Today in Digital Marketing - Search and Destroy: The Imminent Threat to Google's Existence

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Friday, May 10th. Today, things are about to get real. AI is poised to take on the fight of its life Monday, and the battle could shape the future of search advertising forever. Also, the surprising price of virtual influencers. Google is planning to reveal your sales data to the public. And exactly how much brand damage have I done to this very podcast with the high ad frequency on the free feed? An expert weighs in.

Starting point is 00:00:33 I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Monday could be a pivotal day in the history of the Internet. Google's dominance as the de facto search engine for the world has been in place for decades now. And while competitors have arrived, Microsoft's Bing probably being the most notable, there really hasn't been a challenger big enough to shake Google off its perch.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Not a search engine anyway. Sure, AI is able to look stuff up on the web and give you a summary of what it finds. And sure, sometimes it even gets it right. But AIs, like ChatGPT, have never been a search engine in the true sense of the word. And industry analysts have said, if companies like OpenAI do manage to put an actual search engine together, that could have disastrous consequences for Google's entire business model. Well, if reports are true, that's what's about to happen.

Starting point is 00:01:30 Reuters quoting two sources saying that OpenAI will announce the launch of its AI-powered search engine on Monday. Both Bloomberg and The Information previously reported that OpenAI had been working on this. But does Google understand the significance? At a staff meeting recently, Google's head of search told employees, quote, OpenAI had been working on this. But does Google understand the significance? At a staff meeting recently, Google's head of search told employees, quote, people come to us because we're trusted. They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with, but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source, unquote.

Starting point is 00:02:02 Uh, okay. Sure, that was certainly the case in the earlier days of ChatGPT, but the engine is getting smarter with fewer hallucinations, and new models like Meta's Challenger are also jumping the industry forward. To be fair, that executive also told his team, it's not like life is going to be hunky-dory forever. Certainly not, especially when OpenAI has been actively hiring Google search engineers for months now.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Oh, and one more small kick in the teeth, OpenAI's rumored search engine launch Monday is scheduled just one day before Google's big I.O. conference. Quoting The Verge, quote, if OpenAI is planning to enter the search game on the eve of Google's I.O. event, then it's likely doing so to send a message, one that Google would do well to take seriously, given that chat GPT is one of the, if not the, fastest growing services the world has ever seen. Unquote.

Starting point is 00:03:01 And that'll bring us to today's trivia question. What was the first ever search engine? Was it Archie, Lycos, AltaVista, WebSearch, or Yahoo? I'll have the answer for you on Monday. Yesterday's trivia question, which was not a Walmart store format? Most people in the newsletter guessed the right answer, and that was Walmart Mega Center. You don't need to be in this business long to realize that picking the right influencer to rep your product could make a huge difference in sales.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Until now, there've really only been two choices, influencer or no influencer. Now though, marketers have another option, fake influencer, or perhaps more charitably, AI influencer. These aren't new. People my age might remember Max Headroom pitching Coca-Cola. It's true. More people are, as we Cocaologists say, catching the wave. Catch it if you can, can. Catch the wave. Coke. A great piece this morning in Digiday has the pros and cons of using a virtual ambassador in your marketing campaigns. Among the pros cited, more control over content, lower production cost, and perhaps for agencies, the biggest benefit, more flexible scheduling.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Quoting that Digiday piece, quote, virtual influencers aren't limited to the same 24-hour day as humans. Factor in that a typical human also has a schedule that gets filled up quickly and frustrations can mount up. I've managed human influencers for years, said one executive from an AI talent agency, and one obstacle I always kept bumping into was availability. There's nothing wrong with having a schedule. Everyone has one. But with a virtual influencer, they can do anything at any time, unquote. You might also think that a pro would be the cost of the AI talent, but that's not quite what it used to be.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Quote, whenever I quote for a human influencer versus our bot, again, this is quoting the AI talent executive, the bot is a lot higher because there's so much involved. And by that, he means his team of three, which includes two women alongside himself, one of whom acts as the bot's voice and the other, her body movements. The trio digitally map and build out the virtual influencer as though she were a real human, unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Other cons include a lack of authenticity or emotion. And the piece also discusses how AI influencers can drive human influencer rates down. One small note on the topic of AIs with emotion, in the coming weeks, watch for an interview I did with the author of several books and scientific papers on how marketers can teach emotion to their AI bots. Definitely an interesting, if slightly eerie conversation

Starting point is 00:05:43 that will be coming your way in a couple of weeks. The whole Digiday piece is worth a read, though. You'll find it on their site. Look for the post called Inside the Debate Among Marketers For and Against Virtual Influencers. From January through April this year, e-commerce spending in the U.S. rose 7% from the same period last year. The numbers from Adobe Analytics, which it should be noted can only measure those sites which use its measurement tools. This upward trend is expected to help push total online spending for the first half of the year over a half trillion dollars. Steady spending on electronics and clothing, along with a big rise in online grocery shopping led to this growth.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Electronics and clothing accounted for 34% of total online spending. Adobe says it's noticed that people are buying cheaper goods online because of inflation, particularly in personal care and electronics. Also, the buy now pay later option is becoming more popular, up about 12% over last year. Yesterday, we reported on Thread's plan to expose your post's view count publicly. Now, Google says it will do the same with your sales data, but not quite as drastically as it sounds. Some merchant center managers have been receiving emails from Google saying that search results might start showing how many people who searched for a product you sell went on to buy it from you.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Google said it would probably read something like, 1,000 shopped here recently. In that email, Google said, quote, we'll use your conversion data to create a customer history signal that highlights your online store's popularity to Google shoppers, helping build shopper confidence in your business, unquote. And in case you're thinking, wait, I actually don't want that. Google will provide an opt out in your settings.

Starting point is 00:07:38 It says it'll still use your data to power various annotations, but it won't display your exact number of conversions. An update on the story we did yesterday on the Apple ad. The company has apologized now for that ad, the one where dozens of creative tools are crushed into a thin iPad. Creatives took to social media to tell Apple they found the ad offensive to their profession. Apple told media that it agrees that the spot missed the mark. The ad was viewed by millions online. Plans to run it on TV have been scrapped. And finally, those of you on the free podcast feed have been sending us messages in the last couple of weeks about the high frequency in our ads. It's the same ads, mostly programmatic, I think, that are starting to get a little irritating. I get it. But I did wonder, after all, I'm a marketer like you,

Starting point is 00:08:36 how many ads can I, you know, get away with before people actually start leaving? On Monday, a deep dive interview with the author of a scientific paper on how marketers can exploit someone's personal attachment to a brand to mitigate the effects of high ad frequency. I asked him how much damage he thought I did to our brand with all these ads. Here's a clip. It depends on who it is that's listening to the ads. It's a relationship that you have with the brand. What if you're a big fan of BMW? Could you expose those people to an advertisement over and over and over, even if it's the same

Starting point is 00:09:15 ad, and not see what has been well-established by researchers and practitioners over about 40 or 50 years, this phenomenon called brand wear out. I want that number, though, because there's been other research, of course, on ad frequency. Some studies have found that high frequency helps people remember the message. There's some research that has found that repetition can make a claim more believable. But I guess what I'm asking is, what is the number? For a super fan, or the term you used is someone with high personal brand attachment. How many ads can I get away with in repetition? And when I'm looking at my meta ads manager, and it's reporting a frequency number of 11 over the course of, I don't

Starting point is 00:09:58 know, seven days, is that too many? Give me the magic number. The answer to that question and a whole lot more about the nitty gritty of combating the negative effects of high ad frequency on your targets. That is coming on Monday. And if you too hate high ad frequency, switch over to the premium podcast. Remember, it is on sale only until the end of this weekend. These are the last few days. It hardly ever goes on sale. It's 50% off.

Starting point is 00:10:22 That's five bucks a month. There's no annual lock in. There's no annual lock-in. There's no requirement to stick around. You will have that rate forever. Tap the link at the top of the show notes to take advantage of that or go to todayindigital.com slash half off. That will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of this e name-ic first nation on Vancouver Island. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Ad coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend. I'll be back Monday with that interview and Tuesday with the regular format. 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 - Search and Destroy: The Imminent Threat to Google's Existence

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