More. More Never Changes.

[00:00:00] It's happened again, this time Adobe scrambles to reassure marketers that it's not going

[00:00:06] to steal their work in the service of AI training.

[00:00:10] But can its track record be trusted?

[00:00:13] That plus updates to Meta's conversions API, LinkedIn pulls one of its most effective

[00:00:18] ad targeting tools, and much more ahead in this very busy Friday, June 7th.

[00:00:23] I'm Tod Maffin, here's what's happening today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:29] Yesterday the creative marketing community was up in arms after Adobe locked some of

[00:00:34] its users out of the company's software until that user agreed to terms that appeared to

[00:00:39] hand over all rights for AI training.

[00:00:43] Some said they couldn't even get support or cancel their subscription or uninstall

[00:00:47] their apps until they agreed to the terms.

[00:00:50] Duncan Jones, a film director posted this on social media, quote, Hey, Photoshop,

[00:00:55] what the hell was that new agreement you forced us to sign this morning that locked

[00:00:59] our app until we agree to it.

[00:01:01] We are working on a bloody movie here and no, you don't suddenly have the right to

[00:01:05] any of the work we're doing on it because we pay you to use Photoshop.

[00:01:09] What the fuck unquote.

[00:01:12] At first Adobe came out with a statement which was basically, yo, what's the problem?

[00:01:16] We've had these terms in there forever, which of course didn't do them any favors.

[00:01:20] Quoting Adobe statement, quote, this policy has been in place for many years.

[00:01:24] Adobe accesses user content for a number of reasons, including the ability to deliver

[00:01:28] some of our most innovative cloud based features, unquote.

[00:01:31] Late yesterday, wiser heads in Adobe's PR department apparently prevailed and they

[00:01:36] published a blog post offering more details.

[00:01:39] Essentially, they said their updated terms were meant to offer some examples

[00:01:43] of how the existing policy would play out and that some of their need to

[00:01:47] review the data you upload to their cloud was about monitoring for child

[00:01:50] abuse imagery.

[00:01:51] Most importantly, Adobe says regardless of how it may have sounded, it doesn't

[00:01:55] use customer content to train its AI, which it calls Firefly.

[00:01:58] Quote, Firefly generative AI models are trained on a data set of licensed

[00:02:03] content such as Adobe stock and public domain content where copyright

[00:02:08] has expired.

[00:02:09] Customers own their content and Adobe does not assume any ownership of

[00:02:13] customer work, unquote.

[00:02:15] The company said it would be tweaking those terms of use acceptance screens

[00:02:18] customers see when opening applications to make them a little less scary.

[00:02:23] It certainly isn't the first time Adobe has sold out some of its goodwill.

[00:02:27] It was only a couple of years ago when the company turned colors in its

[00:02:30] customers documents to black if they hadn't purchased an additional Pantone

[00:02:35] color license.

[00:02:37] This might be a good time to remind you that there are plenty of

[00:02:39] outstanding Adobe substitutes out there which don't charge you a

[00:02:42] monthly fee to use.

[00:02:44] The Affinity Suite is an excellent replacement.

[00:02:46] I bought Pixelmator Pro for 25 bucks about six years ago.

[00:02:51] It does pretty much everything Photoshop does including reading and writing

[00:02:54] Photoshop files.

[00:02:55] Both products are low cost and pay once lifetime models.

[00:03:04] LinkedIn has geo restricted one of the most effective ad targeting tools

[00:03:08] it has.

[00:03:09] It will no longer let marketers target European users based on which

[00:03:13] LinkedIn groups they're in.

[00:03:15] This after a complaint filed with privacy regulators on the continent

[00:03:18] quoting TechCrunch, quote, Patrick Corrigan, LinkedIn's VP for legal

[00:03:22] and digital safety said that while it disagreed that its platform could be

[00:03:25] used indirectly by advertisers to target users on special categories of data,

[00:03:30] it has chosen to remove this feature anyway.

[00:03:33] Quote, we made this change to prevent any misconception that ads to

[00:03:36] European members could be indirectly targeted based on special categories of

[00:03:40] data or related profiling categories.

[00:03:43] The change is effective now for all new advertising campaigns.

[00:03:48] It's a move evidently designed to nip the investigation in the bud early.

[00:03:51] After all, its parent company, Microsoft, is facing a raft of regulatory hurdles

[00:03:56] in Europe over various alleged misdemeanors.

[00:03:59] Unquote.

[00:04:04] Instagram is clarifying its stance on single word call to actions and longer

[00:04:09] reels after concerns flew among marketers about having their content

[00:04:12] shadow banned.

[00:04:14] Last week, the platform advised against using single word calls to action,

[00:04:18] saying those could be seen by their systems as engagement bait and lead to

[00:04:22] reduced post reach.

[00:04:24] Now, though, Instagram says that open ended questions and calls to action are

[00:04:28] still fine and won't be penalized.

[00:04:31] It says the goal is to prevent users from hacking the system by trying to

[00:04:34] pile on clicks.

[00:04:36] It also clarified that third party automation tools like MiniChat, which

[00:04:40] use single word responses to drive engagement, were not the intended

[00:04:44] target of that advice.

[00:04:46] One recent piece of advice it didn't walk back, though, was to avoid

[00:04:49] posting reels longer than 90 seconds.

[00:04:53] It confirmed that reels over that length still are not eligible for

[00:04:56] recommendations, but if someone already follows your brand's account, your

[00:05:01] content could still very well get to them.

[00:05:03] In other words, 90 second or longer reels are a shadow ban from people

[00:05:07] who don't follow your account, but not for those who do.

[00:05:15] Meta has announced some updates to its messaging tools at an event

[00:05:18] yesterday.

[00:05:18] First, and this is a big one, they're expanding the conversions API to

[00:05:23] support messaging events, quoting the company.

[00:05:26] Quote, conversions API previously supported web app and offline events,

[00:05:30] and it is now expanding to support messaging events across Messenger,

[00:05:34] Instagram and WhatsApp.

[00:05:35] For business messaging, this also enables our new purchase optimization,

[00:05:40] which offers advertisers the ability to drive more sales and reduce costs

[00:05:45] by reaching customers most likely to purchase, unquote.

[00:05:48] Second, they are testing a new AI support tool on WhatsApp, which can

[00:05:52] respond to fairly simple questions asked in the app.

[00:05:55] The chat will indicate that it was written by AI.

[00:05:59] These aren't out in the real world much yet, so we don't have any way of

[00:06:01] knowing how good these are in practice.

[00:06:03] So far, most attempts we've seen at auto replying AI bots have been

[00:06:08] pretty anemic at best.

[00:06:10] In some cases, it's spouted replies that brand managers have winced at.

[00:06:14] Third, they're letting brands in more countries buy a blue checkmark.

[00:06:18] The new countries are Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia.

[00:06:21] If you already have a green verified badge from WhatsApp, that will be

[00:06:25] changing to blue to match it everywhere else.

[00:06:28] The company recently added higher priced tiers to its verified program,

[00:06:32] including one that costs a thousand dollars US a month if you want both

[00:06:36] your Facebook and Instagram accounts to have the checkmark.

[00:06:39] A few other updates to a new paid message option to let you send

[00:06:43] personalized marketing messages to customers, WhatsApp inboxes

[00:06:47] and a new message template library in the WhatsApp business platform.

[00:06:56] After watching Walmart, CVS and other big retailers rent out its

[00:07:00] customer purchase data for ad targeting, Costco says it now wants in too.

[00:07:05] And with nearly 75 million members, it could quickly become one of the big

[00:07:09] players, especially when you remember that unlike Walmart or CVS, in order

[00:07:15] to make any purchase at Costco, customers need to have a member specific card

[00:07:20] which logs what they buy.

[00:07:22] Quoting marketing brew quote, generally advertising is a comparatively

[00:07:26] high margin business for retailers since it costs relatively little

[00:07:30] to run ads on websites.

[00:07:31] And since shoppers will visit retailers, e-commerce sites,

[00:07:34] whether there are ads or not.

[00:07:36] Costco already has a nascent ads business, bringing in some

[00:07:40] advertising revenue through its Costco connection magazine and

[00:07:44] rudimentary on-site contextual ads.

[00:07:47] Ad tech company Criteo manages a portion of its website monetization,

[00:07:51] like sponsored search and product ads.

[00:07:53] But the company hasn't until now made more aggressive moves into the ad space,

[00:07:59] which a Costco executive suggested could be due to its general aversion

[00:08:03] to advertising and marketing on major platforms like TV, which has created

[00:08:08] a lack of expertise in the paid media space.

[00:08:11] Unquote.

[00:08:12] And that will bring us to the lightning round.

[00:08:17] Shopify has acquired threads.com.

[00:08:20] No, not Meta's app, but the UK based Slack competitor that everyone

[00:08:24] Googled by accident when Meta announced their app.

[00:08:27] Threads admitted Meta's move on the name helped push them towards selling.

[00:08:31] It is not clear what Shopify plans to do with it.

[00:08:34] Formal complaints in 11 European countries now over Meta's plans

[00:08:38] to scrape the personal data from Facebook users to train its AI and

[00:08:43] share it with third parties.

[00:08:45] Meta says users have a couple of weeks to manually opt out and did not

[00:08:49] reply to media questions about how people can have their data removed

[00:08:52] if they didn't hear about the opt out option in time.

[00:08:56] Communities have been rolled out on Meta's messenger app.

[00:08:59] This lets users join groups based on shared interests.

[00:09:02] The move seen as a response to the growing popularity of

[00:09:05] community focused platforms.

[00:09:07] And Google says it will turn off the old user interface for

[00:09:11] Google ads on August 30th.

[00:09:13] It says the new version is better and we marketers have had

[00:09:16] plenty of time to get used to it.

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[00:11:07] And finally, LinkedIn has blown past X as the most

[00:11:11] valuable social media platform for public relations professionals.

[00:11:15] This according to the latest state of the PR report by

[00:11:17] Muckrack, this marks a substantial decline in X's

[00:11:21] usability since Elon Musk took over in 2022.

[00:11:24] The report based on a survey of about 11,000 people

[00:11:27] found that 61% of respondents view LinkedIn as the most

[00:11:31] useful platform, surpassing X, Instagram, Facebook and

[00:11:36] TikTok combined.

[00:11:38] It's a big fall.

[00:11:39] X had previously been the second most used platform for

[00:11:43] pitching reporters, but now only 10% of PR professionals

[00:11:47] use it for outreach ranking even below 40%.

[00:11:51] And the second biggest fall is the second biggest

[00:11:55] outreach ranking even below phone calls and text messages.

[00:12:02] And that will do it for the week today in digital marketing

[00:12:04] is produced by engage Q digital on the traditional

[00:12:06] territories of this new name, first nation on Vancouver

[00:12:09] Island.

[00:12:10] Our production coordinator is Sarah guild.

[00:12:12] Our theme is by Mark Bleviss at coordination by

[00:12:15] Red Circle.

[00:12:16] I'm Todd Maffin have a restful weekend.

[00:12:19] I'll see you on Monday.

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