Today in Digital Marketing - My Only Regret Is That I Have... Boneitis

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:52 Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It is Wednesday, September 27th. Today, better late than never, Meta jumps into the AI party. We have extended coverage. Also, YouTube will let ads appear on controversial videos. The three biggest mistakes that advertisers are making on the Google Ads platform this year, they are not what you think they are. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Meta held its annual conference today and reiterated its belief that the next big thing is NFT. Oh, I'm sorry. Hang on. I've got it right in the back. It's the metaverse. No. Oh, I'm sorry. Hang on. I've got it right. It's the metaverse. No. Oh, here it is. It's AI. AI, of course, the topic which has captured the hearts and wallets of the tech bros. And Meta has joined the club with a whole pool of announcements. And we have them here for you.

Starting point is 00:01:58 First, and this probably won't surprise anyone, more generative AI is coming to its apps. Instagram will get something called restyle, where you can type in something like watercolor or magazine collage, and it will change your uploaded image to that style. It'll also get a backdrop feature that will let you upload a photo, then have the tool surround you with puppies if you so desire. And if that sounds familiar, it's because it's similar to YouTube's announcement a week or two ago, which will auto generate a background for your video shorts. They call that dream screen. Meta said it will indicate to viewers that AI was used, at least in part, though they're still working on whether that's a label or some other kind of indicator.

Starting point is 00:02:38 TikTok already has some AI content labels in place. YouTube is still figuring it out. Meta is also planning stickers that you can create by just typing out something specific. So if you want a sticker of a unicorn birthday cake, just type that and it will generate four options. We have examples of what all these look like in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to by tapping the link in the show notes. These stickers can then be slapped onto Facebook stories, Instagram stories, and DMs within Messenger and WhatsApp. Don't go looking for it yet, though.

Starting point is 00:03:08 This will start to roll out in the next month, starting with a small group first. Second, Meta has entered the chatbot wars. It plans to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's BingChat, and Google's BARD. But rather than being a website to go to, Meta's will be built into their messaging products in Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It will be free to use, and they will have a partnership with Bing to be able to pull in real-time data, something that ChatGP charges for. Also, Meta has licensed the likeness of a whole whack of celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton. There are 28 of these AI bots in total. Meta calls them, somewhat creepily, embodiments.

Starting point is 00:03:52 Others are theme-based, like an AI chef and an AI travel agent. On the marketing side, Meta is launching a platform that will let you build chatbots for your own brand and drop them into the message apps. They call it AI Studio and expect brands will use it to connect with consumers and maybe even handle customer service experiences. It is awfully similar to their one-time obsession of bots on Messenger seven years ago, which in fact ended up being a little more than simple data collection forms. They spent months hyping the tools,

Starting point is 00:04:30 the API, the customer experience, all to basically abandon it a couple of years later. It's hard to say what level of commitment Meta will have with this shiny new AI polish on message bots. But you just have to ask the brands who invested heavily in Zuckerberg's promise that the metaverse was going to be the next big thing to get an educated guess on what the future might hold. Then again, this technology has more of a track record than the message bots did. And one important feature of that track record, monetization. Other apps like Snapchat has proven that people will pay for add-ons that include AI chatbots. Oh, incidentally, a bit of a side note here. Snapchat this week announced it is closing its Enterprise AR tool.

Starting point is 00:05:09 This tool was only announced back in March of this year. It let brands design augmented reality try-on features. Snap's CEO told employees in an internal memo, quote, the advent of generative AI has made it easier for companies of all sizes to create try-on experiences for their customers and made it harder for us to differentiate our offering, unquote. Meta's AI studio is, for now, just an announcement. Don't expect to see it in the real world until next year. One other addition to its new message bots is users will be able to ask it to generate an image right from that chat. It's similar to Midjourney in Discord.

Starting point is 00:05:45 If you've used that, you type slash imagine and then your prompt. This too will be free to use. A company executive would not tell media what data the model had been trained on, but apparently it's not trained on data uploaded by users to Instagram and Facebook. At least for now. The Verge reported today that's probably coming, though. The executive from Meta said, quote, We see a long roadmap for us to tie in some of our own social integrations. Quoting from The Verge, It's clear that the company sees its unrivaled distribution, billions of daily users across its messaging apps, as a key competitive edge against chat GPT and others. OpenAI may have kickstarted the chatbot race, but given Meta's immense scale through its social

Starting point is 00:06:31 networks, its assistant may actually be the AI that most people use for the first time. Unquote. There is other news today, so we turn now to YouTube, which has long held a policy that certain video topics aren't monetizable. Create a video about abortion, for instance, and it's entirely likely that video will get monetization turned off. In other words, no ads can run alongside it. The idea, of course, is that advertisers don't want their brand names beside content like abortion and firearms and sexual assault. But now, that's changing. YouTube yesterday updated its rules around controversial issues,

Starting point is 00:07:14 and now, ads can run alongside topics that used to be protected as long as that content isn't unusually graphic. This is widely seen as a response to creators, which have said that YouTube applies those brushstrokes too broadly, that a video discussing gun policy in the U.S. isn't the same as one showing a 14-year-old wildly shooting in the air while drunk. They're both firearms videos, but they're completely different in tone and should be treated differently. Quoting YouTube's announcement today, quote, content which discusses these topics without going into graphic detail

Starting point is 00:07:48 can fully monetize. We know that videos covering topics like these can be a helpful resource to users, so we want to ensure that, wherever possible, controversial issues discussed in a non-descriptive and non-graphic way aren't disincentivized

Starting point is 00:08:04 through demonetization, unquote. But YouTube also clamped down on one particular topic, eating disorders, making it more restricted and said it will no longer let ads run alongside videos that share information around binging or hoarding food or abusing laxatives. All of this, of course, a mostly net positive for marketers by loosening up the guidelines on content available for advertising while still keeping the really egregious ones out of the pool. That opens up inventory, which generally lowers the advertising cost.

Starting point is 00:08:39 We have the complete list along with links to full descriptions of each of these in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to by going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tapping the link in the show notes. Next time you ask your customers for a review in exchange for a discount, you might end up on a new named and shamed list on Yelp. The company publishing a web page this week with the names of businesses it says it caught trying to incentivize customers for reviewing their restaurant or organization. The page lists the name of the business, the location, and then a link ominously titled, view the evidence here. One such piece of evidence was a screenshot of a messenger conversation between a Korean barbecue restaurant and presumably an influencer.

Starting point is 00:09:31 That message reads, Hi, hoping all is well. We recently opened up our hot pot and barbecue here and we want to invite you to come in and eat with a plus one and we will comp your entire bill of course. In return, we're asking for a real post, R-E-E-L, on your Instagram, a one story post to help our business, and a Yelp review based on your experience, unquote. This was a private message, so you might wonder, how did Yelp get its hands on it? Well, a note at the top says, quote, a user sent us the below image of the offer, unquote, suggesting that the influencer narked the business out. But wait a minute. Nowhere in that message did the business owners say they'd comp their bill for a five-star review or even a good review. They just said a Yelp review based on your experience.

Starting point is 00:10:26 Another example was from a tanning salon, which posted this text as an Instagram story. If you've been tanned by me, can you please help me out and leave me a review? $5 off your next tan, unquote. Again, only asking for a review, not a good one. To be fair,

Starting point is 00:10:49 Yelp's policy extends to asking for any kind of review, not just good ones. Quoting from that policy, don't ask anyone to review your business, be it customers, mailing list subscribers, friends, family, etc. Don't ask for reviews after requesting customer feedback in other places like surveys or contact forms. Don't offer freebies, discounts, or payment in exchange for reviews. It will turn off savvy consumers and may also be illegal. For the same reason, you can't offer incentives for users to remove reviews. Your best bet to get positive, unbiased reviews about your business is by providing a high

Starting point is 00:11:21 quality, memorable customer experience without any expectation or encouragement of a review in return, unquote. This is something I'm not sure most marketers realize. Certainly, we all know about not asking customers for five star reviews, if not the actual policy, at least basic common sense. But how many realize they're in violation of this broad policy of don't ask anyone for a review at any time for any reason? I'll bet not many. Google's policy is probably closer to what most marketers would expect. Their local guides policy on deceptive content and behavior notes that it's against guidelines for a business to, quote, pay, incentivize, or encourage the posting of content that does not represent a genuine experience, unquote.

Starting point is 00:12:12 That presumably allows for incentivizing reviews which are fair and accurate, a genuine experience in Google's terms. Yelp says it has published notices of paid review attempts on nearly 5,000 businesses. Oh, and there are other naughty lists it's publishing as well, including a list of businesses where a bunch of positive reviews all came from the same IP address. They also put a pop-up calling it out on top of that business's profile. 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.

Starting point is 00:12:52 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. It gives you some insights on campaign building, some talking points about Snapchat's offering, help with its ad products. You can try it out at SnapchatAgencyAdventure.com. There are actually four mini games in it. Each highlights a stage in the pitch process from the brief to the team brainstorm to building the deck and, of course, the final presentation. Snapchat says there are also some Easter eggs thrown in there.

Starting point is 00:13:43 Gamers, you know what I mean by that. A hidden augmented reality bonus game is one of them. There are also points involved, which means there's a scoreboard. And Snapchat says, as long as your agency is an official Snapchat partner, you can show up on the leaderboard. In the end, you get a pretty decently fleshed out sample strategy for the app with client goals and tactics. That strategy is in all caps using Comic Sans font. Back to brand safety for a moment in news today that X, formerly known as Twitter, has dramatically cut back on the team responsible for limiting misinformation and election fraud. Media reports

Starting point is 00:14:26 say about half the team which was left in that division was fired on Friday. And there were only eight people left after Elon Musk's previous layoffs. Now, there's just four. It wasn't even a month ago when X said it would expand the team. At the time, it said it would hire a civic integrity and elections lead and hire people focused on information integrity. It's not clear what the status of those hiring plans is now. One of those laid off was a team lead in Europe. The information reports that he'd actually been suspended recently for clicking like on a post critical of management at X, the app which says it's devoted to free speech, on Monday the European Commission released a report finding that X had the highest amount of misinformation

Starting point is 00:15:10 than any other major social media platform. Quoting from the information, The perception that brand safety on X has declined has also hurt its ad revenue, which has fallen 60% in the U.S, Musk tweeted recently. Advertisers are typically leery of running ads next to content that can be deemed misinformation or toxic in other ways, unquote. Also, an Australian organization this week has written X's Management demanding answers to why the social platform appears to have straight up removed the ability to even report false information. The reporting menu on posts had things like spam, suicide, self-harm, violence,

Starting point is 00:15:54 and so on. But false information is no longer on that list of things users can flag for action. And one brief note, X is working on a way to restrict who can reply to your posts. Right now, you can make it anyone or just people you follow or just people you mention. An app researcher has found code showing that soon they will let you set your posts to only accept replies from accounts which are paying for the blue checkmark. And finally, there was a time when Google was good. Remember? It wasn't even that long ago.

Starting point is 00:16:30 You could type something in like, what is Bonitas? And it would give you back a list of links. Up top was usually a link to the wiki for the cartoon TV show Futurama, along with a list of videos from the show. That made it immediately apparent that Bonitas is a fictional condition created by the show writers. But now, powered by the magic that is snippets, the sorcery that is AI, can we achieve even better results? Nay, dare I say, even more accurate?

Starting point is 00:17:00 Perhaps a clear statement at the top saying, bonitis is a fictional disease which was parodied in a TV cartoon. No friends, we cannot say that. Because Google, in all its newfound knowledge and intellect, is now responding to some searches for, what is Bonitis, as if it were a real world disease. One Mastodon user today posted a screenshot of their search. Google's reply at the very top of the screen above all other links read, quote, Bonitis is a severe bone disease that is fatal if uncured or untreated. At first, it is barely noticeable, but the bones of the affected person will eventually suddenly twist and break. It has been known since at least the 1980s, unquote.

Starting point is 00:17:46 Again, at the very top of the results page. And where did Google get that information from? Turns out the text is a word-for-word lift from a Reddit comment nearly a decade old now. What's even more remarkable is that Google didn't even pick the top comment from that Reddit post. The top comment, as it turns out,

Starting point is 00:18:10 is actually completely accurate. It reads, quote, Bonitis is a fake disease from the show Futurama. A one-off character from an episode had the disease and was cryogenically frozen until they found a cure. More than a thousand years later, he is unfrozen, a cure for the disease being known. However, he spends so much time being a money-hungry,

Starting point is 00:18:30 aggressive 80s guy that he forgets to cure it and dies. His final words are, My only regret is that I have bonitis. When we searched Google for what is bonitis, we got a different and somehow an even more inaccurate answer at the very top above everything else. Here's what ours read, quote, medical information. Assuming the same terminology exists in the 31st century, bonitis means inflamed bones, itis meaning inflammation, and bone

Starting point is 00:19:07 meaning of the bones. Bonitis seems to be an extreme and accelerated form of rheumatism. The photo beside the text, by the way, was a screenshot from the Futurama show. By the way, we also asked all the

Starting point is 00:19:23 major AI chatbots the question. All of them, Bing, GPT-3, GPT-4, and BARD, confirmed that the condition was fictional. And who said the chatbots would never dethrone Google? This music kind of sounds like I'm about to start an episode of Serial, doesn't it? Do you remember that opening of Serial? It sounded just like this. This is a Global Tell Link prepaid call from... Adnan Sayed. By the way, if you have somehow never listened to that podcast series before, it was the OG.

Starting point is 00:20:05 It was the breakout. Serial, season one, highly recommended. Anyway, that's it for now. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Welcome to your night. Now, why don't you come home?

Starting point is 00:20:21 I've been waiting for you. Now the fun can begin. The devil's in the detail. Don't worry, it won't hurt Suppose I leave your eyes to last So you can watch me work

Today in Digital Marketing - My Only Regret Is That I Have... Boneitis

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