Today in Digital Marketing - The Machine Learning Will Continue Until Morale Improve

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Meta's new retargeting will cost you how AI is ratting out influencer ads, why you can ignore toxic SEO links, Snapchat's new e-commerce partnership, and YouTube finally launches the analytics we've all been waiting for. It's Friday, May 20th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Meta is making it even easier for you to slide into your customers DMs. Yesterday, the company announced recurring notifications. This is an update to the messenger

Starting point is 00:00:32 API that lets businesses send proactive automated messages to customers who have opted in to receive them. With the feature, brands deliver customized messaging at a specific time to their consumers. Things like product recommendations, newsletters, sales promotions, discount codes, that sort of thing. This is a new optional and premium feature that the company intends to charge businesses for in the future. It is currently available for all businesses using Messenger platform as part of a free trial period. Meta also noted that the feature for businesses will be headed to Instagram in the fall, and developers can sign up now for its beta interest list. One advantage of influencer marketing is that it may not always seem like an advertisement.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Well, the UK Advertising Standards Authority now intends to put some ropes around that marketing strategy. The ASA has announced a project that uses artificial intelligence to identify Instagram stories posted by influencers that do not clearly disclose their content is an ad. To identify potential ads in posts, machine learning algorithms are used alongside image recognition and natural language processing techniques, and they're used to categorize influencer posts. It also searches for possible ad labels to identify content that might be an ad but is not clearly labeled. As a result, the ASA monitors dozens of high-risk influencers every week, and so far, more than 80,000 Instagram stories have been analyzed for noncompliance since the project began, with around 20,000 captured every month. The company is working to enhance this process by tracking what influencers are talking about and analyzing trends in tagging and mentions, and your brand could pay the price.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Quoting the ASA, We are also ramping up our monitoring of companies who partner with influencers and are holding them to account. Repeat offenders who are unwilling or unable to follow the rules will face an escalation of sanctions and enforcement action. Are toxic links really that bad for your website's ranking? According to Google Search Console, you should try to disavow low-quality or spammy backlinks, but Google search advocate John Mueller recently addressed a Reddit question and suggests there's no need to be concerned.

Starting point is 00:02:55 In response to a question about where the links come from, he said, toxic links is all about selling tools. Don't get hung up on it, unquote. As reported by Search Engine Roundtable, Google has previously indicated it has no internal concept of toxic domains and that you can ignore toxic links and the tools that report on them. More shopping snaps are headed to Snapchat. The platform is expanding its e-commerce offerings with a new eBay integration. The platform announced yesterday that users can now share listings directly from eBay using the Snapchat camera on Android and iOS.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Through the integration, Snapchatters can share items on eBay that they're interested in or selling with their contacts, while eBay merchants can share their listings across platforms with their community. Consumers and sellers can share an item to their snaps and Snapchat stories when viewing an item in the eBay app, with the listing appearing as a sticker that they can overlay on their post. By tapping the sticker, users will be directed to the eBay listing. We consumers are fickle. We expect the products to be perfect and customer service to be fast and precise.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Problem is, people are sometimes neither of those last two. So little surprise that many brands have turned to chatbots to supplement, or in some cases completely replace, their human customer service team. Take Aflac, which famously has a duck as a mascot. A couple of years ago, it introduced DuckChat, an AI bot on Facebook Messenger that would help enroll customers. Or Bank of America, that has a chatbot named Erica

Starting point is 00:04:35 and sent her to work in its mobile app, helping customers with basic banking tasks. There's Levi's Virtual Stylist, a bot inside Facebook Messenger. Hell, there's even LubeChat, which, no, not what you're thinking. This is actually a B2B chatbot from Shell, which helped share product information for customers of its industrial lubricants. And while a lot of research has gone into how consumers react to chatbot conversations, there hasn't been a lot of study into how the bots make

Starting point is 00:05:05 people feel about the company itself. People like investors in the company. That's what Dorema Fotheringham set out to discover. She is co-author of a research study called The Effect of Implementing Chatbot Customer Service on Stock Returns, which was recently published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. She spoke with me earlier and told me that while chatbots are generally seen positively by influencers, if you are a B2B brand, there is one thing in particular you should avoid, making your bot too human-like. What we found was that using more anthropomorphic features, like giving a human name or personality, or describing what the chatbot was doing in terms of making it sound more like a human agent, did not really have a more positive boost by implementing chatbots,

Starting point is 00:06:07 actually increasing human-like features in these chatbots was hurting these positive effects. So we saw that making these chatbots more anthropomorphized or more human-like for B2B companies was really detracting from attractiveness of these chatbots. Our full conversation goes into much more detail, of course. So if this topic interests you, make sure you are on the premium feed because that's where the full interview will be headed tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Pacific time we release it. It is the premium feed.

Starting point is 00:06:38 You can find it at todayindigital.com slash premium feed or just tap the link in the show notes. 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

Starting point is 00:07:13 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.ca. 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. Don't quite know what to make of this, so I will just present it for you prognosticators to make that determination.

Starting point is 00:07:56 But Meta is apparently cutting back on investments in several products. The tech giant has halted hiring for its shopping team, messenger kids, as well as for certain engineering roles and low-level data scientists. This according to The Verge. According to a recording obtained of the meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that there are no job cuts yet. Quoting him, I can't sit here and make a permanent ongoing promise that as things shift, we won't have to reconsider that.

Starting point is 00:08:23 But what I can tell you is that as of where we sit today, our expectation is not that we're going to have to do that. But what I can tell you is that as of where we sit today, our expectation is not that we're going to have to do that. And instead, basically what we're doing is we're dialing growth to the levels that we think are going to be manageable over time, unquote. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the freeze and stated, quote, as we alluded to in our recent earnings, we're evaluating key priorities across the company and putting energy behind them, especially as they relate to our core business and reality labs, unquote. While Zuckerberg added that he wants to be clear that the company is in, quote, a very strong position, unquote, and that it has, quote, a very healthy business and we're still growing quickly, unquote. In other words, this is fine. I'm fine.

Starting point is 00:09:03 Everything is fine. I'm fine. Everything is fine. YouTube is finally giving your brand data insights for shorts. Yesterday, the platform announced it is launching separate analytics for videos in YouTube Studio. With the new update, the reach and engagement tabs will be replaced with a new content tab to separate data for your different content types like videos, shorts, live streams, and posts. By tapping into any of these formats, you'll see specific information for each so you can keep track of the performance of your different content types, or you can still view your content performance in aggregate on the all tab.

Starting point is 00:09:43 The platform added that all previously available metrics will remain in the new format, although some may have been moved around. And if you'd like to see more advanced analytics, you can switch to Advanced Mode. YouTube says the update will be rolling out to creators on desktop and mobile in the next few weeks. And finally, a tourism agency has created an ad targeted to get you to stop checking your work email while on vacation and they aren't horsing around. Visit Iceland conducted a study that found that four out of ten people still check their work emails while taking time off. In response, their solution is a campaign for their new email service called Outhorse Your Email, in which horses respond to out-of-office emails. By trotting over a large keyboard mat, the horses are able to handle your out-of-office emails, and vacationers can feel confident that their professional communications won't be ignored.

Starting point is 00:10:45 I know this sounds ridiculous. I can assure you it is actually real. I wonder if you can hire the horses to do podcasts. The weather has turned nice here on Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada, which means, of course, I'm going to be on my Xbox. No, I am going for walks. I'm doing three kilometer walks a day now. Just came back from one. So I am getting out there, but I have not touched my Xbox in like two weeks now.

Starting point is 00:11:20 So I need something to kind of absorb myself in. I don't know. Maybe I'll do another playthrough of Fallout 4. I keep thinking I'm something to kind of absorb myself in. I don't know. Maybe I'll do another playthrough of Fallout 4. I keep thinking I'm going to. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of this dynamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is the intrepid Steph Gunn. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild.

Starting point is 00:11:43 Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. And hey, it's our theme composer Mark Blevins' birthday today. Although I really don't know how he's going to celebrate. Don't drink, don't smoke. And what do you do? Monday is a statutory holiday here in Canada. Something like a queen, I think.

Starting point is 00:12:08 Isn't it always up here? So I will see you on Tuesday of next week. Have a great weekend. I will give you all the time that you've been needing. You don't have to worry about your little heart. You deserve to love yourself and share that feeling. We can start a fire with a spark.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Machine Learning Will Continue Until Morale Improve

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