Deepfakes: The Next Brand Safety Challenge

[00:00:00] It is Thursday, June 6th.

[00:00:03] Today, deepfakes are the next challenge for brand safety.

[00:00:06] Reddit's Ads API is out, barely.

[00:00:09] LinkedIn has a new video ad product.

[00:00:11] Instagram updates carousels.

[00:00:14] And the toggle switch inside Microsoft's Ads platform you might want to turn off.

[00:00:20] I'm Tod Maffin.

[00:00:21] That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:25] A lot of brand safety tools for advertisers deal with adjacency.

[00:00:29] How close your ads get to pro-Nazi content, for instance.

[00:00:33] Your brand might not want its ads for school backpacks to be directly below a post about

[00:00:37] silencers on AR15s.

[00:00:40] Until now, the list of things to stay away from have been topic driven.

[00:00:44] Violence, war, gambling and so on.

[00:00:47] But now we're starting to see protection based on the origin of the content.

[00:00:52] Integral Ad Science says it's working on a new brand safety tool designed to keep

[00:00:56] deepfake content away from your ads.

[00:00:59] This of course, happening as AI generated misinformation and fake images are continuing

[00:01:04] to grow.

[00:01:05] A recent BBC investigation found that TikTok's algorithm was recommending fake videos of

[00:01:09] political candidates making controversial statements.

[00:01:12] The IAS says its deepfake tool would be an industry first, though OpenAI has said

[00:01:18] it's working on one of its own.

[00:01:19] Both companies clearly trying to capitalize on brand safety anxieties.

[00:01:24] Most analysts say the issue of deepfake ad adjacency is likely to worsen in the

[00:01:29] coming years as generative AI becomes more widely available.

[00:01:38] We don't usually cover workplace software, but there is one update that I think could

[00:01:42] be pretty groundbreaking for marketers.

[00:01:44] Google's spreadsheets will soon be able to send conditional notifications.

[00:01:49] On email, whenever a specific cell or range of cells change.

[00:01:54] For instance, an ad campaign planning spreadsheet that tracks daily results could give a senior

[00:01:58] executive a heads up whenever the CPA goes above a certain value.

[00:02:02] Google Sheets have had notifications for a while, but they've been pretty simple.

[00:02:07] Did something on the sheet change or not?

[00:02:10] Nothing at this cell level.

[00:02:11] These kinds of notifications have also existed in online databases like Airtable

[00:02:15] for some time.

[00:02:16] Cell can do it too, but it requires some heavy duty coding for them.

[00:02:21] Google's email notification will show you what changed and who made the change if it

[00:02:25] was human generated.

[00:02:27] This started rolling out next week and should be to most accounts by the end of the

[00:02:30] month.

[00:02:31] I say most because it's only going to be available on business enterprise or education

[00:02:35] plans.

[00:02:36] If you are using Google Sheets on a free personal account, you will be out of luck.

[00:02:45] Reddit continues to build out its ads platform today, announcing that the social media platform

[00:02:49] Sprinkler will be its first partner to use its ads API.

[00:02:54] This API gives Sprinkler customers direct access to near real time public conversations

[00:02:58] on Reddit.

[00:02:59] Sprinkler will also be able to show relevant Reddit posts and comments in its app and

[00:03:03] collect metadata like sentiment, topic trends, and so on.

[00:03:07] It also provides a direct way to put ads onto the platform without having to go to

[00:03:11] Reddit's website.

[00:03:13] Reddit says now that they've got their first partner up and running, they've opened

[00:03:16] the new ads API to other developers and advertisers.

[00:03:20] What's not clear is just how open this is.

[00:03:24] Reddit recently clamped way down on its public API, jacking up the price by several

[00:03:28] magnitudes, forcing a lot of popular and well-loved third party apps into closure.

[00:03:33] Presumably Reddit will be hand picking which partners get into its API versus

[00:03:38] it being a truly open pathway.

[00:03:45] LinkedIn has a new ad product available.

[00:03:47] It's called The Wire.

[00:03:48] It lets you run in-stream video ads placed alongside content from publishers that

[00:03:52] LinkedIn considers trustworthy.

[00:03:55] Those publishers include Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, Market Watch,

[00:03:59] NBC Universal, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo Finance.

[00:04:03] Quoting LinkedIn, quote, knowing that U.S. viewers will spend 55 minutes more each

[00:04:08] day with digital video than traditional TV.

[00:04:10] Aligning your brand's message to publisher content in a format that resonates with

[00:04:14] buyers will support memory recall when it's time to buy, unquote.

[00:04:19] Social media today speculates that these publishers might even get a small cut of

[00:04:23] ad revenue placed beside their stories.

[00:04:25] Quoting their coverage of it today, quote, it could be a good way to reach

[00:04:29] key audience segments and with video uploads on LinkedIn increasing 45%

[00:04:34] year over year, it might also be a key path for tapping into emerging usage

[00:04:38] trends, unquote.

[00:04:40] LinkedIn is also adding some AI stuff, of course.

[00:04:43] Image generation based on your own assets, those rarely helpful ad platform

[00:04:48] recommendations.

[00:04:49] And you'll also now be able to add targeting exclusions using third party

[00:04:53] lists.

[00:04:58] Instagram is testing some new content features, in particular the ability to

[00:05:02] add text overlays on individual images inside of a carousel.

[00:05:06] This might be a helpful thing for explanations, how-tos, and so on.

[00:05:10] There are also some new carousel formats.

[00:05:12] Original will display the photos in full size and whatever originally they came in.

[00:05:17] Portrait will be cropped to vertical format, square of course to a square

[00:05:20] format.

[00:05:21] Honestly now that this is an option, I'm not sure why we wouldn't all just

[00:05:24] start using portrait since that would take up the most real estate on the

[00:05:28] screen.

[00:05:33] And finally, Microsoft is warning advertisers that if they've imported

[00:05:36] campaign data from Google ads to their Microsoft ads account starting

[00:05:40] from about two weeks from now, Microsoft will keep importing your Google

[00:05:45] conversion data automatically.

[00:05:48] You may or may not want this.

[00:05:50] Quoting from Microsoft's email to advertisers, quote, once you run an

[00:05:54] import, whether it's scheduled or not, we'll start importing your conversion

[00:05:57] goals by default.

[00:05:59] We encourage you to set up a universal event tracking tag with Google Tag

[00:06:03] Manager directly if you haven't done so already to ensure that these new

[00:06:06] conversion goals are fully set up and can receive conversion events.

[00:06:11] If your imported campaigns use a conversion value based bid strategy

[00:06:15] such as max conversion, we will continue to use the same strategy and optimize

[00:06:19] those campaigns based on the new conversions.

[00:06:23] If you'd like to not import conversion goals, you can uncheck the import

[00:06:27] conversion goal setting in your customize your import setting step of

[00:06:31] the import process unquote.

[00:06:38] So my end game for this podcast is starting to get to fruition.

[00:06:42] No, it's not to sell.

[00:06:43] It's not to have an asset for retirement.

[00:06:45] It's so that I can amass a large enough audience so that when I have problems

[00:06:49] in my life, you guys will just send me tips.

[00:06:53] So I want to thank those of you who have sent me tips about the puppy.

[00:06:57] It's very helpful.

[00:06:58] Got a great tip actually yesterday, I think, about a spray that we can use

[00:07:04] that we spray on the lawn and it apparently smells like pee and hopefully

[00:07:07] the dog will go there.

[00:07:08] So thank you, Carrie, for that tip.

[00:07:09] We've already bought the product that's coming tomorrow.

[00:07:13] You know, it's like we get a day or two where everything is being placed in

[00:07:19] the place we want it to be.

[00:07:21] And then and then it just seems to go to hell.

[00:07:23] It's like she forgets all of the training.

[00:07:25] And I know parents, I know it's not the same.

[00:07:27] You guys do a much bigger job.

[00:07:31] But I've never had a puppy before.

[00:07:33] So this is all new to me.

[00:07:35] Also, as you may have been able to tell from my voice in the reading of

[00:07:38] today's podcast, I'm a little under the weather for some reason.

[00:07:41] This feels like one of those things that's going to get worse tonight and

[00:07:44] tomorrow. So heads up, there may not be an episode tomorrow.

[00:07:47] Normally, of course, we would have our associate producer, the

[00:07:49] intrepid Steph Gunn in my stead.

[00:07:52] But Steph is still on mat leave.

[00:07:53] She comes back in the fall and I've tried not to be sick until then.

[00:07:56] But this one I may not be able to hold off on it.

[00:07:58] I'll do my best.

[00:07:59] I'll do my best for you.

[00:08:00] All right.

[00:08:00] Hopefully see you tomorrow.