Today in Digital Marketing - First, They Came for the YouTube Thumbnail Designers…
Episode Date: August 8, 2023AI disrupts YouTube thumbnails, CTV ad placement remains elusive, why you might need to block GPT from crawling your brand’s web site, and the social app paying people to watch ads..🌍 Follow us o...n our social media📰 Subscribe FREE to our daily newsletter.Thanks to our sponsors!- Go to HelloFresh.com/digital16 and use code digital16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping✨ 𝗚𝗢 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗨𝗠! ✨Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Weekly Meta Ad platform updates with Andrew Foxwell✅ Weekly Google Ad platform updates with Jyll Saskin Gales✅ Earlier episodes each day✅ Story links in show notes✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-exclusive Slack channel✅ Back catalog of 30+ marketing science interviews✅ Discounts on marketing tools✅...and a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium.🎙️ Subscribe free to our other podcast "Behind the Ad"🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital.If you like Today in Digital Marketing, you’ll love Morning Brew.Get smarter in 5 minutes (and it's free!)There's a reason more than 4 million marketers and business people start their day with Morning Brew - the daily email that delivers the latest news from marketing to the ad business to social media. Business and marketing news doesn't have to be boring...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free.Check it out!.🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack📰 Get The Top Story each day on LinkedIn. ✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🙂 Rate and Review.ABOUT THIS PODCASTToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source Audio.🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Google Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses .Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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It is Tuesday, August 8th. Today, AI disrupts YouTube thumbnails, CTV ad placement remains
elusive, why you might need to block GPT from crawling your brand's website, and the social
app paying people to watch ads. I'm Todd Maffin, and that's ahead today in digital marketing.
Thumbnails mean big business for YouTubers, with creators like MrBeast dishing out up to $10,000 for a single video thumbnail design.
But now, the landscape is changing as AI steps in.
Among the 2,000-plus job postings on YouTube Jobs in May, Thumbnail Designer ranked second in demand, accounting for a fifth of listings. CTR Hero, dubbed as an AI
to replace thumbnail artists, recently entered the design scene and could create graphics within
minutes based on the data of millions of thumbnails from social media sites. But its launch upset
designers who feel their livelihoods are being jeopardized. CTR Hero's new owner, who acquired the tech
and relaunched it as Alpha CTR in June,
says that whether graphic creators like it or not,
AI is coming for their industry.
The platform currently has 30,000 signups.
In response, several artists reported
that they have adopted or will soon incorporate
AI tools like MidJourney or Photoshop's Generative Fill
into their creative workflows.
From the business side, a YouTube consultant shared how AI tools like ChatGPT have effectively
cut operating costs for his five-member team. The team uses GBD Plus for scripting YouTube videos
and drafting thumbnail descriptions, and Midjourney for generating illustrations.
On the other hand, an industry expert noted
that the most well-resourced YouTube creators
still work with human thumbnail designers,
but he sees an opportunity for AI to analyze,
predict, and specify what thumbnails will work best.
It's not just designers feeling the uncertainty.
Marketers are also navigating the AI wave sweeping through the industry.
According to a new report, 90% of marketing professionals have used or experimented with AI tools.
The majority have already incorporated AI into their daily workflows and expect more adoption to increase productivity. The top applications of AI for marketers are summarizing content,
doing legwork or inspired thinking,
and personalizing customer and user content.
But marketers do have mixed opinions
about the technology's impact.
Four out of 10 expect AI to boost work quality
and creativity,
but three out of 10 anticipate a decline.
Marketers also have concerns about the technology's effect on jobs. 40% foresee AI causing a reduction in employment. More than a fifth expect negative
effects on team culture, along with issues around misinformation, inaccuracy, and legal
uncertainties. The data comes from the Conference Board survey of more than 280 respondents.
As viewers shift to streaming, connected TV buyers are still struggling to know where their ads
are being shown. Adweek reported yesterday that a slow upfront season might finally give advertisers
the chance to get what's missing from their buys,
content-level transparency, or knowing what shows their ads are running against.
This is common in traditional TV, but it remains largely unknown in connected TV due to limited inventory, letting publishers withhold information.
The report notes there has been some progress this year.
Multiple buyers said that Paramount has been
a leader in providing post-campaign show-level data, while NBCUniversal is working toward
providing more content-level granularity, and several equipment manufacturers like Samsung
and Roku are making progress toward passing full genre-level data into the bid stream.
But not all buyers are optimistic that content data sharing will improve. As a
result, some are resorting to ad tech intermediaries for solutions as they await more robust content
data from publishers, while others prefer buying CTV programmatically because they can use
verification firms like Integral Ad Science to gain more assurance on their buys. The question
looms. Will buyers eventually get complete content transparency in connected TV?
A spokesperson for the Omnicom Media Group sees it as likely, as streaming platforms face more competition from each other and other platforms.
Should you protect your brand's website from GPT-Bot?
OpenAI, that's the creator of ChatGPT, has now published information on its web crawler, GPT-Bot.
And you can monitor if GPT-Bot is crawling your brand's site and control its access using the robots.txt file.
According to the company, GPT-Bot scours webpages to potentially improve future models.
The content it collects is, as they say, carefully filtered to exclude paywalled sources,
personally identifiable information, and text that violates its policies. Adding that granting GPT-Bot entry to your site can help AI models become more accurate and improve their general
capabilities. But they also shared how to disable GPT bot from accessing your site.
Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz recently spotted a thread on Webmaster World
with complaints about the bot's activities.
The webmaster said, quote, just had over a thousand hits from this bot hitting individual
pages.
As it happens, my site automatically served a 403 for each hit because the bot is not in my whitelist, nor did it pass the human test, unquote.
Until now, only ChatGPT plugins could be restricted.
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Meta's Threads is getting some new Twitter-like features amidst a huge user slump,
including one feature that lets users see what posts they've liked.
The feature was tested on Android last week, but is now available to all users who update the app.
The platform also introduced new updates that lets users upload high-quality videos and images
and sort follower lists based on latest firsts or earliest firsts.
And some welcome news for desktop marketers.
Mark Zuckerberg hinted at more upcoming features in a Threads post over the weekend,
including search and a web version of the app.
Mobile app WeAre8 launched in the U.S. today.
It is a new social platform that pays users for watching ads.
The app's been active in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand for the past year.
It's backed by publishers like The Independent, Ladd Bible, and Pink News,
and excludes advertising from tobacco, big oil, and gambling companies.
Revenue is generated through ads, and half of it is shared with people
via micropayments, 5% with charity and climate change solutions, 5% with its creators and
publishers. The app currently has just under 1 million users with big plans to reach at least
80 million users for at least eight minutes per day within two years. The app again is called We Are Eight.
That's the digit eight.
And users will see two content feeds.
The first is called Eight Stage, featuring eight pieces of content daily from creators
and publishers.
The second feed shows content from friends.
Both feeds are free of algorithms and ads until a user opts in to see them.
Then they'll see video ads spanning from 15 seconds to two minutes,
followed by feedback questions.
Every time a user watches a brand ad,
they receive a share of money in their digital wallet.
According to the company, the app has seen 90% of people opt in for ads
and 80% can recall an ad that they saw.
And finally, look out, Simon Cowell, TikTok has announced a music contest called Gimme
the Mic yesterday, which is similar to challenge shows like The Voice.
The U.S. competition will be held on TikTok live streams, which will include live voting
from fans.
The winner will receive 50,000 diamonds.
That's TikTok's in-app currency that can be exchanged and withdrawn for money.
The catch?
TikTok won't share how much 50,000 diamonds are actually worth in U.S. dollars.
Are they worth a yacht?
A coffee?
Your eternal dignity?
Based on previous estimates on influencer websites,
diamonds are worth about five cents each, meaning TikTok's grand prize would be worth about $2,500.
Meta's BS auto robots, auto enforcement robots are back at it again.
I cranked up WhatsApp on the weekend just to fool around.
I really don't use WhatsApp at all. It's
not connected to our business manager or anything. I hooked it up to a chat app through the API,
all legitimately. Did that on my work computer. Then I did that on my home computer.
And the WhatsApp account crapped out and said, well, you're spamming, which obviously I wasn't.
So my account got locked. And there's a little place where you can put in a, you know,
a statement for the apparently human reviewer to read. I'm like, listen, I hardly ever use this.
I never spam. Knock it off. Give me my account back. And hey, guess what? They didn't. Not only that, they permanently banned me from WhatsApp. And you know, you can't just it's not like you
can just crank up another email address
and get another account.
WhatsApp is connected to your phone number.
I've had my phone number for more than,
I don't know, 25 years?
I don't want to change my phone number just to get in.
Anyway, apparently I'm banned for life now, so yay.
Oh, premium users, check your email.
We have started to schedule those premium live stream hangouts again, exclusively for you folks users, check your email. We have started to schedule those premium live stream hangouts again exclusively for you folks.
So check your email.
Hopefully we'll see you there.
Thanks for listening.
See you tomorrow.
And this big old barn's got that southern charm.
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And as the sun goes down upon this town, you'll still hear me say.
You know I like blue skies
down by the
countryside, a cold
beer in the sunshine
and the warmth of my lover's
eyes, I got
friends by my side
we're dancing just Charlie
Pride, everybody's
feeling fine
yeah we're getting together
Doing it
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