Today in Digital Marketing - The TrollBot That Embarrassed Brands on IWD

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a restaurant takes Google to court Be protected. Be Zen. with no ads, more stories, and extended weekend episodes. Tap the link in the show notes for more. Is poor grammar and spelling on your website hurting your SEO? It's Thursday, March 10th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Google is being sued for allegedly deceiving consumers with online ordering. A few years ago, the search giant added an order online button to the Google business profile box for restaurants, assuming this would benefit restaurants, so they didn't ask them specifically to opt in. After receiving backlash against the feature,

Starting point is 00:01:16 it added the ability to opt out. But now, the company's being sued over that order button. The plaintiff, Lime Fresh Mexican Grill, is accusing Google of setting up an illicit storefront using its brand name and IP without permission and therefore deceiving consumers. Here's what the complaint says. Quote,

Starting point is 00:01:35 Google's order online button leads to an unauthorized online storefront, one owned and controlled by Google, wherein consumers can place orders for the restaurant's products all under the restaurant's trade name. Google prominently features the restaurant's trade name at the top of the page, above the restaurant's address and menu, to give the user the distinct impression that the storefront and products are authorized and sponsored by the restaurant when they are not. And while it would be easy for Google to label its service as, quote, Google's unauthorized

Starting point is 00:02:07 buying service, unquote, Google does not dare do so. It knows that its website is more likely to generate orders when cloaked in the brand of the restaurant, unquote. The case is before the courts now. We will keep you updated. Pinterest today revealed several new shopping features at its global ad summit called Pinterest Presents. Here are the updates. First, Your Shop.

Starting point is 00:02:32 This is going to be a new customized shopping experience based on consumers' activity and preferences on the platform. So basically shopping ads. Pinterest said its users spend twice as much per month compared to other platforms and urged retailers to upload their catalogs so that their products will appear in Your Shop for Pinners. It is currently in beta in the US. It plans to roll it out later in the year. Number two, values-based shopping. The company says this shopping feature will guide consumers to brands that share their sense of purpose or interests. Merchant details were introduced last year, enabling brands to display values in the form of labels on their profiles, like LGBT owned, and so on. The company added brands with merchant details

Starting point is 00:03:13 were more than 15% more likely to make a sale. Number three, a new checkout that will enable pinners to make purchases without leaving the app. I don't have to tell you, that is a huge deal, of course. And number four, the platform will also be launching a new shopping API that automates the process of uploading and updating catalogs. And finally, the Pinterest Trends tool will be adding more features, including personalized recommendations for businesses, real-time search data, and more. So this is embarrassing.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Just when you thought you were making a smart PR move shouting out International Women's Day, one Twitter bot has been busy trolling those marketing efforts. The Twitter account called at PayGapApp targeted businesses in the UK that were promoting International Women's Day, by retweeting their message along with a note comparing the gender pay gap in their company. One example, when a local university tweeted about how men can be allies in the issue, the bot quoted that tweet and replied, These tweets were seemingly automated since they had the same sentence structure every time, women's median hourly pay is 23.2% lower than men's, unquote. These tweets were seemingly automated since they had the same sentence structure every time

Starting point is 00:04:29 and occasionally would report that women were paid more in a particular organization, though, of course, that was pretty rare. Several brands deleted the tweets from their account and others responded with plans for addressing it. According to the New York Times, a social media manager and software consultant created the account in order to, quote social media manager and software consultant created the account

Starting point is 00:04:45 in order to, quote, empower employees and members of the public to hold these companies to account for their role in perpetuating inequalities because it's no good saying how much you empower women

Starting point is 00:04:56 if you have a stinking pay gap. Unquote. 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. Howard Lerman, the founding CEO of the AI search firm Yext, announced yesterday he will

Starting point is 00:05:33 be leaving after more than 15 years. On top of that, the software company CFO is leaving as well. The announcement came on the company's earnings call after it reported poor year-over-year revenue growth and a disappointing outlook for the year. The current chairman will become the new CEO of the tech company. Lerman said in a LinkedIn post, quote, The skills to build something out of nothing are quite different than the skills to operate at scale, unquote. As a result of the news that the top executives would be leaving, the company's stock plunged more than 20% yesterday.

Starting point is 00:06:09 An interesting piece today in Adweek asks whether it's time to start including movie theater buys in your ad budget. It's been about three years since the pandemic wiped out cinema attendance, but now blockbusters are back in theaters and consumers are buying tickets again. But there's one major difference this time.

Starting point is 00:06:27 The audience is younger. Three out of four moviegoers in 2021 were in the 18 to 49 age group, and of those, half were in the 18 to 34 age group. The article suggests that many of these young adults are cord cutters, meaning they don't watch traditional television. Nielsen Data revealed that 30 million viewers in the 18 to 49 age group exclusively use ad-free streaming platforms.

Starting point is 00:06:53 And a movie theater could be one of the few places that advertisers can reach them. The full piece is up on Adweek. Look for the article called Is It Time to Hit Play on movie theater ad buys? LinkedIn has announced a new future of skills data tool, which lets you view top skills for any job role. Here's how it works. You select a country, industry or specific job title.

Starting point is 00:07:21 Once you make your selection, you'll see an overview of key skills trends for each. According to how many LinkedIn members have listed them. You can also see how each trend has changed over time and look for similar skills by hovering over any skill listed. The skills listed are those that LinkedIn members have displayed on their profiles, not on job listings, so it's not actually an indication of what's in demand. And finally today, Google announced that its Marketing Live conference will be held on May 24th this year.

Starting point is 00:07:51 The company said the event will feature a mix of in-person and live-streamed content, but did not provide any specifics on what will be covered. As Google's marketing event has become a ritual to showcase its upcoming ad tools, it is likely worth tuning in to see what's to come. So a surprising, a small but a surprising number of people asked why I was not in fact streaming last night on Twitch, my model painting experiment, or my try at it anyway. And that's because I learned that Twitch's iPad app cannot stream. So I did it on TikTok, but I'm going to do it on Twitch today.

Starting point is 00:08:29 I promise. Twitch.tv slash Todd Mappin. You can find the link in the show notes under follow Todd. And I learned that there's, I'm so new at this. I learned that there's different types of paint. So two things. First of all, shut up. Okay. Because you didn different types of paint. So two things. First of all, shut up. Okay. Because you didn't know that either, I'm sure. And two, there's like base paint,

Starting point is 00:08:51 contrast paint, technical paint, shade paint. And I'd been painting with the wrong kind and completely messed up my very first figure. But I have another identical figure, which I'm going to try now that I know what I'm doing. Well, now that I know a little bit what I'm doing. Anyway, come join me. I'll be doing it tonight. Again, twitch.tv slash ToddMap and I have no friends. I haven't been out of the house in a year and a half. So please, please, please join me. So our associate producer, the

Starting point is 00:09:15 Intrepid Stepgun, will be here for me tomorrow. So that's it for me. I'll see you on Monday. Steph will be with you tomorrow. Talk to you then.

Today in Digital Marketing - The TrollBot That Embarrassed Brands on IWD

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.