Today in Digital Marketing - Problemattic.

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

The battle of WordPress escalates — and marketers are caught in the middle. The two powerhouses in B2B advertising. Amazon’s new AI shopping wingman. And those meeting notetaking bots are listening to more than you think they are..Today’s story links.📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us.GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • Cancel.MORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital🌟 Rate and Review Us🤝 Our Slack.UPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and Courses.Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate producer: Steph Gunn.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. It is Thursday, October 10th. Today, the battle of WordPress escalates and marketers are caught in the middle. The two powerhouses in B2B advertising, Amazon's new AI shopping wingman, and those meeting note-taking bots are listening to more than you think they are. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing. A fight between the head of WordPress,

which runs more than half the web, and one of its hosting partners is heating up. WordPress.org users, those are brands and people who use the popular self-hosted app, now need to pledge that they have no affiliation with the website hosting platform WP Engine before logging in. It shows up as a literal checkbox in the login screen. This move is part of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg's

ongoing feud with WP Engine, accusing the hosting platform of misusing the WordPress brand and not pulling its weight in the open source community. The checkbox on the login page asks users to confirm, quote, I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise, unquote. And if they don't check that box, they can't access the site. That's a big problem for brands that need to download updates, or developers who are building e-commerce tools for websites, or really anyone who needs to get in.

WP Engine is an independent platform that hosts WordPress-based sites, just like hundreds of others. WPMU, WPX, WP Webhost, WP Oven, Stagecoach, and many, many more. WordPress.org operates as an open-source project, while WordPress.com is the commercial arm owned by Automatic, which funds and contributes to developing the WordPress codebase. A few weeks ago, Mullenweg, who also co-founded Automatic, published a blog post labeling WP Engine as a, quote, cancer to WordPress, unquote. He accused the company of, quote, strip mining the WordPress ecosystem, unquote, and degrading user experience by disabling revision history all in the pursuit of higher profits.

WP Engine hit automatic with a cease and desist and automatic fired one back. Now, WP Engine is banned from using WordPress.org's resources and some contributors tied to the platform are reportedly getting booted from WordPress's community Slack for even asking about the issues. WordPress contributors who have been bystanders in this legal tussle until now are feeling the impact. One veteran contributor described the situation as chaos, noting uncertainty as Mullenweg is promising more surprises all week. When it comes to B2B ad dollars, LinkedIn and Meta are still calling the shots.

A new eMarketer forecast shows that B2B social ad spending will reach $8.5 billion this year, with LinkedIn and Meta capturing nearly 80% of that total. LinkedIn is expected to bring in $4.2 billion and Meta $2.9 billion in B2B ad revenues this year. LinkedIn, of course, continues to be the go-to platform for B2B advertisers. More than 9 out of 10 ads on LinkedIn target business-to-business audiences. It's projected to secure nearly half of B2B display ad spending and a quarter of all B2B digital ad spend in 2024, despite slowing growth. Meta, including Facebook and Instagram, ranks second in B2B social ad spend. Meta's B2B ad revenue growth is projected to slow to 14% this year, down from 25% last year.

Growth may be slowing, but its platforms remain effective for targeting new businesses and decision makers, and it'll still take 16% of B2B digital ad spending this year. Oh, and YouTube's in there as well. Their B2B ad revenues will also grow this year, driven by increasing demand for video content. The company's B2B ad revenues are expected to hit almost $300 million this year, a 12% increase compared to last year. Overall, B2B video advertising is expected to grow 14%, reaching $1.75 billion,

which will account for about one-tenth of overall digital ad spend. The robot overlords are here to make no shopper leave their virtual cart empty. Amazon yesterday launching a new AI tool called Shopping Guides, aimed at helping customers find products based on their specific needs by providing personalized product information and recommendations while they browse. These AI guides cover about a hundred product categories, including TVs, headphones, running shoes, skincare items, and so on, and include educational content as well as customer insights related to these products. For instance, selecting a guide for headphones gives you a curated list based on popularity, reviews, and price. Shoppers can filter results by brand, use case, like sports or gaming,

or connectivity type, like wired or wireless. These AI shopping guides will appear as autocomplete suggestions during searches or can be accessed directly from Amazon's homepage. Clicking on the Keep Shopping For card will also surface guides based on recent shopping activity. The user interface, though, appears to take up a lot more screen real estate space, and it's not clear yet if users can disable this feature. Shopping guides are now available in the U.S. on Amazon's mobile website and its apps for iOS and Android.

A couple of updates from Google. First, it announced yesterday it is expanding the store ratings feature beyond U.S. search. This update will now be available to searchers in Australia, Canada, India, and the U.K. Store ratings appear in shopping search results for products like Summer Dress. When users click on your store rating, they can view detailed information about your business, such as reviews, shipping, return policies, and more. Google is also testing verified badges for product listings in search results.

Back in August, there were reports that Google was testing verified badges and verification labels in organic search results. Now Google is testing these verification labels on detailed product result overlays specifically for retailer listings. When users hover over the badge, a message explains that Google's signals suggest the business is authentic, but it can't guarantee the reliability of that business or its products.

And that will bring us to the lightning round. Google Analytics has a new real-time or its products. The company says it's on track to become the most used AI assistant in the world. Those new countries are Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Paraguay, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. A new European regulatory body called Appeals Center Europe will be up and running by the end of the year. And the EU says this platform will manage disputes about post takedowns between European users and big social platforms. It'll start with Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, and it will add to that list over time. about post takedowns between European users and big social platforms. It'll start with Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, and it will add to that list over time. In the Brazil versus Elon battle, Elon has blinked. X is back online in Brazil after backing down and meeting the government's requests regarding content moderation.

And LinkedIn has introduced a new game to its stable, Tango, which is a kind of image-matching logic game. The company says more than three out of four users who play a game come back to play again within a week. 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.

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So imagine you show up to your Monday meeting, you participate for 10 minutes, and then you leave. Those people in that meeting might start talking about you now that you're gone, and the bot will dutifully send everyone a complete transcript after the meeting is formally over. Quoting the Fortune piece, quote, That happened to researcher and engineer Alex Bilzerian recently. He'd been on a Zoom meeting with a venture capital firm and otter.ai was used to record the call.

After the meeting, it automatically emailed him the transcript, which included hours of their private conversations afterward where they discussed intimate, confidential details about their business. The transcript showed that after Bilzerian had logged off, investors had discussed their firm's

quote, strategic failures and cooked metrics, unquote. So look through those setting screens, people. Make sure you know what's going out to whom. Or better yet, disable those automatic emails entirely, lest your boss learn what you really think of her kids. We have a new business pitch in the U.S. tomorrow that I have to fly down for, but rest assured, you will still get a show because our associate producer,

the intrepid Steph Gunn, will be here hosting In My Place. So she will see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening. This desire to lead in gumball innovation that would change everything forever. What we were trying to do was make the gumballs more orange. But what we did instead was open a rift in the space-time continuum, unleashing a godlike entity. You know, it happens.