Today in Digital Marketing - Meta's "Marketing Experts" Are Back (and Worse Than Ever)

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, November 8th. Today, don't believe the emails. Despite what Meta says, your ad campaigns are probably just fine. Also, some interesting advances in AI-generated marketing media. TikTok is feeling the ad slowdown too. And how consumers this holiday season are forecast to spend more, but buy less. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:32 If you do any advertising on Meta's platform, you're probably familiar with the emails. They come from a so-called marketing expert, although in most cases, these are fresh out of college junior salespeople with no actual experience in, you know, marketing. Anyway, for a while now, they've been occasionally sending out sales pitches, cleverly disguised as inviting the recipient to a call to help them get better results. Here's how the latest version of these reads. Hi, I'm John S., a dedicated meta marketing pro. We've noticed that your ads have seen a decline in performance. As a result, you might be spending more to reach your campaign goals, unquote. If you ever get one of these,

Starting point is 00:01:08 honestly, don't bother talking to them. I promise you know more about Meta's platform than these people do. Here's the bigger problem, though. Meta sends these to anyone with an ad account, including those whose ad campaigns are managed by an agency. So you can understand an agency's consternation when Meta, supposedly

Starting point is 00:01:26 their mutual partner, tells the agency's customers, hey, your agency's screwed up, your ads are performing terribly. And now it seems to be getting worse. One version of this letter posted in an industry Slack group I'm in adds this line, quote, I've been equipped with new technical solutions and best practices designed to allow our ad system to optimize your ads and help improve performance, unquote. Wait, what? What tools? Once the EO of a marketing agency I follow posted this on social media today, Meta is back at it again, scaring clients with misinformation. Performance is not down. Worse, they're implying

Starting point is 00:02:05 that they have exclusive secret tools that others don't have to fix it. He also reported the performance on the account that got the email is actually great. So the email itself is a template at best and an outright lie at worst. Again, quoting that CEO, how do we get Meta to treat its own partners with even 10% of the respect we expect from them? This is getting so tiring, unquote. So if you run a digital agency, you might want to have a chat with your clients and let them know they might get one of these emails. And despite what those emails claim, their ad campaigns are not, in fact, tanking. For better or worse, auto-generated marketing content is here.

Starting point is 00:02:50 Whether you're looking for product shots for e-commerce or even campaign videos with a brand spokesperson, there's an AI for that. First, the photo editing app PhotoRoom today launched a new generative AI feature called Magic Studio, which lets users create marketing images with just one product photo. To use the feature, brands and marketers upload an image of their product. They'll then be prompted to describe an item in a single word, like shoe, hat, or lipstick, and then describe a desired background or setting. Magic Studio then removes the background automatically and places the item

Starting point is 00:03:25 in the generated setting. The feature can't yet be used on shots of humans or animals. While applications like Canva or PixelCut offer similar editing features like background removal and image templates, PhotoRoom targets online merchants. You can create images with ready-made templates for platforms like eBay, Shopify, and Etsy. Based on the images we've seen online, it's clear that the generated images are not perfect in terms of accuracy, with some of the uploaded images appearing distorted. But that said, some images look pretty legit, and it might be useful for merchants without the means to hire a professional photographer. Next up is a startup called Movio that wants to create marketing videos with generative AI. The platform targets marketers with a Canva-style drag-and-drop interface.

Starting point is 00:04:11 But here's the really interesting part. It will feature talking human avatars. So first, you pick from a range of templates, just like you would do on Canva. Then you can add a hyper realistic avatar to be the video's spokesperson with speech generated by text input. The outfit, the face, and the voice of the AI-made human can also be changed to suit your brand. Currently, Movio's algorithms can only synthesize talking heads, but the company says it is working toward generating whole body movement. Leaving social media's current golden child isn't safe from the ad slowdown. The Financial Times reported today that TikTok is restructuring its US operations

Starting point is 00:04:55 due to a slowing economy and a depressed environment for digital advertising. It's also resulting in big leadership changes. The overhaul will see North American general manager Sandy Hawkins, who oversees business operations, sales and marketing, transferred to TikTok Shop in the U.S. That's its e-commerce division. Sources say the move was announced yesterday during an internal meeting. According to the Financial Times, the GM's reassignment is part of a broader restructuring over the past four months that has resulted in fewer than 100 staff people being laid off. Those familiar with the matter said

Starting point is 00:05:30 that about 20 senior managers have been cut and new leadership had been recruited. Sources noted that TikTok has been considering replacing Hawkins with the head of Asia Pacific operations on a permanent basis since last year. The company told media it is considering several candidates and confirmed it was expanding e-commerce to the U.S. and reviewing further international expansion. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Inflation is expected to drive more consumers to shop during Cyber Week, which is less than three weeks away. A new report predicts that Cyber Week sales will increase sales by 5% compared to last year. And this shopping season, Cyber Week will account for a fifth of overall holiday sales. But according to Retail Dive, the study also predicts a 15% decline in product volume, suggesting that shoppers are spending more, but on fewer items. The research also indicates that consumers are relying more on discount codes to save money this season. The study found that sales using discount codes increased by almost a quarter in September and by more than 40% in October. Scheduling on Instagram is officially here, but only for professional accounts.

Starting point is 00:07:08 The company announced the launch of its in-app scheduling tool yesterday, which lets brands and businesses schedule posts in advance without the use of third-party apps or Creator Studio. Social media managers have been waiting about, let me check my notes here, 300 years for this update. Truth be told, most content managers just use third-party tools. But with this new tool, you will be able to schedule content directly in the app up to 75 days in advance, including posts, reels, and carousels. As for stories, no soup for you. Here's how it works. You access it after creating a post by tapping Advanced Settings. Then you'll see a new Schedule This Post toggle. After selecting the option, you can choose the date and time when you want the post to go live.

Starting point is 00:07:53 Finally, you will need to navigate back to the post flow and tap Schedule. You'll also be able to see these posts in a new Scheduled Content section, which is accessible via the hamburger menu, and you can reschedule content if you need to. And finally, if you're targeting a teen demographic, a new survey has found that TikTok is the number one social app of choice for youth of the nation beating Instagram again and leaving Twitter and Facebook in the dust. The second most popular app among teens was Snapchat. Meanwhile, teenagers have pretty much zero interest in Twitter or Facebook. Both platforms drew just 2% of Gen Z.

Starting point is 00:08:40 The data comes from Piper Sandler's survey of over 14,500 U.S. teens. Boy, thank goodness for the undo feature. We use Notion, which we love, for everything. We use it for everything. We use it for ad scheduling. We use it to schedule the marketing scientists for their interviews. We use it for transcripts, for the lineup. And I deleted a status field that I thought was just deleting it for the interviews,

Starting point is 00:09:05 basically tracking whether or not we reached out a second time. That's what I thought was just deleting it for the interviews, basically tracking whether or not we'd reached out a second time. That's what I thought I was deleting. It turns out that's the default thing on all of our calendar entries, which are all of our interviews, all of our ads, all of our shows. And I went to put in the music credit this afternoon. Everything was gone. Thank goodness, though, Notion has a revert to this date, this time feature which I was able to do and everything came back, but oh my god, what a

Starting point is 00:09:28 heart-racing moment, let me tell you. Thanks for listening. I'm Todd Mappin. See you tomorrow. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - Meta's "Marketing Experts" Are Back (and Worse Than Ever)

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