Today in Digital Marketing - Dollars and AI Sense: Facebook's Strategy to Monetize Ad Creation

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Thursday, April 6th. Today, the details of Meta's plan to charge you to create ad campaigns while slashing its support teams. Also, why your podcast ads should target co-listeners, the staggering amount of suboptimal ad creative, and Google's urgent warning about a YouTube account scam happening right now. I'm Steph Gunn, sitting in for Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Meta has confirmed it's jumping on the generative AI bandwagon, and it's probably going to cost you. The company's CTO told media yesterday that they're developing an AI creative engine for advertisers. One use case he mentioned, being able to create different images at scale for

Starting point is 00:00:42 individual users. While Meta's AI models have mainly been used internally or released as public demos and research projects, the company now plans to start charging businesses to use ad-generating AI. The tech will become available this year, but we don't have a specific date. Meanwhile, Google is testing its own AI-powered ad creation tool that suggests ad headlines and descriptions based on information it has about a business. Advertisers are asked to describe the product or service they are marketing and what makes it unique in a few sentences, and the tool generates ad content. The test is apparently unrelated to its chat GPT rival, Barge. With so much changing in the world of ad creation these days, you'd think customer service would also be prioritized. But no. CNBC reported yesterday that Meta's

Starting point is 00:01:35 recent layoffs have taken out large swaths of its customer service team, leaving brands and influencers without customer service reps. According to internal documents and former employees, the job cuts affected workers across Facebook and Instagram's customer support, customer experience, and communities teams. Meta announced plans to create a customer support team last year with a focus on helping users who were locked out of their accounts or had their posts removed. The company also began testing a live chat support team for account recovery in 2021, which reportedly expanded to over a million people in nine countries. But it's unclear how many team members are still active. Many users continue to report

Starting point is 00:02:17 difficulties trying to reach support when facing platform-related issues. Ad slowdown? Not for TikTok. The platform is expected to grow its ad revenue by more than 50% year-over-year this year, this despite a general downturn in the ad market and threats of a U.S. ban. Recent research found TikTok's advertising revenue should surpass $15 billion in 2023. That's up from $10 million last year. The researchers anticipate an increase in ad spend across all categories on the app this year, even sectors that are forecast to see an overall decrease in ad spend, such as automotive and soft drinks. The report also forecasts five categories will make up spend of more than $8.5 billion on TikTok in 2023. Those five are

Starting point is 00:03:07 technology and electronics, toiletries and cosmetics, retail, clothing and accessories, and telecoms and utilities. Data has been provided by Work Media. So your podcast ads are targeting listeners, but are they also speaking to co-listeners? According to a new study from Magna and underwritten by Spotify, three-quarters of people listen to digital audio with others at least once per week. The study also found that co-listeners generally tend to be in a positive mood, which may influence their perception of ads. So, how can brands customize their ads to reach this co-listening audience?

Starting point is 00:03:48 The study recommends focusing on storytelling. Narrative-focused ads outperformed product ads in capturing attention, generating interest, and improving brand perception. The report also identified specific activities where co-listening typically occurs. Those are in periods of relaxation, hanging out with friends, cooking, entertaining kids, and during yoga. New research has revealed that advertisers spent close to $1 billion on ad creative last year that failed to meet basic industry standards. In fact, most brands allocated the majority of their spend

Starting point is 00:04:26 to campaigns that didn't meet these best practices. As a result, the study from CreativeX found that more than half of media budgets were wasted on bad ads in 2022. Best practices include things like putting your branding in the first few seconds of a video or using sound. These have been linked to increased ROI. Ads that miss out on these can suffer a significant impact. The analysis came from a review of more than 2 million ads. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

Starting point is 00:05:01 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. Social media account takeovers are a big problem for brands and users. And now now some victims of hacked Facebook and Instagram accounts are turning to TikTok influencers to recover their profiles. Bloomberg this week reported on a self-help coach who had a sizable following on her Instagram. She received an email from someone posing as a meta employee claiming she had posted

Starting point is 00:05:41 a copyrighted photo. She clicked on a link that directed her to a fake website where she entered her login credentials. This let the hackers take control of her account and demand $1,500 for its return. In response, she sought assistance from a cybersecurity expert and influencer on TikTok. This expert noted that when hackers take over accounts, one of the first things that they do is change the username.

Starting point is 00:06:09 To recover the account, users should ask a friend to check their connections list for the new name, which can be used to request Instagram's help in the recovery process. He also recommends removing any connected social media accounts as they can provide a roadmap for hackers to retake the breached profile. He added that Instagram is reportedly the most common site for account takeovers. On this front, beware of opening any emails from YouTube. Google this week warned about a phishing campaign that is stealing personal data, such as email addresses and passwords. The fake email looks genuine, and crooks try to lure users into clicking on harmful links by warning that YouTube access will be blocked if they don't accept the new terms. And finally, it looks like Bing's AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT will be getting some company.

Starting point is 00:06:58 Google's CEO recently confirmed that an AI chatbot is coming to Google Search. Eventually. No specific timeline was provided for its release. That's it for me. Tomorrow and Monday are stat holidays here in Canada, so we won't be doing the regular show. But worry not, we will not leave you hanging. Tomorrow, Todd has a deep dive interview with a marketing scientist whose recent paper found a surprising connection between corporate social responsibility and brand sales. It is not what you think. And Monday, is it possible that we can increase sales by saying good things about products and services that compete with ours?

Starting point is 00:07:43 Todd will be speaking with the author of a research paper called Befriending the Enemy. Both of these incidentally ran about a year ago exclusively on the Premium podcast. If you'd like access to more than 30 similar deep dive episodes and start getting new ones, you can hunt to todayindigital.com slash premium, or you can tap the link in the show notes. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneimuk First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is me, Steph Gunn. Our production coordinator is Sarah Gild. Music licensing by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle. And not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is actually the inventor of ChatGPT.

Starting point is 00:08:31 He came up with the idea back in the 80s from a dream he had. He told me that day he woke up and said to himself, Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree? Thanks for listening. We'll be back to talk to you on Tuesday.

Today in Digital Marketing - Dollars and AI Sense: Facebook's Strategy to Monetize Ad Creation

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