House and Senate.

“It’s the chickens coming home to roost,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during his 2008 presidential run. “This operating style I don’t think serves the process very well, and I think he got trapped into it by not being specific enough on the campaign.”

[The GOP tax plan, explained in simplest possible terms]

Now, Trump and congressional Republicans are getting another chance to claim a big victory — an opportunity to rewrite the U.S. tax code for the first time in three decades. So far, Trump has shown no signs of modifying his approach.

After dozens of closed-door meetings and public hearings, the White House and GOP leaders have still not sorted through many of the most vital details of Trump’s promise to deliver the largest tax cut in U.S. history.

There is, in short, no hammered-out tax plan, only a nine-page framework of GOP goals that have yet to be filled in or agreed to. Lawmakers now plan to clash over the details, with the White House staying in touch but giving them room to negotiate.

They stuck with the 20 percent tax-rate target in the “unified framework” released Wednesday, but some people close to Trump fear he might waver again.

Speaking Wednesday in Indiana, Trump said the tax rate would end up being “no higher than 20 percent,” leaving the door open for him to keep trying to push it lower.

“These tax cuts are significant,” he said. “There’s never been tax cuts like we’re talking about.”

The nine-page document released Wednesday pales in scope to the 461-page tax plan the Reagan administration offered in 1985 that helped shepherd the last tax overhaul into law.

On health care, infrastructure, the deficit and a range of other issues, the Trump administration has stopped short of specifying its platform.

[GOP proposes deep tax cuts, provides few details on how to pay for them]

On Tuesday, Trump told a handful of Republicans and Democrats in a White House meeting that he was now opposed to public-private partnerships for infrastructure programs. He cited the example of a toll road in northern Indiana that fell into bankruptcy.

“He dismissed it categorically and said it doesn’t work,” said Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who brought up the issue with Trump at the White House. “And in fact, pointed to [Vice President Pence] and said they tried in their state and it didn’t work.”

Senior administration officials were flabbergasted. They had spent months designing a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that centered on the idea of privatizing roads, air traffic control systems and other networks. On Wednesday, they were still trying to sort through whether Trump had misspoken or changed policy.

Trump’s team had planned to issue his infrastructure plan in May, but they have been beset by delays, in part because they cannot agree on how to finance the entire operation.

The indecision has been most evident on health-care policy.

Trump vowed to roll back the Affordable Care Act on his first day in office, but the White House never advanced a single substantive health-care proposal, relying instead on Congress, which failed multiple times to enact changes into law. When the House passed a bill in June, Trump said he supported it and hosted a Rose Garden celebration with dozens of lawmakers.

He later complained to Senate Republicans that the bill was “mean” and said they needed to change it. He didn’t specify how.

Similarly, he has cast about for ways to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, but the Trump administration has not settled on any approach, and key decisions keep getting postponed.

His budget proposal was so sparse on details that the Congressional Budget Office said they could not adequately review it, adding that “the proposals . . . are in many cases not sufficiently specified,” and in some cases found the White House’s economic claims would “not be achievable.” There is not a complete White House plan to eliminate the deficit or expand access to health care, things that Trump has promised voters.

This is markedly different from past White House operations, which have often buried Capitol Hill in paperwork and policy proposals hoping to have a lead role in how bills are written.

President Barack Obama’s top aides in 2009 helped write a 1,000-page draft health-care bill that would serve as an initial iteration of the Affordable Care Act, drawing support and opposition to a debate that would last for months.

To be sure, that approach does not always work. The Clinton administration tried to play a lead role in the drafting of health-care changes, but Congress balked and it ended up a chief unfinished goal of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Trump administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment on sensitive discussions, said they took a cautious approach with the tax plan, in part to avoid looking as if they cut a secret deal without input from lawmakers. They also wanted to defer, at times, to lawmakers who had spent years working on tax cuts. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn has said the plan was for the White House to serve as a “guiding light.”

But lawmakers and senior Capitol Hill aides were also skeptical that Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, their main interlocutors, could negotiate on behalf of Trump, who is famous for changing his mind on some occasions and refusing to budge on others.

White House officials say they learned a hard lesson from the failed effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act, which featured numerous competing GOP plans the party never coalesced around. By moving more slowly on tax cuts, White House officials hope, they have a greater chance to bring people aboard.

Those decisions will now be tested.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the new GOP framework would cut taxes by $5.8 trillion and recoup $3.6 trillion by eliminating mostly unspecified tax deductions that many companies will fight to preserve. Even if all those battles are won, it will lead to a $2.2 trillion gap in revenue over 10 years, the committee forecast, a level that could prove difficult to push through Congress.

Trump has shown an element of urgency on the tax push, though, and he has told aides he wants it completed by the end of the year. Still, Republican leaders struggled for months to reach agreements on specifics, at times leaving final decisions for later. For example, the tax framework does not mention raising taxes on hedge fund managers, even though Trump has promised to do that for months.

And negotiators haggled for weeks about a way to ensure the wealthy did not benefit disproportionately from the tax overhaul, but they never agreed on how to prevent it.

Republicans on Capitol Hill seemed willing to step in now and try to take the nine-page framework and mold it into a tax bill, which many of them say will give lawmakers a bigger say in the process.

“I’m actually grateful they’re letting us fill in many of the blanks,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.).

Mnuchin had long said the goal for the tax-cut bill was to pass it by August, but Republicans working on the plan didn’t even have the nine-page framework by then. Now, lawmakers have only a couple of months to decide which tax breaks to jettison, what changes should be permanent,and whether to prevent the wealthy from receiving too much as part of the deal. Administration officials want the tax deal to be finished by the end of the year.

As Republicans push forward, advisers to Trump’s predecessor warn that the White House has completely miscalculated the amount of planning and details necessary to convince the public that such a plan has been properly vetted.

“I’ve never seen an administration that so overpromised in terms of specific plans and underdelivered,” said Jason Furman, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. “They promised detailed plans on everything and have put forward plans on nothing.”

Mike DeBonis and Tory Newmyer contributed to this report.

Marketing To Millennials: Promoting Industry, Not Individuals

Video Marketing, , , ,

  • by Betsy Davis
    , Columnist,

    Yesterday

Appealing to the decision-makers of tomorrow, the millennials, is an increasingly complicated challenge for marketers, particularly those working across B2B businesses.

According to
research, 84% of millennials do not trust traditional advertising. Given that they have matured at a time when it’s
possible to simply fast-forward through television ads, and they are more likely to see sponsored social media posts on their phone than notice billboard advertisements, this is unsurprising.
Millennials have grown up surrounded by innovative technologies—also making them much harder to impress—so how can B2B businesses reach these decision-makers of tomorrow?

The ‘B2B consumer’

In 2017, the consumer is king. This factor has also impacted B2B marketing, with marketers now tasked with appealing to the
individual decision makers in businesses; in essence, the “B2B consumer.” Marketing has entered the era of specialization and niche messaging; a single marketing message is no longer
enough. Adding further complication, the generations rising up the ranks to become decision makers know which
marketing appeals to them; that is, marketing that genuinely values their interest, and not just their money.

Capturing the attention of B2B
consumers demands that organizations create stories that align themselves with industry innovation. The insurance industry has managed to do this particularly well with smart devices such as telematics
and wearables, despite not typically being considered an early adopter of new technologies. This tactic is advantageous in industries that focus on the discovery and development of something new such
as pharmaceuticals, where this means a new drug or medical device. For these industries, it’s important to align the company with broader innovation by promoting regular breakthroughs, as a part
of a B2B consumer marketing approach.

Digital natives, and other B2B consumers, don’t want to be bombarded with marketing buzzwords, they want stories that engage them.
Accordingly, B2B marketers should favor a more story-driven approach spread across a variety of media. For example, internet video traffic is predicted to account for 82%
of all consumer internet traffic by 2021. Whereas video it is not currently heavily used by B2B marketers, it is vital that they develop a narrative-focused, immersive marketing strategy using
platforms like video to their advantage.

Marketing pharmaceutical innovation

Individual “big” pharma businesses have long been focused on
their own individual successes. However, many are starting to understand the need to promote the progress of the whole industry to their B2B consumers. But in targeting a millennial audience, to truly
differentiate, then businesses need to actively contribute to moving innovation forward within the industry.

Currently, with big pharma continuing to labor under a productivity
deficit — 45% of its total forecast
revenue comes from external sources — fostering industry innovation is crucial. Our company is playing a part in steering industry development through a start-up project. This virtual
hub offers a platform to the most innovate start-ups selected from over 100 applicants to promote their own innovative technologies to the pharmaceutical industry while creating inspiring and
insightful stories that can appeal to millennial B2B consumers.

The new face of industry

With businesses battling to meet customer expectations and
overtake competitors, industries are progressing at breakneck speed. At the same time, organizations are trying to maintain their originality in an ever-more technologically advanced world. While
innovation is the way to move forward, there is a growing responsibility to show the rest of your industry how you innovate, and encourage them to do the same. The industry needs to learn how to keep
up now that the context of marketing is changing.

Brands should be wary of publishers’ ‘pivot to video’

Video Marketing, , , ,

The phrase ‘pivot to video’ now has meme status in the world of media, as a euphemism for when a publisher fires a bunch of journalists in response to disappointing ad revenue.

Fog Creek Software CEO Anil Dash’s joke on Twitter is the most joyful scoff at this phrase: “Horse broke its leg, so we had to take it out back and help it ‘pivot to video’.”

Newsweek writer Zach Schonfeld began a recent article with a useful summary of the problem: “There’s a video at the top of this article. I know. I’m sorry. It’s probably set to autoplay too, which means it’ll scream at you whether you want it to or not. (The answer, I’m assuming, is ‘not’.)”

This was not his decision but his employer’s, he added, because “banner ads don’t work anymore, and the solution handed down by frantic media executives is video. More video. Lots of video.”

The pivoting began in earnest last year, when Mashable cut staff to focus on video. In 2017, a slew of publishers followed: Bleacher Report in February, ESPN in April, Fox Sports and Vocativ in June.

Perhaps the most discussed pivoting was by MTV News. Prior to this, in 2015, a team of fantastic writers and editors had been hired, with experience at the likes of Rolling Stone, Village Voice and BuzzFeed. Former Grantland editorial director Dan Fierman had succeeded in turning MTV News into a destination for award-winning reporting.

As Billboard puts it: “At a time when MTV’s television wing was airing ‘Friends’ reruns and episodes of ‘Teen Mom’, the MTV News reboot ushered in by Fierman had shifted to producing widely discussed stories on topics as diverse as harassment at Planned Parenthood, a clinic for trans [military] veterans, and what to say to a friend who has been sexually assaulted.”

But by 2017, MTV had decided that long-form journalism wasn’t what the youth wanted. Average dwell time on MTV.com had risen but unique visitors were falling, even if, as Billboard points out, this was likely partly to do with changes to the Facebook algorithm (with organic content suffering and video flourishing). So, in June 2017, MTV News pivoted to video and all those great journalists were out of a job.

Why the fascination?

The reasons for this fascination with video among publishers are pretty simple. First, publishers are desperately chasing any advertising model that works. And, just as importantly, advertisers (and therefore Facebook and Google) are pretty keen on video.

For many brand advertisers, ads around the outside or in the middle of long-form articles are seen as all too easy to ignore and scroll past, whereas branded video content (or even pre-roll) is thought of as more inspiring – closer to the old-fashioned TV ad experience and what consumers want.

READ MORE: Mark Ritson – TV is dead, long live Facebook TV

Facebook agrees, and why wouldn’t it? It wants to share in the success of branded video content on its platform, with publishers uploading advertorial-style video on behalf of their advertisers and paying Facebook to promote them.

Facebook recently produced a study saying Facebook and Instagram users are emotionally engaging with video, watching more of it than ever, and expecting to watch still more in the future.

An article by Fast Company refers to this as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Facebook, the anonymously-authored article states, “has been shoving video down everyone’s throats—video is everywhere on our news feeds. So it shouldn’t be shocking that people are watching more video and expect to watch more of it.”

Just because Facebook and Google are championing video doesn’t mean it always delivers value for advertisers.

Here’s the thing: despite all the bluster, few in publishing are particularly confident that video is what the people want from their favourite online publishers.

Survey data from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford shows 71% of respondents across all markets mostly consume news in text form, while 14% say they use text and video equally. The popularity of text holds true across age groups, suggesting the idea that ‘millennials’ want video is a myth.

Indeed, video is often associated with clunky user experience, whether it’s content or advertising. Autoplay videos and pre-roll ads are universally derided, mid-roll ads are even worse (Facebook is reportedly due to cancel an experiment with mid-roll) and everybody knows the annoying feeling of clicking on an interesting headline and finding a video and not a text article.

So what should advertisers and marketers take from this mess? Well, just because Facebook and Google are championing video doesn’t mean it always delivers value for advertisers.

READ MORE: When to use video – The ultimate guide

The quality of video content produced by some publishers is still iffy, with slideshow-style imagery and text overlay that seems either automated (there is tech out there that does this) or rushed. Placing an ad is, as ever, all about context, and you want to make sure your ads are seen in places where viewers are happy with the perceived transaction.

Furthermore, this new focus on video may mean that publishers have lowered their standards as to what branded content they will put out there. On Twitter, financial journalist Felix Salmon highlighted a video feature from Wired about Tesla cars, which is nothing more than a glorified advertorial. Brand advertisers may feel they can take advantage of publishers’ laxity, but this is missing the point entirely.

There are media companies out there producing great video. The Washington Post is doing interesting things with vertical video on mobile, for example (though is a bit of an outlier, as a well-funded publication). Successful subscription businesses, too, such as the New York Times, are able to innovate without pandering to the advertiser.

One thing seems clear: the pivot to video is just the latest attempt at finding a publishing revenue model that works. As Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffrey tweeted: “Pivots, more often than not, aren’t led by real audience strategy. It’s chasing an ad [demographic], or dream of a [demographic], like a cat chases a laser.”

Marketers are always going to partner with publishers to create content, but now more than ever they have to make sure that they produce stuff (video or otherwise) that readers actually want to consume. Ultimately, rationalisation is necessary whatever the format, to make sure content and context represent quality.

Ben Davis is senior writer at Marketing Week’s sister title Econsultancy.

For Hugh Hefner, gay rights were part of the sexual revolution

Video Marketing, , , ,

Hugh Hefner on the Esmaralda yatch during the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2001. (AFP/Getty Images)

The year was 1955, and science fiction author Charles Beaumont had, by most accounts, crossed the line with his latest short story.

“The Crooked Man” depicted a dystopian future where homosexuality was the norm, heterosexuality was outlawed and angry anti-straight mobs marched through the street chanting “make our city clean again!” Even the relatively progressive Esquire magazine had rejected the piece because it was too controversial.

But Beaumont found a fan in a young Hugh Hefner, who agreed to run it in his Playboy magazine, then less than two years old.

Outraged letters poured in to Playboy. Even readers of the pioneering nude publication found Beaumont’s tale of straight people dressing in drag and sneaking into dark barrooms to find partners too offensive for their tastes.

Hefner responded to the backlash in a defiant note. “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society,” he wrote, “then the reverse was wrong, too.”

The move would serve to represent an early example of Hefner’s lifelong commitment to gay rights, and civil rights in general. Hefner, who died Wednesday at 91, prided himself as an advocate for the LGBT community, taking public stands on high-profile issues such as sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and transgender rights well into his later years.

The anecdote about “The Crooked Man” was little known until 2009 when it was highlighted in “Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel,” a documentary on Hefner’s civil rights advocacy. The film expounds on Hefner’s efforts to promote black writers and artists, expand reproductive rights and resist racial segregation. It won praise for showcasing a different side of the celebrated libertine and media mogul, though some criticized the documentary for glossing over the more controversial aspects of his legacy, namely drug abuse and sexism, while others dismissed it as a shrewd attempt to remake his image as he aged.

Indeed, Hefner’s life was full of contradictions that are sure to be debated exhaustively in the days and weeks following his death. He portrayed himself and his magazine as defenders of women’s rights, but his critics have called him anything but, pointing to his rotating cast of girlfriends, multiple divorces and general objectification of women in the pages of Playboy (“They are objects,” he once told Vanity Fair).

A widely-publicized memoir by one of his former girlfriends, Holly Madison, described a life of manipulation and constant fighting at the Playboy Mansion. Hefner was also accused last year of paving the way for Bill Cosby to drug and sexually assault a woman at the famed estate in 2008. Hefner denied the allegation.

Hefner’s contradictions weren’t lost on The Advocate, a gay magazine that published a wide-ranging interview with him in 1994. Hefner told writer Jeff Yarbrough their magazines had a lot in common in the sense that they were both “anti-discrimination.” Yarbrough was caught off guard.

“What suprises me about that statement is that Playboy and you, of course, are both known as representations of male heterosexuality and, to some degree, the objectification of heterosexual women,” Yarbrough told him. “I’m surprised you recognize the issue of oppression concerning gays and lesbians so clearly at a time when most Americans still don’t.”

Asked if he considered himself a gay rights activist, Hefner responded that he had been a “human rights activist” from the magazine’s inception. He said he had campaigned against the nation’s sodomy laws, which criminalized certain sexual acts. “If the pursuit of happiness has any meaning at all as it is written in the Constitution, the government’s intruding into one’s bedroom, into personal sexual behaviors, is as unconstitutional as anything can be,” Hefner said.

The interview also touched on the AIDS crisis, which “profoundly changed Hefner’s life” in the early 1980s, Yarbrough wrote. Hefner fixated on the disease soon after it was identified, he wrote, and used Playboy to keep a spotlight on the epidemic “with articles that examine everything from the disease’s origins to safer sex practices.”

Hefner told The Advocate: “The only thing ‘wrong’ with AIDS is the way our government responded to it. They are culpable on many, many levels… I have chosen every aspect of human sexuality — and the discrimination that goes along with some of those aspects — as my major concern. Homosexuality and, later, the homophobia that surrounds the AIDS crisis are part of a much bigger picture for me.”

Long before Caitlyn Jenner became a household name, Hefner took something of a symbolic stand on transgender rights. In the 1980s, model and actress Caroline “Tula” Cossey was outed as a transgender woman by the tabloid News Of The World and subjected to a series of intrusive headlines. Playboy helped her bounce back from the ordeal by publishing a photo series with Cossey, making her the magazine’s first openly transgender model.

When the magazine reran the spread in 2015, Cossey thanked Hefner by name, saying the exposure helped her show that transgender women can be sexy. “I wanted to fight for the right of recognition,” she told Playboy. “That was my goal, and Playboy was a great platform for that.”

Hefner came out forcefully in support of same-sex marriage just as a group of marriage equality lawsuits were weaving through the federal court system. In a commentary in the September 2012 issue of Playboy, Hefner, then 86, argued that same-sex marriage was “a fight for all of our rights.”

“Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time,” he wrote. He railed against people trying to “criminalize your entire sex life,” using language that echoed his remarks to The Advocate decades earlier.

“No one should have to subjugate their religious freedom, and no one should have their personal freedoms infringed,” Hefner wrote. “This is America and we must protect the rights of all Americans.”

More from Morning Mix:

Judge strikes down Kentucky antiabortion law requiring ultrasound

Missouri prosecutors: Brutal murder of transgender teen is not a hate crime

Megyn Kelly is striking out with her celebrity guests

An police officer posted a ‘don’t drink and drive’ video. Then he was involved in a deadly crash.

Twitter takes its turn in the Russian probe spotlight

Video Marketing, , , ,

Hillary Clinton’s surrogates and campaign aides faced what they called an overwhelming wave of Twitter attacks during the 2016 election cycle — some of it, they’re convinced, driven by Russian bots and trolls.

Now Senate Intelligence Committee investigators plan to ask Twitter representatives on Thursday whether false information spread by Russians accounts made it into real news stories aimed at torpedoing the Democrat’s candidacy, and whether the social media company took any steps to stem the fake news.

Story Continued Below

Thursday’s closed-door briefing in the Senate’s Hart office building is the latest move by federal investigators to probe social media’s role in last year’s presidential campaign, putting Twitter into the same hot seat occupied for weeks by its larger rival Facebook.

Facebook was a natural first target for congressional scrutiny, given its enormous 2 billion user reach and its role as an intermediary between trusted friends and family. But Twitter is also of keen interest to the Intelligence Committee because of the company’s outsize influence in distributing and amplifying news, a source close to the investigation told POLITICO.

Among other topics, the Senate staffers are eager to learn more about how disinformation posted on Twitter found its way into the news. They’re also interested in exploring whether automated Twitter accounts known as “bots” were used to boost the Google rankings of fake or misleading news items.

Senate investigators are inviting Google, Twitter and Facebook to testify publicly on Nov. 1 about attempts by Russia to use digital platforms to influence the presidential race, a Senate aide said Wednesday.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official said the Russian use of Twitter is “consistent” with what U.S. intelligence agencies found in their election post-mortem, which concluded that hackers associated with Vladimir Putin’s regime had interfered in the presidential campaign. That includes “the methodology of using multiple different lanes in an information operations campaign, » said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigation.

Twitter’s power to influence the news cycle makes it a convenient tool, people who have studied the social network’s role in the election say.

“The fastest way to move a story from outlying media to mainstream media is to promote it on Twitter,” said Clint Watts, a counterterrorism expert and former FBI agent who has studied Russian influence campaigns. “All mainstream media is watching Twitter and it spreads organically from there to other platforms.”

Former Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ann Ravel said tweets from foreign entities intended to cause trouble in U.S. elections should be no less alarming to lawmakers and regulators than the paid advertisements at the center of Facebook’s role in the Russia investigation.

« The sock puppets, the fake accounts cost money,” Ravel told POLITICO. “It’s not just a couple of guys in Moldova. If it were just a bunch of kids doing it for no reason, or a bunch of crazies putting stuff up on the internet, OK, that’s fine. That’s not political ads. But these are political ads: People are being paid to do it. »

Clinton supporters say they sensed early on that Twitter would be surprisingly toxic terrain.

“You’d get dogpiled for days if you expressed support for Clinton,” said one supporter, Brooklyn-based author Sady Doyle, who shared screenshots of critics who lambasted the Democratic hopeful as an “unindicted criminal,” “liar” and “fraud.” Doyle added: “One time I got something that was either a bot or a very bad impersonation of an American Trump supporter because it was a tweet in Cyrillic that when I translated was something like, ‘You are an ugly and bitter woman.' »

But it’s unclear how much help Twitter will offer the investigators.

Facebook showed up for its own Senate briefing earlier this month with a detailed story to tell about how Russian actors had used its site. The company shared seven out of about 3,000 ads linked to a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” called the Internet Research Agency — a level of preparation the source close to the investigation called a “happy surprise.”

That raises the stakes for Twitter, which declined to say what it plans to show Senate staffers. A Twitter spokesperson has simply said the company is cooperating with congressional investigations.

But Senate investigators are coming to the debriefing with specific questions, the source said. Chief among them: What, if anything, did Twitter do to address bots once it had identified them as potentially malicious?

The prevalence of bots is a known problem on the platform, and researchers at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute found, in a study published on the eve of Election Day, that an estimated 400,000 bots were participating in the conversation around the election during a six-week period in September and October 2016. That represented about 19 percent of all election-related tweets.

The congressional investigators are also eager to learn more about how disinformation posted on Twitter bled into news outlets. This spring, researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology documented “a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites” including Breitbart and Infowars that gleaned content from Twitter.

Moreover, the Senate aides are interested in exploring whether the bot-driven amplification of tweets was used to boost the Google rankings of fake news. Google does not fully disclose how its algorithm works, but in 2010 a company official in charge of search-result quality revealed in a video posted on YouTube that the “organic rankings treat links the same from Twitter or Facebook” as they do from traditional websites. (Google periodically modifies its ranking methods without revealing the extent of the changes, so it’s unclear whether that practice has changed since then.)

U.S. intelligence officials have been closely studying Russia’s interest in tapping social media to fulfill its own geopolitical ends. A report on Russian election interference that the director of national intelligence issued Jan. 6 concluded that Russian elements enlisted social media trolls « as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton. » Those efforts included pro-Kremlin online activists who prepared to mark Clinton’s expected victory by circulating the hashtag « #Democracy RIP. »

Even without foreign meddling, the internet might have remained a hostile place for Clinton. As a candidate, the former secretary of State has often been criticized for what’s judged to be a lack of authenticity, a quality often held in high esteem online. Former President Barack Obama openly joked about Clinton’s lack of online prowess, remarking that “Hillary trying to appeal to young voters is a little bit like your relative just signed up for Facebook.”

But Clinton herself has concluded that the overwhelmingly negative reception she got on the internet was ginned up at least in part by Russians. She dedicated four pages of her campaign memoir to the topic, writing that both Russian publications and independent trolls circulated stories saying she was « a murderer, money launderer, and secretly had Parkinson’s disease » — themes that often quickly found their way to right-wing outlets.

Twitter has long avoided drawing too much attention to the prevalence of bots on its platform. In part, that’s because such artificial accounts raise questions about the company’s already shaky business model. The platform makes money selling advertising in the form of promoted tweets, and shrinking its already stagnant user base by culling fake accounts would make it potentially less attractive to advertisers.

Twitter has defended its hands-off approach by saying it encourages the free exchange of ideas and information, and that journalists, media watchdogs and engaged citizens will push back on fake or manipulated tweets.

But the former senior intelligence official and other observers of the 2016 campaign say Twitter’s response doesn’t address the fact that a sophisticated bad actor — such as Russia — can create entirely new and false narratives by manipulating the size and scale of Twitter activity.

The cybersecurity firm FireEye reported that many hundreds of fake accounts with links to Russian entities were actively posting anti-Clinton messages, especially as Election Day neared.

“And then the day after the election, all of it decreased,” said Frank Cilluffo, a former Bush administration cybersecurity official who testifies frequently before Congress on the issue.

Much of the Russian effort to manipulate Twitter and Facebook was aimed at exploiting controversies over such issues as immigration and police shootings of minorities, according to Cilluffo, who directs the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. “It was more that they were driving wedges into existing cracks in our society, around divisive issues, and trying to provide legitimacy to fringe ideas.”

“And that’s very consistent with the old KGB tradecraft, like [the false rumor] that the CIA created AIDS, but leveraging social media to do it,” he added. “And if it fails, it’s cheap.”

Elana Schor contributed to this report.

With Tax Cuts on the Table, Once-Mighty Deficit Hawks Hardly Chirp

Video Marketing, , , ,

This month, the majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate voted to raise the debt limit without doing anything to rein in spending.

Republican lawmakers are pushing to increase military spending by tens of billions of dollars, topping even Mr. Trump’s request for a beefed-up military. Democrats are sharing in the fiscal intemperance, lining up behind a “Medicare for all” proposal despite having no definitive plan for how to pay for universal, government-provided health coverage.

And as Congress mulls large tax cuts, the tabs for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria keep rising.

When Mr. Bush took office and pushed for a big tax cut, the fiscal outlook was strong. The Congressional Budget Office in 2001 was projecting $5.6 trillion in budget surpluses over 10 years.

Now, the budget office forecasts that deficits will total $10.1 trillion over the next decade. The deficit is expected to top $1 trillion a year in 2022 and keep growing from there. Federal debt held by the public is at the highest level since shortly after World War II, at 77 percent of the gross domestic product.

“I think the greatest threat to our nation is us,” warned Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and a member of the Senate Budget Committee. “The way we handle our finances, we as a nation are the greatest threat to our nation. It’s not ISIS. It’s not North Korea. It’s not ascendant China. It’s not Russia. We are the greatest threat.”

But such voices are strangely quiet these days in Washington. Even Mr. Corker seems accommodating.

Last week, he reached a deal with another Republican on the budget panel, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, to allow a tax cut of up to $1.5 trillion over a decade, helping pave the way for the overhaul of the tax code that is a top goal for Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans. He did say he will not vote for a final tax plan if it would add to the deficit.

The mantra now is economic growth.

“Every Republican I know of is concerned about the deficit,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. “Every Republican I know of is concerned about tepid growth, too.”

Continue reading the main story

  • Manage Email Preferences
  • Privacy Policy
  • Opt out or contact us anytime

While Republicans denounced the ballooning debt when President Barack Obama was in office, they have much less of a political incentive to dwell on the issue now that their party controls the government.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“There’s been less talk about it this year with a Republican-led administration than there has been the last seven or eight years,” said Mr. Walker, who bristled at the Senate’s plan for tax cuts that would add to the deficit and said it was imperative that lawmakers pay attention to the debt.

Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said it seems like “fiscal responsibility is more about playing defense than it really is caring about the issue.”

“The party that is the minority, you hear them talk about fiscal responsibility so much more to try to stop the other party from implementing their agenda,” she said. “But then when that party gets in power, and you’re seeing that now, they’re more likely to throw those fiscal concerns to the wayside in order to implement their agenda without having to face any of the hard choices about how to pay for things.”

Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, said his party deserves blame. He warned that the United States could wind up facing an economic collapse akin to that in Venezuela, adding that Republicans in the House and Senate had not demonstrated that they possess “the intellectual understanding of the dangers posed by these deficits and accumulated debt.”

Mr. Trump, who has called himself “the king of debt,” may be setting the tone.

During his presidential campaign, he insisted that he could eliminate the national debt in eight years, even as he promised to protect Social Security and Medicare, programs that are projected to consume an ever larger share of federal spending as the country’s population ages.

After Mr. Trump struck a deal with Democrats on a short-term debt limit extension, Representative David Schweikert, Republican of Arizona, asked, “In this entire discussion, how many members have you heard, how many from the White House said, ‘We’re in the middle of a demographic crisis that’s going to crush us in just a few years; let’s get to work on it’?”

He left unsaid the answer to his question: Not many.

The change in tone on fiscal matters has been swift. This spring, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, asserted that the tax overhaul needed to be revenue neutral, citing the nation’s debt and invoking Mr. Trump’s Democratic predecessor.

“We added an enormous amount of debt during the Obama years,” Mr. McConnell said.

Now, Republican lawmakers are betting that economic growth will fix the nation’s fiscal woes with no pain and a lot of gain.

“The only way we’re going to solve our long-term debt and deficit issue to allow the federal government to have the revenue it’s going to need to fund all these promises made is with strong — and I mean strong — economic growth,” said Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and a member of the Senate Budget Committee. “You’re not going to achieve that with an awful tax system.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Kennedy, another member of the budget panel, said Americans have to have faith.

“If we do it right, then the economy will be stimulated appropriately and tax revenues will go up and the deficit won’t increase,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Now, I can’t prove to you that that will happen. But neither can anybody else.”


Continue reading the main story

The Impact Of Live Streaming On Influencer Marketing – Forbes

Video Marketing, , , ,

Pexels

Live streaming can greatly benefit the use of influence marketing.

Influencer marketing is a common method for reaching highly engaged online audiences, but many companies are still trying to fine-tune the best methods for cashing in on influencers and their popularity. Live streaming offers a fresh and effective way to pull influencers into your campaigns. When well-trusted influencers and compelling live streams come together, it’s almost impossible for audiences to look away. Discover some of the fascinating ways that live streaming is shaping the face of influencer marketing campaigns.

Make Influencers More Accessible To Audiences

Live streaming allows viewers to engage with popular influencers on a new level. An undeniable thrill exists to getting a celebrity or other popular influencer to respond to your tweet or comment. That sense of excitement amplifies when you get a live response to your questions or comments. Live streaming gives a face and voice to the content, items that are lacking in written forms of marketing.

Live streaming also trumps pre-recorded video when you need to pack a personality-driven punch. Scripted videos are just that — scripted. In a live stream, you have an added sense of uncertainty and anticipation because you don’t know what will happen next.

Influencer Brian Fanzo gave a compelling example of how conversations can derail in a live video stream. Fanzo was attempting to give a backstage tour via live stream when viewers began steering the conversation toward his smartphone. Adapting quickly, Fanzo went with the flow and said, « We started talking about technology because that is where participants wanted to go. » Working with an influencer for live video marketing campaigns makes both the host and your brand more accessible to audiences in an authentic and compelling way.

Create Content With Quantitative ROI

The ROI of influencer marketing is often difficult to measure. However, live streaming is one area where you can get measurable results that offer valuable information for crafting future campaigns. By the third quarter of 2015, year-over-year ad views had increased 113 % for live video. In 2016, 81% of internet audience members viewed more live content than they did the previous year. By 2021, the live streaming industry could reach $70.05 billion.

Live streaming is an outstanding way to reach the online audience. The technique has massive appeal for viewers, drawing them in far more than traditional online videos. Videos on Facebook Live get viewed for three times as long as a pre-recorded video.

At first glance, live streaming may seem like another form of entertainment, but the possibilities go much deeper. Companies can use powerful influencers and live video to access audiences in many diverse industries. Twitter streamed more than 600 hours of live video in the fourth quarter of 2016. Of these hours, only 10% were entertainment, while 38% concerned news and politics, and 52% involved sports

Build Trust With Viewers

Live video comes with a generous helping of transparency. Your influencer’s voice will ring truer in a live conversation with fans than it does in a blog post. Viewers can engage with your product or service and the influencer in open conversation handled in real time.

If you’re looking for a compelling way to build trust with your audience, a live video is a great place to start. Offer a behind-the-scenes tour of your offices or production facilities. Invite an industry influencer to interview some of your staff members in a live conversation with questions and comments from viewers.

Provide Cost-Effective Access To Video Marketing

If you’re looking for an affordable way to add video to your marketing campaign? Professionally produced videos can be staggeringly expensive. Even the DIY approach takes time and video editing software. Those two elements are part of the reason why influencers love live streaming so much. All you need is a solid internet connection and quality smartphone to live stream video.

Tony Wang, co-founder of agora.io says using an influencer for your live stream adds to the value of your low-cost endeavor. « Influencers offer instant access to their highly engaged audience, » he says. « While a live stream hosted exclusively in-house will reach your own fans and followers, working with an influencer will expand your reach without leveraging the massive expense of creating a highly produced video. »

Create Hosting Opportunities For Popular Events

Working with influencers and live media streams, you can add live hosts to your events with minimum production or preparation costs. When NBC launched Hairspray Live, the network engaged 20 influencers to help hype the event. Some of these popular names hosted the event through Facebook Live while it was airing on television.

Adding an influencer stream to your event offers engaged fans a fun new way to take part in the action from a remote location. It also builds awareness of the event among those who didn’t know about it. Live streams appear at the top of social media feeds, so users receive 200% more notifications for live streams than for other activity.

Allow Influencers To Fine-Tune Marketing Strategies

Live streams give smart influencers a wealth of new opportunities for successfully promoting your brand and driving conversions. When you’re producing a scripted video, blog, or other static media post, you can edit to your heart’s content, but you’ll have to cross your fingers and hope for the best when you finally post your piece.

“In a live stream influencers can respond compellingly to feedback from the audience, » says attorney Timothy Abeel who uses live streaming. « They might answer questions, ease concerns, or simply use the viewers’ comments to make snap decisions about which direction to take as they tour your facility or show off new products. There’s nothing like offering the opportunity for potential buyers to ask their trusted influencer to demonstrate a product feature live. When the influencer responds to the viewers’ interests while keeping your company front and center, you have live media gold.”

Live video is a powerful medium that can find a place in any online marketing campaign. Adding an influencer to the mix will only make your posts more powerful. Bringing a trusted face and name into an authentic live video will allow you to reach your audience in the most personable way possible.

Rick Pitino reportedly fired by Louisville in wake of federal corruption case

Video Marketing, , , ,

(Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press)

Rick Pitino survived the tawdriest of scandals during his tenure as coach of the Louisville men’s basketball team, first a 2009 extortion attempt during which he admitted to having sexual relations with the wife of his team’s equipment manager, then a 2015 scandal in which a former Cardinals staffer arranged for strippers and prostitutes to have sex with players and recruits in the team’s dormitory.

But Pitino could not survive allegations that, in the grand scheme of college basketball scandals, barely rise above sordid: That an executive from Adidas, which outfits the Cardinals athletic teams, and others conspired to steer top recruits to Louisville via six-figure payments to their families, in one instance enlisting the aid of one of Pitino’s assistants. Those allegations, unveiled Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York after a years-long undercover investigation by the FBI, proved to be Pitino’s undoing.

[College basketball coaches charged with accepting bribes in federal corruption case]

On Wednesday, Pitino reportedly was informed of his dismissal after 16 seasons, three Final Four appearances and one national championship at Louisville, likely ending a career that earned him a spot in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013. His departure, and the circumstances surrounding it, leaves one of the nation’s college basketball powerhouses on shaky ground only days before practice was to begin for the 2017-18 season, one in which the Cardinals were expected to be a top 10 team.

Tom Jurich, Louisville’s athletic director since 1997, also reportedly was fired, though a school spokesman later denied those reports and said both men officially were still employed. Both he and Pitino briefly met with Louisville interim president Greg Postel on Wednesday morning, departing with little to say to the reporters who were gathered.

Pitino’s attorney, Steve Pence, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the coach had been placed on administrative leave Wednesday and that he had been “effectively fired.” Pitino’s contract says he must be given 10 days’ notice of his termination, which only can be decided by a vote of the Louisville athletic department’s Board of Directors, and that Pitino must be allowed to “present evidence” in his defense over that 10-day span.

Depending on the cause of his dismissal, Jurich may have to be given 30 days’ notice of his dismissal, according to WRDB’s Chris Otts.

The school will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT. Kent Taylor of WAVE-TV in Louisville and ESPN’s Michael Eaves both reported the news of Pitino’s firing.

Pitino expressed dismay and surprise at the allegations Tuesday, just as he had after the revelations that former Louisville assistant Andre McGee had paid a Louisville escort to entertain the Cardinals’ players and recruits.

[Perspective: After another NCAA basketball scandal, let’s be honest: This is how college sports works]

“These allegations come as a complete shock to me,” Pitino said in a statement released Tuesday by his lawyer, Steve Pence. “If true, I agree with the U.S. Attorney’s Office that these third-party schemes, initiated by a few bad actors, operated to commit a fraud on the impacted universities and their basketball programs, including the University of Louisville. Our fans and supporters deserve better and I am committed to taking whatever steps are needed to ensure those responsible are held accountable.”

But Louisville officials needed less than 24 hours to find that Pitino ultimately was responsible for the alleged misdeeds of his program.

The men’s basketball program is already under NCAA probation for the 2015 scandal. Pitino faced a five-game suspension during the upcoming season as part of the penalties; in addition, Louisville was ordered to return money received for NCAA tournament appearances from 2012 through 2015 and to vacate 123 wins during that period, including the 2013 national championship. The university has appealed the ruling.

Pitino, 65, found success at nearly every NCAA stop he made in a coaching career that began in the mid-1970s. At Boston University, his first head coaching job, he led the Terriers to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 24 years. Pitino parlayed that success into a two-year run at Providence, where he guided the Friars to the 1987 Final Four. Then, after a two-year run coaching the New York Knicks, he left his dream NBA job in 1989 to take over at tradition-rich but scandal-plagued Kentucky, even though he Wildcats would be banned from live television in his first season and from the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons. After that, however, Pitino quickly had Kentucky back among the nation’s elite, with a memorable Elite Eight appearance in the Wildcats’ first post-probation season and a Final Four bid the season after that, his first of three appearances in the national semifinals at the school. In 1996, he led Kentucky to its first national title in 18 years.

After a thoroughly unsuccessful four-year run as coach and team president of the Boston Celtics, he was back at another faded Kentucky power: Louisville, which had not won an NCAA tournament game in Denny Crum’s last four seasons.

More success followed, even as Louisville pinballed its way from Conference USA, to the Big East, to one season in the American Athletic Conference before finally landing securely in the ACC, the school coming out ahead in the NCAA’s football-driven conference-realignment wars even though the Cardinals’ football program has never been regarded as a power. The school’s athletic programs were buoyed financially — just like every other big-time NCAA program — by their apparel agreement with a major athletic brand, in this case Adidas, a relationship began in the mid-1990s and continued throughout Pitino’s tenure. Last month, the school announced that its athletes would continue to sport the brand in a deal worth $160 million over 10 years.

Ironically, Pitino decried the shoe companies’ presence in basketball recruiting, where prospects attend summer camps and tournaments sponsored by the sneaker companies with the hopes that they both attend colleges that have agreements with those companies and then continue to wear the product should they continue their careers professionally.

“I never thought that shoes would be the reason you recruit players,” Pitino said in 2014. “It’s a factor. It’s a factor. I think we need to deal with that. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of young athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents have more of a say than peripheral people. But that’s easier said than done. I don’t know how to do that. It’s like trying to get the [recruiting] runners out of the game. I know we try to do our best to do that, but I don’t know, I don’t know how to do that.”

He never was able to figure that out, and it led to his downfall.