Today in Digital Marketing - Meta Thinks Everything Is AI Now

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, June 21st. Today, did you use AI to make that product image? No? Then why is Meta telling everyone you did? Also, local service ads expands to Google Maps, whether you want them to or not. Unboxing goes big, YouTube editing goes long, and a dispute over programmatic ads heats up,

Starting point is 00:00:21 with advertisers caught in the middle. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Well, I didn't see this on my AI takes over everything bingo card. Meta is labeling images as having been made with AI. Images which were not, in fact, made with AI. And TechCrunch reports today this has been going on since last month. One example they showed was of a team winning a cricket league tournament. It's a real photo shot with a real camera held by a real human. But the made with AI label shows up anyway. Interestingly, it's only visible on mobile apps and not the web. And lest you think this is just

Starting point is 00:01:01 a bug. No, because Meta lives in a parallel universe, this is by design. Meta's system seems to be applying the label to any image where AI has even just touched the image. To add a small element with generative fill, for instance. Pete Souza, the former White House photographer, said all he did was flatten an image into a JPEG, and that's all it took for Meta to apply the label. Quote, what's annoying is that the post forced me to include the made with AI, even though I unchecked it, unquote. Also, Souza did this photographic work, not on Meta's own platform, but using an Adobe tool. Still, Meta applied the tag. That's because Meta is honoring some new technical standards, C2PA and some from the IPTC. This lets software add metadata identifying that some AI took place. This means that Meta can

Starting point is 00:01:52 identify when images touch AI from all the major sites, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney, and Shutterstock, for instance. This means that even if all you do is remove a tree branch from the background using Adobe's generative fill, Adobe will dutifully slip some metadata in. Meta will pick that up and report that, well, imply that the whole image was conjured out of thin air. This is more a language issue, of course, and the industry still hasn't figured out how to handle granular use of image AI. There's a big difference between made with AI and touched up by AI. But do we even really need that? Removing items from backgrounds has been something photographers have done since the invention of the medium. And even recent technology, like Pixelmator's repair tool, can do this and doesn't use any of

Starting point is 00:02:42 the new generation AI. To be fair, once you tap Meta's label, it does explain things a bit better. It reads, generative AI may have been used to create or edit content in this post. But nobody taps that. As for marketers, this might actually become a bigger issue as the months go on. There are national elections happening this year all over the world. France, Ghana, Mozambique, the UK, Austria. I feel like I'm missing another one. It'll come to me. Elections, of course, are a breeding ground for misinformation,

Starting point is 00:03:14 and we may very well see consumers form worsening opinions about generative AI. Marketers could very well end up having the same labels applied to their images as some big scandals, and that's no good, no matter how hard you or Meta spin it. Oh, Venezuela. That's the one I forgot. July 28th. If you run local service ads with Google,

Starting point is 00:03:40 you might soon start getting more impressions and maybe more leads. Google says it will start showing local service ads on Google Maps, first on the iPhone Google Map app, then others to come after. An email Google sent to advertisers reads, quote, We'll use your business's existing ad data and user reviews on Google Maps to create these ads. You don't need to share any additional data or details with us. The billing and pricing for these new ads will remain the same as what they currently are for search ads. One interesting note there is that this change means LSAs will start using reviews from your Google Business profile, which are generally considered a little more authentic than the ones previously attached to on their own. If for some reason you'd rather not have your ad surface in Maps,

Starting point is 00:04:29 here is the process for opting out. Turn off your ad campaign entirely. That's right, there's no way to opt out other than to just stop running your ads, including your search ads. So your TikTok influencer marketing campaign was a hit. Dozens of creators jumped in, made some unboxing UGCs for you, and you thought, how can we keep this buzz going? Of course, you can just throw them all into one ad and then run that ad on the app. But maybe you're looking for something with more impact. TikTok says it's got a solution and one that's not even in the app at all. Last year, it launched a program called Out of Phone, riffing on the industry standard term for outdoor media known as Out of Home. This includes billboards, in-store displays, movie ads, and so on.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Today, they are bringing that Out of Phone program to their Branded Mission product. And the naming geniuses there are calling this creation Out of Phone Branded Mission. Quoting social media today, quote, Branded Mission, which TikTok launched in 2020, lets brands post participatory campaigns, which creators can then choose to participate in. Brands can then select their favorite creator videos on the theme and amplify them through boosted ad traffic. The new Out of Phone Branded Mission will essentially incorporate user-generated content into its off-platform outreach

Starting point is 00:05:49 so that brands can use UGC in their expanded promotions, unquote. TikTok says the film company Lionsgate was one of the brands testing this to promote a Hunger Games sequel. The campaign took over most of the iconic screens in Times Square and, as TikTok said in a news release this week, quote, everyday creators were given their spotlight moment on the billboards, unquote. No word on pricing yet, but don't be surprised if this is priced a little higher.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Earlier this week, we reported on a nasty dispute between the programmatic ad platform, the Trade Desk and Yahoo. In a nutshell, Yahoo was categorizing the Trade Desk, and Yahoo. In a nutshell, Yahoo was categorizing the Trade Desk's programmatic ads as in-stream when sold through open marketplaces. Those types of ads generally are sold at a higher price than what the Trade Desk wants. It says its content should be in a category called accompanying content. This fact got so heated that the Trade Desk said it would prevent advertisers from buying Yahoo's video inventory on its open marketing platform by this week if Yahoo didn't capitulate. They didn't, and now we've learned the Trade Desk has followed through on the threat.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Now, a new deadline, July 1st. That's when the Trade Desk says it will also disable access to all of Yahoo's video inventory, including those bought through private marketplace deals. The Trade Desk is generally considered to be one of the largest programmatic platforms in the industry. A Yahoo executive did not mince words, quoting Aaron Miller, the VP of Corporate Communications at Yahoo, quote, the timing of this deadline, coinciding with the kickoff and wrap up of cans, appears to be an arbitrary and publicity-seeking effort

Starting point is 00:07:26 by the Trade Desk at Yahoo's expense, especially given the incredibly low amount of revenue this represents for both companies. We are still in negotiations and intend to make business decisions on a timeline that allows us to do what's right for our clients, partners, and business. In addition, we are aware

Starting point is 00:07:43 that the Trade Des desk turned off deals, but we have not seen a change in spend from advertisers this week, unquote. Some insiders say part of the problem comes from the way the industry has defined the definition of in-stream video ads. Right now, they say it's pretty loose and subjective. Quoting Digiday, quote, for example, some would declare small video players in the corner of a web page as in-stream Quoting Digiday, quote, by default at player start, or have explicitly clear user intent to watch the video content. While there may be other content surrounding the player, the video content must be the focus of the user's visit, unquote. So far, no budging from either side as this new July 1st deadline approaches.

Starting point is 00:08:42 And that will bring us to the lightning round. YouTube will now let you edit your really long videos. Until now, if your video was six hours or longer, you couldn't edit it on the platform. Now you can. This should be out to everyone by the end of the month. You can also now select and act on multiple comments at a time in your YouTube channel's published tab. Until now, you could only do that inside YouTube Studios' Held for Review tab. New research has found that two-thirds of advertisers between 2019 and 2021 unknowingly bought programmatic ads on websites that contained

Starting point is 00:09:16 misinformation. The study looked at 9 million ads from more than 42,000 advertisers on 5,400 websites. And as the weather warms up, people are flocking to theaters. Industry watchers say there was a 41% increase in cinema ad spending in Q1 of this year compared to the same quarter last year. 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.

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Starting point is 00:10:23 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. And a programming note, as you know, during the summer, we are moving Monday's news to our Tuesday episodes. That's because news tends to be pretty slow on Mondays. This is especially the case in the summer. But this Monday, I will be back in your ear holes with a special deep dive marketing science episode. I'll be speaking with a researcher who studied the brand impact on turning comments off on social media posts versus the impact of leaving them on, even if that means people leave and see negative comments.

Starting point is 00:11:08 The study's results, I promise, will surprise you. That's this Monday. Yesterday's episode, you may have noticed, was about 10 or 15 minutes late. That is because I was busy during the day negotiating an arms deal. So I play Fallout 76. And one of the things you do at end game when you're sort of through it all is to try and get the best weapon in the game.

Starting point is 00:11:29 And they're random. These weapons are dropped randomly. The one I wanted is called a bloodied weapon, meaning the lower health I am, the more damage it does. I tried to find it in player vendors. I couldn't find it. I tried to make one.

Starting point is 00:11:39 It wasn't coming up. So yesterday, this kid who watches my stream and is in my video game Discord and I were negotiating a price for a bloodied weapon with a 50% increase in critical chance and a 90% reduction in weight. This is what we gamers in Fallout 76 would call a god roll. It is a one of the best weapons in the game. Anyway, we came to a deal 15,000 caps. Caps is the currency. I didn't spend real money on it, of course, although people do. Anyway, just to put that in perspective, the max number of caps you can have is 40,000.

Starting point is 00:12:16 So I basically spent like, what is that? A third of everything that I had in the game to get this one gun. And I got it. And it's okay and it's okay. You know, it's okay. You know, it's sort of, at the end of the day, it sort of makes my weapon go from killing something in eight bullets to killing something in five bullets, and then I sort of reflected on it. It's like, you know, I've been spending probably two or three weeks

Starting point is 00:12:38 grinding for enough cores to be able to get that affected. I never did, and am I really using my time wisely? Anyway, that will do it for the week. to get that affected. I never did. And am I really using my time wisely? Anyway, that will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Snunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island.

Starting point is 00:12:57 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. I'll see you Monday for that Marketing Science Deep Dive episode and Tuesday for the regular news.

Today in Digital Marketing - Meta Thinks Everything Is AI Now

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