Today in Digital Marketing - Reticulating Splines and Desalinizing Snorkels

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, September 6th. Today, the Google hack keeping negative reviews at the top of your business listing. Is TikTok preparing a standalone messaging app? Chrome's ad privacy notice seems a little fishy. And the AI company that secretly uses humans instead of AI. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. of AI. I'm Todd Maffin. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N.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. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. So you run a business.

Starting point is 00:01:30 A customer has a bad experience, and they leave a negative review. You reply to it, and that's it. A couple of days later, two good reviews come in, pushing that negative one down your Google business profile, and you rest easy, knowing that while the bad one isn't gone, at least it won't be at the top forever. Unless, that is, the disgruntled customer forces it there forever. Yes, it's possible. And Barry Schwartz from seroundtable.com reported on the hack today. Basically, anytime someone updates the text, even barely, Google considers it an updated review and jumps it to the top.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Barry quoted a post from his forums that reads, quote, I have a business owner with almost 800 reviews and a five star average who's in the middle of legal proceedings with a customer. Somehow that customer is able to refresh and bump his negative and aggressive review daily for several months. So it's tagged with new every day. I compared the text of the review yesterday to the bumped version today, and both are identical, unquote.

Starting point is 00:02:33 I should say that I was not able to replicate this. I found a four-star review that I wrote two years ago of a local dairy queen. I don't even know why I wrote it. The review just reads, reasonable. I updated that to add a period at the end, but did not see it bump to the top. Then again, my results might be different because I'm logged in or who knows. Barry, in his reporting of this this week, said, quote, supposedly, this is a thing that's been going on for years. And Google has no problem with these efforts. I get some businesses may

Starting point is 00:03:05 not be perfect all the time and negative reviews do happen, but there is a reason reviews are dated. In some cases, some really disgruntled customers have been leaving reviews and then coming back to that review every few months and updating the review to make sure that the review really sticks out as a sore thumb for that business owner, unquote. Joy Hawkins from the Sterling Sky local SEO agency in Toronto says she approached Google when she first learned about this two and a half years ago, and they told her the practice doesn't violate their guidelines. As such, there's really no recourse for the business owner. We reached out to Google this morning for comment and did not hear back by deadline. line, many consumers are starting to cycle through them. Buy Netflix for a month, chain smoke

Starting point is 00:04:05 everything there, cancel, sign up to Disney Plus for a month, chain smoke everything there, cancel, and on to the next ones. For the managers behind these platforms, it means a crazy high churn rate. In fact, the past year's average churn rate across streamers in the U.S. was 47%. But one streamer thinks it has a marketing solution out of this. A very basic OG marketing solution, email. Peacock, that's the NBC service, sends its customers between three and five emails each week, depending on how much they watch. As of June, Peacock had 24 million paying subscribers. But is it working? Quoting a great piece up on marketingbrew.com today, quote, blasting users with email messages may sound less sexy than the sophisticated algorithms that streamers promise will serve

Starting point is 00:04:57 up perfectly timed and personalized programming recommendations. But at Peacock, at least, email seems to have a big effect on churn reduction and conversion rates. Late last year, an email campaign in which more than 40 million users received year-in-review breakdowns of their viewing activity on Peacock translated to a 20% reduction in churn rate among paid subscribers in a 30-day period, as well as a 6% higher upgrade rate for free users who moved into Peacock's paid tier. More broadly, every single premium subscription streamer saw churn rates in June increase compared to the year prior, with the exception of Peacock, which saw churn rates decline more than 2%, unquote. It is, of course, more complicated a setup than a MailChimp account. Peacock has more than 500 different segments based on how much people watch, how long they've been watching, what device they watch on, and so on.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Each segment gets different recommendations. The marketing team there watches open rates but doesn't really care too much about click-through, since the conversion event they care about happens on TV screens or devices separate from where people check their email. So then how do they track all of this? They measure the seven-day lift on viewership of individual shows that are mentioned in the emails, as well as any viewership increase overall among those who got emails. Peacock says it consistently sees double-digit lifts on both. But while the emails may be personalized, they don't want them to sound too personalized. One Peacock executive telling Marketing Brew, quote,

Starting point is 00:06:33 We don't tell you specifically you watched Yellowstone, for instance. We kind of stuck to a higher level, with genre and your viewing activity outside of the actual content, unquote. Peacock is phasing out its free tier and has raised the prices of its premium tiers. Yesterday, we reported on a seismic shift happening with young people. Fewer are posting to social media feeds and instead are posting to private Discord communities, a handful of selected Snapchat friends, or group DMs instead. Today, we learned that TikTok is moving quickly to bulk up its messaging functionality.

Starting point is 00:07:11 TikTok does have messaging already. It's a kind of basic DM system. But Axios this week found job listings suggesting the platform is working on a much deeper system called TikTok Social. In fact, it might even become a standalone app. Quoting The Verge, if there is a specific overarching product plan, TikTok's listings don't reveal it. Neither will the company. It told Axios only that entertainment is still the core of TikTok.

Starting point is 00:07:38 But the listing for a backend software engineer says that the social team oversees, quote, user profile, story, inbox, messaging, follow, like, comment, tag, etc., unquote. Add all that together and you have a messaging app, an extremely Instagram sounding messaging app at that, unquote. Instagram, too, is working on capitalizing this, rolling out a new option to share feed posts with close friends only. Only some users can see it, but it shows up as a new audience selector within the post creation workflow. If this sounds familiar, it's because they added this almost five years ago, but only for stories, not feed posts.

Starting point is 00:08:16 Instagram's tried variations of private sharing before, suggesting people private their whole account, adding close friends to reels and notes, and the bizarre and seemingly against policy recommendation to just create multiple accounts for yourself. But this is the first time feed posts have felt a little more, dare I say it, Snapchatty? Instagram's head has repeatedly said that their users now share more content via DMs than they do in feed posts or even stories. One more brief Instagram update while we're here. Some users are now able to add a location tag to their notes searches. Notes, if you're not familiar, are short messages that appear on your profile and last

Starting point is 00:08:56 for 24 hours. Instagram launched these last December. Younger people especially seem to respond, so Instagram added audio clips to notes, then song highlights. This is just in testing for now with a small group of users. Google is under fire this week for what appears to be a somewhat sneaky attempt at dark patterning consumer approval of ad targeting. As you might know, Google's been rolling out what it calls enhanced ad privacy, but a more accurate product name could be enhanced ad permissions. Since unless users opt out, it will let websites target them with personalized ads based on their browser histories. For the last few weeks, people have reported seeing a pop-up box asking them to

Starting point is 00:09:42 confirm that they want to stay opted in. But the wording on that pop-up box asking them to confirm that they want to stay opted in, but the wording on that pop-up box does not at all make it clear that confirming means personalized ads. The message shows up in Chrome with the headline, Enhanced Ad Privacy, and reads, We're launching new privacy features that give you more choice over the ads you see. There are two buttons to clear that pop-up. And you might expect to see Accept and Reject, or Opt-in and Opt-out. But instead, the Opt-in button reads, Got it!

Starting point is 00:10:13 Which, everywhere else on the web, is used to confirm you've read something, not to confirm a big change to your account. The other button, the one presumably meant for people who don't want to have personalized ad, is just as vague. It reads settings. This is all part of Google's move to its replacement for third-party cookies, a replacement it calls topics. Basically, topics watches the sites people go to and puts them into general topics buckets. So for example,

Starting point is 00:10:40 this guy likes sports, she likes mechanics, he likes flowers, and so on. Websites, it should be noted, can ask Chrome what topics someone likes when they arrive on their site. Quoting TheRegister.com, quote, some people presented with the notification of the new regime complain it's a dark pattern, as Chrome users may think they're accepting or enabling enhanced privacy from ads when, in actual fact, the Topics API is already enabled and will remain enabled and has to be disabled in the browser's settings. That is to say, the pop-up is a notice that you've been opted in, with a little link to your settings to disable the tech if you so wish. Google has offered repeated reassurances that its Topics API does not allow companies to identify those

Starting point is 00:11:25 whose interests inform its ad API, but some developers claim Topics may be useful for browser fingerprinting, and both Apple and Mozilla have said they won't adopt Topics due to privacy concerns, unquote. Of course, from a marketing point of view, the fewer people who opt out, the better our results. Google may, in fact, be aware of the dark pattern concerns. Another test spotted the headline, turn on an ad privacy feature with the buttons, no thanks or turn it on. This is likely a test for the European market, given its more stringent recommendations. But again, turning this on does not give the user privacy. In fact,

Starting point is 00:12:05 it reveals information about their browsing habits. 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. 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. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:13:05 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N.C-A. YouTube today announced two changes to its ad options. Starting in November, they will be removing individual ad controls for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on newly uploaded videos. Once it rolls out, when creators turn ads on, viewers might see any of these ad formats. This is, of course, an AI thing, the platform intending to match the consumer to their preferred format. Channel managers probably won't like it since it removes some control over which ad formats are shown. This change will only

Starting point is 00:13:45 apply to new uploads. All previously uploaded videos will retain their existing ad format selections unless a video's monetization settings is edited in the future. Creators will still be able to turn mid-rolls on or off. Speaking of mid-rolls, they're also letting channel owners push mid-rolls at set intervals during a live stream. Before an ad appears in the live control room, you will see a 60-second countdown with the option to skip the ad. They say they'll soon add a new Delay Ads button to delay mid-rolls and live display ads from appearing for 10 minutes. If an ad is skipped or delayed, the new Insert Ads button can be used to manually insert a mid-roll at any time. And that will bring us to the lightning round.

Starting point is 00:14:34 A new study says despite the rise in podcasts, terrestrial radio still dominates in-car listening. Research from Westwood One shows that 60% of all in-car tuning is to AM and FM radio. Google Ads has updated its emails to now include customer IDs. This change addresses a long-standing user request, making it easier for advertisers to manage their campaigns. Ad spending in the U.S. is stabilizing after the pandemic. a 5% growth rate is expected, which mirrors trends from before the pandemic. A new survey reveals that more than half of B2B marketers have seen an increase in their budgets this year. Many feel the funding is still insufficient for their needs. And Google has introduced a new URL Contains targeting feature for its Performance Max

Starting point is 00:15:22 campaigns. Links to the full details of these lightning round stories are in today's free newsletter, which you can sign up to by going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tapping the link in the show notes. And finally, has this happened to you yet? You hire a copywriter and the copy they come up with is, I don't know, effusive? Overdone? You run it through a generative AI detector, and yep, they chat GPT'd that. It's happening more and more.

Starting point is 00:15:59 Brands and agencies hiring artists and writers and researchers, and those people just farming it out to AI. But one company is being accused of doing the opposite. Promising AI, but delivering human creations. 404 Media Today reported on a design company called Kadim, which turns 2D illustrations into 3D models. While the company does say it uses humans for quality control, 404 Media Today reports one of their sources told them, at one point, humans made the whole 3D design by hand with no help from AI. Quoting 404 Media's story, the news pulls back the curtain on a hyped startup and is an example of how AI companies can sometimes overstate the capabilities of their technology.

Starting point is 00:16:41 What Kadem's artificial intelligence produced was of such low quality that at one point in time, it would just be an unrecognizable blob or something instead of a tree, for example, unquote. A recent job listing for the company said it needed people who are able to produce low quality 3D assets from 2D images 15 minutes after they are requested. 15 minutes! That's plausible delay time for AI, isn't it? Like, the engine is generating your models now, please wait. It kind of reminds me of how the video game The Sims starts up. To keep you entertained, it cycles through a series of fake but data-heavy sounding status updates like reticulating splines and desalinizing snorkels. In one particularly sad example of how do you do

Starting point is 00:17:31 fellow kids, if you had the teen expansion on, it would say, like, reticulating splines, dude. 404 Media found LinkedIn profiles for KDM workers in Argentina, England, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Greece, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Greece, the Czech Republic, Colombia, and Spain. These people listed their title as quality assurance or quality control. Remember yesterday, I was so excited that Starfield was coming out today. It actually came out yesterday at five o'clock. So my 16 year old nephew and I share a discord server and he alerted me to that just as I was putting this show out. So that's what I did last night.

Starting point is 00:18:10 That's what I'm going to do right now. Bye. Playing one looking for player two. Giving my last quarter to you. I hope you like my character. It shows me. Got the high score but never play with a trophy. The game starts with special move unlock.

Starting point is 00:18:23 Punch kick combo got through my block. Give you my hearts if you get hit. Diamond blocks craft with a trophy. The game starts, your special move unlocked. Punch, kick, combo, got through my block. Give you my hearts if you get hit. Diamond blocks, crack you a necklace. Oh, you the apple in my pixel. Intelligent,

Starting point is 00:18:33 far from artificial. Flying up a cut, I'm on the ground.

Today in Digital Marketing - Reticulating Splines and Desalinizing Snorkels

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