In This Issue:

🤖 Meta tries to attract Gen Z with outdated AI chatbot personas

🛍️ Shopify Audiences integrates with Snap, Criteo, and TikTok

🤝 Snap collaborates with Microsoft for ads in ‘My AI' chatbot feature

📈 TikTok on track to surpass Facebook in daily usage by 2025, but ad spend lags

🔍 Google stands firm on its recent “helpful content” update

📺 Samsung Ads unveils interactive ad types for smart TVs with BrightLine.

🎙️ Spotify uses AI to translate podcasts into other languages with the original voice.

Meta’s Forthcoming “How Do You Do Fellow Kids?” Moment

The American sitcom 30 Rock was known for great writing, and in fact it spawned one of the most popular memes that we know today — one that frequently gets used to mock marketing campaigns.

It was episode 8, season 6. Steve Buscemi is playing a private detective hired as a strike buster. It’s a flashback scene, where he’s recalling what he thought was a successful attempt to go undercover in a high school. He approaches a bunch of teens dressed in every possible article of clothing that matches them — a backwards hat, a skateboard he carries over his shoulder, and a t-shirt that sort of looks like the AC/DC logo but if you actually look really just says “Music Band”.

He walks up to the kids and says “How do you do, fellow kids?”

The entire scene only lasts about three seconds — and yet, “how do you do, fellow kids” has become shorthand for older people and brands trying a little too hard to capture the attention of a younger generation or a subculture.

And that brings us to Meta, who is apparently about to grab a skateboard and sling it over its corporate shoulders.

Meta’s New Chatbots: Aiming for the Wrong Market?

Reports say the company will announce this week that it’s bringing AI chatbots to its apps — similar to Snapchat’s My AI bot, where you can ask it questions, talk to it, that sort of thing.

And if the intention is — as it surely must be — to appeal to younger people and bring them back into the Meta fold, they’re sure making some strange choices when it comes to those chatbots.

One persona is called Bob the Robot, but it’s a rip-off of Bender from Futurama. Internal testing so far has found that the AI is, like the character, is sarcastic and sassy, but also occasionally is rude and “unhelpful.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that one employee said (and cue the skateboard over the shoulder):

The Journal notes that reducing humour down to its basest qualities isn’t always the best way to reach a different generation.

Nobody Gets Gen Z Right

But more than that, what shows do Meta executives think Gen Z are watching?

Futurama aired between 1999 and 2003. Gen Z were toddlers. And sure there’s endless syndication repeats, but it’s never been part of the cultural lexicon for that generation.

The other thing to consider is: Why does everyone think that Gen Z wants to talk to AI bots in the first place.?

TikTok hosts thousands of videos about Snapchat’s AI bot — the vast majority are mocking it, or showing how much fun it is to try to break it. And they’re not immune to concerns about how much personal data the bots are syphoning up in these conversations.

Only 3.4% of Facebook users are between 13-17. Only 8% of Instagram users are in that age range.

Microsoft Wins Another Chatbot Ads Contract

Speaking of Snapchat’s AI — that bot can tell you the weather, encourage you to spend time with friends, and, now, promote products.

The company says it’s brought Microsoft on board as an ads partner and that will let marketers buy ads that can be inserted into its My AI tool.

Until now, it’s been experimenting on its own. Back in May, Snap said it would test Sponsored Links in My AI.

So that’s still there, but now it will be bringing Microsoft on board to sell some of those link suggestions.

Answers, Not Links

This is a compelling trend for marketers who have watched speculation that Google’s search results aren’t keeping up to the pace of chatbots who can go out and fetch the answer to a question, rather than a list of links it thinks might have the answer in them.

One key to consumer trust will be the disclosure of these ads and how prominent that disclosure will be. Snapchat’s announcement didn’t reference that, though last week we reported that Microsoft’s own new comparison-table ads unit had a disclosure which was not at all prominent.

Microsoft Charges Ahead

This is, of course, another big win for Microsoft, which has positioned itself as not just a competitor to Google’s ad business, but in many ways, the anti-Google. Last year, Netflix picked Microsoft to power its new ad-supported tier.

And if more people turn to chatbots to get answers to questions, this could be a huge arrow in a digital marketers’ quiver.

Shopify’s “Audiences” Tool: Paid, But Promising

Shopify today announced it’s launching an upgraded version of Shopify Audiences.

There are new integrations with Snap, Criteo, and TikTok — those join their existing roster, that being Meta, Google, and Pinterest.

They’re also adding some new benchmarking that lets merchants compare the performance of their campaigns to merchants like them.

Shopify Audiences is part of their Plus upgrade, which is a paid program. You also have to use Shopify Payments.

The new Audiences feature is currently only is available in the United States and Canada.

TikTok: The Eyeballs Are There. Where Are the Ad Dollars?

Here’s a stat nobody saw coming a couple of years ago: Insider Intelligence says that within two years, U.S. adults will spend more time on TikTok than on Facebook.

The shortform video app is on track to become the largest social platform in total daily minutes by 2025.

Then Why Aren’t the Ad Dollars Following?

And while that’s good news for TikTok, the ad dollars still favour Facebook. And not by a little.

Insider says by 2025, they forecast that Facebook will bring in $1.02 per person per hour, while TikTok — for the same person and hour — will bring in just 19¢.

And why? Comfort. Insider says media buyers are familiar with Meta’s ad platform, so why shift if they’re still getting results?

But Insider says that gap is closing.

Nope, Google’s Not Going to Roll Back the Latest Algo Update

Some people in the SEO community have been taken aback by the most recent core update of Google’s search engine.

Google does these big, sweeping algorithm changes it calls “core updates” every month or two — and, each time, big changes happen to some web sites. Some move way up in the listings, some way down, but most stay around the same.

Those who’ve moved way down have been calling on Google to revert the changes — something the company says isn’t going to happen.

Google search engineer John Mueller said on social media that it’s unlikely they’ll roll it back.

I really don't see a rollback happening. And, I agree it is sad to see people put their heart & passion into making something and not seeing long-term results, but things can be both heart-made & not as helpful as the makers want.

— John, aka “a total bell cheese” (@JohnMu)
Sep 24, 2023

Samsung Launches TV Ads That Can Show Consumers Local Stores

Samsung is rolling out new interactive ads for its TVs, through a partnership with BrightLine.

These new ad units are:

A branded trivia experience

A product carousel

Polls

Dynamic creative which lets you show local stores to someone watching in a specific region

These placements will show up on Samsung TVs in their smart TV user interface.

Coming Soon: Podcasts in Multiple Languages, “Spoken” by the Host

Soon, you might be able to listen to this very podcast in Spanish. It’ll be me reading you the daily marketing news in Spanish every day.

And also, I’ll be doing it in German. And French.

Which is especially impressive, considering I can’t speak Spanish or German, and — as an anglophone Canadian — I only know how to swear in French, and ask Jacques and Marie if they found the pencil in the library.

This language translation, though, it’s a real thing being worked on by Spotify’s podcasting team. The plan is to replicate a podcaster’s voice to provide the content in a number of different languages.

They’re testing it right now in Spanish with a handful of podcasters — French and German expected in the coming weeks.

The first batch of these auto-translated episodes will come from podcasters like Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Fridman, Bill Simmons, and Steven Bartlett.

It’s not entirely clear what tech they’re using for this, though Spotify has partnered with OpenAI before. OpenAI also made a few announcements this morning including the launch of a tool that can create “human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech.”

But don’t expect this to be in your ChatGPT interface any time soon. The company says it’s keeping this technology close to its chest for fear of it being misused.

Tabarnak!

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