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BMW becomes first brand to team up with Snapchat for AR lens
 BMW is the first brand to use Snapchat’s new AR ‘augmented trial’ Lens which lets customers visualise how products look in the real world before purchase.

BMW said in a statement that it is hoping the playful medium will help it attract a younger audience

The brand is using the technology to promote its new X2 model, allowing Snapchat users to interact with a virtual 3D version of the car as they would in a garage showroom.

BMW said in a statement that it is hoping the playful medium will help it attract a younger audience. Jörg Poggenpohl said the tool allows it to “enrich” users’ digital experience through content they find appealing, with a high recognition value.

“We wanted to insert ourselves in an organic way into the Snapchat environment and its users’ world. That is the most meaningful way to address our fans in a style that fits the channel and the target group,” he added.

As The Drum reveled in July, Snap has been working on the product for a while. In summer the tech firm’s head of consumer, app and gaming Fintan Gillespie actualy hinted that BMW would be a good brand partner, saying: “you can imagine being able to show a new BMW in your driveway, or a Burberry handbag on your desk.”

As part of the push, Snapchatters can 'customise' the AR version of the car; changing the colour and moving it around to view it from different angles. BMW is also running vertical video ads within Snapchat, and when individuals swipe up on these they can play with the Lens.

Brands have already been investing in Snapchat's 3D World Lenses which let users overlay pictures taken using their rear-facing camera with a series of interactive 3D filters, but this is the first time a product has been able to be 'tested' by consumers using the Snap camera before they consider a purchase.

AR previews are something that retailers like Ikea and Gap have already been experimenting with for a while, but Snap's ability to reach 178 million users per-day means it can bring the feature to retailers at scale. It also means Snap can potentially stave off increasing competition from arch rivals Instagram and Facebook by way of a fresh unique feature which brings in revenues to boot.

The company claims its interactive lenses drive a six point lift in brand awareness for advertisers and a 3.4 point lift in action intent. Snap is likely hoping its latest format helps prove its worth to brands by converting online shoppers.

In the US at least, a recent Daymon study indicated that 61% of consumers believed AR was already changing where they decided to shop, with 55% saying they thought AR "made shopping fun". Juniper research, meanwhile, has suggested that dedicated brand AR apps are likely to have limited revenue opportunity and a short shelf-life due to the need for constant innovation, something Snapchat's latest tool could potentially help solve.

Output: BMW has become the first brand to deploy Snapchat’s "augmented trial" lens as part of the campaign for its new X2 model. The augmented reality tool allows users to view the car from different angles and change the colour, while at the same time watch accompanying vertical ads. In a statement, BMW said it hoped the "playful medium will help it attract a younger audience". Snap, which has 178 million daily users, said its interactive lenses have previously resulted in a six percentage point lift in brand awareness and a 3.4-point boost in action intent.


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Cybersecurity broker WhiteHawk eyes $3m listing in Australian IPO
 United States-headquartered cyber security player, WhiteHawk, has opened up its proposed $4 million public offer to prospective investors in its ongoing effort to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

The company, which operates a cyber security software brokerage platform dubbed the “WhiteHawk Exchange”, revealed its Australian initial public offering (IPO) intentions earlier this year and lodged its prospectus with Australia’s corporate regulator on 7 November.

Now, the company is hoping to raise at least $4 million through the issue of 20 million shares, with the option of a further $500,000 worth of shares if the offer is oversubscribed.

WhiteHawk’s ultimate goal is to list publicly on the ASX and use the funds from its IPO for engineering and development of the WhiteHawk Exchange platform, which effectively acts as an automated broker for cyber security solutions.

The funds will also be used for research and development, sales and marketing, and for working capital requirements.

Launched in 2016, WhiteHawk began as a cyber security advisory service with a long-term plan to develop a self-service cyber security marketplace designed to match businesses up with the most appropriate cyber security solutions for their needs.

Specifically, the company has developed a machine learning algorithm and an associated artificial intelligence platform designed to let enterprises seek out advice on their cyber security needs and be matched to vendor products, based on their identified needs, via the WhiteHawk Exchange.

“Today, we help US and Australian companies to connect to content, solutions, and service providers through evolving our rich data and user experience,” WhiteHawk said in a statement.

According to the company’s website, its marketplace currently claims more than 40 different vendors, including Symantec, Trend Micro, Sophos, Micro Focus, Kaspersky Lab, Juniper Networks and Fortinet, among others.

“Since WhiteHawk launched in 2016, we have worked hard to develop an easy-to-use platform that will enable small to midsize companies to better understand their vulnerabilities and protect themselves against the ever-increasing cyber threat,” WhiteHawk CEO, Terry Roberts, said.

“We believe that our technology has an incredible amount of potential given the vast number of businesses across the globe who are simply unaware or ill-equipped to deal with online crime and fraud.

Our Initial Public Offering is a significant step forward for WhiteHawk as well as for the cyber security industry. I am very excited to be bringing this opportunity before investors and am committed to delivering growth for WhiteHawk’s shareholders,” she said.

Given how different WhiteHawk’s business model is compared to those of traditional technology distributors, it remains to be seen just how the company’s brokerage platform will affect local distributors and partners that deal with the solutions offered by the vendors already featured on the WhiteHawk Exchange.

However, in an ASX release issued on 22 November, WhiteHawk said it currently earns revenue largely from lead generation agreements with cyber security vendors in the US market, and has won advisory service contracts with a small and growing number of Government agencies.

Its current advisory service clients include the US Department of Energy and Department of Homeland Security as well as a number of medium to large-sized business customers, domestic and multi-national companies based in the US, all of which provide a steady stream of low-level revenue while WhiteHawk’s online sales business model matures.

The company’s Initial Public Offering closes on 5 December.

Output: US-based cybersecurity company WhiteHawk aims to raise AUD4m ($3m) in an initial public offering (IPO) and listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. WhiteHawk's Exchange platform uses a machine-learning algorithm and artificial intelligence to broker cybersecurity deals between enterprises and vendors such as Symantec, Kaspersky Lab and Juniper Networks.


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Budget pressures lead brands to try out 'micro-influencers'
 Bigger doesn’t always mean better for Unilever when it comes to the influencers it works with.

Influencers previously hired by the advertiser had to be as well-known as a finalist on the hit TV show “The Great British Bake Off,” according to Madeleine Boulton, assistant brand manager at Unilever. Now, the business is turning to so-called micro-influencers, people with smaller follower counts than the biggest social media stars, but who can offer better engagement at a fraction of the cost. At least that’s the theory. For Unilever, which is looking for alternatives to costly agencies, these types of influencers increasingly make sense.

Working with influencer network Tribe, the advertiser has been treating influencers like agencies, going to them with briefs and relying less on its agencies in the process. “Previously, we’ve used agencies [to work with influencers], but if you have a middleman like that, then as an advertiser it becomes a bit detached,” Boulton said. “I quite like being in control of the influencers myself.”

Unilever’s most noteworthy use of Tribe’s micro-influencers to date came in the summer when it ran a campaign for its margarine brand Stork. After posting a brief that asked influencers for images of foods they had baked using Stork ingredients, Unilever picked the 21 creator posts it liked best. Those creators then posted their images to their own Instagram accounts, leading to around 436,000 followers seeing the images over five weeks, according to the brand.

The images generated 11,990 likes and comments, while the cost per engagement was 16 pence (21 cents). Anything considered 30 pence (40 cents) or less is considered good value, according to Tribe. Another micro-influencer campaign that ran for Stork around the same time had a CPE of 20 pence (26 cents).

Unilever uses the CPE to benchmark how well its campaigns perform against others within the Tribe network rather than as a metric to pay influencers. Instead, the advertiser pays the influencer a fixed fee per post, which ranges from £50 ($66) to £100 ($132) for influencers who have between 3,000 and 10,000 followers, according to Tribe. “If the influencer had a good number of followers and I really liked the content, but the price they were asking felt too high, then I’d ask if they could lower the price, which most of the time they did,” Boulton said.

Advertisers like Unilever are increasingly applying performance-based pricing models like CPE to their influencer campaigns, viewing the metric as a way to keep campaign costs tied to what influencers deliver such as likes and shares. The problem, however, is influencers could game the CPE model and focus on meeting engagement numbers at the expense of creating quality content. CPE is a step toward more qualitative metrics for influencer campaigns, according to industry observers, but it still poses a philosophical challenge, in which brands measure engagement the same way they would a media buy.

While larger influencers aren’t as “authentic” as their smaller counterparts, Boulton said there’s still a role for them in the advertiser’s plans. The perfect blend between both groups, according to Boulton, would be using the larger influencers for high-impact campaign launches, while having micro-influencers do more of the day-to-day engagement. “That cake posted by a micro-influencer might look a bit battered, but it has that homely edge that you don’t get from an influencer’s polished and pristine content,” she added. “It’s not as accessible for the everyday baker.”

The advertiser is still testing micro-influencers, having done sporadic campaigns with them prior to its work with Tribe. Last year, Unilever worked with influencer platform Mavrck to recruit 1,000 micro-influencers for a three-week campaign for its hair care brand Clear, which captured 2,421 email addresses.

“Brands like us [Unilever] don’t necessarily have the budget now to go and spend on mega-influencers,” Boulton said. “We’re looking across the board at how we can be smarter with our money, and working with micro-influencers is one of them.”

As Unilever gets closer to influencers, it is moving further away from working with traditional agencies. The advertiser is slashing half of the 3,000 agencies it employs worldwide, the savings from which will go toward the €1 billion ($1.2 billion) it hopes to accrue by 2019. Aline Santos, its svp of global marketing, said earlier this year that the traditional agency model is “under huge pressure.”

Output: Fast-moving consumer goods brand Unilever is turning to "micro-influencers" to help increase audience awareness of its products at a fraction of the cost of using more well-known social media stars. Madeleine Boulton, assistant brand manager at Unilever, said the company treats its micro-influencers like agencies, and applies cost-per-engagement models to ensure they deliver value for money. Boulton said Unilever would still consider using "mega-influencers" for bigger campaigns, while relying on micro-influencers for more frequent, lower-level engagement. She added the firm was "looking across the board at how we can be smarter with our money".


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Farmshelf gets cash boost for restaurant-based vertical farms
 Farmshelf, the New York City startup that brings vertical grow systems into restaurants and food retail spaces, has received an investment from one of Thailand’s biggest real estate development companies, Sansiri.

The investment by Sansiri comes a part of a broader $80 million investment across six companies that include lifestyle magazine Monocle, home sharing app Hostmaker, and Farmshelf. According to the Financial Times, Sansiri invested $300 thousand in Farmshelf, a relatively small amount compared to the other investments disclosed as part of the announcement such as the $58 million stake in US boutique hotel brand Standard International.

According to Crunchbase, Farmshelf received a $150 thousand seed round investment from startup accelerators Urban-X and SOSV in September 2016. The $300 thousand investment from Sansiri marks the second overall funding round for the company.

As detailed in the announcement, Sansiri’s investment plan for Farmshelf includes integrating the vertical farming startups products into select residential properties, as well as possibly scaling the business across Asia.

It’s an interesting investment for a company that has up to this point focused on installations in New York City restaurants and food retail. I visited the company’s installation at Grand Central’s Great Northern Food Hall in June and liked how it fit into the upscale food court. Residential properties seems like a bit of a departure for the company, so I am intrigued to see how these might be rolled out within the Asia market.

Long term, these types of developer deals make a whole lot of sense for a company like Farmshelf. Access to both retail and residential developments is not only a heavy business development lift for a resource constrained startup, but the long term success of these types of installations will require a strong commitment from the property holder and business operator.

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Output: New York food-growing startup Farmshelf has received a $300,000 investment to develop its vertical farming technology for restaurants and shops. The new funding comes from Thai property company Sansiri, which plans to incorporate the system into residential properties as part of the deal.


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Google tests voice recognition bots to transcribe doctors' notes
 Doctors work long hours, and a disturbingly large part of that is documenting patient visits -- one study indicates that they spend 6 hours of an 11-hour day making sure their records are up to snuff. But how do you streamline that work without hiring an army of note takers? Google Brain and Stanford think voice recognition is the answer. They recently partnered on a study that used automatic speech recognition (similar to what you'd find in Google Assistant or Google Translate) to transcribe both doctors and patients during a session.

The approach can not only distinguish the voices in the room, but also the subjects. It's broad enough to both account for a sophisticated medical diagnosis and small talk like the weather. Doctors could have all the vital information they need for follow-ups and a better connection to their patients.

The system is far from perfect. The best voice recognition system in the study still had an error rate of 18.3 percent. That's good enough to be practical, according to the researchers, but it's not flawless. There's also the matter of making sure that any automated transcripts are truly private and secure. Patients in the study volunteered for recordings and will have their identifying information scrubbed out, but this would need to be highly streamlined (both through consent policies and automation) for it to be effective on a large scale.

If voice recognition does find its way into doctors' offices, though, it could dramatically increase the effectiveness of doctors. They could spend more time attending patients and less time with the overhead necessary to account for each visit. Ideally, this will also lead to doctors working more reasonable hours -- they won't burn out and risk affecting their judgment through fatigue.

Output: Google is trialling the use of voice recognition software in doctors' surgeries in the US. Researchers at Stanford University have partnered with the internet company's artificial intelligence research division, Google Brain, on the project. It used voice recognition systems to transcribe conversations between doctors and volunteer patients during medical consultations, and was intended to test whether such a system could help GPs save time in writing up notes. However, even the best of the systems tested had an error rate of 18.3% and concerns remain over how patient confidentiality would be assured if the technology were adopted.


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Ginger.io changes tack to become app-based mental health service
 San Francisco health startup Ginger.io went public today with a major pivot that the company has been undergoing over the last year and a half. While the startup began life as a passive monitoring company that sold its artificial intelligence technology to hospitals, it has reinvented itself as a healthcare provider in its own right, offering a full service online and app-based mental healthcare service, either direct-to-consumer for a fee or via insurers and self-insured employers.

“The realization for us was that trying to convince that whole industry to change their way of operating and adopt this technology would take a lot of time,” CEO and cofounder Dr. Anmol Madan told MobiHealthNews. “Not that it couldn’t be done. We were making a lot of progress there; we had 40 different hospitals that were using our technology. But it was just a slow process and we felt that … by bringing to bear the clinical components and combining it with the technology, we could work directly with the people who are paying for healthcare — i.e. the employers, the average consumer, the health plans — and we could offer the full service.”

So for the last 18 months, the startup has been reinventing itself as an online medical practice that provides users with an escalating range of options for mental and behavioral healthcare.

“The way Ginger.io works is as soon as you install the app you’re connected to a mental health coach,” Madan said. “You have a dedicated team of three coaches who are available 24 hours a day seven days a week and they provide a starter kit. In addition, they also guide you through a variety of self-care content built on cognitive behavior therapy, mindfulness, resiliency, covering a vast range of issues that help you build skills in those areas based on those symptoms and needs. If required, we can escalate you to a video visit with a licensed therapist or a board-certified psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist can also, if appropriate and relevant, prescribe medication to you if that’s what’s required for you to get better.”

The company’s big data roots come into play when it comes to scaling the system, finding efficiencies, and tracking whether patients are really improving.

“We practice a membership-based care model where we measure everything that happens within the system,” cofounder Karan Singh told MobiHealthNews. “Every interaction with a coach or therapist or psychiatrist — it’s similar to how after you take a Lyft ride you rate your driver. After this you rate your coach, therapist, and psychiatrist, and we use that data to improve the kind of care we deliver and improve the quality of the support we’re providing.”

Madan says the average rating for a clinician on the system is 4.75 out of 5. Collecting data has also allowed them to tailor the system to people’s needs — for instance, observing that peak usage of the coaching service happens late at night and adjusting coach availability accordingly.

Ginger.io also measures patient progress in more traditionally clinical ways.

“Really every member who comes through our system we measure their progress on regular rhythms,” Singh said. “So we might use standard clinical assessments like a PHQ-9 or the GAD-7 and we match that against best practice. So I think that’s pretty unique in this space in that we continue to track member progress and if we don’t see symptom responses, reevaluate it and we have our clinical supervision and the rest of our clinical team review those cases and determine if a different course of treatments is required to get them the level of support that’s needed.”

Just 12 months after launching its employer business, the company now has 25 large to mid-sized employer customers over a range of industries.

“We’ve been working in mental health and behavioral health for a number of years now,” Singh said. “I think that experience working on the front lines and really understanding how the business of healthcare actually works, how incentives operate, how workflows might need to change and, frankly, how culture might need to change in order to ultimately integrate technology led us to evolve from offering just the technology solution, to actually becoming a full stack behavioral health provider that integrates that technology and that data at our core, which allows us to deliver great care, and measure that it works.”

Output: Healthtech Ginger.io has successfully switched from selling artificial intelligence technology to hospitals to becoming an online mental health service, with 25 businesses now using its services. The San Francisco firm has spent the past 18 months developing its service, which includes an app and 24-hour access to a support team, while care can be escalated to include video consultations with clinicians, who can prescribe medication if needed. All services are rated, with the average score for a clinician being 4.75 out of five. Ginger.io's service is available to individuals as well as via insurers and self-insured employers.


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Regus Regus set to open two new business centres in Nairobi
 If you’ve always dreamed of starting your own business, it’s something you want to get right. If you are confident, you can safely say that you will have goals and desires that you would like to achieve. Some people want to hold onto their passions, and that’s fine. However, some want to follow their dreams and ensure they come true. When this is the case, ensuring that you are actively pushing your business in the right direction is essential.

Indeed, the organization is not the only factor that matters in all aspects. There are many small ways of thinking and even the occasional leap of faith that is important, but when you put in the effort to be organized, it will help you make these things happen. So, you must do whatever it takes to ensure you can manage all aspects of your business and continue with courage. This requires you to keep your eye on the ball and strive to grow the business and reach the desired point. Let’s see how you can achieve this.

Branding Strategy

First, you’ll want to make sure you try to make sure you know your business from the past. It isn’t easy to organize your business or propel yourself forward if you know your brand name. Therefore, the first thing you should be able to achieve is to know your brand. Creating the right branding strategy will allow you to gain confidence in your business and take it to the level you would like.

One important thing you could do to increase your business’s growth is to invest in custom packaging boxes that enable branding. Create a design for your packaging that promotes your company’s image. It is essential to consider your product category and determine the branding strategy most effectively for you.

Knowledge about Customer

The next thing you should be able to do is to spend some time understanding your customer. If you don’t have profiles for your customers and you don’t have an idea in your head about who your customers are, you’re not on the right track. Therefore, ensuring you take the time to build the profiles that will help you increase your sales is crucial.

Make a Proper Plan

When you are sure of the current direction of your business, it is possible to put together an overall business plan that includes all the essential elements of a business plan. Knowing how you will grow your business is vital. This will not be the case if you are not organized. You may have many different ideas about what you want to achieve. It would be best if you recorded everything to start your strategy.

You might consider avoiding the cost of renting office space by opting for a virtual address instead. A virtual office address will allow you to present a stylish brand identity in your favorite city without the price shock.

Gift Boxes

Kraft boxes also come in gift boxes. Kraft boxes also wrap gifts for special occasions, such as birthdays and anniversaries. The kraft boxes are easy to fold, so you can avoid all the dirt and glue in the package.

Set Your Vision

You’ve made your plan, which will help you feel more organized. However, it would be best if you took action on this. Her goals are a factor. If you have set goals for yourself, you have something to strive for and achieve. This method organizes your ideas and goals and pushes you to the next level.

This is one tip you can discover that will help keep you accountable. Because when you strive for something, it’s much easier to ensure your business is progressing. Setting mini-goals can help here.

Professional Presentation

The second thing that will help is to help you make sure you present yourself as a professional. If you want to stay in tip-top shape, you can have a well-branded website and branded emails and ensure that you look like the organized and proficient company you are.

Efficient System

You’ll probably be asked to make sure you’re using the internet. Even if you’re using an efficient system, there’s much more you can do electronically. There is plenty of digital asset management software you can use to help you organize everything. Finding an efficient system that works for you is essential to ensure you don’t worry about what documents belong and can work on moving your business forward.

Prepare Marketing Strategies

One of the most effective ways to stay organized is to ensure you know exactly what you’re doing in your marketing. If you want to expand, you have to strategize. You need to make sure you have a marketing plan that tells you how you will increase your growth. If you’ve come up with your marketing strategies, you’ll need to include them in an action plan to help your business scale.

Consistency

Next, you will need to make sure you are as consistent as possible. If you want to stay organized and allow your business to grow how you want it to, staying consistent is the best way to do it. Being consistent when trying to gain momentum is critical. This can help you push your business further and get results through social media and marketing.

Share Your Workload

Sometimes you’ll be a little overwhelmed – that’s how things work. You’ll find that you can’t always do it on your own. You’ll need to make sure you can hire freelancers and employees to help with your workload.

Markup Your Schedule

In this way, you will find that it is beneficial to have a calendar that allows you to be better organized. When your business is expanding rapidly, it’s not easy to keep track of things. Whether it’s meetings, financial obligations, or marketing, calendars can help you stay organized. Content calendars will help you plan your social media activities, and synced journal calendars can help you manage your appointments. This could be a massive boost to your overall success.

Feel Organized With Work

You must hold yourself accountable if you’re having trouble making things happen. Feeling more organized with your work and goals is easy and fun. It doesn’t matter if you have someone checking you out or if you’ve created an incentive you want to know; it will help ensure you can complete your tasks.

Monitor

Additionally, you may want to be sure to monitor everything you do. This applies to your goals, marketing strategy, and customers. It would be best if you didn’t keep moving forward. You need to make sure you are working on the right goals. Make sure your customers are happy and get the services they want from you. Make sure you’re in the right place every month. It will allow you to stay organized and clutter-free.

It’s that simple. Sometimes it’s impossible to organize yourself and figure out what you need to do to make progress. However, most of the time, it’s about getting started. Maybe you’re not sure what you could do to make that happen. However, now that you have all the information you can get, you have gathered the only thing you have to choose the right points that are most beneficial for you and start working.

Output: Shared office provider Regus (part of IWG) is opening two new business centres in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The city has in recent years attracted an increasing number of micro and small businesses, a sector that now employs 7.5 million people across the country. The new centres will open in December, with one of them, Vienna Court, having been awarded an environmental award by the US Green Building Council. The development incorporates solar power, rain water harvesting and cycling storage.


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Facebook still posting discriminatory housing ads
 In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit.

But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company’s monitoring of the rental market.

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Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to publish any advertisement “with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Every single ad was approved within minutes.

The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters “interested in Islam, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam.” It was approved after 22 minutes.

Under its own policies, Facebook should have flagged these ads, and prevented the posting of some of them. Its failure to do so revives questions about whether the company is in compliance with federal fair housing rules, as well as about its ability and commitment to police discriminatory advertising on the world’s largest social network.

Facebook’s advertising portal lets users choose their audiences based on specific traits, demographics and behavior profiles. Our ad for an apartment rental excluded African Americans, Asian Americans and Spanish-speaking Hispanic audiences. It was approved in under a minute.

Housing, employment and credit are the three areas in which federal law prohibits discriminatory ads. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — the agency responsible for enforcing fair housing laws — told us that it has closed an inquiry into Facebook’s advertising policies, reducing pressure on the company to address the issue. In a 2015 newspaper column, Ben Carson, now HUD secretary, criticized “government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality” in housing.

Facebook’s failure to police discriminatory rental ads flies in the face of its promises in February that it would no longer approve ads for housing, employment or credit that targeted racial categories. For advertising aimed at audiences not selected by race, Facebook said it would require housing, employment and credit advertisers to “self-certify” that their ads were compliant with anti-discrimination laws.

Based on Facebook’s announcement, the ads purchased by ProPublica that were aimed at racial categories should have been rejected. The others should have prompted a screen to pop up asking for self-certification. We never encountered a self-certification screen, and none of our ads were rejected by Facebook.

“This was a failure in our enforcement and we’re disappointed that we fell short of our commitments,” Ami Vora, vice president of product management at Facebook, said in an emailed statement. “The rental housing ads purchased by ProPublica should have but did not trigger the extra review and certifications we put in place due to a technical failure.”

Vora added that Facebook’s anti-discrimination system had “successfully flagged millions of ads” in the credit, employment and housing categories and that Facebook will now begin requiring self-certification for ads in all categories that choose to exclude an audience segment. “Our systems continue to improve but we can do better,” Vora said.

About 37 percent of U.S. households rented in 2016, representing a 50-year high, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. On average, renters earn about half as much as homeowners, and the percentage of families with children that rent rather than buy has increased sharply in the past decade, the study said. Minority renters have long faced pervasive housing discrimination. A 2013 study by HUD found that real estate agents show more units to whites than to African Americans, Asians and Latinos.

Facebook has long been a popular destination for rental listings, on pages hosted by real estate brokers, property owners and building managers. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it had added two large providers of rental listings to its Facebook Marketplace service. “Marketplace is a popular place for people to look for a home to rent,” Facebook product manager Bowen Pan said in a press release.

Facebook warns rental advertisers in its Marketplace section that “listings that discriminate against a protected class can be reported and will be removed from Facebook.”

Facebook’s anti-discrimination initiative was prompted by an article published last year by ProPublica. For that story, we bought a Facebook ad targeting house hunters. We were able to use Facebook’s features to block the ad from being shown to anyone with an “affinity” for African American, Asian American or Hispanic people. Our ability to narrow the audience based on race raised the question of whether such ads violated the Fair Housing Act.

After ProPublica’s article appeared in the fall of 2016, HUD, then under the Obama administration, began examining Facebook’s practices. Facebook then said it would build an automated system to spot ads that discriminate illegally. “We take these issues seriously,” Facebook Vice President Erin Egan wrote in a blog post. “Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook.”

Read More Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads.

In February, Facebook announced it had built its system and was rolling it out. The press lauded the announcement: “Facebook cracks down on ads that discriminate” was the Washington Post’s headline.

Facebook has been under fire for other aspects of its automated ad buying system as well. Two months ago, the company disclosed that it had discovered $100,000 worth of divisive political ads placed by “inauthentic” Russian accounts. And in September, ProPublica reported that Facebook’s ad targeting system allowed buyers to reach people who identified themselves as “Jew haters” and other anti-Semitic categories. Facebook pledged to remove the offending categories and to hire thousands more employees to enforce its ad policies.

“We’re adding additional layers of review where people use potentially sensitive categories for targeting,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said during Senate testimony earlier this month.

After Stretch’s public statement, we wondered whether the ability to buy discriminatory housing ads had really been addressed. So we set out to buy an advertisement with the exact same targeting parameters as the ad we bought last year. The ad promoted a fictional apartment for rent and was targeted at people living in New York, ages 18–65, who were house hunting and likely to move. We asked Facebook not to show the ad to people categorized under the “multicultural affinity” of Hispanic, African American or Asian American.

(ProPublica generally forbids impersonation in news gathering. We felt in this instance that the public interest in Facebook’s ad system justified the brief posting of a fake ad for non-existent housing. We deleted each ad as soon as it was approved.)

The only changes from last year that we could identify in Facebook’s ad buying system was that the category called “Ethnic Affinity” had been renamed “Multicultural Affinity” and was no longer part of “Demographics.” It is now designated as part of “Behaviors.”

Our ad was approved within minutes.

Left: A screenshot of ad targeting categories ProPublica submitted and Facebook approved in 2016. Right: Categories ProPublica submitted and were approved in 2017, raising questions about what the social network has done to police discriminatory ads.

Then we decided to test whether we could purchase housing ads that discriminated against other protected categories of people under the Fair Housing Act.

We placed ads that sought to exclude members of as many of the protected categories as we could find in Facebook’s self-service advertising portal. In addition to those mentioned above, we bought ads that were blocked from being shown to “soccer moms,” people interested in American sign language, gay men and Christians.

We also tested whether it was possible to use geography as a way to target racial groups — a practice known as redlining. We bought a housing ad that targeted ZIP codes in Brooklyn whose residents are more than 50 percent non-Hispanic white people, according to the U.S. Census bureau. By definition, that meant the ad was not shown to Facebook users living in Brooklyn neighborhoods where minorities are a majority of the residents.

Facebook drew blue lines around our target neighborhoods and told us our “audience selection is great!” It approved the ad.

Output: Facebook is still permitting the posting of US housing ads that break the law by discriminating against people in specific ethnic groups or with disabilities, according to investigative journalism non-profit ProPublica. In October 2016, the group revealed that it had been able to purchase an ad on Facebook which excluded Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American people from viewing it. Facebook announced in February that it had installed tools to prevent this. However, ProPublica claims that it recently purchased an ad for rental apartments which excluded groups including African Americans, Jews, Spanish speakers and people interested in wheelchair ramps.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Facebook still posting discriminatory housing ads
 Facebook is still allowing people to post housing ads that illegally discriminate against certain ethnic groups or people with disabilities, according to ProPublica.

ProPublica reported in October 2016 it was able to buy an ad in Facebook's housing category and exclude black, Hispanic or Asian-Americans from seeing it. Discriminating against specific races, colors, religions, sex, handicaps, familial status and national origin when it comes to housing ads is against the law under the Fair Housing Act. Facebook said it added new tools in February to prevent the issue.

But a new ProPublica report shows the publication bought housing ads recently -- and was still allowed to block groups including African Americans, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, and Spanish speakers from seeing it. Most ads were approved within three minutes, except for an exclusion for people "interested in Islam, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam" which was also eventually approved.

While the ad bought in October 2016 was about a community meeting about housing, the recent housing ad was about rental apartments, which would make it illegal.

Facebook admitted it allowed the ads, and apologized for the error in a statement. Ami Vora, VP of product management, said the company will add a notification across all categories for anyone who places an ad that excludes certain groups of people. Purchasers will have to acknowledge they are posting in accordance with Facebook's policies and the law.

"This was a failure in our enforcement and we're disappointed that we fell short of our commitments," Vora said in the statement.

"Earlier this year, we added additional safeguards to protect against the abuse of our multicultural affinity tools to facilitate discrimination in housing, credit and employment. The rental housing ads purchased by ProPublica should have but did not trigger the extra review and certifications we put in place due to a technical failure. Our safeguards, including additional human reviewers and machine learning systems have successfully flagged millions of ads and their effectiveness has improved over time. Tens of thousands of advertisers have confirmed compliance with our tighter restrictions, including that they follow all applicable laws. We don't want Facebook to be used for discrimination and will continue to strengthen our policies, hire more ad reviewers, and refine machine learning tools to help detect violations. Our systems continue to improve but we can do better. While we currently require compliance notifications of advertisers that seek to place ads for housing, employment, and credit opportunities, we will extend this requirement to ALL advertisers who choose to exclude some users from seeing their ads on Facebook to also confirm their compliance with our anti-discrimination policies – and the law."

A source close to the situation said there was a coding error which did not prevent discriminatory tactics from being used on rental ads. However housing ads that pertained to purchasing property were properly screened.

Facebook also faced scrutiny over its ad targeting capabilities in September, when another ProPublica report showed the platform allowed ads to be shown to people who identified as "Jew haters" and other anti-semitic terms. The company responded by adding more features to block the use of derogatory terms to target users, as well as hiring more people to look over ads before they post.

Output: Facebook is still permitting the posting of US housing ads that break the law by discriminating against people in specific ethnic groups or with disabilities, according to investigative journalism non-profit ProPublica. In October 2016, the group revealed that it had been able to purchase an ad on Facebook which excluded Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American people from viewing it. Facebook announced in February that it had installed tools to prevent this. However, ProPublica claims that it recently purchased an ad for rental apartments which excluded groups including African Americans, Jews, Spanish speakers and people interested in wheelchair ramps.


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Solar accounts for record 39% of India's new power capacity
 The solar energy sector has accounted for the largest capacity addition to the Indian electricity grid so far this year.

It has contributed around 39%—over 7,100 megawatts (MW)—to the overall capacity additions, according to data from Mercom Capital Group, a US-based research and consulting firm. For comparison, solar energy capacity additions stood at only around 4,313 MW in all of 2016.

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In all, the country now has a total solar capacity of around 14.7 gigawatts (GW, 1 GW = 1,000 MW) as of September 2017.

The spurt in solar power capacity comes on the back of the Narendra Modi government’s push for renewable energy, and its target of installing 175 GW of renewable energy (100 GW of this from solar sources) by 2022. “Last year (financial year 2016-17) was a landmark year in the Indian power sector…for the first time, the capacity addition in renewables sector was more than conventional and the same is likely to continue even this year also,” Amit Kumar, a partner at consulting firm PwC, told Quartz.

India’s demand for coal is also likely to peak by 2027, according to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based research institute, the Financial Times reported (paywall). It will be replaced by renewables, which the IEEFA predicts will account for 27% by 2027.

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Cloudy future

The last few months, however, have been difficult for the sector. Solar energy developers are battling issues ranging from lack of power transmission infrastructure, increasing costs of solar panels, and lacklustre power demand. “Even though the Indian solar market is on pace for a record-breaking year, the momentum has definitely slowed,” said Raj Prabhu, Mercom Capital Group’s CEO.

For instance, nearly 1,000 MW of large-scale projects that are ready to be connected to the grid haven’t been commissioned yet due to delays by the government, according to the Mercom report. The sector also had to tackle ambiguity around the goods and services tax on solar plant components and various states’ demands to renegotiate older power purchase agreements (PPAs). The sector expects another policy change—an imposition of anti-dumping duties on imported panels—in the next few months.

As a result, capacity addition has only reached 7,100 MW this year in the sector—around 3,000 MW short of the annual target set by the ministry of new and renewable energy. “The fourth quarter of 2017 will be a crucial one for the solar sector in many ways, considering the anti-dumping recommendations due to be released, the uncertain trajectory of module prices, and low power demand,” the Mercom report added.

Output: Solar energy accounted for a record 39% of energy capacity added to India's grid this year, according to Mercom Capital Group. The 7,100 MW of new capacity was still short of the 10,000 MW target as lacklustre demand, rising solar panel costs and an absence of power transmission infrastructure slowed growth. "Even though the Indian solar market is on pace for a record-breaking year, the momentum has definitely slowed," said Mercom CEO Raj Prabhu.


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Regus Second business centre opened in Phnom Penh
 Regus opens its second biz centre

Global workspace provider Regus officially opened its second business centre in Phnom Penh yesterday with the aim of offering flexible office solutions for the growing number of Cambodian and global professionals.

Located in Casa Meridian, a luxury condo development on Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island, the firm offers 191 rentable workstations, co-working spaces, professional address solutions and virtual offices that are bookable by the hour.

Lars Wittig, country manager for Regus Cambodia, said that the demand for short- and long-term rentable office space and meeting rooms has been on the rise. The company first opened a 208 workstation facility in Canadia Tower in 2012.

“As a developing economy, Cambodian enterprises, especially startups, are challenged by a lack of capital, business networks and affordable professional office space,” he said. “By providing opportunities for modern and dynamic businesses to work where and when they want, they can become better connected globally through our network.”

The firm, which is based in Luxembourg and listed on the London Stock Exchange, claims to be the world’s largest provider of flexible workspace solutions with 2.3 million customers spread across more than a 100 countries with 3,000 locations. The company posted total revenue earnings of nearly $3 billion last year with a net profit of $183 million.

Wittig added that for startups, rentable workstation fees start at $79 per person a month while office space for two or more people begins at $479 per month.

Output: Abstract: Flexible office space provider Regus has opened its second offering in Phnom Penh, a 191-desk business centre with virtual offices and co-working spaces, at the city's Diamond Island development. Five years after Regus launched its first space in the capital, the Casa Meridian site aims to address the needs of Cambodia's growing number of start-ups, according to country manager Lars Wittig.


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USAA plans 1,000 tech hires in Phoenix over three years
 USAA plans to hire up to 1,000 technology professionals at its Phoenix office by the end of 2020, the company announced.

With the move, USAA will add Phoenix as the fourth city associated with the insurer’s chief technology and digital office initiative, focusing on data analytics, innovation, digital experience and design. Austin, Plano and the military carrier’s hometown of San Antonio, Texas make up the other sites. USAA’s Phoenix location currently employs 4,500 people.

“As our membership grows and their needs change, our workforce must keep pace and evolve,” said Gay Meyer, assistant vice president of HR operations at USAA, in a statement. “Phoenix is a great market for us and with the area’s deep pool of tech talent, adding these roles makes sense.”

Santana, Danni

Growing internal technology capabilities is a focus for USAA. The company recently opened its design studio in Austin in February, responsible for experimenting with ways to improve the customer experience. The new office houses 120 employees.

Also see: Inside USAA’s approach to digital design

“We are constantly working to design, develop and deliver the best possible experiences,” said Michael Pansini, USAA’s VP of applications development, adding the company is predominantly looking to hire software engineers and application developers, in an interview with Phoenix Business Journal.

Output: USAA is planning to hire 1,000 staff focusing on technology by 2020. The staff will be based in the insurer's Phoenix, Arizona office. The firm has made technological developments a key focus, looking to add personnel to oversee the growth of its capabilities in data analytics, innovation, digital experience and design. USAA opened a design centre in Austin, Texas recently, as it looks to enhance their customers' digital experience. The centre employs 120 people.


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Marine sector behind in acquiring cyber coverage
 And while insurers have also expressed an interest in creating new products to stop competing for the same traditional lines of business, many have still not done so, noted Latitude Brokers founding partner Andrew Brooker at the 5th Asia Marine Insurance Conference.

There is a need to provide response consultants and more importantly fit-for=purpose policies. "We need a starting point; clear fit-for-purpose base which we're not doing," he said.

Part of the reason for this is a lack of understanding of the issues involved and the ability to provide solutions to them on the part of both insurers and the insureds. Brooker suggested that a way forward for this relatively recent phenomenon might be to take the quick and effective introduction of Kidnap & Ransom (K&R) insurance when the Gulf of Aden piracy situation rose to prominence.

Many of the elements involved there such as unfamiliarity with the situation and confusion about how to react are similar to that being faced by companies with cyber crime now. Similarly the impetus to take more proactive measures onboard ships was also driven by the insurers providing the K&R insurance. This included the hardening of ships, providing of armed guards and so on.

In the same way, Brooker believed that the current inertia on the part of shipping company management in implementing cyber security measures could be overcome by demands from the insurers to step up.

Output: Shipping companies are behind in terms of their adoption of coverage for cyber threats, according to Latitude Brokers founding partner Andrew Brooker. Part of the reason for this is the lack of policies specifically designed for marine clients. Marine insurance policies often excludes cyber coverage, according to a report from Miller Insurance. The insurer added in its report that marine clients searching for this kind of protection often have to do so through dedicated cyber insurance specialists.


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Ping An plans to spin off, list tech units
 A Ping An Bank employee (left) addresses queries from a customer on credit and loan services at a financial expo held in Beijing. [Photo/for China Daily]

Insurance company to invest $7.54b in development of innovative products

Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd is planning to spin off and list its technology and internet units separately and set up more financial services platforms as part of a strategic transformation plan, the company said on Monday.

Jessica Tan, deputy chief executive and the chief operating officer and chief information officer, said Ping An is transforming by applying biometrics, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain and iCloud technologies to empower four business ecosystems－financial services, healthcare services, automobile services and real estate finance.

Tan said Ping An has invested more than 50 billion yuan ($7.54 billion) internally on research and development to develop innovative projects including financial technology, medical technology, artificial intelligence and externally exported socialized services. Financial technology is expected to lift potential returns on bank earnings by as much as 44 percent.

Ping An said the four ecosystems are estimated to reach a market size of as much as 550 trillion yuan by 2022. Tan said the fifth ecosystem would be on city life but it would take time to establish this new business.

Jason Yao, chief financial officer and chief actuary, said the Chinese mainland's insurance market was far from saturated compared with that in other developed countries.

He pointed out that Ping An will consider spinning off the listing of technology and internet subsidiaries in the near future but gave no timeline.

He also mentioned that Ping An has been doing internet insurance business for 15 years including the launching of Lufax business and has been focusing on technology for seven years.

Ping An now has more than 22,000 technology staff, with 40 percent coming from internet companies and 20 percent possessing masters degrees, 500 big-data scientists and 2,000 global patents. Tan said their team is expected to expand in the future.

Discussing competition from internet companies entering the insurance industry, Yao said insurance technology is a trend and Ping An is open to cooperation with them.

Li Yuan Siong, deputy chief executive and chief insurance business officer, said the company is conducting an asset-light approach, adopting a "finance plus technology" strategy that will consistently improve profit and value, though the company's share price has not fully reflected its value yet.

Ping An's net profit in the first six months of this year rose 6.5 percent year-on-year to 43.43 million yuan. The company's core finance businesses had an overall individual customer base of 143 million, increasing 9.3 percent year-on-year; it has 403 million internet users.

Ping An's shares closed at HK$86.2 ($11) in Hong Kong on Tuesday, up 8.84 percent from Monday's closing price.

Output: China's Ping An is planning to spin off and list its technology and internet-focused divisions. The firm also says it's open to partnering with internet companies entering the insurance space. There is no timeline for when the insurer will list the divisions as separate entities. Ping An's stock is trading in a similar fashion to a technology company, according to Bloomberg. It's reported that the firm's share price has risen 122% in 2017, keeping pace with China's technology behemoth Tencent, which has seen returns of 127%.


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Landmark legal case could affect outsourced UK workers’ rights
 A union is launching a legal challenge over the rights of 75 university support staff to negotiate their pay and conditions, in a landmark case that could improve rights for outsourced workers.

The receptionists, security officers, postroom staff and porters working at the University of London are employed through the facilities management company Cordant Security, but are seeking the right to agree their pay and conditions directly with the university.

Papers for the case, led by gig economy union the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, and the Good Law Project, devised by the barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, are being filed at the central arbitration committee on Tuesday.

The case argues that denying the workers the right to collectively bargain with their “de facto employer” is a breach of article 11 of the European convention on human rights concerning joining trade unions and having them protect their interests.

If successful, the case could potentially open the door for thousands of outsourced workers across the UK to negotiate with the company that ultimately benefits from their labour. The union said that if it established the precedent of a joint employer for the purposes of collective bargaining, this could potentially be applied to people employed via agencies, such as those working in the Sports Direct warehouse.

The IWGB general secretary, Jason Moyer Lee, said: “When it comes to the most important elements of pay and terms and conditions for the outsourced workers, it is the University of London and not Cordant which calls the shots.

“In order for these workers’ collective bargaining and human rights to mean anything, we need to be able to negotiate directly with the university, not the glorified middleman.”

A University of London spokesperson said: “The university does not employ any of these workers and does not accept that the relevant legislation recognises the concept of joint employment. We have therefore not agreed to the IWGB’s request for recognition.”

The spokesperson added that the university had begun a review of the performance of its contracted facilities management services, which would cover pay, conditions and benefits.The court case is the latest in a series of battles over better employment rights and pay between outsourced workers, particularly cleaning staff, and universities and other big institutions including hospitals.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the practice of using outsourced workers hit those in the lowest-paid sectors the hardest.

“Outsourcing’s a cheap trick used by bad bosses to dodge their basic responsibilities to workers. They’re trying to hammer down people’s pay and get an unfair advantage,” O’Grady said. “Other European countries have a sensible way of dealing with this. Unions and businesses negotiate fair pay rates for the whole sector, which means outsourcing can’t drive down pay and conditions.”

This article was amended on 21 November 2017. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to agency workers, rather than outsourced workers. We were also incorrect when we said the case was being launched by the staff; it is being brought by the union.

Output: A UK legal challenge over the rights of support staff at the University of London could prove a landmark case for outsourced workers. The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain and the Good Law Project are leading the case, filed on Tuesday on behalf of 75 staff employed via facilities management firm Cordant Security. The workers are seeking the right to agree pay and conditions directly with the university. The case argues that denial of collective bargaining rights with a “de facto employer” breaches the European convention on human rights. If successful, the case could affect thousands of outsourced workers.


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HSBC closes account held by Marine Le Pen for 25 years
 Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National, has claimed that she and her party are victims of a “banking fatwa” after HSBC closed a bank account she had had for 25 years.

The move by Britain’s biggest bank comes amid heightened scrutiny of political accounts and the day after Société Générale, France’s second-largest bank, asked the far-right party to close all its accounts after a 30-year relationship.

Le Pen told a press conference on Wednesday that HSBC had “driven me out”.

She said the closure of her and the party’s accounts amounted to a “banking fatwa” against the Front National, which has said it will sue both banks for discrimination.

Le Pen said the closures were a political decision designed to “stop the Front National taking part in democratic life and to cause the conditions of its ruin and collapse”.

Banks were trying to “silence the voices” of the almost 11 million people who voted for her in May in the final round of the French presidential election, which she lost to the centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron.

“Financial oligarchs are trying to stifle the opposition and interfere in the course of French democracy,” she said. “Will the opposition in France be forced into banking exile? What would become of France’s reputation if that happens?”

La persécution bancaire devient personnelle : M. Vandeville, patron de la HSBC, me chasse de la banque dont je suis cliente depuis 25 ans.

Je diffuserai l’enregistrement de la conversation lors de ma conférence de presse à 11h30. MLP — Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) November 22, 2017

HSBC has been criticised for closing the accounts of small business customers and charities. In September, small businesses in the UK – ranging from an avocado importer to marketing and design companies – complained their accounts had been shut by the bank without notice.

The banks have not made public their reasons for closing the Front National and Le Pen accounts.

HSBC said it could not comment on individuals. SocGen issued a statement saying its decisions on opening and closing accounts were based only on banking issues, and a respect of banking rules, “without any political consideration”.

Output: HSBC has closed a bank account held for 25 years by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Front National (FN) party. France’s second-largest bank, Société Générale, asked the FN to close all its accounts, the result of a 30-year banking relationship, earlier this week. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Marine Le Pen claimed that the moves constituted a “banking fatwa” against her party, which has stated that it will sue the banks for discrimination. Neither HSBC nor Société Générale has revealed the reasons for their actions.


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MIT creates rent indices for India's top cities with Propstack
 MUMBAI: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created office realty rent indices for India’s top six cities in collaboration with Propstack in the run-up to opening up of India’s Real Estate Investment Trust market that prompted large investments from global institutional funds.The development assumes significance as the maiden index for Indian office real estate market is expected to bring greater transparency into this segment and could trigger higher institutional investments from large sovereign wealth and pension funds.MIT Center of Real Estate has developed these indices, based on data from realty information and analytic firm Propstack, for Mumbai, National Capital Region, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. These indices have been developed from data of last 12 years related to rent and its growth on quarterly basis in these six key markets.“We introduce new methodology for constructing real estate rent indices. Using unique data on contract rents from six Indian metropolitan markets, we pair subsequent rented units in the same building to create over 12,000 pseudo repeat rent pairs,” said the paper released by MIT’s Sheharyar Bokhari, David Geltner, and Alex van de Minne.Rent indices are an important indicator for tracking the space market and can be used to support asset allocation, performance measurement and attribution, transparency, research and investment product development.“Indian commercial market has been witnessing steady and robust growth in the last few years owing to improving macroeconomic factors leading to business development. This coupled with uptake in office space absorption, rental growth and improving transparency has been attracting global investments. With the upcoming REIT listings, indices tracking rental growth in key markets would help in pushing this further,” said Raja Seetharaman, cofounder, Propstack.Among the six Indian office markets, Bengaluru has seen the biggest increase in rents since 2010 more than 5% annually. Chennai and Pune grew annually at 2.8% and 2.7%, respectively. Hyderabad and the NCR office market rents have increased 1.9% and 1.8% per year, respectively.While Mumbai had the slowest annual growth at 0.4%, it had grown tremendously during in 2005-2008, when rents more than doubled. The growth indicates that important emerging markets such as India need to develop sophisticated commercial realty information analytics.

Output: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has calculated office rent indices for the six leading cities in India in a collaboration with property data firm Propstack. The partnership comes as India's market in real estate investment trusts is about to open, which is expected to receive significant investment from institutional funds. The indices were calculated with a new methodology and should assist in asset location, performance measurement, transparency, research and investment product development.


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Housing market crisis is oversimplified and requires new thinking
 Recent years have seen growing public and political recognition that there is a crisis in housing. This has led to a widening debate on the causes and potential solutions.

However, within this debate there has been little in the way of a consensus view of what constitutes the current housing crisis and what a “crisis-free” housing system might look like. There seems little clear idea of any measurable goal. The nearest we have as a target to aim at has been a series of aspirational numbers for new-build homes, with limited clarity on what to expect if we were to hit those numbers.

Clarity about what success would look like is essential. Without a framework for what we need and want from housing, our ability to understand and fix it appropriately will be compromised. A lack of clarity also increases the risk of unintended consequences from misguided policy interventions.

The current housing debate is “bedevilled by rival simplifications”. There are several quite often competing explanations for why we have a housing crisis. For many it is our failure to build homes at the same rate as projected household formation. This failure might be assigned to the planning system, the greenbelt, housebuilder business models, the land market, or NIMBYs. For others, the crisis is a result of falling interest rates, rising credit supply, low income growth, wealth and income inequality, tax incentives, or simply our fixation on house price growth. For some, there is no shortage of homes, rather a poor distribution. And for others there isn’t really a housing crisis.

Despite the apparent contradictions in this mix of positions, each of the arguments that support these various views may hold significant elements of truth. Housing is a complex and interconnected system within the economy and society. There is no simple single housing market. There are multiple markets defined by location, property type, tenure, and price. Therefore, there is no simple single housing crisis. Instead we have multiple overlapping issues affecting different parts of the country in different ways and to varying degrees.

There may be factors that influence all housing markets across the UK, indeed across much of the globe. There will be others that impact more locally and within specific housing sectors.

So, for instance, there is growing acceptance by many experts that the cost and availability of credit has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, drivers of increases in national house prices over the last twenty years. But it is not the only factor. The growth in buy-to-let has contributed to the financialisation of housing, with homes increasingly thought of as an investment rather than a place for people to live. A lack of supply is predominantly an issue for London and its surrounds, but there are localised shortages elsewhere, particularly of specific types or tenure of homes. Planning (including a lack of) and the land market limit the responsiveness of supply to rising demand. Housing is unevenly distributed, mostly across generations but also spatially and within generations. Some areas don’t need a net increase in housing but desperately need existing poor-quality homes improved or replaced. In many areas the biggest issue is low (or negative) income growth and employment insecurity.

All these issues and others play a part in defining “the housing crisis”. Having a framework for what we need and want from housing, combined with an understanding of the complexities and interactions that run through the housing market, is essential to resolving the problems they create.

A misunderstanding of the complexities of housing can be found in one of the most frequently stated explanations for the crisis: a lack of new supply compared with household projections. Unfortunately, this argument is flawed. Household projections are not a measure of housing demand. The effective demand for new housing is determined by the number of people or companies willing and financially able to buy property. Meanwhile new supply only accounts for around 12% of total transactions and probably less of available homes for sale.

Importantly, even if some analysis may suggest there is no shortage of supply, that does not mean there is no need for new supply. Household projections are a statistical construct based on the past, not a direct measure of future housing demand. But they are still important if used appropriately within a framework for what we need and want from housing.

If we are more explicit about the role of household projections in measuring housing need and the assumptions they contain, then the supply versus household projections argument might be recast as a debate on changing household sizes and the consumption of housing (both in terms of space and multiple properties). This then implies that we should be clearer about the minimum acceptable amount of housing people need, while also accounting for what they want. Should younger people still expect to form households at the same rate and size as their parents? The assumptions and projections around future household sizes should be moved from the background, where they are typically only discussed by planners and researchers, to the centre of the debate.

They should be just one part of a framework for success that explicitly states what we need and want from housing (not just in terms of size but also cost, tenure, quality, security, and location) and better defines the minimum we are prepared to accept. That will provide a clearer understanding of where housing is failing to meet those requirements and help set objectives for how to fix it. These could then be applied appropriately across different markets.

If measurement against the framework shows that households are not able to form at an appropriate rate and size relative to what they need, then we probably need to increase supply while possibly encouraging older households to move out of larger homes. If rents are too expensive then we may need to reform the rental sectors and increase supply. If housing quality is poor, then we need to work harder at improving and replacing existing stock. If many areas are struggling due to low (or negative) income growth and employment insecurity, then we probably need to look beyond just housing. It might even question whether we need to rebalance the economy and infrastructure investment away from London and its commuter zone.

Having a framework for success may even highlight which issues we can fix and which we can’t. For example, it looks likely that we are stuck with a low interest rate and hence high house price to income market. Under those conditions, prospective first-time buyers will continue to struggle to raise a deposit and access home-ownership irrespective of how much new supply can be realistically delivered. Rather than trying to return to the relatively short-lived 20th century ideal of mass home-ownership, perhaps we should be focussing our efforts on making renting cheaper, higher quality, and more secure as a long-term home. Increasing new supply would be an important tool in achieving that outcome.

When we have a framework for what success could look like, our ability to understand and fix housing appropriately will be dramatically improved. It would be an important step towards making housing available, affordable, and appropriate for everyone that needs it. It would also be more useful than simply setting a nice round number national target for new homes.

Output: There's little consensus on what constitutes the UK's housing crisis or what an ideal housing market would look like, according to an opinion piece in Residential Analysts. As debate swings between competing "rival simplifications" of the cause of the crisis, such as slow progress in housebuilding and low interest rates, it's important to recognise that there is not just one "single housing market". It is a complex, layered entity and if it's to be "fixed" then clarity is needed via a framework of success for each individual layer of the market.


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TalkTalk Handful of customers report the internet service as not working
 TalkTalk down - Internet not working for hundreds of customers

UPDATE ONE: The issues affecting TalkTalk and AOL today appear to have been resolved.

Down Detector reports of issues with the services have fallen from the hundreds to just a handful.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, a TalkTalk spokesperson said: “Technical issues led to a limited number of customers in Nottinghamshire experiencing difficulty with their services this evening.

"Our engineers have now restored all services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

ORIGINAL: TalkTalk is down right now in the UK for hundreds of customers who have reported issues with the firm's internet service today.

Independent website Down Detector has received a surge of TalkTalk down reports, with the majority of those affected experiencing issues with their internet connection.

The Down Detector outage map shows users across the UK experiencing issues with TalkTalk today.

Down Detector is an independent website that tracks social mentions around certain topics to detect outages across the globe.

The TalkTalk outage coincided with issues in the US for users of AOL - which is part of the TalkTalk Group.

The official TalkTalk service status page says there are currently issues with the Broadband service in the UK, but added it's a localised issue.

Output: Technical issues caused hundreds of TalkTalk customers in Nottinghamshire to experience internet connection issues and phone problems, with customers of TalkTalk-owned AOL in the US also seeing the service go down. The telecoms company stated that the issue was localised, and has now resolved all the issues, commenting that a "limited" number of customers were affected.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Uber agrees to buy up to 24,000 self-driving Volvo cars
 Uber’s long term goal has always been to disrupt humans out of existence, and replace its fleet of man-piloted 2010 Mazda 3s with something a little more modern. That plan got an additional boost today with the news that Uber has entered into an agreement with Volvo to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from the automobile manufacturer.

With delivery of thousands of cars scheduled to start in 2019, that gives us a firm date for when Uber plans to deploy self-driving cars as a widespread alternative to human-navigated vehicles.

The cars in question will be Volvo’s flagship luxury SUV, the XC90. The retail price of an XC90 is somewhere around $50,000, on top of which Uber will have to supply the self-driving technology. All told, the deal could cost over $1 billion, which is a lot of cash to burn, even by Uber’s standards.

This isn’t the first time Uber and Volvo have worked together. Uber already uses Volvo’s XC90 as the testbed for its self-driving system, which is currently undergoing trials in Arizona and Pittsburgh. Although those cars are self-driving, they still have an engineer present behind the wheel, ready to take control.

Waymo, the Google self-driving car spinoff, recently announced that some of its self-driving minivans are already running around Phoenix without a human inside; within months, the company is planning on using those fully self-driving cars to launch a ride-hailing service in the city.

Output: Uber has agreed to buy up to 24,000 autonomous vehicles from Volvo as it seeks to replace its drivers with self-driving cars. Delivery of the luxury SUV XC90 vehicles is scheduled to start in 2019. With the cars costing around $50,000 each and the addition of self-driving technology, the deal could cost Uber more than $1bn. Uber already uses XC90s for its testing in Arizona and Pittsburgh, although those vehicles have human drivers ready to take control if something goes wrong. Google’s Waymo is already testing vehicles without drivers in Phoenix.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
A new role for first responders: providing in-home health care
 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Dedalo Sousa, an 85-year-old with type 2 diabetes, has seen the inside of a hospital more times than he can remember.

He has a regular doctor. But sometimes, “when he gets scary things, we don’t want to wait for his doctor visit,” said Sousa’s wife, Emilia Torres.

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Once it was a cyst on his back. Another time, Torres said, he had something like heartburn.

Torres admitted that the her husband’s emergency room visits are often for “minor things.” She added, however, “I panic when he gets sick.”

That impulse — combined with the fact that health problems crop up outside of office hours, or that even daytime problems can present a transportation challenge — drive many older patients to turn to 911 for help. And laws in many places, including Massachusetts, are very clear: A 911 call means a trip to the hospital.

But hospitals and insurers have begun trying to change that story by changing how emergency medicine is delivered. The idea is, instead of transporting patients to the hospital, emergency medical technicians respond to their needs in their own home. Many patient needs — for instance, slightly elevated blood pressure, a dip in blood sugar — are simple enough to not need a trip to the hospital. Avoiding hospitals saves insurers money, is easier on patients, and reduces the risk of hospital-acquired infections.

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It’s called mobile integrated health; currently, more than 100 such programs exist nationwide. In Massachusetts, a number of pilot programs in mobile integrated health have sprouted up in recent years. The Department of Public Health has waived certain rules governing EMS providers for two Boston-area pilot programs.

Senior paramedic Joe Hughes works on his computer between visits on the mobile integrated health program. Kayana Szymczak for STAT

One such program was started in 2014 by nonprofit Commonwealth Care Alliance. Its participants are so-called “dual eligible” individuals — residents who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare. This group tends to have multiple complex health issues, often including behavioral health conditions.

They also make up a disproportionate share of health care spending. According to a 2016 MedPAC report, while dual-eligible beneficiaries account for 18 percent of beneficiaries with traditional Medicare coverage, they accounted for 31 percent of spending in 2012. This is due, at least in part, to frequent ER visits.

But avoiding emergency rooms can be trickier than it seems. In evenings when doctors are gone and clinics are closed, a 911 call is some patients’ best bet for medical attention. And Massachusetts law — and similar ones in many other places — dictates that when a person calls 911, the ambulance that responds must transport them to a hospital, regardless of the seriousness of their health needs.

Pilot mobile health projects take a different tack. In the case of the program run by CCA, participants enroll by signing up online or through their doctors. Instead of 911, those participants are given another number on a refrigerator magnet to call if they have a medical emergency between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m., the state rules for their hours of operation.

A nurse practitioner answers the phone and assesses the patient’s condition, and contacts EasCare Ambulance Service, which contracts with the organization.

A patient calling during the program’s hours of operation will usually have a paramedic at the door within an hour. Calls at other times are queued for that evening’s shift.

Once at a patient’s home, the visit proceeds much like a home health care visit — vitals are taken and symptoms are noted. The EMT then relays this information to a doctor over the phone, before beginning treatment such as running an IV, administering medication, or taking tests.

Because the modified ambulances don’t carry stretchers, if the EMTs determine a patient needs to go to the hospital, they call for a regular ambulance.

But generally, that isn’t needed. According to a survey CCA conducted of 275 patients who received mobile care through July 2017, 84 percent avoided any emergency room visits during that time.

According to a CCA-coauthored 2016 report, those avoided visits amount to about $800 to $3,600 in savings per patient, relative to what it would have cost if the patient received the same treatment in a hospital emergency department.

Paramedic Joe Hughes checks on an IV treatment given to patient Sousa during a home visit. Kayana Szymczak for STAT

Still, despite the growing enthusiasm of insurers for mobile integrated health programs, their overall efficacy hasn’t been thoroughly studied.

“We’re able to anecdotally note that there is a benefit, but we need to measure how beneficial these programs really are,” said Dr. Stephen Dorner, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital who co-authored a 2016 journal article on mobile integrated health programs. Dorner also serves as a consultant to CCA.

He and his co-authors pointed out that while mobile health programs are sprouting up across the country, “their performance has rarely been rigorously evaluated.”

CCA’s program is a good example, he said.

“We know that it saved money when people avoided going to the hospital,” Dorner added. “But we’re talking about avoiding something that it’s hard to predict in the first place. There hasn’t been a full-scale, retrospective analysis.”

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Currently, CCA’s mobile integrated health service is only available to participants in the Boston area; it hopes to extend its coverage to 28 southeastern Massachusetts cities and towns in the first half of 2018.

But the state would have to change the program’s waiver to allow, among other things, emergency medical technicians to perform some of the duties of paramedics.

“We’re not allowed to do that yet, but we want to, so we can help people more,” said Ron Quaranto, chief operating officer of Cataldo Ambulance Service. Cataldo operates its own mobile health program, called SmartCare Community Paramedics. The program, also created under a DPH waiver, serves Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center patients with severe health problems that put them at high risk for repeated hospitalizations.

“At least we can continue the pilot program,” Quaranto added. “But we’d like the state to extend the special project waiver.”

For now, they’ll have to wait, said Ann Scales, spokesperson for Massachusetts Department of Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel. The current state budget does not provide funding for mobile integrated health pilots to become permanent.

“Until the necessary program startup and operating costs are appropriated, the Department of Public Health cannot promulgate the Mobile Integrated Health regulations and implement the program,” she said.

For his part, Sousa is glad he can be treated in his own home.

“He’s a gentleman who will not go to the hospital,” explained Torres, his wife.

“No, no, no,” laughed Sousa, sitting in his recliner, answering freely, with a smile that said he didn’t entirely disagree.

Output: Hospitals and insurers attempting to change the method of delivery for emergency medicine by sending emergency medical technicians to patients’ homes. At present, older adults tend to rely on 911 for assistance, which often leads to unnecessary hospitalization. By taking care of the simple check-ups older adults often need at home, insurers save money and patients risk fewer health complications. Over 100 mobile integrated health programs have been initiated worldwide, with some focusing on the high-needs group of “dual eligible” patients that require both Medicare and Medicaid. This group generally has more than one complex health problem, and accounted for 31 percent of spending for Medicare in 2012, largely due to repeated ER visits. At present, 911 calls are the only option for many senior patients to receive medical attention for their various ailments. However, the pilot mobile health projects sign up patients to a separate number if they have an out-of-hours medical emergency, allowing for triage to the ambulance services or paramedics if necessary. The paramedic carries out vital symptom checks and administers treatment if necessary. A survey of one such project by the nonprofit Commonwealth Care Alliance, of 275 patients that had mobile care treatment throughout July of this year, 84 percent avoided ER visits, saving approximately $800 to $3,600 per patient in terms of ER fees. A full evaluation of the potential success of these programs needs to be made, however, before it can be implemented more widely. Waivers would also have to be put in place to allow emergency medical technicians to perform the same duties as paramedics, and in some states budgets would have to be extended for the programs to gain permanency.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
AdEx, travel media giant Ink to auction boarding-pass ad space
 Blockchain-powered global ad exchange AdEx announced today that they have entered into an exclusive partnership with Ink, the world’s leading travel media company.

About Ink

Ink is the world’s biggest travel media company with an audience reach of over 775 million passengers annually. They offer opportunities for advertisers to connect with a global audience through in-flight magazines, mobile devices, and other digital, print, and video media products. They work with some of the world’s most prominent airlines including American Airlines, Norwegian, Qatar Airways, United, and many others.

The world leader in travel media, Ink has won numerous awards including Travel Magazine of the Year, Best Cover, Best Photography, and Best Overall Editorial at industry events throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

For more information about Ink please visit ink-global.com.

About AdEx

AdEx is one of the largest and most popular decentralized ad networks in the world. Using blockchain technology and smart contracts, AdEx solves many of the most significant problems plaguing traditional ad networks today. Advertisers, publishers, and consumers alike will benefit from the advantages that blockchain technology brings to the online advertising market, including increased data security, fraud protection, enhanced audience targeting, and clear and accurate reporting. Previous partnerships have included such renowned blockchain companies and projects as NEO, Wings, and Fintech Blockchain Group.

For more information about AdEx please visit adex.network.

AdEx and Ink to Auction 2 Million Ad Spots

Under the new partnership, AdEx and Ink will hold a blockchain-based auction for ad spaces on airline boarding passes. The auction will be the first of its kind and marks one of the few instances where a blockchain-based company has crossed over and entered the real sector of the economy.

Ink CEO Simon Leslie says:

We are pleased to be working with AdEx to deliver advertisers such a targeted medium, and to be involved in this media first.

For the first auction, 2 million ad spaces on boarding tickets will be offered up for sale. AdEx will oversee the bidding process while Ink and the airline in question will choose the winners.

Ivo Georgiev, CEO of AdEx Network, states:

This is a giant step for us as it bridges travel media, advertising and blockchain to offer advertisers even more opportunities for reaching their desired target audiences.

According to Georgiev, several prominent companies, including eToro and Propy, have expressed their intent to bid for the ad spots in the upcoming auction.

Further details about the auction, including results, are expected to be released next week.

AdEx has already partnered with several prominent cryptocurrency-related companies. After their partnership with digital assets platform NEO was announced in August of this year, the price of the platform’s ADX token rose by over 400% to almost $2 from $0.35 over a matter of days. ADX is currently trading at around $1.

Do you think that this latest AdEx partnership will help pave the way into the “real sector” for other blockchain-based services? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of AdEx, Ink

Output: Blockchain-based ad-serving network AdEx is partnering with Ink, the world's largest travel media firm, to launch a first-of-its-kind auction for ad space on airline boarding passes. Ink CEO Simon Leslie said two million spaces on tickets would be up for grabs in the inaugural auction, with companies including Propy and eToro among those expressing early interest.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Video header bidding pays off for LittleThings' ad rates
 Although header bidding has a video problem, feel-good publisher LittleThings is getting unified auctions for its video inventory to pay off.

Adopting video header bidding helped LittleThings increase its programmatic video ad rates by about 20 percent over the past 12 months, said Justin Festa, chief digital officer at LittleThings, declining to share raw numbers. LittleThings avoided a slowdown of its ad loads by putting videos at the bottom of its articles and not using autoplay, so webpages are fully loaded by the time users click on the video player to initiate video ad calls, Festa said.

For example, in an article about Thanksgiving side dish recipes, there are six paragraphs about food that precede the overhead hands-in-pans video, which sits at the bottom of the post. LittleThings recently pivoted its video strategy by laying off 13 people and shrinking the number of shows it produces for Facebook Live. It also diversified its video distribution by creating a “postproduction” team of five people that works on publishing LittleThings’ video content across platforms like Amazon, Apple TV, Roku and Tubi TV. LittleThings receives about 80 million to 120 million video views a month on its website, Festa said.

Given that ad buyers are pouring money into video and header bidding has helped publishers increase their display ad rates, it’s logical that publishers would use video header bidding to increase their video ad revenue. But video header bidding has been slow to take off because header bidding’s latency problems are more acute with video, and most publishers continue to sell the bulk of their video inventory direct.

The phrase video header bidding is also a misnomer since there isn’t a header in video. But the idea of header bidding — where publishers simultaneously offer inventory to multiple exchanges before making calls to their ad servers — persists within video, so publishers and vendors that sell video inventory programmatically through unified auctions still use the phrase.

A year ago, LittleThings began testing video header bidding with Index Exchange’s wrapper tag and has since added a handful of supply-side platforms to its wrapper.

LittleThings uses header bidding to sell about 30 percent of its video inventory. For the rest, it uses other selling methods like direct sales and Google’s dynamic allocation. About 40 million people visited LittleThings in October, according to comScore.

Setting up video header bidding is more difficult than setting up header bidding for display, which explains why LittleThings sells a limited amount of its video ad space using header bidding. For one, there’s another middleman with video header bidding.

With display header bidding, a publisher only needs to work with an SSP. For video header bidding, the publisher needs to make sure its video player and SSP are on the same page when it comes to serving video ads. Since adopting video header bidding, Festa and LittleThings’ tech team of eight people have been in frequent contact with the publisher’s SSPs and video player to ensure everything is being implemented correctly.

Another thing that makes video header bidding hard to set up is that video ad tags are much more complicated than display ad tags, said Brian Rifkin, co-founder of video vendor JW Player. For example, advertisers will push Flash-based VPAID or VAST tags through an exchange even if the exchange no longer accepts Flash. When this happens, the ad gets blocked from loading, and the publisher loses potential ad revenue on wasted impressions.

“Video is a totally different auction than display,” Festa said. “No matter what wrapper you use, you can’t just check a box and suddenly have video [header bidding]. It’s its own setup.”

Output: US publisher LittleThings has seen growth of 20% in its programmatic video ad rates over the past 12 months after adopting header bidding via unified auctions. It now receives between 80 million and 120 million video views a month on its home and family-focused website, according to chief digital officer Justin Festa. He said the company sold around 30% of video ads via header bidding, despite the system being more laborious than display auctions, as it requires compatibility between LittleThings' video player and supply-side platforms, and also features complicated ad tags.