fRiEnDSHIp endeD WItH gErMANY. Now FrANce IS my BesT frieND.

[00:00:00] It is Wednesday, March 6th. Today, why do Germans hate social media? Will a government

[00:00:06] threat finally convince meta to better support hacking victims? YouTube shorts gets

[00:00:11] easier to measure and Facebook abandoned it but LinkedIn picks it up. I'm Tod Maffin.

[00:00:18] That's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:21] Attorney General from 41 American States have sent a letter to meta saying they're putting

[00:00:26] the company on notice over a surge in stolen Facebook and Instagram accounts. Hackers commonly

[00:00:32] use fishing to take over accounts, then use the Add Accounts credit card on file to run spammy,

[00:00:37] crypto ads or get access to the victim's DMs and start sending even more fishing attempts

[00:00:42] to their contacts. Many marketers say when it's happened to them, getting a human being

[00:00:47] at meta to even review the issue is nearly impossible. Some just give up. Cancel their credit card

[00:00:54] and start over with a new account, basically having to rebuild their brand presence from scratch.

[00:01:00] That letter in part reads quote, we've received a number of complaints of threat actors fraudulently

[00:01:05] charging thousands of dollars to store credit cards. We refuse to operate as the customer service

[00:01:11] representatives of your company. Proper investment in response and mitigation is mandatory.

[00:01:17] Unquote.

[00:01:18] For its part meta says they try to combat fraud through specialized detection tools and cooperation

[00:01:22] with law enforcement. Statistics from New York reveal a tenfold increase in complaints

[00:01:27] from 2019 to 2023, with the significant rise in complaints in states like Pennsylvania,

[00:01:33] North Carolina and Vermont. This uptick coincided with meta's layoffs of about 11,000 employees

[00:01:39] in 2022, although direct connection to the increase in account theft complaints remains

[00:01:44] uncertain for now this letter is just a letter. It doesn't have any legislative or enforcement

[00:01:50] teeth, but at least it's on some radars.

[00:01:57] If you've ever run an ad campaign and targeted all countries or perhaps you're in Europe

[00:02:01] and you targeted Germany specifically, you may have wondered why that country's metrics

[00:02:05] looked a little off. It turns out that while Germans are online, a new study from the

[00:02:11] Pew Research Center says comparatively speaking, they're not really on social media. Germans

[00:02:17] stand out globally for their low engagement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram,

[00:02:21] despite 93% of German adults having internet access, only 51% dive into social media,

[00:02:28] marking the largest gap seen in past Pew Research surveys. Compared to neighboring Western

[00:02:34] European countries where two thirds of the population are social media users, Germany's

[00:02:39] numbers are notably lower. Even in regions with less internet usage like South Africa,

[00:02:45] a higher percentage of the population embraces social media than in Germany. Interestingly

[00:02:50] this trend holds true across all age groups in Germany with young adults under 40 showing

[00:02:55] a surprisingly low social media usage rate of 79%, despite universal internet access

[00:03:01] among them. This is a stark contrast to countries like France where 90% of young adults are

[00:03:07] active on social media. The reasons behind Germany's unique stance on social media remains unclear,

[00:03:13] access to the internet isn't an issue. Germans don't have a significantly more negative

[00:03:18] perception of social media's impact on society. In fact, a majority believe it's been beneficial

[00:03:24] for democracy, a sentiment more widely held in Germany than in many other surveyed countries.

[00:03:35] Reddit is ramping up its efforts to attract more ad dollars as it's much anticipated public

[00:03:39] offering looms on the horizon. The social platform which relies almost entirely on ads for its

[00:03:45] revenue has posted 32 job openings for its ad sales team to prepare for its stock market debut.

[00:03:52] And in a bid to woo advertisers, Reddit has been hosting agency days, similar to practices by

[00:03:59] other platforms trying to convince marketers to try it out. But there might be a problem. Reddit

[00:04:05] has always emphasized contextual advertising as its cornerstone. If you want to reach gardeners,

[00:04:10] you run ads in the gardening community. This is how platforms like Facebook started by targeting

[00:04:16] what people indicated were their interest, though it soon outgrew that fairly basic approach and now

[00:04:21] almost no meta-marketers use interests targeting as their primary method. The online ad industry

[00:04:26] has grown up a lot since those early days, so it'll be interesting to see if Reddit can catch up

[00:04:31] and offer more contemporary targeting options.

[00:04:38] CommScore is expanding its YouTube measurement tools to include YouTube shorts

[00:04:43] and viewership across YouTube's connected TV service, desktop, and mobile.

[00:04:47] If you're still not convinced how important shorts are these days, consider this. YouTube shorts

[00:04:52] now see more than 70 billion views per day. And the number of channels uploading shorts has grown

[00:05:00] by 50% year over year. Of course, the format is only three years old so you might expect numbers

[00:05:05] like that. The new update will enable CommScore customers to measure the performance of YouTube shorts

[00:05:12] and in-feed inventory in addition to YouTube's standard video placement. CommScore's campaign

[00:05:17] ratings will also be extended to YouTube's mass-head ads in the coming months. Essentially,

[00:05:23] brands will now have additional third-party verification of their YouTube performance metrics,

[00:05:28] which will provide more assurance and more options to accurately measure response

[00:05:33] to their YouTube campaigns.

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[00:06:49] Future you? Well thank you. Amazon recently ventured into new AI territory with Rufus,

[00:06:56] a chatbot designed to help shoppers find and compare products in its mobile app.

[00:07:01] Launched last month and rolled out two early testers, Rufus promised to ease the shopping experience.

[00:07:07] Users can engage with it by swiping upward tapping the search bar. So has it been doing so far?

[00:07:12] The pretty deep dive published this week on TechCrunch found it's pretty good at navigating

[00:07:17] questions about product attributes and recommendations even linking to relevant items with brief explanations.

[00:07:23] But like most AI, it occasionally misses the mark, providing irrelevant suggestions.

[00:07:29] Interestingly, Rufus doesn't exclusively promote Amazon's own products,

[00:07:35] which might be more about antitrust lawsuit fears than genuine good faith but whatever will take it.

[00:07:40] And since it is a chatbot, he can also ask questions outside of shopping like who won

[00:07:45] specific sports events or questions about political history. There is a whole lot it can't do.

[00:07:50] It can't manage orders, process returns or create wish lists. At least not yet.

[00:07:56] Amazon has not said when it plans to roll the tech out more fully.

[00:08:04] LinkedIn is switching its focus from individual creators to partnering with more than 400 news

[00:08:08] publishers. This aims to tap into the platform's recent surge in engagement with a 22% increase

[00:08:14] in main feed updates views and a 25% rise in public conversations over the last year.

[00:08:20] It's certainly an interesting move, especially given Meta's recent abandonment of news on its

[00:08:25] platforms, deprioritizing it in threads and on Facebook and straight up blocking it in Canada.

[00:08:31] Yes, that pissing match is still at a stalemate. LinkedIn is also expanding its podcast network

[00:08:36] and testing new video sponsorship programs with sub-new sites. This obviously trying to get into

[00:08:41] the lucrative video ads business. And their focus on newsletters has seen a significant uptick

[00:08:46] with the platform reporting a 150% increase in publications by journalists and news publishers

[00:08:52] in the past year.

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[00:09:12] I am still sick, I took a covid test yesterday it came up negative so I guess it's just

[00:09:16] a cold. I am going to bed after I put this out with any luck see you tomorrow

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