Your Griefbots Have No Soul

[00:00:00] It is Wednesday, June 19th. Today government regulators sound the warning on AI spokespeople as the marketing industry and social media platforms scramble to ramp up their avatar game. Also LinkedIn goes B to C, consumers prefer year-round pride support, and more on Google's

[00:00:21] decision to force many companies off using credit cards to buy ads, today an insider's view. I'm Tod Maffin, that's Ahead, Today in Digital Marketing. LinkedIn, long known for its dominance in B2B marketing, is now gaining traction among B2C marketers.

[00:00:41] The platform's ad team says it's selling more B2C ads these days after incorporating features from Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. New formats, like a vertical video feed, are currently in testing and expected to roll out soon, along with creator and user-generated content tools.

[00:00:58] The shift is driven by the growing interest from B2C firms, including luxury brands, which are drawn to LinkedIn's more casual and engaging environment. At the Cannes Lions Festival this week, DigiDay reports that about 30% of LinkedIn's meetings are with B2C firms. Quoting from their piece, quote,

[00:01:17] This is indicative of where social media is heading more generally, toward an experience that's more about watching content based on individual interests. A key difference for LinkedIn, however, is the fact that it would argue that its platform

[00:01:31] is inherently safer for advertising than other platforms due to its core existence as a professional networking app. Users sign up using their real identities, along with their job titles and the companies they work for, unquote. DigiDay's piece is actually quite good. It's quite long. It's worth a read.

[00:01:50] It's up on their website. We have a link to it in today's email newsletter, which you can sign up to by tapping the link at the top of the show notes. Yesterday we reported on how Google is forcing some advertisers to stop using credit cards to buy ads.

[00:02:06] It was certainly a shock for many businesses and agencies. Some complained on social media the change could cost them thousands, presumably in lost credit card cash back rewards. To dive a little deeper, I'm joined by our Google Ads correspondent, Jill Saskin-Gales.

[00:02:21] Jill runs the Inside Google Ads training program for practitioners and is host of the Inside Google Ads podcast. Jill, you worked at Google Ads for six years. What do you make of this news? I honestly don't understand why it's such big news.

[00:02:36] The fact that thousands of businesses have been using Google to make a ton in credit card points and agencies have been making a ton in credit card points, like good for them. But at the end of the day, Google is a business.

[00:02:47] They pay 3% on credit card transactions, unless the 1% on bank transfer. I think the other reason I'm surprised at such big news is it's a very small portion of accounts that are affected by this. And this has always been a policy.

[00:02:59] So I think just one or two people who maybe hadn't encountered this before posted about it very publicly. But I remember from my days at Google, I worked in large customer sales and any time a customer moved from GCS up to large customer sales,

[00:03:12] they'd have to move on to invoicing. And there were certain customers who were like, OK, forget it. I don't want the additional support. Just let me keep my credit card points. But when you're spending a certain amount, it's a lot of money lost for

[00:03:23] Google. So I don't know, I think it makes sense. And yeah, I'm not sure why it's such a big deal to folks. Google's rep in social media, which they call a search liaison, did mention in a reply to some of these things that it was a small number.

[00:03:37] We asked her what small meant. Is that 1%? Is that she never got back to us. But what do you think the threshold is here? She did reply to other people and said that there is no threshold.

[00:03:46] But some people were saying, no, this isn't just massive agencies that are having this. These are people that are running four hundred dollars a month campaigns. I saw those comments as well and that surprised me. I don't know what an exact threshold would be.

[00:04:01] I would imagine you would need to be spending at least six figures a year on Google for this to make sense. So it would surprise me going lower than that. It's possible that those really small accounts, because they're linked to an agency, MCC,

[00:04:14] and so across the whole agency, the ad spend is really high. That could be one reason why some super small accounts are supposed to leaving for us to make this change. But that is not something I faxed to back up.

[00:04:25] That's just my estimation of why that would be happening. Isn't invoicing customers a lot more work for Google than credit card billing, like having to chase down customers for invoice payments and so on? It is. I know a lot of account managers at Google who work with

[00:04:38] customers on invoicing, like a very annoying part of their job is, you know, chasing down those invoices. But again, the money savings here makes sense. And at least from the screenshot that the original poster about this leaked,

[00:04:52] it said you can choose to go on automated billing from your bank account or be billed after the fact, in which case it's really Google extending you the credit rather than your credit card company. So it is more work for Google.

[00:05:04] But they've obviously done the calculation that the time spent chasing invoices will be worth it for the saving on fees. What kind of media buyer uses credit cards? More versus bank transfers or post-run invoicing? I think everyone would want to use credit cards more if they could.

[00:05:21] For the points, you know, when people say they're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, they're talking credit card points. But it's going to be now the larger customers and potentially the larger agencies that could be why this is affecting smaller customers.

[00:05:34] That's going to force people off of it. I don't think anyone would choose to, you know, authorize bank transfer to Google ads if they didn't have to. Google also said that people could pay via paper checks. Does anybody do that? Yeah, that surprised me as well.

[00:05:52] I can't imagine anyone would choose to do it that way. It could be perhaps there are other parts of the world where that's necessary. And it's also important to keep in mind there are parts of the world

[00:06:01] where credit cards aren't as common and where this change wouldn't be, you know, as big a deal to people in Germany, for example. But yeah, I can't imagine anyone mailing their check to Google. I imagine Google would have to extend more than 30 days

[00:06:13] to allow for checks to come in the mail. Jill, last question. And I will not accept the answer. You can't. And that answer, that question is, how can advertisers opt out? Uh, you cannot. There's no opt out. It is forced.

[00:06:30] And again, I've seen customers be forced onto invoicing. They'll be like, well, I'm not going to deal with Google anymore and I don't want this and forget about it. And you know what? Eventually they all come around.

[00:06:38] If you don't want to pay for Google, that's for your business. By all means, you don't have to. But if you've been selected to move over to invoicing, there's no way out of it. Is this something that we can expect to see other platforms?

[00:06:49] Do you think Pinterest, Metta, TikTok, X start to do as well? Or are they already there? Is Google just catching up? I actually don't know what the other platforms do, to be honest. But if they're not yet doing this, I imagine they'll look to see

[00:07:04] what happens as Google makes this rollout before making that decision. But you know what? But again, if I worked at any of those platforms, I'd say like this absolutely makes sense, you know, saving that in between, you know, two percent

[00:07:15] on hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars a year. It really does make a difference to a company as large as Google. All right, Jill, thank you. See you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Jill Saskengales is our Google Ads correspondent. She's here every second Wednesday.

[00:07:28] You can learn more about her Google Ads training program at our affiliate link at todayindigital.com slash GA. And you can watch our full unedited interview. There's a link to it in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to for free

[00:07:40] by tapping the link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Meta will now let you send promotional messages to people on Messenger and WhatsApp at scale. A handful of advertisers will soon be able to create, organize

[00:07:58] and send paid marketing messages on Messenger using ads manager to people who have opted in to hearing from them. This is, of course, a test. They will presumably roll it out later to more people. This follows an update from their recent conversations event

[00:08:12] where they announced businesses using ads manager to send marketing messages on WhatsApp will have the option to provide Meta with their subscriber list and their systems will recommend the right subset of recipients based on the outcomes they care about the most, like helping turn a lead

[00:08:27] into a conversion or generating awareness for a new product. So you want to sell more of your product online, but you don't have the budget for an official spokesperson. You don't have the time to set up an influencer marketing campaign.

[00:08:43] Well, one major social media platform says it's ready to give you a third option. The fully digital AI spokesperson. TikTok announced this week it's testing this, which would be accessible right within its ads manager. You would provide your product details or a landing page URL

[00:08:59] or any assets you already have. And in under a minute, TikTok's ad platform will generate a variety of custom videos for you. There are a number of digital actors you can use, which are generated from real people that TikTok says were paid for the modeling time.

[00:09:14] Sadly, like a lot of similar attempts at these, the avatars TikToks are using come off sounding now a little stiff. Hi there. My name is Adrienne. Well, not Adrienne, Adrienne, but TikTok's latest Symphony digital avatar. I am a custom avatar born from TikTok's latest generative AI technology.

[00:09:32] What I love about my job here at TikTok is that we're building for the future of creativity and marketing. And today I'm thrilled to unveil our new Symphony digital avatars right here and now.

[00:09:43] We believe there are a couple of other tells to the lips seem to lag behind the words and the avatar gestures at times that don't really match what she's saying. TikTok says it'll get a small AI generated label overlaid on the video. Still, there are some big benefits,

[00:09:59] probably the biggest being the multi-language capabilities. The bot can speak 30 languages. So you just turn that feature on with a checkbox and suddenly you're a lot more effective in markets that you might have previously ignored. There is a wait list to sign up for the test.

[00:10:13] We have that link in today's email newsletter. Again, tap the link at the top of the show notes. It was just last week that the American trade regulator warned about using AI in advertising. Quoting from the FTC quote, your therapy bots aren't licensed psychologists.

[00:10:28] Your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends. Your grief bots have no soul and your AI co-pilots are not gods. We've warned companies about making false or unsubstantiated claims about AI or algorithms. We followed up with action. Unquote.

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[00:12:04] To find out more, visit Parker.com slash purpose. Parker, engineering your success. A large study has found that consumers overwhelmingly want brands to support the LGBTQ plus community, not just during Pride Month, but throughout the year. The brand experience platform, Disco, surveyed more than 6,500 American

[00:12:24] consumers last month and found 39% of respondents were positively influenced by brands Pride participation compared to only 17% who said they were negatively influenced. Among LGBT consumers, a significant 80% reported being positively influenced. The study also revealed that 26% of all consumers and 73% of LGBT consumers

[00:12:48] purchased a product because of its Pride Month messaging. More than half of consumers said they think marketers should show support for the community year round. The report's findings contradict a growing notion, especially in culture warlocked America, that consumers aren't interested in brands supporting the LGBTQ plus community.

[00:13:07] Quoting media posts, quote, one key takeaway of the report is that while the media headlines focus on the negative impact of consumer boycotts on the bottom line, they often omit that backtracking support can be just as damaging. Given that more people look favorably on brands Pride participation

[00:13:24] than negatively, the report concluded the ROI is twofold, long-term business and community benefit, unquote. We have a link to the study in today's email newsletter. All right, that is it for today. Thanks for listening. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow.