Today in Digital Marketing - The Latest Victim of AI: Lookalike Audiences

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, January 23rd. Today, LinkedIn is the latest platform to pull a popular ad targeting tool. Google's chatbot will create a whole campaign out of just your website address. And TikTok has a nice update for us aging executives. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. 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

Starting point is 00:00:35 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. LinkedIn is discontinuing lookalike audiences, a tool used by advertisers to reach potential customers who resemble their existing customer base.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Lookalikes work by you uploading a list of your customers from your own email list or CRM or store records, and the platform tries to find people similar. Lookalikes will be dropped on February 29th. Once they're gone, you won't be able to create or edit these audiences, but they will still work as static assets for your existing campaigns. Lookalike audiences have been a valuable tool for advertisers, but like all our favorite toys these days, AI is slowly taking their space. LinkedIn offers two options for you. One is predictive audiences, which is sort of like lookalike audiences, but relies more heavily on data sourced directly from LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:01:39 This includes information from LinkedIn's lead gen forms, contact lists, and conversion data from the insight tag. Another option is audience expansion, which targets users with interests related to your campaign. For instance, targeting members skilled in online advertising could expand to include those with interactive marketing skills, in theory, uncovering new prospects. headlines for your ads, it finds site links you might want to include, and so on. It'll be rolling out to other countries in the next few weeks, but for the time being, only to English language advertisers. How this AI differs from some previous releases is it can handle much more of the campaign creation. All you need to start is your website URL. From there, the AI will generate relevant ad content, including creatives and

Starting point is 00:02:45 keywords. Google claims small business advertisers that use this tool are 42% more likely to publish search campaigns with good or excellent ad strength. What it doesn't do, for now, are photos. Quoting Marketing Dive, quote, in response to advertiser concerns about creating images for campaigns, Google will add over the coming months a capability for the conversational experience to suggest images using generative AI and images from landing pages. All images created with generative AI in Google ads will be invisibly watermarked with Synth ID and will include metadata to indicate that it was generated with the technology, which still faces concerns about transparency, unquote. So while Google giveth, Google also is thinking about taking away if you break the rules. The company is now sending emails to website publishers and

Starting point is 00:03:45 mobile app developers warning them to be in line with the GDPR user consent policy or Google might suspend your ad account. As for who needs to deal with this, all advertisers who want to show personalized ads to consumers in the European economic Area. That includes advertisers based outside the EEA. If you are using consent mode and working with a Google consent management platform, you don't have to do anything. If you're using Google's APIs or SDKs to share audience data, you need to upgrade to the latest versions.

Starting point is 00:04:20 If you're not using consent mode at all, Google recommends you start. The GDPR consent policy requires advertisers to get user consent to use cookies and disclose each third party that might end up with users' data. You most often see this in those cookie consent banners at the bottom of webpages. You have until March of this year to get it all done. We have a link to all sorts of detailed information about this in today's email newsletter, which is free. You can subscribe at todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tap the link near the top of the show notes.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Meanwhile, Google is also testing a new box that would show up in local search results called Nearby Events and Deals. It has four tiles, a post title, a brand name, and your average review rating. That is you as the brand, of course. Clicking one of the posts will load that post or deal in full screen along with a map and some additional text.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Quoting Search Engine Land, quote, the new SERP feature, which is only visible for local searches on mobile devices, displays Google Business Profile posts promoting deals and events from nearby businesses. This offers a chance for local businesses to boost conversions. To make the most of it, you should regularly post and optimize content on your GMB profile to increase the likelihood of your brand's events and deals ranking higher. Honestly, brands don't use GBP posts that much. They're sort of like YouTube community posts in that the format exists, but it's kind of bolted on the side of an otherwise completely different system.

Starting point is 00:05:56 So it's nice to see more integration here. Also, remember, when platforms test things like this, there aren't many brands trying it out. So you may have less competition in that space. And finally, fellow middle-aged people rejoice. TikTok is rolling out a way to adjust the text size in the app. You will find it in settings, and it affects the system text. So the captions, the account name, the button labels, and so on.

Starting point is 00:06:23 It will not change any text that's been burned onto the videos, as is common on TikTok videos. If you don't see this in your app, you may need to update it. Also with TikTok, NPR this week reported the company's cut about 60 jobs, mostly in sales and advertising. Follow us on social media. We are almost everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Post.News, Spoutable, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Go to todayindigital.com slash social or tap the link at the top of the show notes. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:07:00 Thank you for listening. I'll see you tomorrow. 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.

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Today in Digital Marketing - The Latest Victim of AI: Lookalike Audiences

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