Author: Stha Banks

I'm a digital professional passionate about digital marketing and media consumption in general. I am vocal about diversity and inclusion and actively work towards making change around me. You will most likely find me on Insta, LinkedIn or with my family! MSc Marketing
MarketingLeave a comment

Africa Day 2020 – A Digital Celebration

Stha Banks

Today, Africans across the globe are united in celebrating one thing, their heritage. We celebrate our diversity; successes; continuous progress and of course the challenges that unite us. For those of us living in the diaspora, we are privileged to bring even more awareness of this day to our local communities. It connects us back with the motherland and helps us feel seen.

Why is today important to me?

For anyone that’s lived away from home for a very long time, you probably get this. You have one foot at home and the other right where you are. This doesn’t mean you don’t live in the “now”, you have the best of both worlds for now. Today is important to me because I have the chance to celebrate my other best world and share some of its highlights and dreams.

Continue reading Africa Day 2020 – A Digital Celebration

Africa Day, Diversity, Inclusivity, Marketing, Unconscious BiasLeave a comment
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Overcoming unconscious biases is crucial to developing a diverse workplace

Stha Banks

After suggesting to my company’s diversity and inclusion committee that we should celebrate Africa Day at work, I realised my journey had been one of navigating through the unconscious biases we all hold about one another, in our communities and in the workplace.

In the workplace, irrelevant factors such as age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, weight, and even hair can often impact on hiring or promotion decisions made about hiring or promoting people.

But letting these unconscious biases influence decision-making often result in missed opportunities across the board.

So, what is unconscious bias anyway? Unconscious biases are…

Continue reading Overcoming unconscious biases is crucial to developing a diverse workplace

Advertising, Facebook, MarketingLeave a comment
Photo by Will Francis on Unsplash

Why advertisers continue to invest in Facebook

Stha Banks

The last week of April is always an interesting time for the tech companies as the latest quarterly earnings reports are published.  It’s a time for these companies to sit back and analyse exactly how they have performed from a revenue and user growth perspective. It’s also a time for the tech companies to counteract all the negativity that is often reported about their business. Whether it’s in relation to tax, brand safety, privacy etc, it’s very rare that a day goes by without one of the “traditional” media outlets publicising the issues that the tech companies bring to the industry, and society.

For Facebook, who own both Instagram and WhatsApp, Q1 was another very strong period of growth for their business. Revenues rose by 25% to more than $15 billion in the first quarter of the year, while its monthly userbase rose by 8% to almost 2.4 billion. Locally the latest IAB study predicts that Facebook accounts for almost 20% of digital media ad spend…

Continue reading Why advertisers continue to invest in Facebook

Marketing, Social, TikTokLeave a comment

TikTok: the new social kid on the block

Stha Banks

Of late, all roads are leading to TikTok in social. TikTok is hyped up as the next big social platform. Its owned by Chinese company ByteDance and gained its popularity in 2018 after becoming the world’s most downloaded iOS app.

So, what is TikTok?

In a nutshell TikTok is a mobile app for creating and sharing short 15-second music videos. Its claims to be the go-to place for real, fun, raw video story telling. Its less of an airbrush app (although it has enough filters) but it’s a more of a ‘come as you are’ platform. Creativity is at its core, so it comes full loaded with tools for users to easily upload and edit their videos and share their creativity with the world. Using AI to analyse users interests and preferences through their interactions, it displays a personalized content feed to each user. Continue reading TikTok: the new social kid on the block

Content, Marketing, Snapchat, Social, Video, Virtual Reality, YouTubeLeave a comment

Video: the MAJOR trend of 2017

Stha Banks

If you are reading this, welcome to 2017! We both made it (counting my blessings!). This is not another top 2017 trends article but it’s what I am considering the key 2017 trend to jump on kind of article (if you aren’t already aboard). It’s the year of video. Expect to see even further massive growth in content brought to you through the medium of video by consumers and businesses alike. It is going to be video first everything and I mean everything!

In my experience, I have seen digital attribution results show video delivering shortest conversion paths (2nd after … Continue reading Video: the MAJOR trend of 2017

Cyber Monday, Data, Experience, Marketing, Mobile, SmartphonesLeave a comment

How to win the #CyberMonday Sale battle

Stha Banks

Its almost here, the season to be #jollyshopping! Christmas…

Time to line up your soldiers and prepare for the biggest cyber sale battle of the year! For some of us the excitement is building up to get those Christmas presents for our family and friends at great value or maybe treating yourself to a good bargain. You feel like a millionaire right 😎? Also for some of us, the challenge is how we make this quarter count for our clients to reach 2016 sales goals, Q4 sales goals, Cyber Monday sales goals, the list goes on! You need a miracle right?
Continue reading How to win the #CyberMonday Sale battle

Consumers, Content, Marketing, VideoLeave a comment

Quote of The Month: Inbound Marketing

Stha Banks

Its State of Inbound Week and HubSpot VP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan chats with ClassPass CMO Joanna Lord and WordStream founder Larry Kim. On how technology has changed the way people shop and buy, the 3 discuss how brands need to connect with users to create a lasting impressions which in turn result in tangible ROI. Quote of the month comes from Larry Kim on content marketing…[…]

While the discussion has great points on when and how to use inbound marketing I thought… Continue reading Quote of The Month: Inbound Marketing

Consumers, Data, Marketing, Search, Snapchat, technologyLeave a comment

Data is a game changer: Irish Google Trends

Stha Banks

At the end of the day we are all human. Most of us are in search of a better life or are doing our best to enjoy the one we already have. Holidays here and there, going to the movies or to matches, music festivals etc! Seeing 2016 is coming to an close, I wondered what captivated our minds and kept us hooked in 2015 and on that note what could we expect this year. As usual Google has the answer! According to Google Trends, some interesting global searches sum up the mood in 2015. Naturally the top searches related to breaking news; it was a very political year; we dug deep and challenged the norms; science developed further; sports events brought us together; tv shows & music made us happy, movies & technology gave us hope; celebrities dominated and there were losses too. In all of this we asked Google a lot of questions! [v]

Data is said to be a game changer because the numbers don’t lie. Whether its big data or small data, its going to have an impact on your business. So what does Irish search data actually say we got up to… Continue reading Data is a game changer: Irish Google Trends

Advertising, Data, Marketing, Programmatic Buying, technologyLeave a comment

Programmatic + Data Jargon

Stha Banks

ABC, its easy as 123, simple as… no actually jargon is never that easy to understand! As a follow up to my last post on #ProgrammaticBuying, this is a quick post on a few core #Programmatic and #Data terms that you might need to master. Therefore the purpose of this post is to bust those jargon terms that you haven’t really got your head around.

Naturally there as a lot #jargon and acronyms in the data field but the good news is that the guys at Live Ramp have put together the below list to make yours and my life easy! If you are driven by data in your daily marketing decisions then this post is one post to bookmark! Continue reading Programmatic + Data Jargon

Facebook, Instagram, Marketing, Snapchat, Social, technology2 Comments

Quote of The Month: Instagram + Snapchat

Stha Banks

So Instagram made Stories and I confess that’s all I have been doing the past few days while on holidays. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to temporarily share even more cute moments of my little girl or one of the few cocktails I managed to have while basking in the sunshine! We are all talking about the #InstaSnaps, including the main man himself, Kevin Systrom [CEO of Instagram]. Yep, this month’s quote had to come from Systrom after admitting to copying Snapchat’s Stories. Who admits copying someone else? No one ever but it’s not personal it’s just business. On borrowing Snapchat Stories here is what Systrom had to say [.]

Since you can’t patent an idea it means every other idea invention is up for grabs but you just have to be able to… Continue reading Quote of The Month: Instagram + Snapchat