Today in Digital Marketing - 🐦 Bird Brained

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, July 31st. Today, why experts say the X super app is doomed from the start. Instagram is testing some nice generative AI tools that can help your organic content, a new B2B ad network launches, and the new ad disclosure labels at Bing are almost invisible. Is this good news for marketers? I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Elon Musk's move to turn X into an everything app like China's WeChat, the app that combines chat, dating, payments, social media, and pretty much everything else, may already be doomed. While Musk sees this as a path to profitability, an interesting think piece up on Business Insider today suggests he might be missing the major plot point. The U.S. isn't China. A big challenge for Musk is that WeChat was originally designed as an all-in-one app from

Starting point is 00:00:52 its inception, giving it a head start, contributing to its success and its now more than 1.3 billion monthly active users, far ahead of Twitter's 368 million. The piece notes that a big part of WeChat's success is also because of China's strict tech censorship, which bans major Western competitors like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Quote, but when Musk looks at these user numbers and simply assumes that adding functions to X will make it the WeChat of the West,

Starting point is 00:01:20 he's missing the point. WeChat is a social ecosystem in itself that's locked its users in from the get-go, something that Facebook, and the entity formerly known as Twitter, will likely never be able to achieve. That's not to say Musk can't find a way to make these features appealing enough to the Western world to lock more consumers into a potential X ecosystem, but it's worth noting that when Tencent introduced WeChat over a decade ago, the digital space in China was still growing and lacked a major power player. Musk, however, is trying to carve out a space in a crowded tech market.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Right now, we have yet to see or hear enough about X to know for sure if he even stands a chance of winning. But Musk may be too late to the game for the odds to be in his favor. Unquote. Heads up brand managers who have admin access to your company's Twitter account. Scammers are now targeting its paying blue subscribers with phishing emails that mimic X. According to recent reports, these fraudulent emails have the subject line, preserve your status, transition smoothly, prompting the recipients to switch their subscription from Twitter Blue to X. Clicking on a link takes the user to a site that,

Starting point is 00:02:36 you guessed it, has no connection to Twitter or X. The URLs then direct users to a seemingly legitimate API authorization screen, requesting permission to use a program that impersonates an official Twitter app. Opting to authorize the app grants the hackers almost full control over the account. More generative AI tools are coming soon to Instagram, including AI stickers. This is a sticker tool for posts and stories, which will let you create custom graphics based on text prompts. The platform also lets you now remove or replace elements of your pictures within the creation process, including an AI brush that lets you replace parts of your image by using generative AI to fill in the gaps and restyle. This will let you recreate sections of an uploaded image with text prompts. Instagram is also testing a new AI chatbot, similar, by the way, to Snap's My AI,

Starting point is 00:03:33 built into DMs, which you can summon by typing at AI into the chat field and ask it questions. Instagram is also testing another DM AI tool that summarizes your inbox messages for you. Finally, and I actually think this is great, Instagram is adding new labels to content that identify when an image has been created by AI. Brands and creators will also be asked to add a created by AI marker to posts uploaded from other tools.

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Starting point is 00:04:24 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. The influencer marketing platform JoinBrands is the latest company playing matchmaker between TikTok creators and advertisers. The company recently launched an integration with TikTok's Spark Ads format. Spark Ads let advertisers access pre-existing creator content and use it in their campaigns with the creator's consent. Now, join brands corporate partners can access this feature without a TikTok account. Beyond TikTok, the marketing platform also features built-in ad tools for reels, YouTube shorts, and even Amazon shoppable videos. Brands pay to use

Starting point is 00:05:03 the platform only after a creator accepts their job and can maintain full content rights to reuse and repurpose promotional materials. The fintech giant Intuit has launched a B2B ad network targeting small businesses called SMB Media Labs. The new ad network lets brands and marketers target QuickBooks customers via several digital media properties like social platforms, like Meta, audio, podcasts, online publishers. Vizio will be its exclusive connected TV partner.

Starting point is 00:05:37 The ads will be designed for QuickBooks online customers in the US based on their type of business, product offerings, and location. The company said that instead of a self-serve setup, advertisers will work with its account managers and media planners on strategy. Into its core products also include TurboTax, Credit Karma, and MailChimp. And finally, two small items to wrap up. First, your brand's followers will soon be able to slide into your threads DMs. Instagram's head recently confirmed the app is adding support for direct messaging.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Meta's new platform is continuing to evolve with recent updates like translation and a new following tab. And soon, looks like brands will be able to chat with users without leaving the platform. Second, seems like Microsoft ads in Bing search results are adopting a hide and seek approach with their ad labels. Typically, the ad label appears before the description line, often with a different colored background. But Search Engine Roundtable spotted today some testing of very discreet looking ad labels with,

Starting point is 00:06:43 I mean, it's basically microscope size text, the same color as the body copy, no background. We have an image of the test in today's newsletter. Go look. I challenge you in the first five seconds to even be able to see the ad notification. You can never overlook me. Believed in myself and look where it took me. We upgraded our newsletter platform over the weekend and it now has an amazing referral program and you barely need to do anything to get really good rewards. For instance, just refer two people,

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Starting point is 00:07:30 There's even Amazon gift cards available. And you really don't have to refer many people to get them either. So check it out. The link is in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. All right. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 🐦 Bird Brained

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