Today in Digital Marketing - When the News Gets Too Hot for Advertising

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Monday, August 21st. Today, advertisers can block wildfire news, but should we? The liberation of MFAs has begun, Threads is set to go desktop, a huge glitch on X over the weekend, and the legal ruling marketers have been waiting for has arrived. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, Today Digital Marketing. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. That's ahead today in digital marketing. 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 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.C-A. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

Starting point is 00:01:04 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. BeZen. Peer39, an ad tech company that provides brand safety tools, now lets advertisers block their ads from appearing next to news stories about the Maui wildfire. That fire has killed more than 100 people since July 11th. The company says this helps advertisers avoid negative associations with the disaster. The feature is called Fire Blocker, and it uses AI to guess at what content is on a page, then categorizes it into buckets of risk.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Media buyers can then use those data points to avoid specific types of content. The company says it's doing this because of growing demand for more granular control over ad placements. Not everyone is thrilled with the idea. Digiday today published a piece interviewing some publishers

Starting point is 00:02:06 and media analysts criticizing the move, saying keyword blocking punishes local news outlets that are covering the crisis. They say contextual targeting doesn't account for tone, quality, or the credibility of the content. Indeed, it seems nobody's comfortable talking about it. Quoting the Digiday piece, when Digiday asked media buying agencies and brand verification companies if the Maui wildfires were

Starting point is 00:02:32 specifically being blocked at the request of advertising clients, all requests were met with declines for comment or no response. Several news publishers, including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, also declined to comment on the story. Meanwhile, some Canadians are having a hard time learning about the devastating fires in Yellowknife and Kelowna. Tens of thousands were forced out of their homes by evacuation orders, but Meta is blocking all news links in the country as part of its pissing match with the Canadian government. People in the wildfire areas aren't able to share any news coverage on Facebook, Instagram, threads or WhatsApp. They just get a message saying news is blocked in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this morning said, quote, Right now we are in an emergency situation where up to date local information is more important than ever. Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of In a statement to media, Meta said there are other places on its platform that people can get news from that aren't being blocked.

Starting point is 00:03:41 They're called MFAs, made for advertising sites. They're usually poorly designed web pages with a bit of content, but mostly made up of banner ads, autoplay video ads, slots for Google ads, and so on. They're heavily monetized and are often part of the inventory for low-quality media buys, like the various versions of audience networks out there. Sometimes these sites offer heavily discounted inventory in exchange for guaranteed spending commitments. But now, one of the world's largest media agencies

Starting point is 00:04:12 is done with them. Group M says it's removing MFA publishers from its inclusion lists. Group M's move follows a similar move by Omnicom in February. Both are part of an industry trade group that's working on developing guidelines for MFA deals. But some of those publishers defend their business model, saying they provide value and scale for advertisers, especially in niche or emerging markets. They claim they're compliant with industry standards.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Meta's Twitter competitor Threads has seen a significant drop-off in user engagement since its splashy launch. That can be expected, I guess, considering everyone wanted to kick the tires, but didn't really have a strategy for content on the site. Threads also suffers from two big omissions, at least from a marketing point of view. First, an API, which would let third-party tools like Sprout Social or Agorapulse and so on post to it. And second, a desktop version, which would let social media content managers post without needing to use their phones.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Well, that desktop version may be hours away from launch. Instagram's head said it was basically done, just being tested internally pre-launch. Also in the wings, an improved search feature that's apparently coming in the next few weeks. But don't expect to be able to use or search hashtags for a while. The company said it's not even working on hashtags right now. Instagram's head, Adam Massari, said, quote, We're much more focused on the web, on search, where I think we can meet a lot of the needs of hashtags, unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:49 So your marketing intern has made a really cool image showing your product in a field of lilies, and she used a generative AI tool for it. Your team liked it so much, someone at your Monday meeting said, we should copyright that. Well, not so fast. A U.S. federal judge has ruled that artificial intelligence cannot be the author of a work of art and therefore cannot claim copyright protection. The decision was made in a case involving an AI-generated image created by a system called Creativity Machine. The plaintiff was a company that develops neural network technologies. It sued the U.S. Copyright Office after it rejected an application to register a generated image.

Starting point is 00:06:29 The image is in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to at todayindigital.com slash newsletter. It actually kind of looks like a Monet painting, and that no work that was, quote, absent any guiding human hand, unquote, could be granted protection. She cited previous cases where animals like a monkey that took a selfie were denied authorship rights. She acknowledged that AI could be used as a tool for human artists to create new works, but that would raise, quote, challenging questions, unquote, about how much human input is necessary. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

Starting point is 00:07:21 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. Apple announcing several new updates to its podcaster creator tools, including subscription analytics, delegated delivery, and link fire integration. Subscription analytics. First of all, this is a new dashboard within Apple Podcasts Connect, where podcasters can track metrics around subscriptions and trials. Podcasters can now see how many listeners started a free trial and then converted to paid, and how many monthly and annual subscriptions they have, how much revenue they're generating, and so on. They can also filter the data by time

Starting point is 00:08:09 period, country, and subscription status. Delegated delivery lets podcasters publish their subscriber episodes from other hosting providers. Specifically, audio means Captivate, Podbean, Podspace, and Transistor. This means podcasters can use their preferred tools and platforms to create and distribute their content, while still offering exclusive access to their subscribers on Apple Podcasts. Apple says it's expanding the service to more hosting providers in the coming months. And LinkFire integration lets podcasters access their analytics directly from the LinkFire platform to see how their campaigns are performing and optimize their strategies. Apple launched podcast subscriptions this past May.

Starting point is 00:08:55 There are now thousands of shows offering paid subscriptions there. A strange glitch on X, formerly Twitter, has caused images and links posted between 2011 and 2014 to disappear from the site. Apparently, the images were still on the servers, just not visible on the website. The bug affected some of the most viral moments in Internet history, like Ellen's Oscar selfie that broke Twitter in 2014. That tweet was still online this weekend, but there was no image and the T.co link didn't actually link to anything. It's happening everywhere. Even images and links posted by glorious leader Musk before December 2014 continue to be offline. It caused a bit of a panic over the weekend for people whose life memories are stored there without backup. Baby photos, weddings, videos of now-deceased relatives, all apparently offline. The glitch comes amid increasing instability on X,

Starting point is 00:09:53 which has faced several outages since Elon made massive job cuts in October last year. X did not respond to requests for comment. And that will bring us to the Pulitzer Prize winning lightning round. Instagram is testing a new audio clip feature for notes. This will allow users to share audio notes with their contacts. It aims to enhance engagement, especially in regions with diverse languages. Audio notes can be a useful tool for users who find it easier to understand spoken language than to write it. Be Real is replacing its discovery feed with a

Starting point is 00:10:26 friends of friends feed. Users can now see posts from their friends' connections if they opt in. The update also lets users choose which posts to share within this wider circle. Users can now also pin three past posts to their profile and tag friends using the at sign. Meta today released a guide on its evolving ad automation tools. It offers insights into the advantage suite, detailing how each tool functions. And TikTok too shared its own guide today

Starting point is 00:10:53 on the fundamentals of in-app ad campaigns. It provides insights on identifying selling points, creating videos and optimizing content for the platform. Links to both of those in today's newsletter. And finally, so you're all ready for your next ad campaign. You've even booked some digital billboards to make a splash. Imagine your surprise when instead of your ads, porn starts playing on the billboards you booked. That happened yesterday in Iraq after a hacker thought it'd be funny to broadcast X-rated video to people in the Ukha Ben Nafa Square, a busy area in Baghdad. Some people speculate it was a protest against the Iraqi government's recent announcement that it planned to block porn sites in the country.

Starting point is 00:11:46 Local media report the screens have been off ever since and a man is in custody. Earlier this month, Iraq's media regulator ordered all press and social media platforms operating in the country to replace the word homosexuality with the phrase sexual deviance. It's lonely here without Steph. Oh man. And now I have to do all the work that I hate. So, surprise, we're looking for a production assistant to cover Steph's one-year mat leave. It's basic stuff, doing the promotional tasks, writing social media posts, some basic graphic design for our newsletter, article headers, wrangling interview guests, uploading the audio files to our podcast posts, publishing the newsletter, kind of VA work. So if you're interested in that or know someone who is,

Starting point is 00:12:26 please check out todayindigital.com slash production or tap the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - When the News Gets Too Hot for Advertising

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