Today in Digital Marketing - First, They Came for the YouTube Thumbnail Designers…

Starting point is 00:00:00 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

Starting point is 00:00:59 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

Starting point is 00:01:24 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,

Starting point is 00:01:53 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

Starting point is 00:02:35 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

Starting point is 00:03:15 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

Starting point is 00:03:54 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?

Starting point is 00:04:51 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.

Starting point is 00:05:34 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:23 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.

Starting point is 00:07:02 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

Starting point is 00:07:37 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,

Starting point is 00:08:06 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

Starting point is 00:08:39 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?

Starting point is 00:09:00 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.

Starting point is 00:09:40 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?

Starting point is 00:10:15 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.

Starting point is 00:10:32 And this big old barn's got that southern charm. Makes you want to stay. 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

Starting point is 00:10:54 eyes, I got friends by my side we're dancing just Charlie Pride, everybody's feeling fine yeah we're getting together Doing it Seven Style

Starting point is 00:11:11 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.

Starting point is 00:11:40 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 dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - First, They Came for the YouTube Thumbnail Designers…

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.