Today in Digital Marketing - The Fact Checkers Are Coming for Your Ad Creative

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Thursday, March 2nd. Today, the social media engagement you probably don't want. Fact-checkers commenting on your ad. Also, YouTube outlines its vision for video AI, while the FTC warns advertisers and platforms about promising too much for the technology. Media buyers are wary of chatbot ads, and Pinterest's new ad placement is coveted space indeed. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. So this is a weird one. You know, Twitter has this thing called community notes used to be called birdwatch. Basically, if someone posts a claim that's misleading or factually inaccurate, and that tweet picks up traction, a select group of users have the power

Starting point is 00:00:44 to add context notes to the bottom of the tweet. It's often seen in the U.S. on posts by politicians. It even corrected Elon Musk once. But now it might be coming after advertisers. The CEO of the media firm EZPR posted a screenshot on social media today showing that community notes corrected a claim made in a paid advertisement on Twitter. The ad was from the financial software firm Quicken. It read, don't borrow from the bank, borrow from yourself. Underneath, though, it read, readers added context they thought people might want to know. Home equity lines of credit do not allow someone to borrow from themselves rather than from a bank.

Starting point is 00:01:25 The money is loaned by a bank with home equity as collateral for the loan. This isn't the first time it's happened, but it's one of the few times it's happened with a major brand. Last year, someone spotted a promoted post claiming that Tesla's stock was crashing because the autonomous driving function wasn't safe. Immediately below was a detailed response, not posted by Elon Musk, but by this community notes feature. And let's not kid anyone, probably written by someone at Tesla.

Starting point is 00:01:55 It's also not the first platform to do this. Facebook's approach is to cover up the creative with a big blurred out screen reading false information. Imagine that on your next creative. Or maybe it's an opportunity. How long before someone designs an ad that looks like a platform corrected it, but was actually just part of the ad? And then would that correction tool

Starting point is 00:02:16 need to post a correction, indicating that the correction in the ad was a fake correction? And you thought AI was going to complicate things. YouTube's incoming CEO Neil Mohan outlined his vision for the platform yesterday, which includes a big push to, yes, generative AI, as Google remains under pressure to keep up with rivals like Microsoft and OpenAI. Some of the upcoming AI features are aimed squarely at influencers and will let them do things like virtually swap outfits

Starting point is 00:02:48 or create what Mohan called fantastical film settings in the coming months. They will also, though, continue to prioritize shorts, of course. In order to lure more brands and creators to the TikTok clone, Mohan says YouTube will be adding more remix options to shorts from longer clips and live streams.

Starting point is 00:03:06 He added that the platform will also be rolling out a creation tool this year that lets users record a short in a side-by-side layout with both shorts and YouTube videos, so they can add their own take on a trend or join in with reactions. Mohan also pointed to some upcoming updates for podcasts on YouTube. The platform will begin offering both audio and video-first podcasts to US users of YouTube Music this year. And later this year, RSS integration will let podcasters upload their shows to YouTube and give users more options for listening.

Starting point is 00:03:40 Finally, in terms of monetization, the incoming CEO noted that he wants to help creators make more money in order to keep them posting on the app. Besides ads, the company plans to provide on the generative AI bandwagon, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is warning advertisers of AI products not to make promises they can't keep. According to an FTC spokesperson, AI is a marketing term that can be misused and abused. The agency has cautioned businesses against making misleading claims about what their AI can do in their campaigns, as well as using the AI label to justify inflating prices or influencing labor decisions. To keep companies' AI claims in check, the FTC plans on creating a new department and increasing its tech staff.

Starting point is 00:04:41 Meanwhile, as AI finds its way into marketing, the tech is failing to impress consumers. More than half of U.S. adults prefer human-generated content across a broad range of media, according to a new survey from market research company Ipsos. Seven out of 10 consumers polled said they want to see human-produced content in news and photojournalism. For marketing websites, though, consumers are slightly more open to AI-generated content, but 6 out of 10 still prefer human-created content. It is true that everyone from software providers to social media platforms to search engines are trying to get in on the AI craze. Last week, we reported on how some AI generated answers from one search engine seem to have ads around them. And so far, media buyers

Starting point is 00:05:31 are lukewarm on the whole idea. Interesting piece up on adweek.com today that looks at why marketers are skeptical about AI chatbot advertising. For the most part, ad buyers remain unclear as to how the tech giants intend to monetize it all. There is uncertainty over when an ad might be served, as well as pricing, given that there would likely be fewer impressions for any given chat compared to a search query since conversational formats are more complex. There are other ways AI chat-driven search could lead to ads. One marketing executive noted that Bing's chatbot could include links that go to relevant Bing searches where users would then be served with ads. One marketing executive noted that Bing's chatbot could include links that go to relevant

Starting point is 00:06:05 Bing searches where users would then be served with ads. This technique, known as search arbitrage, has been employed by Ask.com and Yellow Pages. Media buyers are also mulling over what data Microsoft and Google will be able to access to power their technology. With chatbots, consumers will spend more time interacting with content on the search engine's site versus interacting with content once they click on a link, which could provide the tech giants and, in turn, advertisers with new data. Do you have business insurance?

Starting point is 00:06:41 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. From ads within our chatbot overlords to a flashy video ad format on Pinterest. The platform is currently testing

Starting point is 00:07:10 Premier Spotlight ads on its search page, which give advertisers premium placement for 24 hours. It shows as the background to the search screen and covers the top half of the screen real estate. Kohl's is the first brand to test out the new ad unit. Premier Spotlight ads feature a short video that plays overlaid by text with a button that takes you to the advertiser's website.

Starting point is 00:07:32 The site opens within the app and not as a separate tab. From there, Pinterest users can browse the retailer's product suggestions, search for other items, add items to their cart checkout, and so on. As Social Media Today points out, it's a very upfront ad option that will no doubt be popular with big advertisers, but may not be affordable for smaller brands.

Starting point is 00:07:54 The company has not yet released pricing for the ad unit. In response to privacy concerns, two former Facebook executives have launched a company called Anonym. Their company joins a growing list of businesses building technology to help brands measure ad performance without sharing individual user data. The Wall Street Journal today reporting that Anonym's first product, which launched yesterday, is a privacy-focused data attribution tool that lets advertisers measure which ads led users to install an app or make a purchase. The company uses encrypted datasets to tell advertisers how effective their ad campaigns were while maintaining user privacy. According to the report, these datasets include the ads displayed and the purchases made on advertisers' site. Anonym brings together two encrypted datasets in a secure environment

Starting point is 00:08:45 where they're unencrypted, then matched together to produce analytics that advertisers can use to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. A company executive said that no one, including Anonym itself, is able to access the data sets while they are in the secure environment. He added that the company also applies algorithms to ensure that the data can't be used for re-identification. As a result of Apple's app tracking transparency, Big Social is collectively moving from ads to direct user payments to replace lost revenue. While major social media platforms still don't have mandatory paywalls, they now offer items via in-app purchases. According to Apptopia, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter have grown quarterly in-app purchase revenue by 90% since Apple introduced ATT.

Starting point is 00:09:38 But TikTok is way ahead. Forbes reports that so far in 2023, TikTok has earned $205 million more than Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat combined from in-app purchases. Meanwhile, Facebook is fighting back. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a paid verification program. The company took in $56 million in in-app purchases last year. That was down from previous year's highs, but is starting to show improvement, particularly on Instagram. In February, Instagram generated nearly a million dollars in in-app revenue. But TikTok is the real winner. During the final quarter of 2022, the platform generated more than $350 million in in-app revenue. It reached just $150 million

Starting point is 00:10:26 during the same quarter the previous year. Quoting Forbes, it's important to note that in-app revenue is really only material for TikTok. Essentially, the small sums that Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snap are bringing via in-app purchase are rounding errors for those companies' overall revenues. However, the example that TikTok is setting shows Facebook and the other social networks that in-app payments and purchases are a very real and very significant revenue opportunity if they can make them work on their platforms.

Starting point is 00:11:01 And finally, behavioral marketing platform, Wunderkind announced today it has raised $76 million in a Series C round, bringing its total funding to more than $150 million. The company's CEO says the money will be put toward investing in product development, hiring, and ongoing market expansion. Thank you to the four or five people that showed up on my Twitch stream yesterday while I was playing Rainbow Six Siege and witnessed a horrible accident live on stream. I was playing this game where basically there are two teams. Our team was trying to protect a hostage. The other team is trying to get the hostage. And so I'm hunkered down in this room with the hostage trying to protect him. And it was a 1v3.

Starting point is 00:11:43 I was the only one left on my team alive, and there were three people coming in. And I accidentally shot the hostage. And that ended the match, and we lost. And because it was being livestreamed, I have a recording of it so it can live on in embarrassing infamy. And they're running in. They're running in. Radio. I know. Todd, shoot. Shoot.

Starting point is 00:12:07 No, not yet. Not yet. No pressure, no pressure. Oh, he's right there. He's popping out. No! Did you kill the fucking hostage? Oh my god. No.

Starting point is 00:12:23 Todd. Bro, it was a 1v3. I could only clutch once. So if you two want to watch some terrible video game playing, you can find me on Twitch. My username there, it's twitch.tv slash therealheels. That's the real, R-E-A-L, and heels spelled H-E-A-L-Z. There's also a link in the show notes. I'm taking a day off tomorrow, not only to recover from the trauma of that, but also for some family time. And so, as usual, our associate producer, the intrepid Stuffed Gun, will be with you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:12:53 And I will see you on Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Fact Checkers Are Coming for Your Ad Creative

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