Today in Digital Marketing - Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media

Starting point is 00:00:01 It's Friday, March 10th. Today, if you can't beat them, join them. Instagram joins the federated social media movement. Also, advertising's disappointing return to gender stereotypes. You are not going to believe what Twitter's new API pricing plan is. Meta pulls the plug on its creator fund and AI that will literally read your mind. I'm Todd Knuffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Meta is building a Twitter competitor. The company confirming it is working on a decentralized text-based social app

Starting point is 00:00:36 codenamed P92. Media quote internal documents saying the app will be Instagram branded and let users log in with their Instagram credentials. Most interestingly, this new platform is said to support ActivityPub. That's the decentralized social networking protocol powering Twitter rival Mastodon and other federated apps. Sources have also told media that legal and regulatory teams are already investigating potential privacy concerns around the app so they can be addressed before launch.

Starting point is 00:01:07 So how much of a threat does this really pose to Twitter? Not much at all. Joe Kerrison is CMO of DigitalWill.com. He's been advertising on Meta's platform for a decade. I spoke with him this afternoon. Consumers in general are kind of tired of Meta. Meta has sort of broken the trust of the consumer over the years, like time and time again.

Starting point is 00:01:29 So I don't think it's like a huge threat. I think that they're a little late to the game. I think they saw that Mastodon was having success. I can't imagine them not trying to monetize this in some way. And what would that be? Would they charge a subscription? Would they start showing advertising eventually? I just don't see it being a threat to Twitter as far as how ubiquitous Twitter is. Even when

Starting point is 00:01:51 Twitter saw its Elon Musk exodus and people ran to Mastodon, you know, Twitter really hasn't gone away. So far, of course, the project's details are scarce. It's still under development, and there is no timeline for its release. Are we back to the 1950s? A new study has revealed that despite women being featured in ads more than ever, women still lack unbiased representation in advertising this year. According to the report, the majority of people in ads across 2021 and 2022 were women, about 40% were men. Last year, though, men were cast in professional roles 75% more often compared with 2021 and 30% more often in leadership roles, while women were cast 50% more often in domestic roles. These trends are even more pronounced when age and race are taken into consideration. Ads featuring women with lighter-skinned tones accounted for a quarter of all tracked spend,

Starting point is 00:02:55 while ads featuring women with darker tones accounted for only 5%. Meanwhile, ads featuring lighter-skinned men in professional or leadership positions received four times the amount of spend than those featuring darker-skinned women. In terms of age, ads featuring women over 60 increased 220% year-over-year. The increase was, however, from 0.3% to 0.9%, representing less than 1% of total advertisements. So are we looking for access to Twitter's API? Well, they have pricing out now, and it only costs $42,000 per month. Using Twitter's free API has long been a vital research for researchers studying social media conversations.

Starting point is 00:03:47 But wire reports today, those days may soon be over as new pricing plans indicate that most organizations will be outpriced. According to internal documents, the company will be offering three levels of enterprise packages to its developer platform. With the cheapest so-called small package, you get access to 50 million tweets per month for $42,000 per month. There are higher tiers. 100 million tweets will cost $125,000 per month, while access to 200 million tweets will set you back $210,000 per month. Subscribers to the cheapest package will be limited to 25,000 rules for filtering data from the real-time PowerTrack API and 50,000 queries from the full Archive Search API. Moreover, researchers will have a limit of 5,000 Twitter handles they can analyze using the Account Activity API, as well as a maximum of 20 requests

Starting point is 00:04:46 per minute for the engagement API. While this dataset might seem substantial, the report noted it only represents 0.3% of Twitter's monthly output, making it far from a comprehensive picture of the platform's activity. Previously, researchers were able to access 1% of all tweets through its free API. These figures have been confirmed with other existing free API users who received emails stating the new pricing plans will take effect within months. Twitter, which no longer has a communications department, did not respond to a request for comment.

Starting point is 00:05:24 The UK government's revised Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which is meant to be a post-Brexit alternative to GDPR, is making its way through the UK Parliament. The new bill aims to create a simpler, more business-friendly, and more flexible framework than the GDPR, while also reducing paperwork, supporting international trade, and introducing AI safeguards. But Adweek reported today that the bill is causing concern for advertisers due to the changes proposed to the cookie consent process and user experience, especially in regard to the reduction of the volume of consent pop-ups users receive, which enables data collection. The bill also includes an increase in fines for companies that make nuisance calls and texts up to 4% of their global revenue.

Starting point is 00:06:12 According to the report, advertisers are concerned about further confusing the already complex digital advertising space, and companies want to avoid having to manage different data regimes across international markets. The UK arm of the Internet Advertising Bureau is urging lawmakers to extend cookie consent exemptions for advertising and measurement, describing those as non-intrusive functions. 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.

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Starting point is 00:07:34 Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. While other platforms are juicing up their monetization features, Meta is ending its Reels Play bonus program on Instagram and Facebook in the U.S., which pays content creators when they hit certain goals for views on their videos. Business Insider reported this week that the company won't offer any new or renewed Reels Play bonus deals, but will honor existing commitments over the next 30 days. A spokesperson for the company said, creators can still earn money through things like subscriptions and brand partnerships. Instagram head Adam Massuri said the company was pausing the program to focus on making it ROI positive.

Starting point is 00:08:23 All right, a couple of updates from TikTok to share with you. First, the company has won a trademark lawsuit against British video editing company Stitch Editing. As a federal jury in L.A. ruled that TikTok's Stitch feature does not infringe on Stitch Editing's trademark rights. Stitch Editing had claimed that TikTok's use of the Stitch name for its video editing feature would confuse consumers and harm its brand, and it requested $116 million in damages. TikTok argued Stitch Editing's trademark does not give it a monopoly on the word Stitch to refer to video editing, and the court ruled in its favor. And second, TikTok has partnered with global marketing agency Dentsu Digital to offer alternative web tracking ahead of the cookiepocalypse.

Starting point is 00:09:05 The new process will let advertisers track user data through the TikTok events API, which will be integrated into XStack even as cookie tracing is phased out. And finally, a new study has found that AI can now read brain scans and recreate images a person has recently seen. How does it work? Well, researchers added additional training to the standard stable diffusion algorithm by teaching the AI model to link functional magnetic resonance imaging data with images participants looked at. They also trained a second AI model to link imaging data with text descriptions of the pictures the study participants looked at. Although there are some noticeable differences between the recreated images by our robot overlords and the originals,

Starting point is 00:09:57 they are eerily similar, meaning AI can officially read our minds now. Yo, guys, is Reddit okay? For the last, like, month or two, I've been getting nonstop email spam from one of their ad reps. You know, the kind, one of those automatically sequenced things, which, you know, I usually ignore for the first couple. But this was constant. Like, I think I got like a dozen emails from her and the crappy kind to the whole just bumping this up to your inbox. I don't know how desperate are they that they're turning to those kind of tactics.

Starting point is 00:10:41 Also, I switched to decaf this week, so I am a little grumpy. I'll give you that. And that will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamik First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn, our production coordinator, Sarah Guild,

Starting point is 00:10:57 music rights by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle, and not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is actually quite effective at getting rid of those spammers. Although I will admit his tactics kind of scare me. Just this morning at the Emu auction, he told me, why don't you call my name?

Starting point is 00:11:17 You'd better call the sledgehammer. Put your mind at rest. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. I'll see you on Monday. Well, we might take a train or board the nearest plane, but

Starting point is 00:11:33 let's get away from it all. Pack your bags, get ready to go, and we'll hit the road.

Today in Digital Marketing - Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media

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