Today in Digital Marketing - Your Ads Going to Spam? Don’t Innovate… Legislate!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, how do you keep your emails from going into spam? By making that illegal, of course. And Google says, yeah, sure, we're on board. Also, great news for social media managers who use Reels. New data on what's driving social commerce. Amazon welcomes its new robot overlords. And surprise, Facebook's auto-moderation is under fire. Again, it's Tuesday, June 28th.

Starting point is 00:00:25 I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And we start with some good email marketing news from Google. That is, if you are a politician or you work for a politician, according to a recent filing that Axios is reporting on, the tech giant is trying to make U.S. political campaign emails exempt from spam filters. Google's proposal to the Federal Election Commission in the U.S. would make emails from authorized candidate committees, political party committees, leadership political action committees, basically anything registered with the FEC, exempt from spam detection as long as they abide by Gmail's policies on phishing, malware, or illegal content. Republicans are behind this one. They claim that Google unfairly targets

Starting point is 00:01:11 conservative content across its services. Recently, Republican leadership proposed a bill that would force platforms to disclose how they filter campaign emails, and actually make it illegal to put their emails into spam without user consent. Ironically, though, Google says the whole reason their emails are going into spam is directly from user consent. In other words, regular users are seeing their campaign emails in their inbox and then reporting it as spam. If it goes through, Google's pilot program would work by giving users the option to opt out of receiving future emails when they receive campaign messages for the first time, basically automatically opting them in first. This could be the first step in a new direction for spam filters. But if consumers are bombarded with

Starting point is 00:02:01 content they didn't sign up for in the first place, will your brand's campaigns get lost in an inbox of 8,000 unread emails from politicians? A wish has been granted for brands and social marketers. You will finally be able to manage and schedule Reels through social media management tools. Meta announced that it has launched its Reels API for external use beginning today. Soon, third-party platforms like Agorapulse, Sprout Social, and so on will be able to post and manage Reels within their tools. For developers with access to the relevant APIs, Reels will become automatically available. The new API support includes content publishing,

Starting point is 00:02:48 insights, comment moderation, hashtag search, and a few nice little other tidbits. It's not clear when each app will support these new processes, of course. However, Meta says the updated Reels API will begin rolling out today to a quarter of Instagram user accounts before becoming fully available next week. If you're trying to target consumers Instagram user accounts before becoming fully available next week. making a purchase, and social commerce experiences aren't just underwhelming for the TikTok generation,

Starting point is 00:03:31 the majority of Gen Xers and Millennials also feel the same way. Not surprisingly, when it comes to which social platforms consumers prefer, the study found that the younger age groups gravitated toward Instagram and TikTok, while Facebook was more popular among Generation X. Two out of three consumers prefer to use social media during the buying process in order to ask questions, make a purchase, and receive post-purchase customer support. More than half of those responding to the survey also believe that customer service quality impacts brand perception more than anything else. According to the study, the two top factors that drive positive brand perception are 24-7 customer service availability and quick response times. The data comes from Amplify's survey of more than a thousand consumers.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Gas prices will be affecting hot dog consumption this weekend. While 85% of U.S. consumers plan to celebrate the upcoming American 4th of July holiday, despite the economic downturn, the majority of respondents expect inflation to impact their holiday plans. This comes from a new survey from Numerator. Consumers plan to spend less, shop for sales and cut back on dining out and fireworks. As for their shopping plans, 95% of consumers plan on purchasing something for the holiday, but plan on keeping their budget to under $100. Their money-saving strategies include nearly two-thirds intend to purchase items on sale, two out of five will

Starting point is 00:04:57 prepare more budget-friendly snacks and meals, a third plan to use more coupons, and one in four will switch to private label or shop at dollar stores. Consumers are also planning to shop in-store for the 4th of July, with 9 out of 10 expecting to shop IRL for groceries. The survey also found retail preferences are divided by generations. Millennials, a third more likely to shop at Target.com. Gen Zs, more than twice as likely to shop at Costco.com. While both generations were less likely to shop at Walmart.com. No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

Starting point is 00:05:49 Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Shipping and logistics are getting a few big changes for the biggest e-commerce company in the world as robots continue to take over Amazon's fulfillment centers. Now they're doing more of the work that humans would do there. Amazon has unveiled several new robots to help automate its centers, including its first fully autonomous mobile robot named Proteus, which looks like a giant Roomba. Proteus is designed to lift and move package-carrying carts through its facility while safely working around employees.

Starting point is 00:06:30 The company says the robot will initially be deployed in the outbound cart handling areas of its fulfillment centers. Remember, previously, robots would bring a bucket of products to a human who would then find the right product in the bucket, scan it in, and send it for packaging. Now the robots can handle everything except that last step. Here are some of the specifics, in case you're curious, quoting RetailDive.com. Cardinal is a robotic work cell that selects, lifts, and reads the label of a specific package out of a pile. It then places the selected package

Starting point is 00:07:03 in a cart. This converts batch-based manual work into continuous automated work. Amazon is testing a prototype to handle packages up to 50 pounds and expects to deploy it next year. Amazon Robotics Identification is an AI-powered scanning capability that uses a camera system to remove the manual scanning process. And the containerized storage system is a system that can find a container with a needed product, figure out how to move it to the employee, and pick up the container once the employee has retrieved the product. This cuts down on the need for employees to reach, bend, or climb to retrieve items, unquote.

Starting point is 00:07:40 As for the work that this robot replaces, Amazon says their use would free up workers to work on more, quote, rewarding tasks. Is it only a matter of time before Amazon is run completely by robot overlords? And finally, Facebook's content moderation systems have come under fire again. Meta has begun removing posts that offer abortion pills on its platforms following last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling. After Friday's decision, social media platforms were flooded with posts explaining how people could legally purchase abortion pills through the mail in areas where safe abortions may be banned. By Sunday, media intelligence firm Zignolabs counted more than 250,000 mentions. As a result, Facebook and Instagram began removing those posts. But would you be surprised to learn that Meta's doing a poor job at content moderation?

Starting point is 00:08:37 By posting an abortion pill offer on Facebook, one reporter at AP tested its social media policies. Facebook removed that post within a minute, and the account was immediately put on a warning, citing rules on guns and other regulated goods. So the reporter made another post, one offering to sell a gun. The content was identical to the one in the abortion offer. Neither did one offering to sell weed. Both of those are, of course, against Facebook policies.

Starting point is 00:09:08 Facebook only removed the abortion pills version. Very excited. I got my beta access key today for Overwatch 2. Regular listeners will know I have an unhealthy relationship with that game. I am a support main. A thousand hours on Mercy. Let's not talk about it. Anyway, normally I have to pay money to get into the beta

Starting point is 00:09:29 pool, but for some reason they took me in the lottery. I got in today. This is not the reason I will not be with you tomorrow. Every Wednesday I'm taking off in the summer. Our associate producer, the intrepid Steph Gunn, will be with you tomorrow. Alright, let's face it. I probably will be playing Overwatch 2 all day.

Starting point is 00:09:45 So, Steph, we'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Ads Going to Spam? Don’t Innovate… Legislate!

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