Today in Digital Marketing - 1-800-DARK-PATTERN

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Google strengthens its e-commerce offerings, Be protected. Be Zen. It's Wednesday, May 19th, 2021. Happy Day of Nature, France. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Well, Google's annual announcement fest called Google I.O. happened yesterday. They talked about an updated video schema, some new privacy controls. But four things in particular I thought were especially relevant to our work as digital marketers.

Starting point is 00:01:04 First, an expanded partnership with Shopify. And this partnership is open to all 1.7 million merchants on the platform. In short, a new, simpler process for getting products featured across Google, which it says will let merchants get discovered by high intent consumers across Google's search, shopping, YouTube, and images sites. If you're using Shopify, you'll be able to run those free shopping ads that Google launched about a year ago. Since they went to that free model, Google says their product catalog has grown by 70%, and the number of advertisers went up 80%.

Starting point is 00:01:38 Second, they share details about something they're calling the Shopping Graph. This is a live data set of products, inventory, and merchants. Quoting Google's head of commerce, the Shopping Graph is a dynamic AI-enhanced model that understands a constantly changing set of products, sales, brands, reviews, and most importantly, the product information and inventory data we receive from brands and retailers directly,

Starting point is 00:02:03 as well as how those attributes relate to one another. Having a deep understanding of products allows Google to help users find products in new ways, such as searching within images, unquote. Which brings us to the third item. Speaking of images, they are adding an interesting touch to Google Photos. Soon, it will recognize products from within screenshots. And if that product is in their catalog, we'll let people buy it right there. Screenshots, of course, are used by, well, pretty much everyone as a kind of quick reminder function. Google is hoping that this image recognition will drive more sales. They also recommend that if you run an online store, you should screenshot a photo featuring one of your products.

Starting point is 00:02:47 That does not mean the screenshot of the product page of your website. This means screenshot an image of your product out in the real world, then open it in Google Photos to see if your product's in there. Finally, and this is a big one, Google has announced the next evolution of search. They're calling it MUM, M-U-M, Multitask Unified Model. It's a new way to understand language. The company says it's 1,000 times more powerful than the BERT model that was launched some time ago. Quoting the company,

Starting point is 00:03:18 MUM trained across 75 different languages and many tasks at once, allowing it to develop a more comprehensive understanding of information and world knowledge than previous models. And MUM is multimodal, so it understands information across text and images, and in the future can expand to more modalities like video and audio, unquote. They used an example where someone typed in, I've hiked Mount Adams and now want to hike Mount Fuji next fall. What should I do differently to prepare? First of all, is anyone using Google search queries that way?

Starting point is 00:03:55 But I don't know, maybe this will get us started. Because mom could apparently understand that well enough to highlight that while both mountains are roughly the same elevation, fall is the rainy season on Mount Fuji, so you might need a waterproof jacket. One design trend in the news over the last year or so has been so-called dark patterns, deliberately misleading design choices aimed at tricking the user into doing something they didn't mean to. Things like unsubscribe buttons labeled, Don't not remove addition of subscription. Or a real world example,

Starting point is 00:04:38 when Donald Trump's fundraising website had a pre-checked option that looked like a legal consent tick, but actually turned the user's one-time donation into a monthly recurring donation. Well now, Consumer Reports has set up a tip line of sorts for people who want to report the most egregious of these. Two years ago, U.S. lawmakers tried passing a bill that would ban the obscuring, subverting, or impairing of user autonomy. That legislation did not go anywhere, but some have. California's privacy laws now ban the use of dark patterns. If you would like to report some nefarious web design, the URL is darkpatternstipline.org. TikTok says it's investing deeply in its pool of content moderators. Those are the people who decide what content should get deleted and what should stay up. Most of the time, of course, they're concerned with keeping things like porn and violent imagery

Starting point is 00:05:28 off the platform. Late yesterday, they announced that they have partnered with the Trust and Safety Professional Association to develop a new program to help train and support these people. It's not an easy job. And given the reports say more than a third of TikTok users in the U.S. are under 14, it's obviously something they don't want to sleep on. Italian investigators are looking at the app's alleged role in the death of a 10-year-old girl who is said to be participating in a popular TikTok trend. TikTok is on track to become the next billion-user platform.

Starting point is 00:06:04 Instagram will run a three-day training program called Creator Week. Thank you. into entertainment, how to start a podcast, how to get discovered on Instagram, and fund my merch line, in which creators will be able to pitch their dream product idea to a panel of judges, and the winners will get their ideas funded. Sessions will also address burnout and algorithm myth-busting, unquote. But only some of these will be open to everyone. Others will be open to everyone. Others will be invitation only. Reports say there are 5,000 invitations going out, but only two Americans. They do say they're planning similar events in Europe. For the truly public events, those will be held on the Instagram creators account.

Starting point is 00:06:57 The event runs from June 8th to June 10th. And two small items to wrap up. First, if your organization uses the Google Workspace platform, you may be interested to know that they have added stat holidays to their calendar product. Previously, you either had to manually input your country's holidays or subscribe to some third-party platform's calendar. Now Google has it built in. You still have to turn it on.

Starting point is 00:07:23 On desktop, go to Settings, Add Calendar, Br calendars of interest, and then regional calendars. And second, you don't have to be on TikTok long before you find a puppuccino video. Yeah, two puppuccinos, please. Thank you. Oh, you love your puppuccino. These are when dog owners drive up to a Starbucks drive-thru and ask for a puppuccino. It's basically a free cup of whipped cream that some dogs really seem to like. Well now, Starbucks, ever the buzz killer, has applied to trademark the term.

Starting point is 00:07:59 Last year, an American tried to trademark it for her pet treats. At that time, Starbucks contested the filing, claiming it would cause confusion. Remember, if you've got a marketing position you're trying to fill, or maybe you're looking for that next great gig, consider a classified ad right here. It's just 20 bucks. You can book it online. Link in this episode's description. That's it for today. Talk to you tomorrow. And when the stars align, you get to wander.

Today in Digital Marketing - 1-800-DARK-PATTERN

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