Today in Digital Marketing - A Picture's Worth a Thousand Instagram Ads

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, March 21st. Today, pinpointing profit. The image-based social app has tips for your next campaign. Artful AI. Two big players enter the generative AI space. New rules at TikTok cover endorsement deals. And Twitter's response to concerns over brand safety issues? A poop emoji. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Two new ad products are coming to Instagram. The company announcing today it's beginning to test ads in search results, which will let brands reach consumers who are actively searching for products, businesses, or content. The ads will show up in the feed that users scroll through when they tap into a post from search results.

Starting point is 00:00:44 The company plans to launch this placement globally in the coming months. Instagram is also launching something called Reminder Ads, which are designed for businesses to announce, remind, and notify consumers of future events or launches that they may be interested in. Users can opt into Reminders and receive three notifications from Instagram one day before, 15 minutes before, and at the time of the event. And those reminder ads are rolling out to all advertisers now as an option in the feed. If you work in e-commerce or retail, you're probably familiar with the 99 cent pricing strategy when you price products at 99 cents instead of rounding up to the nearest dollar. Some new research shows that one simple adjustment to

Starting point is 00:01:31 this strategy can boost sales by up to 10%. The study found to increase the effectiveness of the 99 cent pricing strategy, you should mention the original price as well. When consumers are shown prices ending in a 99 cents with a reference price, they perceive the price to be even cheaper because the discount will seem larger, making them more likely to purchase. This is especially true for casual buyers. According to the study's researchers, this is because people tend to process prices in one of two ways, either by looking at each digit individually or by rounding the number in our minds. When the original and discounted prices are listed side by side, consumers tend to compare prices using the first method, focusing on the leftmost digits, making the difference appear larger.

Starting point is 00:02:21 But when the prices are not listed together, people judge the prices based on their memory of one price, seeing the 99 cent price as less significant. The report notes that companies often use prices ending in 99 cents to make the cost seem lower, especially during sales or promotions, and including the original price can emphasize that discount to buyers. Examples of companies using this strategy include some of the big ones, like Amazon, Best Buy, and Zara. The study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

Starting point is 00:02:51 It's called, When and Why Are Consumers Pennywise and Pound Foolish? If you're looking to up your Pinterest game, the company provided some new pointers for your pin campaigns yesterday. The ad tips include, experimenting with multiple objectives. If you're looking to up your Pinterest game, the company provided some new pointers for your pin campaigns yesterday. The ad tips include experimenting with multiple objectives. This was their number one tip, saying that we advertisers should target consumers at each stage of the purchase cycle rather than focusing on one aspect.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Now, of course, multiple objectives usually means multiple ads, which equals more money for Pinterest. So, you know, grain of salt. But that said, Pinterest noted that advertisers that adopt more than one goal have experienced sales lifts of up to 60%. Number two, spend more on video. Pinterest recommends brands aim to have video comprise the majority of their media plan to maximize ROI and response as video remains, of course, the most engaging format on their platform. Number three, keep your campaign fresh. To improve performance, include variations in your creative mix. Pinterest says that using three or more ad formats can increase awareness by three times. So just a few versions of each ad are needed to keep things engaging. Adobe has finally caught up to the AI image generator trend. The company launched Adobe Firefly today, a family of creative generative AI models, which includes the release

Starting point is 00:04:14 of two new tools, one that creates images based on prompts and another that generates stylized text. Adobe says its models are trained on images that are licensed or out of copyright or in its own stock library. The company also plans to pay artists who contribute training data and make its AI tools more user-friendly than its rivals. Instead of having to type in a string of descriptive text to style an image, the tool includes built-in options for art styles, lighting, and aspect ratios. The beta version of Firefly is currently available through its website with plans for future integration into Adobe's suite of creative apps.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Along with the launch of Firefly, the company also launched Adobe Sensai generative AI services today. Those are new AI tools aimed specifically at enterprise-level marketers. The services will leverage a combination of AI tech, including Adobe's own large language models and Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service to perform marketing and sales tasks. The services will let customers create different versions of advertising email, text copy, and web pages by selecting the tone, identifying keywords, and using up-to-date product information. The models within generative AI services will also generate captions for visualizations such as cohort tables and follow charts. Meanwhile, Microsoft Bing now does

Starting point is 00:05:37 generative AI images as well. The company launched Bing Image Creator in chat today, which is the latest powered by Dell E and will only be available through creative mode. The new image generator will be available in Microsoft Edge, meaning you'll be able to generate AI images directly from your browser. For now, it's only available in the US and the UK. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. More generative AI tools also means more restrictions. TikTok has updated its content moderation policies to include new restrictions on sharing AI deepfakes, which have gained

Starting point is 00:06:38 popularity on the app in recent months. The platform's rules on what content can be posted and promoted remain largely unchanged with no graphic violence, hate speech, or overtly sexual content allowed. But a newly expanded section covers synthetic and manipulated media, otherwise known as AI deepfakes. With the new policy updates, all realistic AI-generated content must now be clearly disclosed as such, either in the video caption or as an overlaid sticker. The platform has also banned any synthetic media that contains likenesses of a real private figure or shows a public figure endorsing a product or violating the app's other policies. Public figures are defined as anyone 18 years of age or older with

Starting point is 00:07:25 a significant public role, like a government official, politician, business leader, or celebrity. In other words, if you've been using a Joe Biden deepfake to promote your products, you're going to need to find a new brand spokesperson. Elon Musk's assessment of Twitter performance may not be as accurate as he claims. Musk noted earlier this month that Twitter experienced 50% less hate speech on the platform than it did pre-acquisition. But new data suggests that hate speech on Elon Musk's Twitter is actually rising. A new study from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that anti-Semitic speech on the app has skyrocketed since Musk took over. The analysis found an average of 6,200 posts per week appearing to contain anti-Semitic language between June 1st and October 27th, the day of the takeover.

Starting point is 00:08:16 But that number more than doubled to nearly 13,000 through early February, a 105% increase. According to the study, contrary to Twitter's own data, hate speech is actually significantly up in the app. When media emailed Twitter's PR department for comment, they did receive a reply from Twitter, a poop emoji. It turns out now every email sent to Twitter's media relations team is ignored, but auto-replied with, well, a shitpost. Hanging out with my 80-year-old mom the last couple of days for some medical appointments of hers makes me realize just how mean-spirited technology is to older people. You know, these notification screens

Starting point is 00:09:08 on apps that prompt you, not the one from the mobile OS, but the one just before that has all sorts of warnings, but if you don't turn on notifications, you'll miss this, and you won't get that, and it's just nonsense, of course, but it just seems kind of mean-spirited. My mom's phone,

Starting point is 00:09:24 of course, is just littered with notifications from crappy apps. Anyway, food for thought. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - A Picture's Worth a Thousand Instagram Ads

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