Today in Digital Marketing - Help Me Obo-Wan, You'ryre Mie Oonly! Hop!

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, January 29th. Today, why are older marketers using AI marketing tools more than their younger counterparts? Amazon's Prime ads start today, and there's only one ad-free holdout left. TweetDeck comes to a Twitter competitor. And the bizarre game of telephone that product marketing bots are playing on X. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing. that product marketing bots are playing on X. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:32 In case you're starting to feel old at the Monday marketing meetings, you know, the interns rolling their eyes at you because you used Finsta as a verb, consider this. You might be using technology better than them. According to a new study by Ernst & Young, older workers are more accepting of AI-based tools in the workplace compared to Gen Z employees. The study surveyed 1,000 Americans across different age groups and found that 74% of millennials and 70% of Gen X respondents have used AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT at work. But in contrast, only 63% of

Starting point is 00:01:09 Gen Z respondents reported using AI in their jobs. One possible reason? The younger generation seems to have a more well-developed skepticism of AI's value and effectiveness. Younger workers might be less convinced that AI can provide real benefits. Gen X workers, on the other hand, might feel more compelled to learn and adapt to AI as they strive to keep up with rapid change, while Gen Z workers who grew up with AI tools may quickly move on if AI fails to meet their high expectations. The study did not conclusively determine whether AI improves workplace performance. Either way, marketing tools and content generation

Starting point is 00:01:52 have changed dramatically in the last year, and AI has its hands in pieces of our world you might not even be aware of. For instance, with the exception of this sentence and the opening paragraph, this story was written by ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo. So if you've tried your hand at ChatGPT and found it lacking, you're not alone. Some marketers say the tool was great at copywriting when it first came out, but lately seems to have been getting lazy.

Starting point is 00:02:24 Worse quality content, sometimes it just times out. Well, this weekend, OpenAI rolled out an update to reduce incomplete tasks. The fix applies to the GPT-4 turbo model in limited preview. It is expected the upgrade will eventually extend to other models. Back in December, OpenAI acknowledged the lack of updates and unpredictable behavior affecting their chatbots' performance. This latest release lets it complete tasks with fewer prompts. ChatGPT now has its own app store for third-party developers to showcase customized bots.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Certain types of chatbots, like virtual girlfriends, are prohibited. But our chatbot, the snarky Marketing Intern, is there. If you have a paid plan, you can chat with your very own dismissive, condescending intern at b.link slash snarkyintern. Today is the day Amazon has switched over to running ads on its Prime Video streaming service. The company sent out an email to users after Christmas detailing the introduction of ads and the option to pay an additional $3 for an ad-free plan. While the exact number of ads to be shown on the ad-supported tier remains unknown, Amazon claims there will be fewer ads compared to linear TV and other streaming providers. On the marketing side, CPMs look to

Starting point is 00:03:46 be very competitive, sometimes half of what other streaming giants like Netflix and Disney Plus have been offering. Amazon's preferred deal placement is $26 CPM, and you can use Amazon's incredibly valuable in-market audiences to reach people who are actively looking for a kind of product. Prime Video was one of the last major services to adopt ad-supported streaming, with Apple TV Plus being the sole major player, which has still not made the change. When Twitter self-imploded, one of the things that went down in the fire was TweetDeck. That's not entirely accurate. TweetDeck still exists, but it has a new name, and it's locked behind a monthly paid plan. Previously, TweetDeck was a great tool to let people create columns based on searches, mentions, lists, and so on.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Mastodon, for its part, has a TweetDeck-like interface already built in. They call it the advanced mode. But until now, brands and marketers who had jumped to BlueSky, another Twitter competitor, were stuck with the just slightly clunky web interface it has. Now, it too has a column-based tool called Deck.Blue. This lets BlueSky users view their home timeline, notifications, likes, lists, and custom feeds in the familiar format. It is a web-based app and it supports multiple accounts and post scheduling. So if you're active on Blue Sky and are looking for the old school TweetDeck functionality, you will find it at deck.blue. And while you're there, follow us. We are at todayindigital at bsky.social. And I am Todd Maffin at bsky.social. All of our social media

Starting point is 00:05:29 links are in the show notes. And finally, if you've spent any time on Twitter or X, no doubt you will have run into the reply bots, which have been programmed to reply automatically when you use a certain phrase. Mention crypto, and you could get pummeled with bots replying to your post telling you about the latest drop or the danger to your wallet or some other nonsense. For a while now, there have also been bots which have taken a page from product marketers using AI to create products based on something someone said and trying to sell them that product. The products don't exist, of course. And in theory, if you order one,

Starting point is 00:06:10 it'll spit out a drop shipped mug or whatever it was trying to hawk. Or maybe it'll just keep your money. But now what was once irritating has turned into a hilarious piece of performance art with AI bots replying to AI bots. One example found on X was someone who posted, may the coffee be with you. And some bot replied with an AI generated image of Princess Leia holding a mug reading,

Starting point is 00:06:35 help me coffee, you're my only hope, and a link to buy the mug. Though it being AI, of course, it misspelled your. Then a different bot, which claimed to sell products under the brand Good Shirts, but spelled G-O-O-D-S-I-R-T-S-S, replied to that first bot's post with another AI-generated image of a mug, this time reading,

Starting point is 00:06:59 help me coffee, you're my only hop, misspelling your even worse this time and putting an exclamation mark after both only and hop, which I suppose is supposed to be hope. There were more replies before, with the bot seemingly caught in a feedback loop, like the old game of telephone, with each iteration getting slightly worse and worse. Quoting Futurism, this was an accident, but deliberately selling AI-generated mugs is somewhat of a notable side hustle. Or at least according to the people whose side hustle is telling other people about side hustles. There's certainly

Starting point is 00:07:36 no shortage of them on marketplaces like Etsy. From a grindset point of view, it makes sense. In putting a prompt in something like mid-journey or stable diffusion will handle most of the creative duties, meaning anyone looking to earn a quick buck can churn out mug designs en masse within a matter of minutes. And hey, maybe the demographic for this stuff is larger than you think. Many of us do throw good taste out the window when it comes to amassing an impractical amount of coffee receptacles, unquote. One commenter, who I really hope is a real human and not a bot, added to the thread, the world is a dead thing with nothing inside it.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Another quick plug for our Slack community. We are past 1,000 members now, all sharing advice, getting help. There's even a channel you can promote yourself in. It is free to join. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash Slack. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Help Me Obo-Wan, You'ryre Mie Oonly! Hop!

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