Amazon's Secret Spy Program Revealed

[00:00:00] It is Friday, April 19th. Today, fake company, real products inside the elaborate secret

[00:00:08] Amazon scheme. Also how to get your ads beside the most popular shorts content, your brand's

[00:00:14] Facebook group might break on Monday and X is having another very bad week. I'm Tod

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

[00:00:28] It is getting out about a secret project Amazon ran in 2015 to allegedly spy on their competitors.

[00:00:35] The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Amazon started a fake company called

[00:00:40] Big River Services International, get it, Big River, in 2015. This company made real products

[00:00:47] like photo frames and clothing and sold them through their competitors like Walmart

[00:00:53] and eBay, all apparently in an attempt to get more information on sales contracts and

[00:00:58] the likes. In the Wall Street Journal, quote, team members attended their rivals' seller

[00:01:04] conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River

[00:01:09] Services instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon

[00:01:15] email addresses to use externally. In emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon

[00:01:20] email addresses and took extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated

[00:01:26] their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who

[00:01:32] worked on the project weren't even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with

[00:01:36] most teams at Amazon. An internal crisis management paper gave advice on what to

[00:01:41] say if discovered the response to questions should be, we make a variety of products

[00:01:47] available to customers through a number of subsidiaries and online channels, unquote.

[00:01:52] But despite how well-prepped they sounded, the alleged spies still made some amateur

[00:01:57] gum shoe mistakes. Some of these Big River team members actually listed Amazon as their

[00:02:03] employer on LinkedIn. For its part, Amazon said it was just collecting data and nothing

[00:02:07] to see here, as spokesperson telling media, quote, benchmarking is a common practice

[00:02:12] in business, unquote. Quoting business insiders, peace on this, quote, Amazon has faced scrutiny

[00:02:17] for its treatment of sellers on its own platform before a US congressional committee found in

[00:02:22] 2020 that the company had used data on sales by third-party sellers to create its own

[00:02:27] version of the products, usually to the detriment of the independent sellers and their

[00:02:32] businesses. A lawsuit from the FTC last year also claimed that Amazon effectively

[00:02:37] raised prices by increasing what the company charged its third-party sellers and punishing

[00:02:43] them for offering lower prices on websites besides Amazon, unquote.

[00:02:49] A new option for brands wanting to capitalize on the vertical video trend, a way to place

[00:02:57] your ads alongside popular YouTube shorts. The new select shorts placement will show

[00:03:03] your ads among the most popular videos in five content categories, entertainment, automotive,

[00:03:08] gaming, beauty and fashion, and food and recipes. This will of course give more opportunity

[00:03:14] to be seen with some of the platform's most viral content. YouTube says shorts are

[00:03:18] now seen by 2 billion users each month, and viewership on TV has also gone up after

[00:03:24] they added a shorts interface to their connected TV apps. The company also updated its

[00:03:28] tips guide called ABCDs of effective ads to include shorts, probably won't be much new

[00:03:34] here if you've seen similar tips from TikTok and Instagram Reels. But might be handy if

[00:03:39] you're just starting out with vertical, we have a link to that in today's email newsletter,

[00:03:43] which is free to join, just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tap the link at the

[00:03:47] top of the show notes.

[00:03:52] Sunday is the last day that brands will be able to post to Facebook groups using

[00:03:57] a third party tool. Meta is shutting down its Facebook groups API on Monday. This means

[00:04:02] that social media management tools like Buffer and Agora Pulse and Hootsuite won't be able

[00:04:07] to post to Facebook groups for you. Some platforms, like Sprout Social, simply no longer offer

[00:04:13] that posting ability anymore. Others, like Buffer, say they're considering a mobile

[00:04:17] reminder system which would still let you schedule content on their platform but

[00:04:22] you would have to manually post directly on Facebook. To be clear, we are talking about

[00:04:27] Facebook groups here, not Facebook pages. Your company's brand page is unaffected by

[00:04:33] this. This appears to be met as an attempt to reduce the amount of spam and commercial

[00:04:37] content that has populated many groups.

[00:04:44] Snapchat has released a new report that looked at three years of ads within their

[00:04:47] app across five different verticals. Commerce, tech, telecommunications, travel and quick

[00:04:52] service restaurants. Although the dataset represented more than 15 billion in ad spend,

[00:04:57] it came from only 36 advertisers. And as you might expect to study funded by a platform,

[00:05:03] the research found that platform to be really strong. One of the headlines in the report

[00:05:08] literally reads, spend more on Snapchat. Quoting social media today, quote, snap

[00:05:14] notes that according to the analysis, brands could actually increase their snap ad spend

[00:05:19] by up to 33% and they'd still continue to drive strong results. I'm fairly skeptical

[00:05:25] of estimations like this as they assume a lot in predicting broader response patterns.

[00:05:30] But based on the data available, the figures do indicate that snap advertisers could improve

[00:05:34] their results by increasing their ad budgets in the app. Snapchat says their app generated

[00:05:40] the highest return relative to all marketing channels for three out of five verticals and

[00:05:45] outperformed paid social across all categories.

[00:06:10] And finally, X, formerly Twitter recently killed off its trending column, which used to

[00:06:29] have some human intervention and replaced it with its AI bots summary of trending content.

[00:06:35] That bot, called GROC, doesn't okay job with that task most of the time. But when it goes

[00:06:41] off the rails, it really goes off the rails. Earlier this week, X's trending session broke

[00:06:47] this news about a basketball star, quote, Clay Thompson accused in bizarre brick vandalism

[00:06:53] spree. Underneath it, the copy read, in a bizarre

[00:06:57] turn of events NBA star Clay Thompson has been accused of vandalizing multiple houses

[00:07:03] with bricks in Sacramento. Authorities are investigating the claims after several individuals

[00:07:08] reported their houses being damaged with windows shattered by bricks. Clay Thompson has not

[00:07:14] yet issued a statement regarding the accusations. The incidents have left the community shaken,

[00:07:19] but no injuries were reported. The motive behind the alleged vandalism remains unclear,

[00:07:25] unquote. Except, and I'm sure you know where

[00:07:28] we're going with this. Clay Thompson did not commit criminal vandalism. It seems the

[00:07:33] bot got confused by the slang term for missing a basketball shot, which is sometimes known

[00:07:39] as throwing bricks. As of this morning when we checked that completely made up news item

[00:07:46] was still up on X. It has been a rough week for the beleaguered app. Yesterday, car

[00:07:51] manufacturer Hyundai announced it's pulling its ads from the platform after pro Nazi

[00:07:55] content was placed beside their brand promotions. It happened just days after NBC said it found

[00:08:01] thousands of accounts posting or amplifying pro Nazi content, at least 150 of those accounts

[00:08:08] sporting the paid blue verified checkmark. We have a couple of ad slots available in our

[00:08:14] newsletter in May and those rates are going up so if you want to try it out, now is the

[00:08:20] time to lock in. Some ad slots are currently as low as 10 bucks. Just tap the link at the

[00:08:24] top of the show notes or go to today in digital.com slash ads to see our rate card.

[00:08:30] And that will do it for the week. Today in digital marketing is produced by Engage Q Digital on

[00:08:34] the traditional territories of the Pneunemic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our production

[00:08:38] coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis ad coordination by Red Circle.

[00:08:45] I'm Todd Mappin, have a restful weekend friends and I will see you on Monday.

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