Today in Digital Marketing - Happy to Answer, But First We’ve Been Trying to Reach You About Your Car’s Insurance

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, March 30th. Today, we knew it'd come sometime, but not this fast. Ads are now in AI chatbot replies. Also, Meta's European users will be able to turn off your targeted ads. Major advertisers remain spooked by Twitter. One brand wisely backs off from one of the worst advised legal battles, and why some AI critics are calling for a moratorium on new development. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Well, that didn't take long.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Ads are now in Bing AI chat. Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed that it is testing the waters with ads in the chat experience and also an expanded hover feature that displays more links from a publisher when hovering over a link. The ads are said to have been in testing for more than a month, but looks like it's now leaking out to the public results. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a lot of details and the ads are a little bit confusing. According to Gizmodo today, there are at least two different types of ad formats currently appearing in the AI chatbot. One type appears to be promoted shopping links that show up as a separate bubble in the chat and offer Microsoft a kickback if items are purchased.

Starting point is 00:01:09 In other words, affiliate links. But the bubble itself doesn't indicate that it's an ad. As for the second ad format, sponsored responses are clearly labeled ad. But the report noted it is difficult to determine exactly what's being advertised, in in some cases, how the ad affects the rest of the text. In one example, the in-chat ad related to Honda cars actually presented inaccurate information. So while the new era of search ads may be here, there is still a long way to go.

Starting point is 00:01:42 Meta is going to let users opt out of targeted ads, but only in Europe. The Wall Street Journal reporting today that the tech giant is set to offer European Facebook and Instagram users the ability version of its services that only targets them with ads based on broad categories like general location and age range without using data such as what videos they watch or content they engage with. To opt out, consumers will still need to submit an online form objecting to Meta's use of their in-app activity for ads, which will then be evaluated by the company. The opt-out strategy comes as the company faces a compliance deadline for landmark rulings from Ireland's Data Privacy Commission. Meta says it's continuing to appeal the rulings, but must comply with them in the meantime. Despite the changes, the company said that personalized advertising

Starting point is 00:02:42 will still be available on its global platform. The move is aimed at limiting the impact of the EU privacy order. However, as the Wall Street Journal's report notes, Meta's approach is likely to upset privacy activists who have pushed the company to seek opt-in consent, which could lead to new complaints and a lengthy resolution process. Advertisers on Twitter? Still crickets. In the weeks following Musk's acquisition, hundreds of advertisers halted spending on the platform. But despite the company's efforts to woo them back with steep discounts and new safety tools,

Starting point is 00:03:23 Bloomberg reported today that many still haven't returned. Here's how bad it has gotten. According to Pathmatics, the top 10 advertisers spent more than $70 million on ads between September and October of last year. Over the past two months, that figure is just 7.5 million, a 90% decline. Since October, Twitter's revenue has been slashed in half due to a, quote, massive decline, unquote, in advertising that, according to Elon Musk himself, this despite what they claim is an increase in daily users. According to Pathmatics, several major brands still hadn't resumed spend on the platform as of last month, including big spenders like Coca-Cola, Hilton, and AT&T.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Sources say that media agencies like IPG and Horizon Media, which advised clients to pause or suspend Twitter campaigns after the takeover, have not yet encouraged marketers to return. Upon Musk's acquisition, one media buyer said that their company's initial advice to clients was a red light for spending. Now they warn clients to proceed with caution with an amber light as Twitter still seems chaotic. According to advertisers speaking to Bloomberg, one of the biggest barriers to spending more on the platform is Elon Musk's behavior. In the fight against costly product returns,

Starting point is 00:04:42 retailers can't win. New research has revealed that more than a third of U.S. consumers have switched from a once loyal brand because of the introduction of paid returns. A study found almost a quarter of shoppers regarded return charges as unfair, and a fifth said they've even discarded an unwanted item instead of returning it, while almost half of loyal customers have abandoned a brand due to a shortened return window. The study suggests product life cycles have become a significant concern for customer loyalty, with three-quarters of respondents relying on returns that aren't in person. Furthermore, a quarter of consumers said merchants should prioritize changes to their return policies. Some retailers are reassessing their approach with more than a third prioritizing investment

Starting point is 00:05:29 in their delivery processes, while a third are also focused on more sustainable packaging. The data comes from SAP MRSIS. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Sometimes common sense wins out over a technical legal accuracy. Adidas this week decided that losing in the court of public opinion was worse than winning in court and has ended its battle with Black Lives Matter. That battle was over a trademark application featuring three parallel stripes. Adidas claimed the stripes were confusingly similar to its own logo. Just two days after submitting a notice of opposition to the U.S. trademark office,

Starting point is 00:06:32 the company confirmed yesterday it had withdrawn its challenge. And finally, some AI researchers at the Future of Life Institute published an open letter yesterday begging AI labs to take a six-month break from training AI systems smarter than ChatGPT-4. They say they're worried that AI is advancing too quickly and they don't want to risk a robot takeover or complete loss of control over civilization. The group even posed some loaded questions like, should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth, unquote? Of course not. Come on. That's what we have Twitter for.

Starting point is 00:07:16 Legendary, that's what I'm going to be. Oh, for sure. Open doors. That's right, I got the key. So a few months ago, I switched over to using Raycast on my Mac. This is not an ad, by the way. Raycast is like an app launcher, but it does a bunch more clipboard history and snippets and a big array of plugins. Yesterday, they got me into their AI beta.

Starting point is 00:07:34 Holy moly. I'm beginning to see how this is going to change things for all of us. One of the things I like about Raycast is you can assign a keyboard shortcut to like, I mean, pretty much anything. So I wrote up a little GPT prompt that reads, summarize this in three sentences using language a 12 year old can understand and be prepared to answer questions about the topic. And then I mapped it to command shift C. So now I just highlight text anywhere I see it, like on a web page, hit that shortcut, and it pops open a window with a summary. This, by the way, is really helpful for the marketing science research papers that we read every day. Every morning, by the way, we go through a list of about 120 potential stories that pop up in our RSS reader and a bunch of websites that we track and try to narrow it down to the seven or eight stories that we cover in every show.

Starting point is 00:08:22 I have tried to create a GPD prompt to do that work for us. I basically give it all 120 URLs. And I said, pick the seven or eight stories that are most relevant to marketers. They can't do it, of course, not yet anyway. But I mean, how much longer, right? Before that's possible and it writes the show and we've already cloned Steph's voice really realistically.

Starting point is 00:08:46 I don't know. I can't decide where I stand on this. Is it good? I mean, I guess in some ways. Should I be scared? Someone give me my opinion, please. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:08:57 See you tomorrow. Don't be scared now. I'm going all out and I'm going to shut it down. So part of your job is to manage your brand social media accounts. That can get busy, especially if you're running a paid campaign. You've got comments to moderate, reviews to reply to, issues to escalate to management, and that engagement comes in around the clock. That's why you might need a social media engagement firm, a partner who's handling all that for you, either just evenings and weekends or offloading it entirely. And that is where my agency, EngageQ, can come in. We've handled the social engagement for dozens of

Starting point is 00:09:36 brands. We start with a brand briefing to collect the info we need, answers to the most common questions and an escalation path, then leave it to us. Our team can answer product questions, encourage purchases, thank your customers, hide or delete the bad stuff, reply to reviews and more. And best of all, your customers won't know it's not you. We don't outsource this. Every single person is an in-house employee

Starting point is 00:09:59 here in North America. If you're interested, check us out at engageq.com. That's engageq.com. Look for the link in this episode's notes in the About This Podcast section.

Today in Digital Marketing - Happy to Answer, But First We’ve Been Trying to Reach You About Your Car’s Insurance

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