Today in Digital Marketing - Has Amazon's "Buy Box" Been Gouging Customers?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, February 13th. Today, Amazon gets sued and the whole industry holds its breath. How to keep the Nazis off your next X campaign. Threads gets trends. Drift gets bought. And LinkedIn delivers agencies their own API. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Do you have business insurance? I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:26 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. Generative AI for automatically created assets in Google Ads is now live in the US and the UK. Google first announced this back in May, but it's been in testing for a while now. I should note this is English language only for the time being. Google says their tech will, quote, improve the relevancy of ads to the search query and that aligns even more closely with the query,

Starting point is 00:01:26 such as soothe your dry, sensitive skin, unquote. AI being AI, of course, your mileage may vary. A few items to note. This is a campaign level setting, so it's going to cover all your ads in that campaign. You can turn it off, though, if you want to, again, at the campaign level. It is important to keep your website up to date, as that's partly where it's going to get its inspiration for generating text. And most importantly, there is some level of performance reporting. And at least for now, you can pull any of these assets if you feel they're not right for you.

Starting point is 00:01:59 We have a link to Google's extensive help document on this in today's email newsletter, which you can find by tapping the link at the top of the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. A lawsuit alleges that Amazon rigged its platform to force customers to pay more for products that could have been bought cheaper. Quoting Ars Technica, quote, the lawsuit claims that a biased algorithm drives Amazon's buy box, which appears on an items page and prompts shoppers to buy now or add to cart. According to customers suing,

Starting point is 00:02:35 nearly 98% of Amazon sales are of items featured in the buy box because customers allegedly reasonably believe that featured items offer the best deal on the platform. But they're often wrong, the complaint said, claiming that instead, Amazon features items from its own retailers and sellers that participate in fulfillment by Amazon, both of which pay Amazon higher fees and gain secret perks like appearing in the buy box. The complaint said, quote,

Starting point is 00:03:05 the result is that consumers routinely overpay for items that are available at lower prices from other sellers on Amazon, not because consumers don't care about price or because they're making informed purchasing decisions, but because Amazon has chosen to display offers for which it will earn the highest fees, unquote. It is a class action lawsuit covering everyone who bought something using that buy box from

Starting point is 00:03:30 2016 to now, and it could have widespread implications for the marketing industry. Assuming a ruling against Amazon, it would almost certainly make other commerce platforms think twice about using similar tactics. X, formerly Twitter, announced this week that advertisers will soon be able to pick and choose which specific content creators they want their ads to be shown beside. It's a move that might help persuade those risk-averse brands to getting back onto the platform. Last year, many companies pulled their ads after their campaigns showed up alongside white supremacist content. X says this will be baked into the self-service ad manager, so you won't need a human rep to access this, though it sounds like it's only for pre-roll video ads, which would run alongside video content of their chosen creators. Quoting TechCrunch, quote, the announcement is likely an

Starting point is 00:04:25 attempt at luring back advertisers to X as its ad revenue has taken a significant hit ever since Musk took the reins of the company. X's advertising revenue plunged by 50% last year, as it was estimated to have brought in around $2.5 billion throughout 2023, falling short of its $3 billion target. The social network generated around $600 million per quarter in 2023, a significant decrease compared to the $1 billion it brought in per quarter in 2022. It's worth noting that today's announcement could also be seen as a way for X to lure creators to its platform and take on YouTube, which is something the company

Starting point is 00:05:05 has been focusing on recently, unquote. The elephant in the room, of course, is whether they will actually do this. That's not something we say for any other company, but X's owner, Elon Musk, has a habit of promising features, then just sort of ignoring it all. This did seem to be more of an official statement from the company, though, so I am putting 80% of my chips on. It'll probably happen. Meanwhile, at Meta's Twitter competitor, Threads, they just launched a test of trending topics, something the community has said it's wanted for some time. The list shows

Starting point is 00:05:41 up on the search page and the main feed. This is a list marketers used on Twitter a lot to try to find out what was gaining traction that day and jump on it. Meta says they will have a team that will review what the AI picks for that section just to make sure nothing crazy gets up there. Drake nude video anyone? And they also said they would be trying to limit political content recommendations. You'd still be able to see them and share them with people, but they'd try to keep any political stuff from going viral. Politics would be eligible for the trending section, though. This section, which they call Today's Topics,

Starting point is 00:06:13 is rolling out this week in the US with more countries to come later. TikTok and Adobe have teamed up. The newly introduced TikTok Creative Assistant is now an add-on feature within Adobe Express. The Creative Assistant was previously exclusive to TikTok's Creative Center. Now you can use it to develop TikTok-specific ads inside Adobe Express. It can also help you find trending hashtags. It is one of those AI chatbot interfaces that's becoming popular these

Starting point is 00:06:45 days. So you can use prompts like show me what's trending or give me tips for making a high performing ad creative or write some thought starters for my ad. One TikTok sponsored study found that TikTok first ads, which use platform specific trends and features, are 74% more likely to capture audience attention and generate three times more engagement compared to other platforms. It is available globally in English for desktop users. The Creative Assistant add-on can be accessed in Adobe Express under the Add-on tab. It is free to use. Do you have business insurance?

Starting point is 00:07:30 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. The marketing platform Drift has been acquired by SalesLoft. Both companies offered customer journey management tools for B2B brands. Quoting Martek, Drift offered several new AI-powered additions to its platform last October.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Drift Engage, Site Concierge, and a Bionic chatbot. SalesLoft also launched a new AI solution last year, Rhythm, aimed at translating buyer signals into a single prioritized workflow, unquote. The new company will have about 6,000 customers. Its employees are based in the UK, Poland, South Africa, Mexico, and the US. LinkedIn has a new API, the Media Planning API. This one is intended for agencies. It will spit out LinkedIn data like user insights to help in campaign planning. Given that it is an API, this will either need third-party tools to take advantage of it,

Starting point is 00:08:42 or agencies could build their own in-house tool using it. Quoting LinkedIn's announcement, quote, the media planning API allows agencies to see the forecasted reach and frequency of brand campaigns before spending any budget. These insights provide marketers more accuracy and allows agencies to better scenario plan and drive measurable results on LinkedIn, unquote. The data it has includes demographics, job titles, industries, and online behaviors. If this is something your agency might want to check out, the company says you should connect with your agency development lead or your LinkedIn sales rep for more information. So I've been streaming again, not video games, though.

Starting point is 00:09:26 I've been trying to figure out a hobby to get into something non-computer, something non-video game. My wife has like all the hobbies. She sews, she crafts, she makes, she does loom things. What is that? Weaving, I think. Anyway, she does all sorts of stuff. And I wanted something. I tried miniature painting. I just didn't have the creativity to know what colors to use. But I've settled on one. And that is

Starting point is 00:09:49 miniature building. So they're little kits you can get at craft stores and things. And they come with it's like wood and paper and plastic and cardboard and very detailed set of instructions. It's the kind of thing if you like don't like together Ikea furniture, you'll hate this. But I'm actually enjoying it and I'm live streaming it as well. So if you want to come watch, it's on my Twitch channel. It's twitch.tv slash loweffortdad. Usually I start around 2 o'clock Pacific time, 3 o'clock Pacific time, something like that. Anyway, come hang out. We listen to really bad 80s music,

Starting point is 00:10:26 tell bad jokes, and you can watch me swear profusely at a stick of glue, which happens every 10 minutes. Alright, that's it for today. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Has Amazon's "Buy Box" Been Gouging Customers?

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