Oh FFS, Meta Is Hallucinating Return Policies Now

[00:00:00] It is Friday, March 8th. Today, is it a bug or a feature met as AI is hallucinating

[00:00:08] return policies now? Plus TikTok's anti-band campaign appears to have backfired. Why do

[00:00:15] women make up a majority of marketing roles but a fraction of visibility and ads? And we

[00:00:21] have the details on Google's change to negative country targeting. That's ahead today in Digital

[00:00:28] Marketing. Met as obsession with AI has turned up some positives, better results from broad

[00:00:35] audiences faster appeals that sort of thing but lately it seems that more often than not

[00:00:42] met as AI gets a little drunk on its own power and decides it knows better than you. What

[00:00:48] you didn't want that product photocopped? Too bad. You don't think that body copy and headline

[00:00:52] combination speaks like your brand? Too bad. Until now, AI's unwanted insertions into

[00:00:59] your marketing have just been a mild pain in the butt. But now at least for one marketer,

[00:01:05] meta is changing things far deeper than a misplaced headline. Matt Snow is the co-founder

[00:01:10] of Boardwalk, a company that specializes in gifts, they sell t-shirts which of course

[00:01:15] they accept returns on and some printed products which they do not. Those return policies

[00:01:20] are clearly stated on their Shopify store, which they've connected to meta to run ads.

[00:01:25] I spoke with Matt yesterday. One of our CS people slacked me and said customer

[00:01:33] place in order for this item that we don't typically accept returns on and she wants

[00:01:37] to do a return when I explained the return policy to her. She sent a screenshot of the Facebook

[00:01:44] shop listing that showed that it says 30 day returns. Indeed, a screenshot of the ad

[00:01:50] in question that we reviewed, man you can see in today's email newsletter shows text

[00:01:54] reading this product can be returned within 30 days of delivery. It was placed on a product

[00:02:01] which is not returnable. As far as Matt could tell, meta's AI just sort of hallucinated

[00:02:08] on his product pages. It seems to have just taken the very first sentence of the page where

[00:02:13] it says we accept returns and exchanges for most items within 30 days of delivery and

[00:02:18] it's just like, okay, so clearly they accept returns and exchange on everything within

[00:02:22] 30 days full stop. Since Mitt is massly off last year, it's been

[00:02:27] harder to find a human being to help. Matt's company did spend enough to warrant a rep though

[00:02:31] he says she was pretty green and just following a script. Then she left and was replaced by

[00:02:37] a rolling series of other reps equally green. Nevertheless, he collected some screenshots

[00:02:44] and sent an email to the last two reps that he had dealings with.

[00:02:48] I'll be lucky if I get a response to this email A ever or B within eight weeks. That's

[00:02:53] usually about the average reply timeline that I'm looking at when I contact anyone directly

[00:02:58] by email at meta. Have you been able to find a workaround?

[00:03:01] Yeah, so I just went into the Shopify backend and I changed our return shipping window

[00:03:08] from 30 days to zero days and now it just says does not accept returns.

[00:03:12] But does that not apply then to all of the products in Shopify even the ones that you do accept

[00:03:17] returns on? That is correct, at least as far as Instagram and Facebook shop is concerned.

[00:03:22] Is it worth it generally to be running on meta if this is what's going on?

[00:03:26] Like are they driving that much revenue?

[00:03:28] For us right now yes but the clock is ticking on how much longer that's going to be the case

[00:03:35] because the acquisition costs are going up, the efficiency is going down. The problem is that

[00:03:42] diverting that marketing budget to another channel and having similar successes very, very unlikely.

[00:03:49] Oh we can't just move it over to Google. Google's very much about demand capture as opposed

[00:03:53] to demand generation. Our products are very demand generation leaning. Most people don't know

[00:03:57] they exist until we put them in front of their faces.

[00:04:00] We reached out to meta to see how widespread this issue is and did not hear back by deadline.

[00:04:04] But a word of warning perhaps if you sell products through Shopify's connection to meta shop

[00:04:09] it might be worth double checking to make sure your ads aren't making up return policies too.

[00:04:19] Well TikTok asked for help and it got it but that help may have come with a big cost.

[00:04:25] This week American legislators advanced a bipartisan bill that would force TikTok to leave

[00:04:30] its Chinese ownership behind or face a national ban. The bill would also let future presidents

[00:04:37] ban any other app they wanted if they're owned or run by an adversary of the US. Yesterday TikTok

[00:04:43] started popping notifications up on its American users screens telling them to call their representatives

[00:04:49] and in the app itself a button that when tapped would place a call directly to the lawmaker from

[00:04:56] that user's jurisdiction and call they did. Quoting business insider quote congressional

[00:05:04] offices got a barrage of calls demanding lawmakers vote against the bill some users filmed themselves

[00:05:10] enthusiastically joining the apps call to arms if you ban TikTok I will kill myself one caller said

[00:05:18] axios reported that some lawmakers offices turned their phones off during the flood of calls

[00:05:26] TikTok says the ban would quote damage millions of businesses and destroy the livelihoods of

[00:05:31] countless content creators unquote honestly it's been a little confusing to watch this whole

[00:05:37] will they ban or won't they ban thing in case you're playing along at home former president trump

[00:05:42] started this fight as an executive order which current president Biden cancelled then Biden said

[00:05:48] he supported a ban but then the White House opened an account on the app and started using it

[00:05:54] now yesterday trump said actually he's cool with TikTok being owned by the Chinese

[00:06:00] and the real problem is the American owned meta which yesterday he called the enemy of the people

[00:06:08] so yeah the messaging from both sides is a little scattered as for that phone campaign one

[00:06:14] representative assistant told axios that TikTok strategy was quote backfiring as members are

[00:06:21] livid about all the calls and misinformation unquote and now just a day after the calls started

[00:06:27] pouring in a committee is voted to advance the bill that committee is made up of 50 lawmakers from

[00:06:33] both parties the vote was unanimous putting our podcast and newsletter together can get complicated

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[00:07:44] today's episode is sponsored by nerd wallets smart money podcast nerd wallets trusted financial

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[00:08:21] podcast app future you will thank you a new report from foresters says bad ads are on the rise and

[00:08:28] they are making it tougher for the good ones like yours to get through these troublesome ads

[00:08:34] range from scams to those loaded with malware and their proliferation is attributed to the

[00:08:39] advent of generative AI and a surplus of ad space the report identified five types of bad ads

[00:08:47] each posting different levels of risk to consumers and marketers alike most harmful are those

[00:08:53] designed to scam users or infect devices with malware the least harmful might simply be miscategorized

[00:08:59] or failed to load correctly but what's of interest to marketers I think is that these bad ads

[00:09:05] are becoming the norm rather than the exception why the growth for one AI is being deployed at

[00:09:13] scale to generate deceptive ads and layoffs in churn has caused a reduction of people in marketing

[00:09:20] roles who traditionally served as gatekeepers to prevent such ads from seeing the light of day

[00:09:25] forster suggests that creating a price floor could be one strategy to combat the issue as it

[00:09:31] would deter low quality ad creators unwilling to invest in distribution.

[00:09:40] Even if the ads out there aren't all bad per se one new study from creative ex on this international

[00:09:46] women's day says the ads are not doing a good job of showing different types of people

[00:09:51] the study looked at more than 32,000 ads globally and found the ad creative still skews away

[00:09:58] from depicting dark skinned and older women these groups remain underrepresented in creative

[00:10:04] receiving only a fraction of screen time and ad spending. Creative ex of CEO points out

[00:10:10] a significant gap between intent and action within the industry although there's often talk

[00:10:17] of change the numbers tell a different story she said there's been an unusually cautious approach

[00:10:23] by advertisers opting for a zone of neutrality to avoid backlash. The report found that yes many

[00:10:31] campaigns do feature women in non-traditional roles but when you look at the spend behind those

[00:10:36] campaigns it's tiny not even 4% of spend on ads featuring women showed them in non-traditional

[00:10:44] roles like management and leadership. LinkedIn data from 2021 found that women held 60% of all

[00:10:51] North American marketing jobs and 52% of CMO roles. Google ads is now capping the number

[00:11:03] of country level exclusions you can add to your campaigns the new limit is 120 countries.

[00:11:10] This of course made some media buyers nervous that this was the start of Google just

[00:11:14] straight up removing the ability to fine tune targeting that way like performance max largely is

[00:11:19] but a Google spokesperson says they're not planning to pull it entirely. Instead,

[00:11:23] Google's ad liaison said they'd prefer it if you just use positive targeting for the few countries

[00:11:29] you want to include rather than negative targeting for a big list of those you want to exclude.

[00:11:35] It's a little strange to me that they're capping it this way. They're not wrong of course there

[00:11:40] are 195 countries in the world it's just faster to go with positive than a huge list of negatives

[00:11:46] but maybe that's just the workflow of some marketers. Maybe that's the way they do it on other

[00:11:51] platforms and it's simpler to copy and paste but regardless Google has already put that cap in

[00:11:57] place now and if for some reason you hit that 120 country limit you will not be able to exclude

[00:12:04] anymore. And finally yesterday a number of bugs on the Google business profiles platform showed up

[00:12:13] those tools are managing reviews verification status check and managing your appeals so you might

[00:12:20] notice some error messages or a frozen screen passed a step by step screen. Google says it is

[00:12:26] aware of the problem and it fix is underway. As you probably know we put this podcast out about

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[00:12:56] LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Macedon, Blue Sky, Snapchat and Pinterest so go to today in digital.com

[00:13:03] slash social or tap the link at the top of the show notes. That will do it for the week. Today

[00:13:08] in digital marketing is produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the

[00:13:13] synunemic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our product and coordinator is Sarah Gild our theme

[00:13:18] is by Mark Blivis at coordination by Red Circle and behind. I'm Todd Mathin have a restful weekend

[00:13:26] and I will see you on Monday. At Parker our purpose is simple we want to make the world a better

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