Today in Digital Marketing - How Do You Do, Fellow Boomers?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, July 30th. Today, a big loss for Amazon as an American regulator gives the company news it didn't want. SurveyMonkey pushes out a big CX update. X's financial position is in rougher shape than anyone thought. And teens on Facebook, boomers on TikTok. What is this world coming to? I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Surprise across the e-commerce sector this morning

Starting point is 00:00:29 as the American product safety regulator ruled that Amazon bears legal responsibility for recalling defective and dangerous products. Amazon, of course, argued that it shouldn't have to manage recalls since it was just the intermediary between buyers and sellers. But the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission disagreed. In 2021, the commission took Amazon to court to force it to recall more than 400,000 products it said were dangerous. Some of those products included carbon monoxide detectors, hair dryers, and children's

Starting point is 00:01:02 pajamas. Amazon did take the product listings down and notified customers of potential safety issues, but that didn't go far enough for the regulator. Quoting Ars Technica, quote, typically a distributor would be required to specifically use the word recall in the subject line of these messages, but Amazon dodged using that language entirely.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Instead, Amazon opted to use much less alarming subject lines. Amazon then left it up to customers to destroy products and explicitly discourage them from making returns. Further, Amazon's messages did not include photos of the defective products as required by law and provided no way for customers to respond, unquote. And this from the information's coverage of this today, quote, In Tuesday's ruling, CPSC said that response was inadequate and that Amazon should have offered customers refunds and been more specific about the issues. As part of the decision, Amazon must submit plans to the CPSC to notify consumers about

Starting point is 00:02:02 the hazardous products and incentives to remove or destroy the products, including refunds or replacements, unquote. An Amazon spokesperson said the company was disappointed by the ruling and plans to appeal. Facebook use is dwindling across all age groups, except, and I didn't have this on my bingo card, Gen Z. In fact, the number of Gen Z users in the U.S. is expected to jump from 34 million to more than 40 million within a couple of years. They still trail older generations in terms of user numbers and daily time spent. But analysts say Facebook has some utility that they can't get elsewhere, at least not at the scale of Facebook. Remember, about half of Gen Z are over 18 now, and as their generation grows

Starting point is 00:02:52 older, they're joining Facebook for things like event planning, community groups, and marketplace. And check this out, three quarters of Gen Z Facebook users made a purchase on Marketplace in the past year. So how is TikTok, the former Gen Z king, doing? TikTok appears to be reaching saturation among young people and is growing among baby boomers, with one million more of those expected to adopt the app in the coming year. That's about a 10% rise for that cohort over the next year. Some people think TikTok's ease of use is likely attracting boomers who want to connect with current trends and younger family members. This growth might be small compared to other generations, but it does show TikTok is slowly gaining broad appeal.

Starting point is 00:03:42 One of the OG marketing tools, SurveyMonkey, has launched a new set of customer experience management tools. The service has long been known for its surveys and feedback management product. Now they're adding a suite of CX tools, including a new direct integration with Salesforce and more flexible branding. Now, Martech.org couldn't find pricing details, nor could we, but they did say that it looks simpler and more accessible than some other experience management solutions. As for what's in the new suite, AI-powered surveys, something they call SurveyMonkey Genius, will let you map out a survey form with a text prompt, and they say make it easier to analyze the results. You'll be able to track progress with your brand's customer satisfaction score, net promoter score, and

Starting point is 00:04:23 customer effort score. In addition to the native Salesforce integration, it also offers integrations with Marketo, HubSpot, Power BI, Tableau, and a handful of other solutions. Despite Elon Musk's claims of increasing popularity for X, the platform is facing bigger financial challenges than previously known. Over the weekend, the platform is facing bigger financial challenges than previously known. Over the weekend, the New York Times revealed that X's US revenue in Q2 was $114 million.

Starting point is 00:04:52 That's a 25% drop from Q1 of this year and a 53% decline from the previous year, highlighting the difficulty the app is faced in bringing advertisers back. The Times reports that even with anticipated boosts from events like the Olympics, X may struggle to reach half of last year's revenue. Quoting that New York Times piece, quote,

Starting point is 00:05:14 The onslaught of political news has reminded the world of its potential, as when President Biden used the social media platform to announce he was dropping out of the presidential race. That post from his official account, which got 106 million views over the subsequent 24 hours, gave X's CEO Linda Iaccarino an opportunity for a victory lap. X is where history happens, she boasted in a repost of Mr. Biden's announcement. But what Ms. Iaccarino failed to mention, or perhaps was unaware of, was that Mr. Biden's announcement had been posted almost simultaneously on the rival sites, Instagram, Threads and Facebook, unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Attention, restaurant owners, Google business profiles will now let you upload a photo of your menu and the site will create a list of your menu items based on that photo. Google's help page on the new system reads, quote, you can use AI to quickly convert a photo of your menu into a detailed menu, which includes item names, descriptions, and prices. With a detailed menu, potential customers on search and maps can easily discover what you offer. Creating a menu from a menu photo is experimental. This feature is currently available for select regions and languages and may not be available for all users, unquote. And yeah, so far it does seem to be quite limited. One person on social media reported you can only upload one image at a time, for instance. But if you haven't, you want to try it, here's how to do it.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Go to your business profile and select Edit Menu. At the top, select Photos of Menu, then upload your images. Click Generate a Menu. And finally, the Publish and Edit button. photos of menu, then upload your images, click generate a menu, and finally the publish and edit button. Remember, menu items are considered when it comes to keyword discovery in Google. Those menu items are searchable and a successful hit may bring you more customers. The web design tool Canva has required Leonardo.ai, an image generator. The financial details were not disclosed, but the deal does include both cash and stock. All 120 employees of Leonardo.ai,

Starting point is 00:07:11 including the executive team, will join Canva. Canva says it's not just going to shut it down and merge it into their main tool. It'll still operate independently. The app was founded just two years ago in Sydney. Leonardo was initially intended to create video game assets, but later expanded to AI models for image creation in fashion, advertising, and architecture. It's a pretty robust platform. It has collaboration tools, a private cloud, video generators, and even APIs for customers to build on. One particularly cool item it's got is something it calls Live Canvas, which combines text prompts with user sketches to create photorealistic images in real time. But like many of its competitors, details on how Leonardo.ai trains its models remain vague, mentioning only, quote, licensed, synthetic and publicly available open source data, unquote. Canva is currently valued at $26 billion

Starting point is 00:08:07 and generates nearly $2 billion in revenue with 180 million monthly users globally. On the show tomorrow, some big changes coming to Google's performance max ad format, including asset level conversion reporting and the expansion of asset generation to app and display campaigns.

Starting point is 00:08:25 There's some announcements around image editing and a whole bunch more. We will cover that tomorrow, along with our Google Ads correspondent, Jill Saskengales. That's it for today. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you then. In the bedroom, Electrophone works as a high-quality AM-FM clock radio. You can wake to news or musical blues with the press of a button. Press the mute button and your party is on hold. Press the redial button and you automatically redial the last number you called. Great for those annoying busy signals.

Today in Digital Marketing - How Do You Do, Fellow Boomers?

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