Technology

Postie, a new Los Angeles-based startup, has a vision for the future of advertising and marketing — and itdirect mail.

Founded by some of the men responsible for the biggest hits in online marketing (like the Dollar Shave Club commercial that launched what becamea billion-dollar acquisition) think that ittime to take technology where itnever gone before — into targeted, direct mail campaigns using the best ad-targeting that money can buy.

Postie uses a combination of online data collection and an on-demand print and mail technology to give its customers turnaround times on print orders in as little as 24 hours, and what the company boasts is the equivalent of online ad-targeting.

Using the service, customers can access demographic, interest and behavioral data of more than 320 million people; can use retargeting to provide direct mail campaigns; and integrate with existing customer relationship management tools.

The company was founded by Dave Fink and Jonathan Neddenriep, two former principals at the startup studio and early-stage investor, Science.At the early-stage investment firm, Fink said he was responsible for marketing activities for companies including Dollar Shave Club, DogVacay, SpringRole, Wishbone and Hello Society over the six years he worked at the company. Neddenriep served as the chief technology officer for Science — a role hecontinuing at Postie.

Where once Fink focused on reaching the widest possible audience with a viral message that could cut through the noise of online advertising, the scale of his messaging is now much smaller, even if the scope of the market hetrying to capture remains just as vast.

&A highly targeted physical piece of mail, especially in todayephemeral world, elicits an emotional response that goes above and beyond what is possible online,& says Fink, in a statement. &Itnow possible to open up a whole new scalable media channel by leveraging the same data driven insights and quantitative approach as digital.&

According to study from the Direct Marketing Association, direct mail campaigns rang up $46 billion from advertisers and companies in 2014, and Fink and his co-founder are hoping that number will climb.

They aren&t the only ones. Postie has raised $3.5 million in seed funding from the Los Angeles-based firms Bonfire Ventures and Crosscut Ventures to expand its business (maybe through direct marketing).

Some Spotify users were so annoyed by the recent Drake promotion that they asked for and were granted refunds, according to a report from Billboard. The streaming service had heavily promoted the artistlatest album, &Scorpion,& even using his image on playlists that didn&t even contain his music, like &Massive Dance Hits,& &Best of British& and &Happy Pop Hits,& for example.

The promotion, dubbed &Scorpion SZN,& was the first-ever global artist takeover of Spotifyservice and the first time an artist took over multiple Spotify playlists on the same day.

While itnot uncommon for artists to receive promotion on Spotify, some felt that the Drake promotion had gone too far — the album and Drakeimage were everywhere in sections like Browse and Playlists.

One Reddit user shared how they were able to obtain a refund from customer service, and that post soon went viral. The screenshot of their chat with the support rep has, to date, been viewed nearly 12,000 times. That transcript doesn&t indicate any official policy on Spotifypart here, but was instead the efforts of a customer service rep helping retaining an individualbusiness.

However, a few other people then tried similar tactics, and were also able to get refunds, they said.

Spotify isn&t officially commenting on the pushback from users, but Billboard claims the number of refunds were minimal.

Itclear that the streaming service noticed the complaints, however, as it was responding to users on Twitter to clarify that things would soon be back to normal.

While Spotify has never refunded customers unhappy over a promotion — the larger news here is not the financial loss of those refunds, or even that they happened at all, but rather the damage this has done to Spotifyreputation.

For those who complained, the problem wasn&t just that they weren&t Drake fans (though thatobviously a part of it), but rather that they felt they were viewing advertisements when they were paying for a Premium, ad-free version of Spotifyservice.

In addition, a heavy-handed promotional effort like this flies up against Spotifydesire to position itself as a service thatpersonalized to its subscribers& musical tastes.

With Drake showing up all over Spotify playlists and recommendations, the overall effect was one of discounting users& own interests — those who complained were likely not Drake fans or perhaps not even heavy listeners of hip-hop in general. As a result, they felt like Spotify was trying to push them to listen to music they didn&t like.

Though Drake is a hugely popular artist, there may not be an artist out there who could withstand a promotion like this. Itjust too much. After all, therea fine line between being excited about an album release and promoting it, and shoving something in peoplefaces. Spotify crossed that line.

Billboardnoted that some people had even compared this to the Apple/iTunes scandal when the company gave away U2&Songs of Innocence& back in 2014 by downloading it without consent to users& iTunes libraries. But itnot quite as bad as that. The issue was not one of stealthily downloading content to your device, which is far more of a violation.

That said, the user outrage feels similar:I don&t like this music, why are your forcing it on me

Spotifyoriginal intention was to promote Drakealbum and the artist in a more playful way. It put Drake on the cover of its biggest Rap, R-B, Pop and Mood playlists, includingRapCaviar,Beast Mode,Are - Be,Summer Party,TodayTop Hits,Morning Commuteand others.

In those cases where Drakeimage was used on the playlist but not his music, the idea was that it would showcase the artistpersonality. But these efforts clearly fell flat. Users were confused as to why Drake was appearing on playlists that didn&t make sense — like those featuring a different genre of music.

From a sheer numbers standpoint, meanwhile, Spotifypromotional efforts were successful.

The album broke the U.S. one-week streaming record for an album in three days, Billboard also reported, and the album was being streamed more than 10 million times per hour the weekend of its release, Spotify said.The album is estimated to reach more than 700 million streams in the U.S. by the end of the tracking week on July 5.

Not everyone thought the promotion was that big of a deal.

Some people said that while they noticed the suggestions, they just bypassed them and listened to their own music as usual. But even then, some sympathized with those who complained that this felt like an advertisement on whatsupposed to be an ad-free service.

Spotify collaborates with artists on promotions — the details of Draketakeover weren&t dictated. (In fact, itnot even the biggest promotion from a financial investment standpoint.) So Spotify will likely chalk this up to a learning experience that may help it craft better promotions in the future that don&t involve as much overreach.

At the end of last November, Google announced that Diane Bryant, who at the time was on a leave of absence from her position as the head of Inteldata center group, would become Google Cloudnew COO. This was a major coup for Google, but it wasn&t meant to last. After only seven months on the job, Bryant has left Google Cloud, as Business Insider first reported today.

&We can confirm that Diane Bryant is no longer with Google. We are grateful for the contributions she made while at Google and we wish her the best in her next pursuit,& a Google spokesperson told us when we reached out for comment.

The reasons for Bryantdeparture are currently unclear. Itno secret that Intel is looking for a new CEO and Bryant would fit the bill. Intel also famously likes to recruit insiders as its leaders, though I would be surprised if the companyboard had already decided on a replacement. Bryant spent more than 25 years at Intel and her hire at Google looked like it would be a good match, especially given that Googleposition behind Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud wars means that it needs all the executive talent it can get.

When Bryant was hired, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene noted that &Dianestrategic acumen, technical knowledge and client focus will prove invaluable as we accelerate the scale and reach of Google Cloud.& According to the most recent analyst reports, Google Cloudmarket share has ticked up a bit — and its revenue has increased at the same time — but Google remains a distant third in the competition and it doesn&t look like thatchanging anytime soon.