“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.

Are We Wasting Our Time? - Digiday shares this confession from a social media strategist in which the writer struggles with his or her role by debating the value of the audience he or she is reaching for clients, an overemphasis on engagement and a lack of creativity across the industry. The writer discovers, however, that platforms are evolving and pushing advertisers to adopt a traditional advertising structure and funneling more dollars to social media marketing, which means more scrutiny on program success. The perspective is smart, but I see this as an expected evolution for a new way to market. Marketers have been testing the waters, getting their feet wet and learning how to swim. Now, the brands that will be successful in the next phase of social media marketing will be strategic, will adopt a measurement mindset and won't settle for just going through the motions.

Beauty Brands Have Met Their Match: Vloggers - Racked.com writes about the shakeup within the beauty industry coming from YouTube influencers not connected with brands. YouTube has 45,000 non-branded beauty vloggers who generate 75 hours worth of content daily. That content receives 700 million views each month. These vloggers are driving purchase intent and consumer preferences in a way beauty brands can't.

News Flash: The Internet's a Big Deal - Mary Meeker presented her annual State of Internet. She presented several key findings, including: TV is alive and well with a slightly increasing ad market, mobile is taking up an ever increasing amount of attention but not ad dollars and the mobile market's greatest potential is in Africa and Asia. Of course, there's much more to view in her 164-slide deck.

How Beats Became Worthy of $3 Billion - The Verge has created a visual history of Beats, the headphone and music streaming company acquired by Apple this week for $3 billion. The compilation shows how the brand was built using a combination of influencers, strong branding and product extensions. An effort that earned the attention of Apple and price tag of $3 billion.