Today in Digital Marketing - Vanishing Views
Episode Date: May 26, 2023Vanishing Views: Why has Twitter stopped reporting one of the platform's most important metrics? Also: The peculiar Captcha that isn't real. And Snapchat nails enhanced AR..🔘 Follow us on s...ocial media🎙️ Subscribe free to our other podcast "Behind the Ad".Increase Your Amazon Sales with Micro-InfluencersHow sending free products to Micro-Influencers has helped brands 5X revenue in 2 months. Get started with Stack Influence and join companies like Unilever, Magic Spoon, Momofuku. and more.✅ MORE INFO and JOIN FREE NOW.Use GPT4 to Comment with 1 Click on LinkedIn ProspectsJoin 15,000+ LinkedIn power users and supercharge your social selling with Engage AI! Imagine effortlessly writing insightful comments that break the ice and build relationships with prospects. With Engage AI as your comment writing assistant, you'll save precious time while achieving conversions with every added touchpoint. Transform your LinkedIn conversations into powerful conversion tools today.✅ GET STARTED FREE NOW.✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨ ✓ Ad-free episodes ✓ Story links in show notes ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions ✓ Better audio quality ✓ Live event replays ✓ Audio chapters ✓ Earlier release time ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts ✓ and more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed.💵 Send us a tip🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack📰 Get the Newsletter: Click Here (daily or weekly)📰 Get The Top Story each day on LinkedIn. ✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form🎙️ Be a Guest on Our Show: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review.ABOUT THIS PODCASTToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source Audio.🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Google Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses .Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us. Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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It is Friday, May 26th. Today, vanishing views. Why has Twitter stopped reporting one of the platform's most important metrics?
Also, the peculiar captcha that isn't real. And Snapchat nails enhanced AR.
I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead. Today in digital marketing. And it is an American holiday on Monday.
I'm assuming everyone down there is taking Friday off for
a four-day week, and so there is very little news, and as a result, a very short show today.
Well, since Elon Musk's takeover, Twitter has been pushing metrics. First came the public
view count for tweets. More recently, bookmark counts were added. But now it seems the platform
is removing one of its most significant metrics for marketers, video view counts.
Several users have reported that videos on Twitter no longer display the number of times they've been viewed.
It's not clear whether the change is intentional or if it's another glitch.
Twitter recently updated its video player to include playback speed and a picture-in-picture style mini player.
But some users noticed the missing view counts more than a week ago. Quoting Mashable.com, if the video view count metrics removal is indeed
on purpose, this would make Twitter the least transparent social media platform when it comes
to video. It's also an extremely important metric for advertisers as this helps them decide how to
run ad campaigns on these platforms. The removal of this metric forces users to depend on a different one
that often paints videos uploaded to Twitter
as more successful than the clips actually are.
As previously mentioned, Twitter does show tweet views,
but that's just the number of impressions on a tweet.
As tweets are regularly recommended by Twitter's algorithm,
users are often served content they don't necessarily have any interest in. If such a tweet has a video embedded in it, and the user
does not play the clip, the tweet view count does not accurately reflect how many users actually
watched the video, unquote. Do you know what a Yoko is? No? Well, that's okay, because it's not real.
But to at least one CAPTCHA technology, it is.
CAPTCHA, of course, the visual puzzle used by sites to make sure that humans are filling in online forms and not bots.
But now one of them is asking users to identify objects that do not exist.
This trend, of course, could pose a big problem for consumers trying to access your brand's webpage
if you use one of these.
Vice recently reported that some Discord users
were asked to identify a Yoko,
which appears to be a snail-like yo-yo hybrid.
That picture and other images in the CAPTCHA
appear to have been generated by AI.
This problem so far seems to be limited to Discord,
where CAPTCHAs are managed by a company called hCAPTCHA,
quoting the Vice piece.
The issue with hCAPTCHA's strange AI-generated prompts
highlights two issues with machine learning systems.
The first is that AI systems require
an enormous amount of human input to not be terrible.
Typically, image labeling is outsourced to foreign workers
who do it for pennies on the
dollar. And finally, I told you it was a short show. Snapchat is upping its AR game with the
launch of enhanced try-on tools. The platform is partnered with beauty brand OPI to create a new
nail polish testing experience within the app. The new process will let consumers test nail polish shades using the Snapchat camera using a new feature called Nails Segmentation. This
applies polish and other 2D effects onto a user's nails. You can add textures, designs, or track 2D
colors. Snapchat previously offered similar nail polish try-on experiences, but this variation is
more responsive and realistic,
and it also provides new ways for brands to showcase nail products through AR in the app.
It is a holiday on Monday for Americans. We also take off American holidays.
It's not that we're double dipping.
It's that, as you can see in today's episode,
very little news happens when Americans are on holiday.
So there is no episode on Monday.
We had intended to bring you another episode of Behind the Ad,
but we had a couple of fires to put out at the agency today,
so that took priority.
And that will do it for the week.
Today in Digital Marketing is produced by
EngageQ Digital on the traditional
territories of the Tsunamik First Nation
on Vancouver Island. Our associate
producer is Steph Gunn, production coordinator
Sarah Guild, music licensing
by Source Audio, ad
coordination by
Red Circle.
And you know,
not many people know this.
But our theme composer, Mark Blevis,
is one of the very first people to get an account on Blue Sky.
It's true. He was the fourth user.
Blue Sky has like 100,000 people in it now.
And still nobody follows Mark.
He was complaining about this to me just a couple of days ago.
He said, because I have friends.
And that's a fact.
Like Agnes, Agathe, Jermaine, and Jack.
I'm Todd Maffin.
Thanks for listening.
Have a restful, long weekend, friends.
I will see you on Tuesday.
The time has come to make it happen.
It's always here, the friend of my mind.
I'll never leave you behind.