Today in Digital Marketing - Computer... Enhance!

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, we can't rely on blurring people out of ad campaigns anymore. at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It's Monday, August 30th, 2021. Happy Bank Holiday Day, Britain! I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 457. Well, it's been in testing for a while now, but TikTok has finally opened the door wide to its promote function. This kind of media buying is sometimes called boosting, where you take an existing organic post, usually one that's over-performing, and put a budget behind it. The workflow is about what you would expect it to be,

Starting point is 00:01:08 pick a video from your account, then a campaign goal, like more views, more followers, more website visits, set a budget, how long you want it to run, and some loose audience targeting. That targeting is either automatic, which means TikTok will try to put it in front of people it thinks would be interested in it, or you can go custom and specify gender, age, and pick from a handful of interests. Like Facebook, your promoted post will go first for review,

Starting point is 00:01:32 then if it's approved, we'll start getting out there. One thing likely to get your ad disapproved is if it's using some trendy music, as many TikTok videos do. The licensing deal TikTok has with the music labels cover organic use, but only some audio tracks are allowed to be used in ads. The easiest way to start is by using the fire icon on each video, which you can get to from the share button. But you can also do this using TikTok's creator tools menu or via its business suite. Still with TikTok for a moment, its parent company ByteDance has acquired the Chinese virtual reality headset maker Pico.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Quoting The Verge, Pico is the third largest maker of the business-ready Neo 3 Pro and the Neo 3 Pro Eye set for a North American and European release as well. What's not clear here is if they have any plans to use this inside TikTok. You've got to think there's some connection there. And again, ByteDance has made purchases that aren't related. A mobile game studio, and they've even launched their own mobile phone. Look, I like CSI Miami

Starting point is 00:02:58 like everyone else, but can we agree that that whole computer enhance thing is kind of ridiculous? Can you clear that up, Benny? I don't know. Let's enhance it. Enhance section A6. I enhanced the detail and... I think there's enough to enhance. Release it to my screen. Enhance the reflection in her eye. Let's run this through.

Starting point is 00:03:16 You've seen this. They take a blurry pixelated image, click a button, and then suddenly it's perfectly clear. As goofy as it sounds, we may actually be getting close. Algorithm scientists at Google today showed off what they call natural image synthesis, and the results are, well, a little breathtaking. The images they showed were deeply pixelated, and their AI was able to clean it up and fill in the pixels properly. It does this by covering it with film grain, then undoing that grain. Premium newsletter subscribers are seeing examples of this today.

Starting point is 00:03:51 There are some impacts of this on marketing. I think most notable is the fact that we probably can't rely anymore on blurring out people from an image or video if they didn't sign release forms. Because soon, those people will be able to be popped right back into the picture. We return to what is turning out to be something of an epic saga at Google. They're stepping up of alterations to your title tags. Briefly recapping, since its start, Google occasionally used a different headline than a web page's title tag, emphasis on occasionally. Earlier this month, it seemed they turned the crank up on this and were picking titles from really weird places on the webpage,

Starting point is 00:04:27 or in some cases, adding the year and then in others, removing the year. Until now, the reports have been plentiful but anecdotal. Now, we have some data. SEMrush says their sample of 2,000 pages found pages where Google used something other than the title tag. 75% of the time, they used the pages H1 tag. One sort of stunning finding was that they found out only about 44% of titles on the search engine result pages matched the title tag in the pages HTML. 44%. Last week, Google claimed

Starting point is 00:05:03 that number was closer to 80%. And e-commerce pages were hardest hit. Only 30% matched, according to the SEMrush study. Now, remember, though, 2,000 pages. So it's not a huge sample size, but if these numbers do hold up, this could be pretty significant in terms of how we digital marketers create webpages. Given that H1 tags seem to have much more prominence than we ever thought, maybe now's the time to put some keywords there instead of just using it to say,

Starting point is 00:05:31 welcome to our website. 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. 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. A great example of humanity circling around Twitter this weekend. It's a letter that a Netflix executive wrote to the co-owners of a Chicago bar who had created a little homage to Stranger Things. They had Christmas light string, you know, with the letters and the bartender's area was called the Upside Down. Anyway, needless to say, Netflix's lawyers were not thrilled.

Starting point is 00:06:21 But rather than sending them a templated takedown, Netflix's senior counsel of IP sent this letter. Dear Danny and Doug, my walkie talkie is busted, so I had to write this note instead. I heard you launched a Stranger Things pop-up bar at your Logan Square location. Look, I don't want you to think I'm a total wastoid and I love how much you guys love the show, but unless I'm living in the upside down, I don't think we did a deal with you for this pop-up. You're obviously creative type, so I'm sure you can appreciate that it's important for us to have a say in how our fans encounter the

Starting point is 00:06:52 worlds we build. And we're not going to go full Dr. Brenner on you, but we ask that you please not extend the pop-up beyond it six-week run ending in September, and reach out to us for permission if you plan to do something like this again. We love our fans more than anything, but you should know that the Demogorgon is not always

Starting point is 00:07:08 as forgiving. So please, don't make us call your mom. The social media platform Agora Pulse now has an integration with Google My Business. This will let you see and reply to reviews from the site. In this first phase, you'll be able to connect multiple Google My Business locations, reply to reviews from the site. In this first phase, you'll be able to connect multiple Google My Business locations, reply to reviews from your social inbox, create and use labels and saved replies,

Starting point is 00:07:32 and assign conversations to other teammates. One side note, Buffer today reported they were having trouble with video uploads. At deadline, they say they believe they've fixed the problem and are monitoring it. Back in the mid-90s, a couple of graduate students at Stanford were trying to come up with a dissertation topic. One of them thought exploring the mathematical properties of the web and understanding its link structure as a huge graph might prove interesting. Their supervisor gave them the green light, and within a couple of weeks, the research project called Backrub launched. Those students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, went on to co-found Google.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Backrub processed its very first search request 25 years ago today. This is the most popular week in the year for people to go on holiday, and the news sort of reflects it. Definitely a slow news day, likely a slow news week as well. Which means you've got lots of time to jump into our Slack community and join the 500 other digital marketers just like you. Jobs get posted there, people use it to get advice. It's free, just tap the link in this episode's notes

Starting point is 00:08:41 or go to todayindigital.com slash Slack. Talk to you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N.C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - Computer... Enhance!

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