Luminate Corporate Blog

Luminate Vice

The world of online advertising can be a dark and scary place at times. Just this week, spider.io announced that they’d uncovered a massive “bot net” aimed at defrauding advertisers. Scammers took over thousands of computers in the United States, and developed a sophisticated network to generate traffic to “fake” websites. In many ways, this traffic was indistinguishable from legitimate traffic, and bilked an enormous amount of money from advertisers.

At Luminate, attempts to defraud our advertisers are taken very seriously. We’ve been at this for a while, and while you’re never really a step ahead of the scammers, we do our best to stay right on top of them. There’s no one perfect approach to keeping advertisers safe, so we rely on several different signals to alert us to fraud.

Our first line of defense begins before a publisher is even allowed to join our network. Each candidate publisher is both algorithmically analyzed and reviewed by a human to assess their quality. We look for tell-tale signs of a scammer: red flags include low-quality content, rip-off domains, and questionable domain registry. Our goal is to ensure that inferior publishers don’t ever make it in the door.

Once a publisher joins our network, we apply several approaches to detecting fraud.

• We continually watch traffic for abnormal patterns. Using a variety of approaches, we monitor each publisher’s traffic, and compare that with known patterns from similar publishers on our network. Any abnormality flags a deeper review of the offending publisher — and any other sites that publisher owns.
• We rate-limit traffic from each user. For example, in order for a click to be considered legitimate — and therefore billable — we require it to be the only click that a particular user has made in that session. Realistically, a user can generate more than one click in a session, so we realize how conservative this approach is: in fact, it costs us about 10% of our potential revenue. Nevertheless, we feel that ensuring our advertisers receive quality traffic is well worth the price.
• All accounting is performed off-line. The Luminate widget is a fairly complicated piece of software. Part of its normal operation involves signaling back to our servers as the user interacts with it. We correlate these signals with one another, and ensure that the pattern they form corresponds to normal human behavior. If not, the session is considered suspect, and is discarded as invalid — along with any impressions or clicks it may have generated.

Finally, if a significant portion of a publisher’s traffic appears to be fraudulent, we initiate a formal review. This review can ultimately result in the publisher being removed from our network.

Going forward, we’re hoping to incorporate even more aggressive fraud detection tactics: for example, incorporating filters for known bot nets (like the one spider.io uncovered), using machine learning techniques to predictively identify fraudulent publishers, and taking advantage of the breadth of our network to look for distributed fraud attempts.

Unfortunately, scammers are here to stay. But we’re doing our best at Luminate to ensure that we have a state-of-the-art system to identify fraudulent activity and protect our advertisers.

Michelle Obama - the FLOTUS inspires our fashion sense

Michelle Obama is gracing the April cover of Vogue for the second time, the article and supporting Annie Leibovitz photos do not dissapoint. The FLOTUS sense of style is elegant, yet comfortable and often unexpected. She is regularly commended for embracing unknown designers, household brands like JCrew and Talbots, and juxtoposing them with haute couture fashion.

“If you’re comfortable in your clothes it’s easy to connect with people and make them feel comfortable as well,” Michelle said in the Vogue story. We certaintly connect with her unique style and draw some inspiration for spring trends.

The FLOTUS is often seen wearing bold colors like the stunning Reed Krakoff sheath dress she is wearing on the Vogue cover. She is not shy about femine prints, pretty florals and shiny metallics - all trends that we're embracing for the spring. 

And checkout some fashion items that are on our WANTED list for the spring, inspired by the first lady of fashion and the country of course - Michelle Obama!

Dotted Fit & Flare Dress from Nordstrom                         Casual & Chic Skimmer Jeans from Gap

 

Daytime Metallics, Kate Spade Tweed Coat from Piperlime

 

 

Industry Innovators : New Ways to Engage Readers—And Please Audiences

Recently Chas Edwards, Luminate CRO, spoke with James Sturdivant of Publishing Executive.  A few exerpts are below: 

Publishing Executive: What's the problem you are looking to solve?

Chas Edwards: When you ask [publishers] about photo galleries they'll say, 'We have discovered the importance of photos and love them—the bad news is the photos that satisfy our readers best are the ones that make us lose our customers.' If you have photos of the red carpet at the Critic's Choice Awards and a viewer is really interested in a picture, you would think that would be a moment of publishing victory … but readers go to Google or IMDb [for more information]. If we can bring relevant content to that image, we can answer that reader's question.

PE: How does the monetization piece work?

CE: It's ad supported. We think of our model as similar to a magazine model in that once we uncover the metadata—the content—inside the image, we want to present [that] content to the consumer and surround it with relevant advertising. We call it visual targeting … [and] within that we can get very granular. We did a campaign with L'Oreal, who asked if we could target images of celebrity women who had smooth skin. We looked at photos of models on their website and found women who look like that on the organic Web … whenever we saw an image of a woman who fit that visual description we would flag it and surround by an ad for Garnier's beauty products. 

To read the full article, please see pubexec.com

 

How Posting a Shutout Helped a 20 Something in the Startup World

By Brian LaFaille

Most people don’t instinctively look at the San Jose Earthquake’s goal box for Silicon Valley startup inspiration, but as a former goalkeeper and current Silicon Valley startup guru, it is this often overlooked position on the pitch that has helped me thrive in my startup career thus far. Speaking as one who has experienced both penalty kicks and pivots, breakaways and rebranding, set pieces and capital funding, I have turned often to the wisdom of my goalkeeper coaches to help get through some of the increasingly sticky situations those of us working for startups inevitably run into. Since college it has been goalkeeping which has given me the tools I needed to succeed in the startup workplace.

These are the most significant lessons I have taken from goalkeeping and applied to Silicon Valley’s world of startups, which has kept me both motivated and level-headed when the going gets tough.

1. Clean, concise communication is key

In soccer there are tons of distractions – crowd, coaches, arguing, referees. Throughout all the distractions, the goalkeeper must be able to keep a clear communication channel amongst the entire team.

Bottom Line:If in doubt, clear up details in person and make sure everyone knows his or her duty before any given ‘play’ takes place.

2. Lead, when needed

When between the sticks, all eyes are either scrutinizing the goalkeeper’s every move… or he doesn’t exist. One of the few times the keeper does not want to find himself between the posts is right after conceding a goal. The team is demoralized and heads are hung low. Teammates will invariably start placing blame, and everyone is looking at the player who slowly walks to the back of the net to retrieve the ball. In this moment, the team, the crowd, even the coach are all looking at the goalkeeper. How do you respond in the face of this type of defeat?

Bottom Line:In those few minutes following a setback or defeat, you have the power to respond positively, shake off an immediate failure, and inspire your team to get back on the offensive as soon as possible. Your actions will show that you’re not only the last line of defense, but the first line of offense. In essence, be a leader when the time presents itself.

3. Work harder than the other guy

Sometimes goalkeepers carry the stigma of being unfit and lazy when compared to their field-playing counterparts. In reality, when you take a look at any and all professional goalkeepers out on the pitch, you will be hard pressed to find a more fit and hardworking athlete (both physically and mentally) on any field. They must constantly work outside practice sessions on their reaction speed and ability to learn and understand their own reactions to every play that could come at them in a game situation.

Bottom Line:In startuplandia, startupers need to mimic this standard of work ethic. Like the American entrepreneur J.C. Penny said, ‘Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.’ Stop talking about working hard and get your hands dirty!

4. Patience – be the Zen Master

Like a goalkeeper stalking a one on one, many times patience is the unwavering virtue that must be practiced to prevent a goalkeeper from jumping the gun and making a rash decision to slide too early.

Bottom Line:Many times we young people seem to think that projects should start and end in an instant with perfect execution, exact data, and useful conclusions. I have learned that expectation is far from reality. Try your best not to be frustrated because a perfectly executed project doesn’t start and end in the time it takes to post an instagram photo. It takes time. Be willing to devote significant time to your work. Relax and keep checking items off your to do list. You’ll get there.

5. Accept failure as part of your lifestyle

One of the hardest parts about being a goalkeeper is keeping your wits, accepting that you are going to fail. You are going to get beat, often multiple times a game, and the only way to keep the debilitating poison of discouragement from affecting your abilities in the next play, is to accept the fact that you are going to fail.

Bottom Line: Face failure head on, and don’t be surprised when it happens. Many times businesses are so caught up with the act of failing that the small window to respond with an alternative solution quickly passes the team by. A perfect example of how to handle failure correctly is Instagram’s latest Terms of Service debacle. In every sense, that change was a complete and utter failure, yet the team immediately responded with clarification and a revised press statement which quickly hushed the outcries of users. Which leads me to my final lesson…

6. Allow yourself to learn from each and every mistake

Some of the worst blunders I’ve caused in goal are, to this day, ingrained in my head. I can replay the missteps, the incorrect technique, the atrocious timing….all of it. Luckily I learned at a young age, that the best way to prevent future goals against is to learn from your previous mistakes.

Bottom Line:When your team or project or idea do fail, it’s important to be able to learn from the mistakes along the way. Do a project post-mortem, and determine where the points of failure were. Publish these clearly documented lessons internally for everyone to see. From these failures, innovation rises, leading to overcoming the problem, and ultimately, success.

Originally published in under30CEO.com

Academy Awards 2013

By Cathy, Luminate Community Manager

After weeks of anticipation the experts and I were finally able to gather in Luminate's community chat for our annual "Oscar Party".   We all enjoy watching the show together while we discuss the fashions and offer each other a hand trying to find gowns and accessories to get the "look".   This year's Oscars did not disappoint and we noticed a few trends that seemed to be prominent.  Along with a throwback to old Hollywood glamor and sophistication shades of red seemed to be very popular as well as metallic gowns that glittered with every step.  Long trains and diaphanous skirts were showing up frequently on the red carpet, often proving to be challenging for the starlets to maneuver in but it was all about the drama of the night.  Side swept hair in the styles of vintage Hollywood and soft up-dos were perfect styles to compliment the millions of dollars in diamond jewelry worn by the stars.   Everyone had their favorites and there were not very many misses that we had noticed.  Some of the starlets accessorized with matching clutches while others decided on bright splashes of contrasting colors.   We were very busy last night  with so many photos to tag and we continue to be busy today, everyone loves seeing the Oscar photos and fashions.  We always enjoy what we do but the Award shows are always a lot of fun and we look forward to each and every one of them. 

Moving Pictures: Can Companies Create Engagement from the Exploding Imagesphere Online?

(Graphic by Shaw Nielsen, Adweek.)

By Chas Edwards

Let’s officially call 2012 the Year of the Imagesphere. To review: Facebook says its users upload more than 300 million photos per day (up from 31 million in 2009). To support this massive interest in photo sharing, the company acquired Instagram in April for $1 billion.

Meanwhile, Pinterest leapt out of the shadows to become the third largest social network (valued at $1.5 billion by investors in May) because of its unique and popular spin on photo curation. Almost exactly a year ago, Twitter launched its own photo sharing, and earlier this month it rolled out photo filters in a bid to steal usage from Instagram. Within days, Instagram responded by disabling integration with Twitter cards and erecting a wall between the two networks that makes it harder for consumers to share Instagram photos via Twitter. And a few weeks ago, the original photo-sharing giant, Flickr, jumped back into the battle with its own sharing app.

The Internet titans are placing big bets on the future businesses that will be built on the 3 trillion (and growing) online images. The unanswered questions: How will publishers, image repositories (such as Flickr or Facebook) and brands capitalize on the imagesphere opportunity? How will content creators turn the act of flipping through galleries and photo feeds into deep engagement? How will advertisers adjust from a marketing rhythm where they produced one beautiful photo every 13 weeks for a print campaign to one where they need 13 photos a day to feed a Tumblr?

And what’s in all of this for consumers? After a decade and a half of presenting consumers with online photos that they can look at — kind of like we look at photo albums at our grandmother’s house — will the Internet finally bring some interactivity to image content and turn photos into a stepping-off point for a richer experience?
It’s clear that consumers are itching for more. They want more depth, interactivity and the opportunity to explore more images beyond those the editor picked to populate a particular gallery. Publishers who want their attention will need to upgrade the photo experience, and advertisers will need to figure out how to tell their stories inside these photo experiences. This means one thing for sure: Brands and publishers need to figure ouhow to extract precise, granular metadata from the Web’s 3 trillion pictures.

Only when publishers know what’s inside images in their archives can they serve readers with additional relevant content from inside each gallery. Every image, then, will launch dozens more galleries — more Angelina Jolie images here, more pictures of fabulous shoes there. They can also monetize photos with precisely targeted ads, just like they do around other content on their sites.

Without image metadata, photos are the dark matter of the ad-server galaxy. Unlock this metadata, and brands will step into the imagesphere as sponsors. Turn those rectangular clusters of pixels into keywords, and ad budgets will support photo content as enthusiastically as they support keywords found in text. Hiring agencies and art directors to produce hundreds of new photo assets each month would break the bank. But attaching a brand’s message to thousands of photos snapped by fans could deliver the same results at a fraction of the cost.

Clearly, this is an emerging trend that Facebook, in particular, is betting on. It ignited consumer hostility by changing Instagram’s terms of service, raising concerns that the new rules would allow the company to license member photos (your personal photos!) to brands or other corporate entities. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom responded on the company’s blog that it merely plans “to experiment with innovative advertising,” but will not license user photos to outside parties. It’s not our images Instagram wants — it’s the metadata.

The explosion in the image-based Web isn’t just an issue for brands. Publishers are experimenting with photocentric, responsive-design-oriented tablet sites. They’re also tinkering with images loaded with interactivity, whether as part of editorial or within ad units.

But it’s still early for applications and for ad products associated with images. The big headline in 2013 will be the evolution from photo creation and sharing to getting inside those images. Will you be camera-ready?

(Originally published as a guest column at Adweek.)

Seven Bridges Road

In 2011, Jim Everingham invited me to join him and a friend on a motorcycle trip. Although I hadn't ridden since my 20's, I thought it sounded fun, so I rented a big Harley Davidson, and off we went. Five days and 1,300 miles later, we'd seen everything from Highway 1 to Yosemite, from Lake Tahoe to Napa Valley. Speeding through the countryside, the three motorcycles took turns leading the way, naturally handing off from one to another. Today I'm thinking about that trip, because Jim and I are making another handoff, in the same natural manner.

In 2008, Jim lured me into a great startup adventure: joining him and a few awesome engineers, all of whom I got to know while working on the Netscape browser in the late 1990s. Together we took a big vision from raw idea to Luminate today: serving 5,000 publishers, 150 million unique users per month, 30 billion image views per year, as the country's #8 network according to Quantcast.

As part of our vision to "make images interactive," we are now working on some incredibly cool, new technology. I think it's the most exciting stuff we've ever done, so stay tuned. And in order to make the most of it, we're going to double down on engineering investments which we think could lead to a big step forward for images and the services that display them. As we reconfigure the company accordingly, I've decided to turn the CEO wheel over to my co-founder Jim.

In addition to being a dear friend, Jim is also remarkably talented. He is a technologist, who, as our CTO, has filed over 30 patents here at Luminate. He is adept at working with developers to create great products. He is a savvy entrepreneur, having played key roles at LiveOps, TellMe, Netscape, and other successful startups. And he has enormous passion for changing the world, one image at a time. Under his leadership, I am confident Luminate's best days are ahead.

Meanwhile, I'll contribute to Luminate's next chapter as a member of the Board of Directors, and an advisor to the company. I'll still raid the snacks, pet the office dogs, frequent the tiki bar, and add photos to the Luminate scrapbook. Beyond Luminate, I'll stay busy with angel investments, hobbies, and family. One of these days, I might even start another company.

Beginning in 2008, we pioneered the idea that images shouldn't remain static rectangles. That images could reveal relevant information and functionality. That interactive images could transform consumers' online experience. Today those ideas have become widely accepted.  And in a world where practically every person carries a camera in her purse or pocket, and social networks multiply the number of times each photo is seen, the opportunity to add value to images has never been bigger.

Spring Into Award Show Fashion Trends

3 hours before the Awards Shows air, E! streams tons and tons of red carpet footage.  Interviews, clips, 360 Glam Cam, you name it.  

Within minutes of tuning in, my evil Joan Rivers tendencies take over and I'm bashing gorgeous, skinny women in $30,000+ outfits.  My roommates and I begin screaming and texting from each other's rooms:

"Woah, didn't Clare Danes JUST have a baby?"

"Jessica Alba SHOULD look hot if she’s not in any good movies.”

“Love Lena Dunham, but WTF is she wearing?!”

What were the big trends this year and who owned them?

1.  Sheer
J. Lo, Amanda Seyfried, and Nicole Kidman didn’t leave much to the imagination with their revealing but elegant looks.
Winner: Kerry Washington

2.  Bold Reds
Zoey Deschanel, Claire Danes and Marion Cotillard made a statement with these standout ensembles.
Winner: Jennifer Lawrence

3.  Metallics:
Emily Blunt, Isla Fisher, Julianne Hough, didn’t bring home a golden statue but shined in their sophisticated gowns.
Winner (and my top dressed vote for the night): Kate Hudson

If you're not in the market for a prom dress, or never get dressed up (like the people of San Francisco), here are some realistic and affordable ways you can rock these looks this spring:

Sheer Tops:

Bold & Bright Pants:

Metallic Shoes:

Will these fashion trends hold true for The Oscars on Feb 24th?   Stay tuned!

Making Images

You may know that Luminate's mission is making images interactive, but did you know that we're also pretty passionate about making pictures too? Our conference rooms are named after camera makes; Ansco, Leica and Polaroid are just some of them. And among our employees we have a professional motorsports photographer, a cinematographer, and a camera collector. I sat down with Will Scullin, one of the Luminate engineers, to ask him about his hobby for camera collecting.

What got you interested in collecting cameras?

When I was a poor college student I would frequent garage and estate sales, looking for bargains. There were invariably cameras, and since it was the era of the 35mm point and shoot, the cameras being discarded tended to be older, cooler looking models that took less common films. In fact, cameras were so common at these sales that I had to start making up rules about which cameras I collected in order to stave off just plain hoarding. I settled on only collecting Kodak cameras, because while it placed some restrictions on my buying, Kodak covered a huge range of photographic history and made a wide variety of cameras, from the basic Brownie to large, ornate bellows cameras.

What is your favorite camera in the collection?

It's hard to pick just one, but the Kodak Flash Bantam is up there and the No. 3A Folding Pocket Camera is also particularly nice looking.

Is there a camera that is missing from your collection?

There are hundreds cameras I could add, but of those the one I would probably like the most is an original Brownie. Because I generally purchase at garage sales and flea markets, it's not the sort of thing I'm likely to encounter. But I keep hoping.

Will you start adding digital cameras to your collection as some of the older digital cameras become antiques?

Sadly, Kodak's digital camera line is pretty unattractive. Most digital cameras aren't really display pieces in the way an Art Deco Bullet camera is. While there are some cool looking digital cameras, many of them, like the Leica digital cameras, simply borrow from classic designs.

Do you use these cameras?

I don't use any of them, really. You can't really go to Walgreens to get film for most of them, and in some cases using them would be detrimental to their health. I've always had current cameras that I've used to take pictures, and have kept up to date like the gadget fiend I am. My current camera of choice is my iPhone 5.

What is your favorite thing to take pictures of?

I am a student of traditional photo subject matters, mostly my cat.

Fashion Trends 2012

From 17th century-inspired luxe designs to blinding bright colors, 2012 was a bold year for fashion. As we look forward to next year's wave of fashion trends, we've reviewed the most clicked on products in Luminate's Product-in-the-Picture* feature over the last year.

The Six Most Popular Trends of 2012 

1. Bright Colors 

With all the neon showcased last year, 2012 felt more like a flashback to 1982. Bright outfits, including neon jeans and neon jewelry, attracted twice the normal click-through-rates than darker colored items. In a brilliant marketing move, Nike outfitted Summer Olympians with eye-catching neon yellow track shoes which generated as much brand attention as formal sponsors to the London games. Touted as "the most-visible color to the human eye," neon colors were seemingly everywhere!

2. Peplum

The flirty peplum crashed the fashion scene this year in everything from dresses and blouses to bathing suit bottoms. The flared silhouette was a must-have for online shoppers this season. 

3. Ankle Booties

Even in the warm summer months, ankle booties were the preferred fashion statement across the shoe category, generating 40% higher click-through-rates than the average shoe product. Nearly every major designer introduced their own spin on this classic look. Popular features included buckles, airy peep-toe, and soft suede.

4. Golden Baroque

The Baroque period, known for extravagant embellishments and clothing with ornate gold designs, was the inspiration behind last year's more decadent looks. Textured fabrics and detailed colorful stitching were popular on the red carpet and runway shows around the world. The bold design was a sure-fire statement piece for brave fashionistas.

5. Bib Necklaces

Long necklaces have long been on the forefront of style, but last year they blossomed, literally! What used to be a long strand of beads or gold links grew into a cascade of oversized stones, star bursts of glass faceted beads, and metal armor. These opulent art designs, once reserved for royalty, are still generating great demand. In fact, the very first product clicked on the Luminate platform in 2013 was Full Tilt's Sunburst Statement Necklace shown above.

6. Unique Bikinis

Each year, women scour malls and online sources for that standout bikini to rock the beach or pool. Across the Luminate platform, images with bathing suits consistently generate outsized interest compared to other clothing categories, regardless of time of year. In 2012, shoppers pounced on those hard-to-find unique bikini styles including: crochet knit, beaded, seashell, safari, retro, and flowing-in-the-wind fringe. 

*Luminate's Product-in-the-Picture feature helps viewers "shop the look" in their favorite fashion and entertainment images.