Today in Digital Marketing - Dong Dong is the Future of AI Commerce

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

The future of AI commerce is Dong Dong... YouTube outlines its plans for this year... Why more than half of marketing agencies did major restructuring in the last year... Some solid numbers from Twitter... New tools for B2B marketers on LinkedIn... and the AI tool making Russian scammers rethink their careers.Go Premium! No ads, more stories, audio chapters, and extended weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, the future of AI commerce is dong-dong. at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. and the AI tool making Russian scammers rethink their careers. And on the premium podcast with no ads, more stories and extended weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. Another blow to ad tracking. This time, the non-cookie way many of us had been using. It's Thursday, February 10th.

I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Chinese tech company Alibaba has unveiled its virtual influencer designed to promote merchandise for the Winter Olympics. The virtual character is named Dong Dong, which is Chinese for winter, and is meant to emulate a 22-year-old woman with a passion for winter sports. With her authentic human-like features and outspoken personality, the AI will interact with audiences in a marketing strategy aimed at targeting younger, tech-savvy sports enthusiasts through an immersive metaverse setting, to use their language.

Here's how the company plans to use AI. Dongdong will promote Olympic merch that will lead consumers to, shocker, Alibaba's own e-commerce platform. Through live streamed shows on the platform, she will respond to questions with hand gestures, facial expressions, and by talking. A human voice was synthesized using text-to-speech using the AI models, movements, and expressions. Why? Well, because then she'll be able to host live talk shows. The scripts written for her and generated by cloud technology will let her interact with humans. Oh, and she can also dance to Olympic theme songs.

YouTube has revealed its product plans for 2022. With no real surprise, shorts, live video, and shopping will be the major areas of focus for the company. Here's a look at the changes you can expect to see this year on the platform. First, YouTube shorts, users will be able to reply to individual comments. So that's very similar to how TikTok works and Reels' recent video updates. The platform, that is YouTube, is also exploring new options for creators to monetize the format by integrating brand content through Brand Connect and letting viewers shop directly through YouTube Shorts. Over to YouTube Live now. The platform plans to introduce collaborative live streaming. So this means that creators can go live together.

And on the shopping side of things, they're working on three different shopping initiatives for this year. Shoppable videos, live shopping, of course, and also how shopping will actually appear in the YouTube app. So expect some changes there. Other updates you can expect to see this year include YouTube Studio will add new insights from Google that aim to improve creators' understand of audience demand. YouTube TV will get a new interface. And finally, the platform will be working on ways to make viewing more immersive as we all head, whether we like it or not, into the metaverse. A new study indicates that more than half of marketing teams were restructured last year. According to the analysis, restructuring is accelerating among marketing teams.

Even during the panic of lockdown in 2020, less than half of respondents reported structural changes to their teams. A company's size does not seem to play a significant role in whether it reorganizes its marketing departments. Almost two-thirds of large companies actually restructured their teams so far this year alone. Two-thirds. At least those businesses have a designated team. Over a quarter of respondents said their marketing departments have merged with other departments. A quarter of respondents said that they have seen employees with areas of expertise added to their team in the past year rather than removing them. Also, marketers are likely to be part of a multidisciplinary

team that includes people from other departments within their company, 15% have moved to team-based working. The data has been provided by Marketing Week's 2022 Career and Salary Survey. Twitter has released its fourth quarter 2021 earnings results. On the user side, the platform added 6 million additional users in the quarter, bringing it to 217 monetizable daily active users. That's the metric that Twitter likes to use. Twitter's growth is largely driven by international markets, as with everyone else these days, with just a million U.S. users added in the past year. Indeed, the platform has struggled to gain momentum in the U.S., which is a problem since American users generate the bulk of its revenue.

For the quarter, the company brought in $1.5 billion, with ad revenue dominating that slice at $1.4 billion. Some news for B2B marketers out there. LinkedIn has launched its quarterly update to its Sales Navigator platform. First, updates to search options. With the new search toolbar, you'll be taken to a new intuitive and collapsible larger view that displays all the available filters, including additional options, such as company headquarters and TeamLink connections. When you refine your search, you change your filters and so on,

you'll be able to see your results update live as you go. And there will be a new at-risk opportunities list based on your CRM data that will show contacts who have left open opportunities. A redesigned homepage layout is coming. This page will put more focus on alerts and priority accounts. In addition, a new bookmarked alerts tab has been added to customize your display. 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.

Reddit's audio platform called Reddit Talk is adding more options to its audio rooms, following what they say is a 250% growth in daily active listeners in just the last three months. So there are actually four new features coming to talk to you about. 150% growth in daily active listeners in just the last three months. So there are actually four new features coming to talk to you about. First of all, recordings. Redditors will now be able to listen to a recording of a Reddit talk session when visiting a post from a past live session. Using the new feature, users can skip to any timestamp, pause or unpause, and fast forward or rewind.

Number two, bringing talk to web users. This will be inside reddit.com with a web browser and anyone will be able to listen to talks and raise their hands to speak. And moderators will also be able to mute speakers and remove them from the stage. Later this month, users will be able to create talks on desktop. Number three, Redditors can now use text and emojis

to participate in real time, kind of like a back channel. And number four, there'll be a new live bar. They're testing a bar at the top of home feeds that highlights when Reddit talks are happening. Women's health continues to be a taboo subject in advertising and is even banned to some extent on some platforms like Facebook. Here's something you can't do on Facebook. Advertise your product with a photo featuring bare breasts. Well, in a campaign to promote inclusive sports

bras instead of showing off the new styles in its sports bra collection, Adidas did exactly that. Tweeted an image of 25 pairs of women's bare breasts. The image would have been prohibited by most social networks and media placements due to nudity. But as you might be aware, Twitter does not have guidelines against nudity.

The tweet generated a variety of responses, including appreciation from one user who said, quote, well done Adidas. What I want to know now is, will Facebook and Instagram allow you to run this when we sex tech and fem tech female founders are banned from any kind of open, healthy, educational advertising or content, let alone pics of nipples? And finally, here's a clever way a company has found to both promote its services and combat phone spam. A free-to-use platform in Russia called Oleg has been developed to listen and respond to cold callers. This is part of the Help the Spammers campaign from Skillbox, an education platform in the country. Here's how it works. People click Activate Assistant,

and then the bot can record and decrypt incoming calls from unknown numbers using speech algorithms. Next, and here's the genius part, it delivers 30 different motivational speeches to inspire the spammer to rethink their lifestyle. And then Oleg offers a 30% discount code for Skillbox's courses in programming, marketing, multimedia, and more. Now, if only they would create one

that can respond to Instagram spammers. Recorded a fascinating interview this morning with a marketing scientist who studied the long-term effects of high ad frequency. And you know how this works. All the studies until now around high frequency have been short-term, right? And they all find the same thing. Too high a frequency pisses people off. But her study measured what happens after that period, in the months after you've assaulted people with your repetitive ads.

And as it turns out, it actually works in your favor as long as you provide a long enough gap without any advertising at all. That interview will be coming exclusively to the premium feed in the weeks ahead. Also this month, when will we be marketing to people based on their genetic predispositions to like a certain product category? Turns out some brands already are. And did you choose your logo correctly? Because having the right logo can dramatically affect how your brand is perceived during a PR crisis. These are interviews and studies you will not hear on other podcasts, and they are only available on the premium feed. Tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium feed.

Don't forget our Slack community is free to join. More than 800 digital marketers just like you are in there. This week, we're talking about planning for Valentine's Day promotions, what people's experience with Performance Max campaigns have been, and how much everyone plans to up their video game, which is to say of course their use of video ad products, not video games themselves. The link to join is in the show notes, or go to

todayindigital.com slash Slack. Speaking of video games, Overwatch got an experimental patch today. Symmetra is a support hero again. Mercy's mass res is back. Junkrat's footsteps are silent for some reason. Orisa can pull enemies through her

team's own teleporter. And Sigma's barrier has no cooldown? What? I cannot decide if this is going to be fun or hell. But either way, I'm off to try it out. Talk to you tomorrow.