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In This Issue:
How to test creative and offers on the Meta ad platform [Premium Exclusive]
Instagram experiments with comment highlights in stories
Snapchat unveils AI-driven ‘Dreams' selfie feature
Slowing websites doesn't boost Google ranking
Agorapulse introduces new social trends feature
Traditional TV struggles against streaming's rise
DoorDash explores AI for phone orders
AI intensifies click and impression farming issues
Global programmatic click fraud hits 17% in Q2
Google Meet introduces AI for meeting assistance
Amazon raises free shipping minimum for non-Prime members.
Meta beta tests Horizon Worlds for mobile
X and LinkedIn integrate Passkey access
QUIZ: Does Slowing Your Site Down Help Your Google Ranking?
Sometimes, marketing advice seems backwards.
Run ugly looking ads on Instagram, and you’ll get better results on Instagram.
Brands will get more views on TikTok by dropping the high production values.
Does the same apply to SEO advice?
Here’s a quick quiz to start us off today — vote below: ⬇️
⬆️ Click your best guess above. The answer is at the end of today’s issue.
Q4 Planning on Meta’s Platform: Offers, Testing, and a New Metric
Every Tuesday, exclusively in the Premium Newsletter, our Meta ads correspondent Andrew Foxwell walks us through the latest platform changes.
✅ This week:
Q4 planning — should your offer be simple or clever?
Do we offer $20 off or 20% off?
How do we test in today’s AI-first Meta platform?
What is Meta’s new “per-brand-reach-saturation” metric?
✨ This column is a Premium Exclusive. Upgrade today!
Andrew runs the Foxwell Founders community of digital ad buyers and offers training in the digital ad space. [affiliate links]
Instagram Lifts a High-Engagement Sticker from TikTok
Instagram is once again borrowing another feature from a rival — this time, naturally, TikTok… and this is a big one.
One of the most engaging features of TikTok is the ability to create a new video based on a comment left on a previous video.
How might a brand use this? Someone comments asking whether your product is gluten-free, you can make a new video answering the question — with that original comment visible in on-screen text.
That’s what Instagram is bringing over to Stories.
It’s in testing right now, but soon you’ll be able to swipe on the comment you want to highlight, tap “Add to story” and the comment will show along with the original post in the Stories feed.
No details about how wide this test is, or when it would roll out publicly.
Earlier this month, Instagram added a way to highlight fan-created Reels posted through the “Add Yours” sticker challenge.
Snapchat Debuts Selfie AI Tool
Snapchat continues to dive head-first into AI with a new generative AI feature called “Dreams”.
This lets people create fantasy images of themselves — like as a superhero, or a tuxedo-clad business executive, or a mermaid. You may have seen these before on App Stores — they all seemed to come out in the same week, with ridiculously expensive by-the-week subscription packages.
Others, like Remini, went a bit viral last month with people using them to create more professional-looking LinkedIn profile photos.
To get there on Snapchat, you’ll go to Memories, and you should see a new tab for Dreams. You’ll upload or take a few selfies, and then it will create a pack of eight new images.
After that, if you want more packs, they’re $1 each.
Dreams is in testing right now in Australia and New Zealand, and will rolling out to the rest of the world over the next few weeks.
Dreams joins My AI, which shows up in your list of friends, but is a chatbot. Apparently, it can even now send photos to you, though when I tried it, she kept claiming she would, but never delivered.
Now even my artificial friends are dissing me. AI is getting more real-world every day.
Agorapulse’s New Social Media Benchmark Site
The social media management tool Agorapulse today released a really nice new trends dashboard at https://social-trends.agorapulse.com
This will let you look at the performance of four major social platforms — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.
You can get:
average engagement rate
impressions trends
the most-shared content by type (like: video, photo, carousel, etc.)
the most engaged with content
the most-used hashtags during the month and the week
Again, the URL is https://social-trends.agorapulse.com
Full disclosure: Our agency has had a comp account with Agorapulse for several years now, which we use for monitoring a few internal social channels.
Streaming Surge Challenges Traditional TV
September traditionally marks the TV industry's awaited fall schedules and big advertising season. But this year stands out because a now long-running writers’ strike and a pivotal shift in the industry's trajectory.
Linear TV advertising has declined recently, as shown by media giants' earnings reports. This mirrors a change in viewer habits, with Nielsen noting record streaming numbers.
The rise in streaming isn't surprising.
With original content and devices like Chromecast, Fire TV Stick, and Roku, a shift towards streaming was anticipated. In July of last year, streaming accounted for 35% of TV views. It was up to 39% this past July — surpassing both cable and broadcast.
As viewers migrate, advertisers follow.
It tracks, then, that advertising would be losing steam for traditional TV. Advertisers follow the eyeballs. If people are drifting away from cable and broadcast, then advertisers will as well. They’ll find cheaper alternatives on digital, where the cost for reaching 1,000 consumers is lower. Plus, with platforms such as Disney+ and Netflix adding ad tiers that have shown success, advertisers can follow viewers to their preferred place to watch.
Forbes.com
Questions Surround DoorDash’s AI Plans
DoorDash says it plans to offer its restaurant partners a new service — phone orders. Rather than using the app, customers will be able to call into a number and place an order directly with a restaurant.
But there’s a catch — those customers won’t be speaking with humans, they’ll be speaking with AI bots trained on the menu.
The new system will also try to upsell customers.
DoorDash, of course, is positioning this as a way to help restaurants take more orders during peak times when they might be too busy to answer the phone. It claims the system will let people bounce to a human operator, if they want, though it wasn’t clear how easy it would be to do that.
What was clear is that this is a white-label product, so customers won’t know their voice is being logged by DoorDash. The company also did not say whether that voice data would be used to train its systems. DoorDash’s current privacy policy was last updated a month ago and says it can collect and use “facial recognition, voiceprint, or other similar data that may be considered biometric data.”
Q2 Had 17% Programmatic Click Fraud: Study
Click fraud may make up more of your ad campaign’s results than you might think. Analytics firm Pixalate says invalid traffic in open programmatic advertising averaged 17% in Q2.
It should be noted Pixalate sells fraud detection services, so it’s not like they don’t have a dog in this race.
But if we are to take their numbers at face value:
Desktop web had the highest click-fraud rate, at 21%
Mobile web was 16%
Mobile apps were 13%
Source: Pixelate
Where did these fake clicks come from? 57% came from click farms set up specifically to do this. On mobile apps, that number drops to 20%.
As for which is the most attractive ad format for bad actors? The very wide leaderboard banner ad you can usually find at the bottom of cheap mobile apps accounted for 26%, that was double as many in mobile apps overall.
In terms of businesses, sites in healthcare had the highest rate of fraudulent ad clicks, at 44%. Entertainment, government, arts and regional desktop web domains were all around 30%.
Google Will Attend Meetings For You (For a Fee)
And you thought Karen from accounting doesn’t show up to meetings now…
Google is working on a new feature for its Google Meet videoconferencing — not meeting at all.
You’ll be able to set a meeting to let its AI bot attend a meeting on your behalf. This, apparently, will be built right into the meeting invites we’ve all seen. There’ll be Yes, No, Maybe — and a new one: “Attend For Me.”
If you click that, you’ll be prompted to list a few things you would have wanted to ask or say in the meeting, and the other human attendees will see those notes.
If, that is, there will be any human attendees? What happens if everyone on the meeting clicks that button and only the AI bots show up? Will they start having conversations with themselves?
For now, it looks like the bots just record what’s said — so, I guess if only bots show up, nothing is actually said. Google says if everyone sends their AI bots, the meeting will auto-cancel.
This is a ways out — it’s not expected until next year, and even then only for those accounts who opt-in for their beta program.
One piece of this that does, actually, sound helpful is that the AI will keep notes on what happened, so if you’re a few minutes late, you can catch up by reading some bullet points — something that Zoom and Teams already have, to some extent. Google says this note-taking part will be out in a few months.
Google’s Duet AI also includes some enhancements to its business suite software and will come at an additional price.
In Brief
Amazon has raised its free shipping threshold from $25 to $35 for non-Prime customers in some areas. This change affects orders that weigh more than 20 pounds or are large in size. Amazon says this is to reflect the increased costs of delivering these items. [read more]
Meta has opened a beta test of Horizon Worlds on mobile devices. Horizon Worlds is their social virtual reality platform where users can create and explore 3D worlds. The beta test is invite-only and requires a Meta account. [read more]
Both X and LinkedIn have added support for Passkey, a new way of logging in without passwords. Passkey uses biometric verification to authenticate users across different apps and websites. [read more]
ANSWER: Does Slowing Down Your Web Site Help Your Google Ranking?
Oh, and as for the quiz: Can you boost your Google ranking by slowing down your web pages, which will make people stay longer on your site?
No. It will not work.
This theoretically could work, but only if time-spent-on-site were a ranking factor.
But, as Google has said many times over the years: Time spent on a page is not a ranking factor.
Google has said for years and years that it does not use behavioral factors for ranking, outside of any of the page experience system metrics. This has been the overwhelmingly consistent messaging from Google for over a decade….
[But] Page speed is a ranking factor, most recently with core web vital metrics.
SERoundtable.com
So artificially slowing down your web site won’t help your ranking — but it will hurt it.
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