Today in Digital Marketing - Is it "Growth Hacking" or Algorithmic Plagiarism?

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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. Today, do I owe Instagram an enormous apology?

Starting point is 00:01:06 The future voice of your brand might be a robot. More post-cookie solutions have been unveiled. Google sends another app to its graveyard. And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and deep dive weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more, the Grammys ad campaign that borrowed heavily from TikTok's mashup culture. It's Tuesday, April 5th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And we start with some breaking news. Just as we were about to upload the podcast

Starting point is 00:01:37 comes word from Twitter that they are working on an edit button. This is a tweet that came out from them late this afternoon. Now that everyone is asking, yes, we've been working on an edit button. This is a tweet that came out from them late this afternoon. Now that everyone is asking, yes, we've been working on an edit feature since last year. We're kicking off testing within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn't, and what's possible. We do have a Twitter-related story in the episode, so I'm going to leave it as it is recorded, and we'll have more coverage of this, of course, tomorrow. Last night I was playing around with a website called fakeyou.com. That's fake and then y-o-u dot com,

Starting point is 00:02:14 where you type whatever you want, pick which celebrity you want to read it, and click a button. No, it's not a kind of cameo for voiceovers. It's AI, voice synthesis that's been trained on thousands of examples of celebrity voices. Some are okay. Here's Mr. Rogers from the children's TV show. Do you want to be my neighbor?

Starting point is 00:02:31 Because real neighbors subscribe to the Today in Digital marketing newsletter. Others aren't bad. This is American politician Bernie Sanders. If the capitalist structure of our great nations wants to get better, you'd rather today in digital marketing newsletter. Some are downright eerie with how good they are. This is the famous YouTuber PewDiePie. I really think you should subscribe to the Today in Digital Marketing podcast. Y'all, you may not be familiar with PewDiePie, but trust me, this is bang on what he

Starting point is 00:03:01 sounds like. Which begs the question, at what point will AI begin to serve as the voice of brands? And who will be the first to deepfake a celebrity for their campaign? There's a great piece up today on adweek.com about more brands turning to synthetic voices for their ad campaigns. By using technology from companies like Veritone,

Starting point is 00:03:22 for instance, brands can use realistic-sounding voice imitations of celebrities and influencers. Even more accurate than the silly website I was playing with. Audio networks like iHeartMedia are also using Veritone's product to clone the voices of podcasts and radio hosts into other languages. According to experts, synthetic voice has the potential to play a role in everything from cheaper voiceover production and audiobook narration to sponsored smart device apps and branded personas in the metaverse. But this technology is already raising concerns about advertising authenticity and transparency, as well as the ownership of one's voice in an age of digital replication and deep fakes. The article notes that companies recommend disclosing up front that consumers are hearing

Starting point is 00:04:07 an AI clone, but of course, it's too early for regulations. Also untested, this use in the legal arena. Tread carefully, friends. Everyone makes fun of Instagram for copying the features of so many other platforms. Hell, it's practically a side business on this podcast. Take TikTok's addictive algorithm that powers its For You page. Everyone says, if only Instagram had something like that. But is it possible that Instagram did?

Starting point is 00:04:41 And TikTok is the one that copied it? A report in BuzzFeed News today says TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is being accused of scraping content from other platforms to train the algorithm of its older app called Flippagram. The company is said to have scraped short-form videos, usernames, even profile pictures, profile descriptions from Instagram and Snapchat and other sources, and then uploaded them without users' consent or knowledge to this Flipagram app. This according to former employees quoted by BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed reviewed internal documents showing that the scraping was seen as a growth hack by the company.

Starting point is 00:05:22 One employee claims that the goal was to scrape more than 10,000 videos a day. According to two of the employees, the scraping was used to train and inform ByteDance's For You algorithm. That algorithm which, of course, is currently used by TikTok. In response to the allegations, the company implies that the code isn't there anymore. Quote, ByteDance acquired Flipagram in 2017 and operated it and subsequently Vigo for a short time. Flipagram and Vigo ceased operations years ago and aren't connected to any current ByteDance products.

Starting point is 00:06:01 Is there chaos ahead for those of us who use Twitter for our ad campaigns and social media? We reported yesterday that Elon Musk bought a little under 10% of the shares in Twitter. Yesterday, he was appointed to its board of directors. That's not unusual. People with lots of shares have lots of votes. And just because you're on the board doesn't mean you control things outright. You're still one person on a board of 12. And Twitter has said, peculiarly, that the

Starting point is 00:06:26 board doesn't make policy decisions. But there is another reason Twitter put him there, perhaps as a preemptive move to stop him from taking over even more of the company. That's because board members are capped at 14.9% ownership. One person on Twitter said, quote, It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike Elon Musk. He enjoys and is good at introducing shock and chaos, much like Trump. If what we suspect will happen happens, odds are it will destabilize the core product and open the company up to shareholder lawsuits, unquote. Yesterday, after news broke of the share acquisition, Musk tweeted out a poll which read, do you want an edit button? When I checked it this morning, 73.5% voted yes. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

Starting point is 00:07:23 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. As we edge even closer to the cookiepocalypse, programmatic marketing firm MIQ has announced a set of capabilities to support advertising performance in a post-cookie world. Here's a look at what will be included in the package, quoting martech.org. called Identity Spine, connects multiple digital IDs from providers with first-party data to create privacy-compliant, addressable cohorts for marketers and ad buyers. It is already processing and connecting more than 100 million identities per week.

Starting point is 00:08:16 It will also ingest third-party data feeds via MIQ Analytics Studio, unquote. The package also includes an expanded partnership with LiveRamp for first-party data onboarding and a partnership with SimilarWeb to access contextual data. More customization is coming to Microsoft Advertising. The company announcing ad customizers for responsive search ads will be in open beta this quarter. By using RSA customizers, advertisers can create ads that feature more product information in the ad without having to manually change the copy.

Starting point is 00:08:55 The product will allow advertisers to create RSAs using custom attributes, similar to how Google Ads does it. The beta includes text, so that'll be product names, categories, and descriptions, number, like inventory count and colors available, the price, and the percentage, which is going to be a discount rate or an interest rate. Microsoft also announced

Starting point is 00:09:15 that an open beta for campaign-level conversion goals will be launching soon. Google is getting ready to send the Google My Business app to its well-populated graveyard. We'll be launching soon. The email advises you should start using Google Maps and search to keep business profile information up to date. It's kind of a weird thing to replace it with. But anyway, no date was given for when the app would be removed or what app would come next. MasterCard continues its marketing campaigns targeted at inclusivity. Last week, we told you about its new card for the visually impaired. Now the company has launched a campaign for its True Name card in Canada.

Starting point is 00:10:10 There's always a fear and an anxiety around not having my chosen name on my card. This allows its transgender and non-binary clients to display their chosen name on their credit card. You feel less safe because you're presenting as one thing and then you have a whole other identity on this little card. In the ad, people talk about the difficulties they face when it comes to so-called dead naming. That's when someone refers to a person who's transgender by the name they used before they transitioned.

Starting point is 00:10:40 The video also captures their reaction when they are presented with their own true name card. Oh, my God. Can I open it? It's got my name on it. Ah! I don't think I have anything with my name on it. The Bank of Montreal has become the first bank in Canada to offer the product,

Starting point is 00:11:01 allowing its clients to request a new card with their chosen name without having to go through the process of a legal name change. The financial institution says it is, quote, a simple way to remove barriers to inclusion and ensure banking is safe and accessible. Okay, I hear you. We hear you. Some of you have been getting a lot of ads in the show. It's always a bit unknown to us because our ad platform is programmatic.

Starting point is 00:11:30 So we actually don't hear that many ads when we listen back because we're in Canada. And for whatever reason, I guess Canadians aren't getting the same volume. But I have heard you. You are getting a ton of ads. I apologize for that. It is not our intention to spam this show with ads. I am already today in contact with our ad platform to try apologize for that. It is not our intention to spam this show with ads. I am already today in contact with our ad platform to try to manage that. I've got a meeting scheduled for them later in the week. So my apologies and please know it is being fixed. We have a small correction from yesterday's show. We mentioned that one fifth of consumers on TikTok bought products on the platform

Starting point is 00:12:02 all of the time. That is true, but we should have been a little bit more clear about what we meant by the phrase consumers. So to be precise, that should have been of the people who have purchased before on TikTok. One-fifth say they buy products on the platform all of the time. Yesterday I played you

Starting point is 00:12:20 a mystery sound, asked you to guess what it is. Hmm. Hey! Hey! guess what it is? Turns out it is every non-word that Freddie Mercury sings or says or grunts in the song Another One Bites the Dust. Saw it on TikTok

Starting point is 00:12:38 a couple of nights ago and thought I would share it with you. Alright, talk to you tomorrow. She's a belle of the ball Just look at her tonight yes she's here for fun to dance with everyone she's a queen she's a queen of saturday night The Queen of Saturday Night

Today in Digital Marketing - Is it "Growth Hacking" or Algorithmic Plagiarism?

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