Today in Digital Marketing - Meta's "Skateboard Over the Shoulder" Moment

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, September 25th. Today, is meta about to turn itself into a living meme? Shopify adds more big names to its partners list. If TikTok has the eyeballs, why doesn't it have the ad dollars? And Google has made a decision on rolling back its most recent search algorithm change. 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,

Starting point is 00:00:32 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. The American sitcom 30 Rock was known for great writing.

Starting point is 00:00:55 And in fact, it spawned one of the most popular memes that we know today. One that frequently gets used to mock marketing campaigns. It was episode 8, season six. Steve Buscemi is playing a private detective hired as a strike buster. It's a flashback scene where he's recalling what he thought was a successful attempt to go undercover in a high school. He approaches a bunch of teens dressed in every possible article of clothing that matches them. A backwards hat, a skateboard he carries over his shoulder, a t-shirt that sort of looks like the ACDC logo,

Starting point is 00:01:29 but if you actually look really close, it actually just says, Music Band. He walks up to the kids and says, How do you do, fellow kids? What? The entire scene only lasts about three seconds. And yet, How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? has become shorthand for older people

Starting point is 00:01:46 and brands trying a little too hard to capture the attention of a younger generation or a subculture. And that brings us to Meta, who is apparently about to grab a skateboard and sling it over its corporate shoulders. Reports say the company will announce this week that it's bringing AI chatbots to its apps similar to Snapchat's My AI Bot, where you can ask it questions, talk to it, that sort of thing. And if the intention is, as it surely must be, to appeal to younger people,

Starting point is 00:02:18 bring them back into the meta-fold, they're sure making some strange choices when it comes to these chatbots. One persona is called Bob the Robot, but it's a ripoff of Bender from Futurama. Internal testing so far has found that the AI, like the character, is sarcastic and sassy, but also occasionally is rude and unhelpful. The Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that one employee said, and cue the skateboard over the shoulder, quote, him being a sassy robot taps into the type of farcical humor that is resonating with young people, unquote. The journal notes that reducing humor down to

Starting point is 00:02:59 its basest qualities isn't always the best way to reach a different generation. But more than that, what shows do meta-marketing executives think that Gen Z are watching? Futurama aired between 1999 and 2003. Gen Z were toddlers. And sure, there's endless syndication repeats, but it's never been part of the cultural lexicon for that generation. Quoting the Wall Street Journal, meta also misses the mark on what Gen Z humor is, often absurdist, incredibly fast-moving anti-humor. It's supposed to be kind

Starting point is 00:03:31 of dumb, a far cry from the superior intellect, sharp wit, and biting sarcasm that Bob the Robot exemplifies. Which means the company is at risk of falling prey to young people's other favorite source of comedy, millennials who think they're funny, unquote. The other thing to consider is, why does everyone think that Gen Z wants to talk to AI bots in the first place? TikTok hosts thousands of videos about Snapchat's AI bot. The vast majority are mocking it or showing how much fun it is to try to break it. And they're not immune to concerns about how much personal data the bots are siphoning up in these conversations. Only 3.4% of Facebook users are between the ages of 13 and 17. On Instagram, that number is 8%.

Starting point is 00:04:20 Speaking of Snapchat's AI, that bot can tell you the weather, encourage you to spend time with friends, and now promote products. The company says it's brought Microsoft on board as an ads partner, and that will let marketers buy ads that can be inserted into its MyAI tool. Until now, it's been experimenting on its own. Back in May, Snap said it would test sponsored links in MyAI. Quoting the company, for example, if a user asked MyAI where to have dinner, the chatbot could reply with a link sponsored by a local restaurant or food delivery app.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Or if the user wanted suggestions for a weekend trip, MyAI could return a link from an airline or hotel. It could also recommend where to buy a product the user was inquiring about from a local retailer, unquote. So that's still there, but now it will be bringing Microsoft on board to sell some of those link suggestions. This is a compelling trend for marketers who have watched speculation that Google's search results

Starting point is 00:05:20 aren't keeping up to the pace of chatbots who can go out and fetch the answer to a question rather than a list of links that thinks might have the answer in them. One key to consumer trust will be the disclosure of these ads and how prominent that disclosure will be. Snapchat's announcement didn't reference that, though last week we reported that Microsoft's own new comparison table ads unit had a disclosure which was not at all prominent. This, of course, is another big win for Microsoft, which has positioned itself as not just a competitor to Google's ad business,

Starting point is 00:05:53 but in many ways, the anti-Google. Last year, Netflix picked Microsoft to power its new ad-supported tier. And if more people turn to chatbots to get answers to questions, this could be a huge arrow in a digital marketer's quiver. Shopify today announced it's launching an upgraded version of Shopify audiences. There are new integrations with Snap, Criteo, and TikTok. Those join their existing roster, that being Meta, Googleogle and Pinterest. They're also adding some new benchmarking that lets merchants compare the performance of their

Starting point is 00:06:29 campaigns to merchants like them. Quoting Shopify, say a merchant sells custom-made t-shirts. They're an apparel retailer, but that doesn't make them a high-end dress designer. With Shopify audience's new benchmarking tools, they can compare their campaign performance to similar merchants, not just any apparel retailer. This provides more relevant insights with a more apples to apples comparison, unquote. Shopify audiences is part of their plus upgrade, which is a paid program. You also have to use Shopify payments. The new audiences feature is currently only available in the United States and Canada. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber

Starting point is 00:07:15 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. Here's a stat not many people saw coming a few years ago. Insider Intelligence says that within two years, U.S. adults will spend more time on TikTok than on Facebook. The short-form video app is on track to become the largest social platform in total daily minutes by 2025. And while that's good news for TikTok, the ad dollars still favor Facebook. And not by a little. Insider says by 2025, they forecast that Facebook will bring in $1.02

Starting point is 00:08:08 per person per hour, while TikTok will bring in just 19 cents. And why? Comfort. Insider says media buyers are familiar with Meta's ad platform, so why shift if they're getting results? But Insider says that gap is closing,

Starting point is 00:08:27 quote, although it is many years away, TikTok's ad business is growing fast enough to eventually over-index against time spent the way Meta does. The rising time spent on TikTok could convince advertisers to invest more, unquote. Some people in the SEO community have been taken aback by the most recent core update of Google's search engine.

Starting point is 00:08:53 Google does these big sweeping algorithm changes it calls core updates every month or two. And each time, big changes happen to some websites. Some move way up in the listings, some way down. The majority more or less stay the same. Those who've moved way down have been calling on Google to revert the changes. Something Google says isn't going to happen. Google search engineer John Mueller said on social media that it's unlikely they'll roll it back. Quote, I don't really see a rollback happening. And I agree. It is sad to see people put their heart and passion into making something and not seeing long term results. But things can both be heart made and not as helpful as the makers want.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Unquote. Barry Schwartz at Essie Roundtable dot com, as usual, has some great analysis on this today. Quoting his piece, this rollout is going to stick and you won't see this being reverted. Again, this does not mean you won't recover when the next helpful content update rolls out, or if a core update rolls out, or another unconfirmed Google search ranking update rolls out. But this helpful content update is doing what Google wanted it to do for the most part. In fact, Google has not seen a Google ranking update where things went completely wrong, requiring a rollback, unquote. Samsung is rolling out new interactive ads for

Starting point is 00:10:16 its TVs through a partnership with Brightline. These new ad units are a branded trivia experience, a product carousel, polls, and dynamic creative, which lets you show local stores to someone watching in a specific region. These placements will show up on Samsung TVs in their smart user interface. Quoting Martech.org, traditionally TV ads have been a passive experience. If consumers take action, they do so on a second screen, usually with a phone in their hand. Smart TV operating systems are encouraging users to do more on the big screen, like making purchases and playing games. The resulting user data in this ecosystem drives better personalization, and new interactive ad units will make the experience more compelling for consumers. Unquote.

Starting point is 00:11:09 And finally, soon you might be able to listen to this very podcast in Spanish. It'll be me reading you the daily marketing news in Spanish every day. Oh, and also, I'll be doing it in German. And in French. Which is especially impressive considering I don't speak Spanish or German. And as an anglophone Canadian, I only know how to swear in French. And ask Jacques and Marie if they found the pencil in the library. This language translation, though, it's a real thing being worked on by Spotify's podcasting team.

Starting point is 00:11:43 The plan is to replicate a podcaster's voice to provide the content in a number of different languages. You're testing it right now in Spanish with a handful of podcasters, French and German, expected in the coming weeks. The first batch of these auto-translated episodes will come from podcasters like Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Friedman, Bill Simmons, and Stephen Bartlett. Here is a clip of what the AI voice sounds like. La siguiente es una conversación con Yuval Noah Harari, historiador, filósofo y autor de varios libros muy aclamados y altamente influyentes, incluidos Sapiens, Homo Deus y 21 lecciones para el siglo XXI. It's not entirely clear what tech they're using for this, though Spotify has partnered with OpenAI before. OpenAI also made a few announcements this morning, including the launch of a tool that can create, quote, human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech, unquote.

Starting point is 00:12:37 But don't expect this to be in your chat GPT interface anytime soon. The company says it's keeping this technology close to its chest for fear of being misused. Ah, tabernacle. Follow us on social media. We are on all the new and upcoming ones, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Threads, Pebble, and Spoutable. We're also on the OG platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Starting point is 00:13:09 You can find all of our links at todayindigital.com slash social or tap the link in the show notes. You can also find links to my personal accounts there, but honestly, it's just shitposting and cat videos. Thanks for listening. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow. Baby, your kind of trouble makes me late for work Makes me say an extra prayer Sunday at church That makes me laugh out loud when I think about

Starting point is 00:13:33 The night that we went skydiving in the country club pool That rave in the city we snuck into You're the wild side of me I don't want to be without. Boy, I know you're not an angel or the devil, but you're my kind of trouble. 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.

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Today in Digital Marketing - Meta's "Skateboard Over the Shoulder" Moment

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