Move Fast and Cancel AI

They spent millions on celebrities. Now, it’s cancelled. What’s next for Meta’s AI chatbot plans? That’s where you come in.

Meta Cancels Celebrity Bots; Pivots to Custom Bots

Remember when Meta made all those celebrity chatbots last year — voiced by celebrities like MrBeast, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton? It was the future, they said. AI would become more human. More indispensable. More transformative.

Well, funny thing.

Turns out, people didn’t really like them — at least, they didn’t like them enough.

Snopp Dogg’s bot only had about 15,000 followers, compared with more than 88 million on his real Instagram account.

Now, Meta has now cancelled the project and shut the bots off.

What happened?

None of the couple dozen they released garnered many followers, certainly nothing at the scale Meta had hoped for when they paid millions of dollars to license the voices.

And the indirect ad revenue Meta had hoped for never materialized. The thought internally was that the chatbots would keep users in the apps longer.

The new plan

But there’s a new plan afoot.

Actually, these Custom AIs are basically a rip-off of ChatGPT’s “Custom GPTs” — right down to the UI to set them up. You give them some instructions on how to answer questions, and users can ask your bot questions.

We set one up to deliver marketing advice in limerick form. You can try it out at https://TodayInDigital.com/chatbot (note: at deadline, it was still being reviewed by Meta, so this link might not work for another day or two).

More AI Comes to Google’s Performance Max

Every other week, our Google ads correspondent Jyll Saskin Gales walks us through the latest platform changes. Jyll spent six years at Google in a senior ad role, and today runs the Inside Google Ads training program.¹

This week, Jyll walks us through recent changes to Performance Max. She discusses the new asset group level reporting, the ability to see individual asset performance, and the implications these updates have for managing ad campaigns. Additionally, Jyll touches on the introduction of AI-powered image editing tools.

Be sure to check out Jyll’s Inside Google Ads training program¹

New Findings on How Gen Z Shops Online

In the last six months, 55% of Gen Z have bought things online while browsing social media. This from a Walmart-funded study of 2,200 Americans.

Compare that cohort to the broader demographics where only 38% of shoppers overall bought while surfing.

Where the journey starts

One interesting finding was that Walmart asked Gen Z shoppers where they began their shopping journey.

44% started with an online search

40% started on a store’s web site or app

38% started on social media

Nearly half said they would buy more clothes if they could access virtual try-on tools.

Getting the youth vote

Walmart is pushing hard to capture the hearts and minds of younger consumers.

NBC’s Bet on the Olympics is Paying Off for Brands

Buying the broadcast rights to the Olympics is an expensive proposition. Just ask the American broadcaster NBC. It paid the Games more than $7.5 billion to renew its broadcast rights through 2032.

NBC, of course, was betting that the Olympics would bring billions in ad dollars in the door — and that bet appears to be paying off, in spades.

Ad dollars are flowing in…

The company said so far it’s earning the highest Olympic and Paralympic ad revenue in history, and it’s onboarded more advertisers than the Rio and Tokyo Olympics combined.

Also, nearly a half billion dollars came in from first-time advertisers, a group that makes up 70% of the total group.

When you break it down to digital-only ad revenue, NBC says that category is earning twice as much as it did for the Tokyo games just four years ago.

…as are viewers watching

Nearly 10 million U.S. households watched the Opening Ceremony either live or later the same day.

The key appears to be NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock. Rather than having to bump solid performers off their main television schedule, the broadcaster is keeping television for special moments. But Peacock is expected to stream 5,000 out of the 7,000 hours of Olympics coverage.

Impact on brands

Most importantly for advertisers, all the metrics are up — in some cases, way up.

Microsoft Ad Revenue Keeps Going Up

Microsoft had a great financial quarter and a lot of it was due to advertising.

In its latest disclosures, the company reported that its search and advertising revenue was up 19%.

In total, revenue for the company was $64 billion; that is up 15% compared to the previous quarter.

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