All Your Brains Are Belong to Us

[00:00:00] It is Thursday, April 18th.

[00:00:03] Today companies are selling their users brainwave data to target them with ads, and lawmakers

[00:00:10] are now just catching wind of it.

[00:00:12] Also what to expect from ads on threads, why ad tech AI is watching episodes of The

[00:00:18] Office and a long time Google ad extension is going away.

[00:00:23] I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:29] Yesterday the American state of Colorado amended its privacy laws to make it harder for advertisers

[00:00:35] to use brain activity data for consumer targeting.

[00:00:40] It's believed to be the first such legislation in the country to protect neural data, and

[00:00:45] if you think, well, I mean that's not really a thing yet, you'd be wrong.

[00:00:50] The New York Times reported that brain data is indeed being collected and sold.

[00:00:55] Quoting Ars Technica, quote, For instance, in 2023, Meta demoed a wristband

[00:00:59] with a neural interface used to control its smart glasses and unveiled an AI system that

[00:01:05] could be used to decode the mind.

[00:01:08] In January, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink implanted its first brain chip in a human

[00:01:13] that can be used to control a device with their thoughts.

[00:01:17] And just last month, Apple Insider reported that quote, Apple is working on technology

[00:01:22] that could turn the Apple Vision Pro into a brainwave reader to improve mental health,

[00:01:28] assist with training and workouts, and help with mindfulness.

[00:01:31] Unquote.

[00:01:32] Colorado's law doesn't ban the collection of this data, of course.

[00:01:36] It only requires companies to get the consent of users to sell or use their neural

[00:01:41] data for ad targeting.

[00:01:42] That consent, of course, will probably be buried in the long terms and conditions

[00:01:46] list that nobody will read.

[00:01:48] It also says the process to remove already collected neural data must be made easy.

[00:01:54] An ethics nonprofit named Neurorights looked at the privacy policies and user agreements

[00:01:59] of 30 consumer neurotech companies.

[00:02:02] Two thirds were already sharing the neural data of their users with third parties.

[00:02:07] Only four companies said they do not sell the brain data.

[00:02:17] Ads are soon making their way to Meta's threads.

[00:02:20] Reinsiders, quoted by Digiday today, say ad placements on threads could begin as early

[00:02:25] as the second half of this year.

[00:02:27] The focus of the discussions has apparently been more about the timing of the rollout

[00:02:31] rather than specifics of how these ads will be integrated into the platform.

[00:02:35] But all things being equal, we can expect two main pushes.

[00:02:38] First, a sponsored influencer disclosure system and second, traditional ad placements bookable

[00:02:43] through the ads manager.

[00:02:45] And of those placements, of course, the in feed slots will be there, but also

[00:02:48] expect placements in the trend sections and carousels, which look similar to the ones

[00:02:53] on Instagram.

[00:02:54] Quoting Digiday, quote, If the rollout of ads on threads occurs as planned, it would

[00:03:00] mean that Meta is confident in achieving its ambitious goal of attracting one billion

[00:03:06] regular users to the app, a milestone it previously set as a prerequisite for introducing

[00:03:11] advertisements.

[00:03:12] As it stands, the platform is still quite a ways off from that number.

[00:03:16] When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided an update on monthly users during the company's

[00:03:20] earnings call in February, he reported a figure of 130 million.

[00:03:26] To meet the one billion user target in a condensed time frame, threads would need

[00:03:30] to expand at a rate eight times faster than its growth over the previous months.

[00:03:35] Nevertheless, reaching this milestone was more about having a clear audience before

[00:03:39] introducing ads.

[00:03:41] That's because in order to achieve more revenue, Meta has needed to find ways to

[00:03:45] increase ad impression volume and open up surface area, the latter in this case being

[00:03:51] threads, unquote.

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[00:04:58] AI is all over our industry, making images, rewriting copy, even making hiring

[00:05:03] decisions.

[00:05:05] But one area we haven't seen a lot of AI in has been in the connected TV space.

[00:05:09] And that's about to change.

[00:05:11] Earlier this week at an industry conference in Miami, executives from several

[00:05:15] companies talked about their work in using metadata from television shows to

[00:05:21] target consumers better.

[00:05:22] For instance, the tech could determine from the closed captioning that the show

[00:05:27] ended on a sad cliffhanger and would find ads in the auction that matched that

[00:05:31] emotional tone.

[00:05:33] Quoting Adweek, quote, for example, an episode of The Office could be a comedy

[00:05:38] or a romance, depending on the scene.

[00:05:41] Similarly, while Pillsbury might be happy to serve an ad during Shrek, it would

[00:05:46] probably want to avoid the scene where Lord Farquaad threatens the

[00:05:49] gingerbread man by inferring the mood of a scene and serving a similarly

[00:05:54] toned ad.

[00:05:55] The technology ensures a higher level of relevance, a cornerstone of

[00:06:00] effective advertising, unquote.

[00:06:03] This tech is being dropped into ad platforms as we speak.

[00:06:06] NBC Universal's ad system already uses similar technology to measure genre,

[00:06:11] tone and emotion.

[00:06:18] Google this week reminded advertisers it would soon remove ad customizers for

[00:06:23] text ads, expanded text ads and dynamic search ads at the end of next month.

[00:06:28] Ad customizers have been around for a decade.

[00:06:30] They could insert more context into your copy, like how many hours left

[00:06:34] before a sale ends.

[00:06:35] To be clear, if you're still using customizers, your ad itself won't stop

[00:06:40] running. Only the customizers will.

[00:06:42] So if you're using those, your ads will fall back to their default text.

[00:06:47] Industry reaction on LinkedIn was mixed.

[00:06:50] One person said it was no biggie to them since they never really liked

[00:06:53] the results anyway. In the same thread, another advertiser said, quote,

[00:06:57] cool. So this is going to kill my top performing ad in one account that

[00:07:01] has been our best performer for years, despite testing other options.

[00:07:06] Unquote again, the end date for these will be May 31st.

[00:07:15] Just a day after TikTok launched its image only app, TikTok notes in a

[00:07:19] couple of test countries, the company's emailing advertisers about a

[00:07:22] new single image ad format soon to be available on their platform.

[00:07:27] This would compliment the existing carousel image ad format it has.

[00:07:31] And the email TikTok notes that some brands find it challenging to create

[00:07:35] videos for every ad. So this might be a good substitute.

[00:07:39] If you don't see single image ads as an available format in your ads

[00:07:42] manager yet, you should expect to see it in the next week or so.

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[00:08:06] I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

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