The Calm Before the Election Storm

[00:00:01] It's Friday, November 1st. Today, brands take on election marketing. A Bezos-backed startup

[00:00:08] sets its sights on Amazon, while ChatGPT takes on Google with Search. I'm Steph Gunn

[00:00:14] sitting in for Tod Maffin. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:20] With the US presidential election just days away, some agencies are recommending brands

[00:00:25] pause campaigns until after the election, while others are scaling back on major ad pushes

[00:00:30] and preparing post-election strategies depending on the outcome.

[00:00:34] Not all brands plan to go completely silent. According to Sprout Social, three out of four

[00:00:40] US consumers now rely on social media as their main source for election news. With more Americans

[00:00:46] turning to social media for political updates, brands risk missing valuable engagement if they

[00:00:52] go dark around elections. Marketers also have to be conscious of ad costs on major platforms,

[00:00:58] as political ad spend has driven up costs on platforms like Meta and YouTube. Political ads

[00:01:04] on YouTube alone exceeded more than $2.5 million daily in October. To navigate this, the digital

[00:01:10] agency Kepler suggests brands reduce ad spend until after the election, when costs are expected to ease

[00:01:16] and the holiday shopping season picks up. Marketers are also preparing for different election outcomes.

[00:01:22] Social agency Monks advises that brands could capitalize on optimism if Harris wins,

[00:01:27] while a Trump win may require more cautious engagement.

[00:01:35] Perplexity, the search engine startup backed by Jeff Bezos, is gearing up to challenge his former

[00:01:40] empire Amazon by entering the e-commerce space. The company is beta testing its latest feature,

[00:01:46] ProShop, which lets shoppers research and buy products from various merchants directly on

[00:01:51] perplexity, according to an internal email obtained by media. Here's how it works. While browsing,

[00:01:58] users will notice a buy with pro option for eligible items. Shoppers will enter their billing and

[00:02:03] shipping information to complete their order. The ProShop also promises free shipping on all purchases.

[00:02:13] OpenAI just took a swing at Google with the broad launch of ChatGPT's search yesterday. Like any

[00:02:19] search engine, it provides information and images from the web, including sports scores, news, stock

[00:02:24] quotes, and so on. It also includes links to relevant sources and lets users ask follow-up questions to

[00:02:30] refine their search. ChatGPT will automatically search the web based on user queries, or users can

[00:02:37] manually choose to search by clicking the new web search icon. Responses have both inline and sidebar

[00:02:44] citations, sourced from news publishers and other data sources the platform has licensing deals with.

[00:02:49] OpenAI has also released a browser extension to make ChatGPT search the default search engine in

[00:02:55] Chrome. Plus and team users will be the first to get it on mobile and web. A couple of weeks after

[00:03:00] that, enterprise and educational customers will get it, followed by free users.

[00:03:09] Even the cost of brand safety isn't safe from inflation. Adweek reported yesterday that Integral AdScience,

[00:03:15] which sells brand safety and ad verification tools to advertisers, is raising its prices, according to several

[00:03:21] sources. Some clients of Yahoo's demand-side platform received in-platform notifications about the price

[00:03:27] increase. The company typically charges on a per-CPM basis, meaning for every 1,000 impressions, the

[00:03:34] company's tech reviews. Clients pay cents on the dollar. Now, Integral AdScience is reportedly raising

[00:03:40] prices for various services by 1 to 3 cents. The new prices are expected to go into effect today.

[00:03:51] Meta reported its third quarter results this week. The good news, the company beat revenue

[00:03:56] expectations. The bad news? Ad sales have slowed. Meta reported $40.5 billion in revenue, marking a

[00:04:03] nearly 20% year-over-year increase. The edge passed Wall Street's expectations of $40.3 billion.

[00:04:10] Advertising accounted for 96% of Q3 revenue, though that's a slight decline from 97% in the previous

[00:04:17] quarter. Net income reached a record $15.7 billion, a 35% year-over-year increase. User engagement also

[00:04:26] showed positive signs, with Meta's platforms generating 3.3 billion average daily active users

[00:04:32] in September 2024, up 5% from the previous year. Looking ahead, the company forecast revenue could

[00:04:39] climb up to $48 billion in the fourth quarter, in line with analyst expectations.

[00:04:47] A couple of updates from Google Ads. First, the platform is rolling out a new conversion report

[00:04:52] that lets advertisers analyze conversions, whether they are lead or sales-oriented. To find it,

[00:04:58] you can navigate to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, where you'll see two tabs, Sales and Leads.

[00:05:04] In other news, Google Ads chatbot is facing some challenges. As Google launches its conversational

[00:05:11] ad feature, advertisers are seeing the chat function more often. Though sometimes it's a bit

[00:05:17] tongue-tied, some users have reported the bot responding with nothing. No words, just a void

[00:05:23] of complete emptiness. Google confirmed that it is due to a bug and they're working on a fix.

[00:05:29] Either that or the robot overlords have had enough of our shit.

[00:05:37] Not much going on for me this weekend. We had a pretty busy week with Halloween being yesterday.

[00:05:42] We actually took our one-year-old out trick-or-treating for the very first time,

[00:05:45] and I forgot how much fun it is to go trick-or-treating. She loved it. She mostly just wanted to go into

[00:05:52] everyone's house, which was adorable and also mildly concerning.

[00:05:56] Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the

[00:06:02] Snunaymug First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is me, Steph Gunn. Our

[00:06:07] production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Ad coordination by Red Circle. And our esteemed VP

[00:06:12] of AI whispering and conversational design is Mark Blevis. Thanks for listening. Todd is away

[00:06:18] on Monday as well, so I will talk to you Monday. I hope you have a great weekend.