Today in Digital Marketing - Track to the Future

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, February 1st. Today, new tracking options on meta platforms and LinkedIn. Will threads rescue trending topics? Adobe gives up on its web design tool. And we tested Google's new AI image gen technology and walked away unimpressed. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:25 Google is tackling a hiccup that occurred last night. A glitch in their system is preventing some websites from showing up in search results as fast as they usually do. This is something that's been happening more frequently lately, although it's usually fixed pretty quick. Judging from reports on social media, this started late last night, around 11.30pm Eastern Time, stirring up a bit of a storm among content and news publishers who noticed their latest posts were missing from Google's search pages. Early this morning, Google acknowledged the issue, saying, quote, We are investigating an indexing glitch in Google search, hitting a handful of sites. These sites might find their content taking longer to appear in searches.

Starting point is 00:01:04 We're digging into the cause and will update you in 12 hours, unquote. So if you've noticed your content playing a little hide and seek in Google search, rest assured they're on the case. Meta is introducing a new attribution setting, Engaged View, that lets marketers measure conversions that occur within one day of a video ad play. You can use Engaged View along with other attribution settings to better analyze your performance. Here are the specifics from Meta. Quote, Engaged View can be counted in ads measurement reporting when someone plays your video ads for a minimum of 10 seconds or watches 97% of the video length if it's less than 10 seconds. So, sort of a real-world example, imagine someone watches a video for a yoga class on Instagram stories, and then signs up the next day for those classes, that sign up can now be

Starting point is 00:02:11 directly linked to watching the ad. When Meta announces these things, they usually do it alongside of a small study that they did showing that if you try this out, you'll get better results. They did that here too, though it was only 15 A-B tests and the results were a 3% lower cost per result. So maybe not something to change up your whole campaign if you have one running now, which is performing well. LinkedIn also added some new tracking options today, a new website actions option. This uses LinkedIn's insight tag on your website and makes it easier to track multiple responses on your site. You pick the actions you care most about, and then you can use them as audiences if you want. Quoting from LinkedIn, it empowers B2B marketers using LinkedIn's

Starting point is 00:02:55 insight tag to capture and measure website actions without the need for additional tracking codes on their website, unquote. This is pretty simple to implement, assuming you've got the insights tag on your site and it's working correctly. Should be a pretty solid tool for those especially who use retargeting. YouTube is adding some new analytics tools for playlists and some handy updates in its studio.

Starting point is 00:03:22 First, when you dive into the content tab, you will find a new playlist section. This will let you put your playlists head-to-head, comparing their performances directly. So kind of similar to the analytics groups feature, but tailored specifically for your playlists. YouTube also introduced content gap insights on the desktop version of the research tab.

Starting point is 00:03:44 This expands on the mobile feature they launched research tab. This expands on the mobile feature they launched last year. This shows search queries related to your channel that aren't being fully addressed, maybe opening the doors to new content ideas that match what viewers are searching for. YouTube is also highlighting top community clips to boost engagement across platforms and rolling out scheduled videos exclusive to members. This could help you build anticipation for things like product launches or live events. Threads, Meta's attempt at filling the void left by Twitter, is gearing up to add a trending section, which would highlight real-time news and discussions.

Starting point is 00:04:23 Threads has been criticized in the past for its for-you algorithm. Some users say it shows content from unknown creators and old posts. People have also complained about seeing low-quality content, but the company says they're working on that. Trends could be in part a solution to these problems in that it'll give users a new way to find interesting conversations. We got a hint about this back in October when a meta-employee accidentally leaked information about it.

Starting point is 00:04:50 The screenshot showed a simple list of popular topics like a show on Disney Plus and Latin Music Week. It didn't have categories like news or sports or personalized recommendations like X's Trends feature. So what does this mean for marketers? Well, trending content has always been a pretty consistent goldmine for social media content managers. This is where a lot of brands find things going viral that they can jump on. Like much of the X platform these days, X's trending section has been sort of broken for

Starting point is 00:05:21 a while now. When we checked earlier today, the front page only showed two trends. First was an ad, and the second, for a reason that we could not figure out, the nation of Antigua. Part of the problem there is that X personalizes the trends to what it thinks you'd like, which is exactly the opposite of what a trending section should do. It should show you what's actually going viral even if you don't have an interest in it. And you can no longer view trends from a logged out window on X's website anymore since X no longer allows you to see the front page without being logged in.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Adobe has decided to pack up its toys and go home. After government regulators squashed its attempted acquisition of Figma, a web design tool that competes with Adobe's XD tool, the company this week announced it will basically stop working on XD entirely. Back in 2022, Adobe tried to buy Figma for $20 billion, but government groups in the US, the UK, and Europe looked closely at the deal, said they didn't like it. So last month, Adobe just gave up on the acquisition and paid Figma a $1 billion

Starting point is 00:06:30 termination fee. Adobe says it won't make any new updates for XD, and it's only keeping it running for people who already use it. And they've stopped selling XD to new buyers. Indeed, we couldn't find any reference to the software on Adobe's All Products page today. To be fair, even before trying to buy Figma, Adobe was not focusing much on XD. It didn't make a lot of money for Adobe, only about 16 million bucks a year, and not many people on the Adobe team worked on it. Now, with Adobe stepping back, Figma has a big chance to be the main tool people use for designing websites and apps. Microsoft has Copilot, OpenAI has DALL-E, and now Google has Imagine2. If that all sounds

Starting point is 00:07:18 like gobblegook, we are talking about generative AI that can make images from a text prompt. We've actually been using it for nearly all our podcast image episodes for the last couple of months. If you use Apple Podcasts, you will see them. Today, Google announced it's rolling its image Gen Tech into its main chatbot, which is called BARD. BARD is also finally getting out of the US. It's now available in 230 countries, but it's the image generation that everyone was checking out today. We tried it too, and, well, we're not very impressed. We tried a bunch of different prompts, half of which they just straight up refused to do.

Starting point is 00:07:53 We asked it to recreate yesterday's episode and newsletter image, which was a TikTok logo on a tombstone in a cemetery, and it just flat out refused. The issue, apparently, was the the TikTok logo saying, quote, I am unable to generate images that depict harmful or disrespectful content. I can, however, offer you an alternative image that depicts a gravestone in a cemetery, unquote. Dali had no problems with it. We tried asking it for an image of a happy mime on stage with a theater audience and the difference was really night and day. We've got it for an image of a happy mime on stage with a theater audience, and the difference was really night and day. We've got these images in today's newsletter.

Starting point is 00:08:33 If you want to check it out, link is at the top of the show notes. Bard only showed two audience members for some reason who appeared to be behind the mime and on stage with him. OpenAI showed what you expected, a big theater full of people. That said, if you want to try it out, Google's new image generation is inside Bard now. Just ask it to create an image. And finally, one clever inventor has made a new type of clock and trying to get it crowdfunded on Kickstarter. It's called the Poem One.

Starting point is 00:09:02 It uses e-paper and a connection to ChatGPT to create a new poem for every minute of the day. That's 1,440 different poems per day. The inventor's name is Matt Webb. He posted a photo of it working on his fundraising page. The poem reads, As the clock strikes 1142, I rhyme the time as I always do. But there's a big problem with the clock. Well, not the clock, but chat GPT. Sometimes the AI just can't make the rhyme work. So it will lie about the time and hallucinate a completely different time of day. Or it'll make something else up. One poem it came up with read, quote,

Starting point is 00:09:48 a clock that defies all rhyme and reason, 4.30 p.m., a temporal teasing. Matt thought to himself, huh, teasing, teasing. Wonder what that means. And yes, the word does not exist. The clock just made that up too. What a world we live in now.

Starting point is 00:10:15 Don't forget about our digital marketing helpline. It is ready to handle your problems that you can't figure out how to get your Google Analytics connected or your CPCs are spiking or you need help growing your agency, just speak your question into our voicemail. We will get an answer for you from an expert here on the show. If we use your question on the show, you'll get a free subscription to our premium newsletter, which comes with a free course, access to dozens of marketing science interviews and more. Here's how to do it. Go to todayindigital.com slash voicemail to leave your question or tap the link at the top of the show notes. I'm Todd Mappin. See you tomorrow. I think I'll walk outside 6 o'clock Really? Still too high to drive 7 o'clock

Starting point is 00:11:05 Now what? Handed back home 8 o'clock Just listen for a second while I I left my head up in the cloud Came back down to earth and got lost in the crowd

Today in Digital Marketing - Track to the Future

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