Today in Digital Marketing - You could do worse.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Friday, March 31st. Today, Meta makeover. The platform launches new brand safety controls. Amazon's legal eagles swoop in on takedown abusers. Google is poised to shut down something they said we marketers should all be using. And two realtors get fired for coming up with a clever and, it turns out, profitable ad campaign. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Meta is giving advertisers more control over the content their ads are placed next to. The company launched new inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram feeds yesterday. Advertisers now have three settings to choose from to control the type of content that appears

Starting point is 00:00:41 alongside their ads. The default setting is called expanded inventory. This will show your ad next to content that adheres to Meta's community standards and meets its monetization eligibility criteria. The next level up, moderate inventory setting. This excludes high risk content for advertisers who want to take a more moderately conservative approach. And then for those who want to take the most conservative approach, the limited inventory setting excludes both high-risk and medium-risk content. To ensure these requirements are met, Meta will use a range of content classifiers and advanced AI tools

Starting point is 00:01:17 to scan content in both text and visual form. Meta is also collaborating with Zephyr to create an AI-powered process that can report the context in which ads appear on the Facebook feeds based on GARM suitability standards. The tool will let advertisers measure, verify, and understand the suitability of content near their ads. Years ago, when Google trotted out its Google Assistant, the company told us marketers that we should get on board, make sure our brand has a presence, kick the tires, you know, that sort of thing. And most of us didn't. That may have proved to be the right decision, as CNBC is now reporting that the company is reorganizing its voice assistant team to prioritize the new bot in town, BARD. In a memo to employees this week titled Changes to Assistant and BARD Teams, the VP and lead of Google Assistant's business unit outlined changes that prioritize BARD

Starting point is 00:02:11 and put its voice assistant product on the back burner. This move comes after several setbacks for the AI assistant in recent years, including the cessation of hardware releases, the removal of assistant support from some Google products, and the shutdown of core features like driving mode and duplex on the web. As Ars Technica points out, the recent memo suggests the Assistant team is now supporting the company's Code Red fight against chat GPT. Quoting their piece, merging Google Assistant and BARD would make some sense if the two units weren't different products. The interfaces of BARD and the Assistant are similar in that they both look like chat apps and therefore have similar monetization problems, but you really do use both products for different purposes. If we assume that the idea of

Starting point is 00:02:55 the Google Assistant, a voice assistant that helps you do things, isn't completely dead at Google, we could imagine a future where B Bard's language model helps it understand what you want to do and will do it. But it feels like the service is years away from something like that. Amazon has taken legal action against three groups who allegedly abused its takedown system by filing false copyright complaints against other products on the platform to encourage consumers to buy their products instead. But according to the lawsuits, the alleged bad actors didn't just file fake complaints. The e-commerce giant says the parties also created fake disposable websites

Starting point is 00:03:37 using product images scraped from real Amazon listings and presented them as evidence that they were the rightful copyright owners. Amazon claims one defendant named Seids used a fraudulent trademark application to get into the Amazon Brand Registry program, which lets companies search for and manage scans of fraudulent listings that copy their products. The complaint alleges that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the trademark application, but the company used it anyway. Seidsk was apparently the worst offender, filing almost 4,000 takedown requests.

Starting point is 00:04:15 According to the lawsuits, in some cases the scheme worked, and materials related to some product listings were temporarily taken down from the Amazon store in response to the invalid complaints. Although Amazon's copyright takedown request systems have legitimate purposes, the recent lawsuits show it can be challenging to balance the need to make it easy for legitimate claimants to file takedown requests with the risk of letting bad actors abuse the system. 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.

Starting point is 00:04:50 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. Ad spending trends suggest a recession may be on the horizon, but no need to panic. At least not yet. According to a new report from financial research company S&P Global Ratings, U.S. advertisers are cutting back on spend, indicating they are preparing for an impending recession. But it's not all bad news, as the downturn may be less severe than initially expected.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Historically, ad spending has lagged behind macroeconomic performance, making it less apparent until contractions have already occurred. The report says that's changed as the media buying windows have shortened, making ad spending potentially more of a leading indicator of where the economy is headed. The research firm predicted the recession will be shallower than originally anticipated and consumer spending will grow 1.2% this year ahead of what was expected. U.S. lawmakers have introduced yet another bill aimed at cutting Google and Facebook's clout in online advertising. The bill, called the America Act, was introduced in Congress this week. It would force digital advertising companies that process more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions to divest or sell part of their businesses. The bill also requires companies processing more than $5 billion in digital ad transactions

Starting point is 00:06:23 to disclose their revenue streams, detailing where the money comes from. The bill has bipartisan support from a number of senators, including Elizabeth Warren on the left and Ted Cruz on the right. The Department of Justice and State Attorneys General would handle enforcement. If the bill passes, it will of course complicate things for big tech. Google is already facing a lawsuit from the DOJ for allegedly operating an ad tech monopoly. YouTube's push to shorts continues. This time, it's giving marketers more data. The company expanded its analytics for artists tool yesterday by adding shorts-related data to the total reach metric, which gives artists an

Starting point is 00:07:05 overview of how their music is reaching audiences across the platform. Previously, the Total Reach metric only included official content uploaded by the artist and long-form videos uploaded by fans. The company says the new metric shows how many people an artist's music reaches across all formats. YouTube is also launching a new songs section in its analytics tool. The new section will show artists their top songs from the past 28 days and which are being used most in shorts. And finally, a pair of real estate agents

Starting point is 00:07:39 from London, Ontario have proved that when in doubt, self-deprecation is the ultimate branding strategy. After getting fired from one real estate firm for their you could do worse catchphrase, they continue to double down on their branding and use it on billboards and social media. And guess what? It worked. The agents claim that the polarizing slogan humanizes their industry and even resonates with some consumers. Their latest billboard campaign features photos of them as awkward teenagers proudly proclaiming, Zero Awards Won!

Starting point is 00:08:12 At least it's not misleading. Ten green bottles standing on the wall And that will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Sonemic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is the intrepid Steph Gunn. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Music rights by Source Audio.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Ad coordination by Red Circle. And, you know, not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, one of the world's most celebrated interpretive dancers, is true, but honestly, he's become a little snobby about it. Won't hang out with my wife and I on weekends if we have other friends over. His reason? Because your friends don't dance.

Starting point is 00:09:02 And if they don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. Have a restful weekend. See you on Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - You could do worse.

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