Today in Digital Marketing - Meet Your Brand's Deepfake Salesperson

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Friday, April 12th. Today, your product sales could be on autopilot after TikTok unveils its latest scheme, Roblox branches into the programmatic market, Amazon's not preferring its own products over yours anymore, well, not as much anyway, and how WordPress's latest plugin can predict the future. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Be protected. Be Zen. I think we all knew this was coming, eventually. Reports say TikTok is working on an app that would let brands design their own deepfake AI video avatar that could be turned loose on the platform to sell products in videos and live streams. Quoting the information, quote, The feature, which is still under development, would generate a script for a video ad based on a prompt submitted by the advertiser,

Starting point is 00:01:16 as well as an AI-generated influencer to perform in the video, according to an advertiser who has seen plans for the tool. TikTok shop merchants could also use the AI influencer tool to promote their goods. TikTok's Chinese cousin app, Douyin, has used virtual influencers for a couple of years now, some of which have become famous in their own rights, selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise a day. Not bad for someone whose wardrobe and look you can change at an instant and don't have to pay. Quoting the MIT Technology Review, quote, Now all the human workers have to do is input basic information, such as the name and price of the product being sold, proofread the generated script, and watch the digital influencer go live. A more advanced version of this technology can spot live comments and find matching answers in its database to answer in real time, so it looks as if the AI streamer is actively

Starting point is 00:02:19 communicating with the audience. It can even adjust its marketing strategy based on the number of viewers, unquote. And sure, you can probably spot artifacting and other things that give away the fact that they're not real, but that's not the point. The people watching and buying from these deepfakes also know they're artificial. They don't care. Livestreams on Doyen are now the app's biggest revenue driver, and TikTok wants a slice of that too. Although its recent attempts at live streamed commerce have, at best, been received lukewarmly by Western audiences. That's true not just for TikTok, but for Meta and other platforms that have toyed with it. In a way, it's similar to this whole WeChat thing.

Starting point is 00:03:00 WeChat, of course, the Chinese app that people rely on there for absolutely everything from news to banking to entertainment to messaging. Many Western platforms have tried to copy it. Elon Musk is obsessed with the idea. That's part of why he bought Twitter in the first place. But like live streamed commerce, those attempts so far have failed in the Western world. Even so, the revenue potential is tantalizing. Last year, TikTok made300 million in Meta Ads spend through his Slack community called Foxwell Founders. If you are a premium member, you can skip this section if it's not relevant to you by just tapping the next story in your podcast app.

Starting point is 00:03:56 Or if you're not a premium member, just go to the 12-minute, 25-second mark. Andrew, yesterday we reported on Meta Ads being quite volatile, CPMs and CPCs up quite a bit. You know, at the time, I kind of wrote the story in a way saying, hey, there's not much you can do about it. But in a way, there sort of is, isn't there, when it comes to things like testing. I wanted to chat with you this week about testing and see what people are using currently that they're finding success with and whether or not that could sort of stem the tide of this volatility we're seeing. There definitely are a

Starting point is 00:04:29 lot of things that are out of our control in reference to meta. One of the things, let's just talk about what is in our control, is the way that we can create better ads. That is something that is in our control. The way that we can walk through our own site and through our own customer journey, through landing pages and through where we're sending folks. You know, there are pieces to this that are in our control, even if the spigot itself is not necessarily in your control when you're going to, you know, like with meta there. But I think that is important to know. I do think in terms of your story, like there are, you know, this could be the new normal. There are ups and downs. I think what we have heard

Starting point is 00:05:16 for a long time is that there is going to be squeezing inventory. And indeed, like two years ago, this quarter, Sheryl Sandberg told us we're running out of space, which is why we now have ads. We have reels ads that are next to each other and they're multi advertisers. So they're showing four at once, which makes a case that your creative is even more important. And the first two seconds of it are even more important. Right. So I think that, you know, it's kind of we knew this was coming and this is what inventory issues look like, especially for high value users in Western countries and in the United States, especially.

Starting point is 00:05:57 And do you think that the the introduction of threads once they start running ads there will be significant enough to sort of provide a volume of inventory that makes a difference in the market when it comes to like CPM, CPCs? I think, I mean, Threads itself is a, it's just like Reels. Everybody laughed at it a couple of years ago. It's getting traction.

Starting point is 00:06:19 It's there. People do look at it. Because of the scale of meta, anything that is a new incremental place to put ads isn't insignificant. Even if they place 2% of impressions there, that's millions and millions of dollars or billions of dollars. And, you know, depending on like kind of what's what you're thinking of the overall ecosystem. So it will provide some relief, but it's not going to be great.

Starting point is 00:06:47 You know, the thing that Meta knows is they know the valuable customers that are on the platform, and those people are harder and harder to reach. And when you combine that with even a slight percentage of economic softening of people, you know, really wanting something, I don't think we're in an economy now, especially in the United States, just because I can see it and know it well, you know, of like, if, oh, that would be nice to have, like it, we're very much in a, you have to want it and you have to see the necessity of it, which is why, you know, going through and creating ads with, with hook rates of going through that kind of framework,

Starting point is 00:07:26 if you've never heard of it, of talking about like problem unaware, problem aware, and then, you know, kind of going through and convincing them that, hey, did they know they had this issue or did they not know they had this issue? But I think there's a lot of people that live in that issue of the product market fit isn't that good. And they haven't figured out the creative testing and the angles that they're going to take to bring people from, are they unaware? Are they, you know, thinking about this issue? Are they not thinking about this issue? And bringing them through where they know, instead of just saying, you need a new microphone, buy this today, right? So that piece in and of itself is really challenging.

Starting point is 00:08:10 And certainly to do creative testing, to go back to your original question, there's a lot of different ways to do it. You can do testing in a campaign budget optimization campaign. You can do individual tests. The point that you want to always have is you want to have some kind of a testing framework for creative. That could be a lot of different

Starting point is 00:08:32 things, but what you want to try to figure out is how am I going to be constantly infusing new ideas and angles into this account as a way to hedge against the challenges that I'm going to be facing from headwinds with meta? Because we know that's going to be happening. So what are the pieces that we can do? And right now, a big discussion point is static ads. Everybody goes, everything comes back in the circling wind is like static ads are back, which is, you know, just as an image with copy on it itself, um, versus video is what everybody was talking about before. And certainly video is still part of the strategy, but you have to be kind of always being a leading edge of making sure you're testing regardless of how with different angles and

Starting point is 00:09:15 hooks to bring people in, to bring those that are especially within prospecting, because that's where you start to feel it and start to hurt over time if you aren't doing that. You know, I'm in your Slack community, which is incredibly valuable. One of the many courses that you've offered there has been a testing framework like you talked about. Can you just give us the 15 second summary of what is in that course, what people would get out of it? Yeah, I mean, the testing course itself is essentially going through all of the different options that you have for testing. How do you go about not only testing creatives, which is a can of worms in and of itself, but how do you then go about testing audiences and testing different campaign types, testing different campaign

Starting point is 00:09:56 objectives? And so really the baseline of all this that nobody really asks themselves when they want to test is you sit and say, well, I feel like I should be testing more. It's just like you said, I should work out. Well, okay, that's great. But like, what does that actually mean? So what are you trying to accomplish with the test? You want to know, what are you wanting to learn? Is it that you want to improve performance? Is it that you want to see, you know, take big creative swings and try brand new things that are from different angles you've never heard of? And if that's the case, then setting up tests to achieve that objective to make sure that you're actually starting from a good point as you get going. So that's kind of what we go through in the testing course.

Starting point is 00:10:36 And it gives you a lot of different options. Like all of our courses, we go through and lay out the options for you. And then you get to determine which one you believe is best based on the information given. It's not a prescriptive course. We don't do that at Foxwell Digital because I'm a big believer in you show people all the options they can have to be successful and they can choose their own path. In your experience of the different things you can test, and there are millions, campaign optimization, creative, audience targeting, blah, blah, blah. Which one of those moves the needle the most? Is it the creative that matters the most? Yeah. I mean, the biggest things that you can do right now, honestly, are number one, simplify the number of campaigns you have running. So, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:13 I mean, we have campaigns that are, we have things that are spending millions of dollars, like accounts are spending millions of bucks a month and, you know, they're running on five campaigns, sometimes three, like, you know, this is a different game than it was. And that in combination with creative testing and having a system of constantly putting in not just new creative tests in reference to hooks and angles I talked about. Like, you know, do you have this issue? That kind of thing, that kind of testing of people that are unaware, problem aware and thinking through that and having that constantly be flowing in. But also, you know, going through and making sure that you're testing a variety of different types of creative over time, based not just video or not just problem unaware and unaware that kind of aware and unaware.

Starting point is 00:11:57 But, you know, carousels, making sure that you kind of think about your creative strategy like a soccer field. So, you know, the defenders are to kind of like be there at the end of the sales cycle and the offense is there to like make sure that you're kind of scoring goals over time. And so each of these ads have to do different things. And that's the type of thinking that we want to apply. And so those are the biggest changes that certainly if you start to do that can make the biggest difference over time. Yes. All right, Andrew, thank you. See you next week. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:12:30 Andrew Foxwell is our Meta Ads correspondent. You can learn more about Andrew's digital ads training, including his testing framework course at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community of senior Meta ad buyers at b.link slash founders. Both of those are affiliate links and you can find those links at the bottom of our show notes. 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. Back to TikTok for a moment. The company this week also announcing some stronger brand safety

Starting point is 00:13:19 controls for advertisers, specifically category exclusion and vertical sensitivity controls. Category exclusion will let brands tell the ad platform to keep their content away from content about gambling and lotteries, violent video games, combat sports, or youth content. Vertical sensitivity is a deeper level of control. Quoting Search Engine Land, quote, advertisers can use this feature to choose their industry vertical and avoid content related to that vertical that Quoting Search Engine Land, For instance, a travel brand that typically focuses on nature-themed content may opt out of appearing alongside content about volcanoes or floods, unquote. Those verticals now available are pets, beauty, food, fashion, retail, travel, financial services, technology, automotive, gaming, professional services, and entertainment. Also, they're moving account-level controls for all their brand safety tools to be within their ads manager. And they also announced partnerships with Double Verify, Integral Ad Science and Zephyr to provide post-campaign measurement of these new controls.

Starting point is 00:14:36 One of the big trends in commerce over the last couple of years has been the emergence of buy nownow-pay-later services. Financial brands like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna offer online sellers the ability to split the consumer's payments up into installments, usually interest free. It's been a couple of years now. How's the adoption been? According to a new Bankrate and YouGov survey, 39% of U.S. adults said that they have used at least one BNPL service. Quoting Retail Dive, quote, of the consumers who used BNPL, half did so to spread their cash flow, and 37% used the service to take advantage of low or no interest rates. Only 20% of respondents cited retailer promotions as their reason for using the tool. 56% of people who used BNPL encountered at least one problem while using the service. Overspending at 29%, missing a payment at 18%, and difficulty returning products or getting a refund,

Starting point is 00:15:36 also at 18% of respondents, were the top problems reported, unquote. By generation, the younger a person is, the more likely they are to use a BNPL service. 55% of millennials have used one. They're in the top spot. Boomers down at the bottom at 25%. A recent Adobe report estimated nearly $17 billion was spent through BNPL last year. That was 14% higher than the previous year. The popular online game platform Roblox has signed with Pubmatic to let advertisers buy ads programmatically on their platform. A Roblox spokesperson told us today the ads appear in the various immersive experiences that are created by users. For now, they're static images on things like billboards.

Starting point is 00:16:29 Later in the year, advertisers will be able to upload videos for those placements. These ads appear in the virtual worlds that are designed by the Roblox community, and designers get a share of the ad revenue when people visit their world. Indeed, Roblox is less a game on its own and more a social platform that contains thousands of games and worlds. This is the same model used by another wildly popular multiplayer game, Fortnite, where people can design worlds and establish buildings and rules for things like how gravity works. Only in Fortnite, so far the only advertising is from bespoke big name and big budget brand deals. Roblox says it has more than 70 million daily active users, more than half of which are in Generation Z, which are between 12 and 27.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Last month, the company launched its Roblox for Brands website, which contains more information about their ad capabilities. You can find that site at brands.roblox.com. Amazon got into heat recently after researchers said the site favored its own private label ads in search results. Now, that seems to have at least been partially addressed after the European Union applied new rules to the company. Quoting the Register, quote, Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that after the EU's designation of Amazon as a gatekeeper platform, the rank of Amazon products in Amazon search results compared to competing brands changed substantially.

Starting point is 00:18:00 The Amazon rank differential fell from a 30 to a 20 rank advantage, while other brand search ranks did not change. Researchers noted that the rank differential can't be definitively attributed to self-preferencing. Other factors like differences in product quality come into play as well, unquote. Amazon did not respond to media requests for comment. The web platform WordPress this week released a new plugin it says can dramatically speed up your brand's website. The plugin is called Speculation Loading. The idea is that the site would take its best guess as to what link any given user will click next and will

Starting point is 00:18:41 pre-render that web page, JavaScript and all, while the user is still looking at the previous page. Then if they do indeed click the predicted link, the website can bring up that web page almost instantly because it was already pre-loaded in the browser. As for how they're taking that educated guess, mostly it's if a user hovers their cursor over a particular link. This has been tried before, but with more of a brute force method. Many caching plugins and some web browsers will cache the first link of search results, for instance, assuming that's where the user will click next. If they click something else, it just throws out what it preloaded.

Starting point is 00:19:18 When you install the plugin, it will by default start prefetching other pages on your website – actually pages, posts posts and archive pages. You can adjust the settings under settings, reading and then speculative loading. Don't forget to follow us on social media. We are almost everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Snapchat and Pinterest. Go to todayindigital.com slash social or tap the link at the top of the show notes. Monday, a deep dive interview with a marketing scientist who says

Starting point is 00:19:53 you might be using numbers in your product marketing all wrong. She is the co-author of a paper called Manipulating Consumers with the Truth. And you'll hear that exclusive interview on Monday. That will do it for this week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island.

Starting point is 00:20:15 Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Ad coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I will see you on Monday. What's this stuff? Some cereal. It's supposed to be good for you. Do you try it? I'm not gonna try it. You try it. I'm not gonna try it. Let's get Mikey. Yeah. He won't need it. He hates everything. He likes it. Hey, Mikey. 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.

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Today in Digital Marketing - Meet Your Brand's Deepfake Salesperson

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