Your Griefbots Have No Soul.

Government regulators sound the warning on AI spokespeople, as the marketing industry and social media platforms scramble to ramp up their avatar game.

The Next Big B2C Platform Is… LinkedIn?!

LinkedIn, long known for its dominance in B2B marketing, is now gaining traction among B2C marketers.

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. This 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.

Google’s Credit Card Decision — An Insider’s View

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

Google is requiring some advertisers to stop using credit cards for ad payments, causing backlash due to loss of credit card rewards.

Jyll explains the business rationale, noting it's a long-standing policy affecting only a small number of accounts. (We asked Google’s ads liaison what “small” meant, and she did not reply to our query.)

Watch the Interview

Transcript

Jyll, 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. The fact that, you know, thousands of businesses have been using Google to make a ton in credit card points and agencies have making ton in credit card points, like good for them.

But at the end of the day, Google's a business. They pay 3% on credit card transactions and less than 1% on bank transfer.

I think the other reason I'm surprised it's such big news is it's a very small portion of accounts that are affected by this. And this has always been a policy. 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 anytime a customer moved from GCS up to large customer sales, they'd have to move on to invoicing.

And there were certain customers who were like, “Okay, 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 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 representative on social media, which they call a Search Liaison, did mention in a reply to some of these things that it was a small number. We asked her what small meant. Is that 1%? Is that she never got back to us?

What do you think the threshold is here?

She did reply to other people and said that there is no threshold, but some people were saying, “No, this isn't just massive agencies that are having this. These are people that are running $400 a month campaigns.”

I saw those comments as well and that surprised me.

I don't know what an exact threshold would be. 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, and so across the whole agency, the ad spend is really high. That could be one reason why some super small accounts are supposedly being forced to make this change. But that is not something I have facts to back up. 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 customers on invoicing. A very annoying part of their job is 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, 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, 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. It's 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. 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 cheques. Does anybody do that? Is there a department in Google that's receiving cheques?

Yeah, that surprised me as well. 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 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 to allow for cheques to come in the mail if that were to happen.

Jyll, last question, and I will not accept the answer “you can't.” And that question is: how can advertisers opt out?

You “can not.” (laughs)

There's no opt out. It is forced. 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.

If you don't want to pay for Google ads 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? Do you think Pinterest, Meta, TikTok, X start to do as well or are they already there? Or 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 what happens as Google makes this rollout before making that decision.

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 on hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars a year, it really does make a difference to a company. It does make a difference to a company as large as Google.

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

Send Spam Messages… With Meta’s Blessing

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 and send paid marketing messages on Messenger, using Ads Manager, to people who have opted-in to hearing from them.

Builds on previous update

This follows an update from their recent Conversations event, 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 into a conversion or generating awareness for a new product.

TikTok’s New AI Avatars Will Sell Products For You

So you want to sell more of your product online, but you don’t have the budget for an official spokesperson. And you don’t have the time to set up an influencer marketing campaign.

Well, one major social media platform says it’s ready to give you a third option: the fully digital AI spokesperson.

Build avatars in Ads Manager

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, or any assets you already have… and in under a minute, TikTok’s ad platform will generate a variety of custom videos for you — including your product URL overlaid.

There is a variety of digital actors you can use — which are generated from real people that TikTok says were paid for the modeling time.

It’s still not perfect

Sadly, like a lot of similar attempts at these, the avatars come off sounding a little stiff:

@tiktoknewsroom

Introducing Symphony Digital Avatars, to help creators and brands captivate global audiences and deliver impactful messages in an immersiv… See more

There are a couple of other tells, too — the lips seem to lag behind the words, and the avatar gestures at times that don’t really match what she’s saying. And TikTok says it will get a small “AI Generated” label overlaid on the video.

The benefits

Still, though, there are some big benefits — probably the biggest is the multi-language capabilities. The bot can speak 30 languages, so you’d just turn that feature on with a checkbox and you’re suddenly a lot more effective in markets that you might previously had ignored.

There is a waitlist to sign up for the test.

Regulators concerned

It was just last week that the American trade regulator warned about using AI in advertising.

Join the beta

Brands Should Support LGBTQ+ Year-Round: Study

A large study has found that consumers overwhelmingly want brands to support the LGBTQ+ community, not just during Pride Month but throughout the year.

The brand experience platform Disqo surveyed more than 6,500 American consumers last month and found that 39% of respondents were positively influenced by brands' Pride participation, compared to only 17% who said they were negatively influenced.

Among LGBTQ+ consumers, a significant 80% reported being positively influenced.

They’ll buy when they see support

The study also revealed that 26% of all consumers and 73% of LGBTQ+ consumers 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.

Culture war is loud but not representative

The report's findings contradict a growing notion, especially in culture-war-locked America, that consumers aren’t interested in brands supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

Read the study

Instacart Jumps Into Retail Media

YouTube viewers will soon see targeted ads from brands like Clorox, powered by Instacart's first-party shopper data, allowing users to jump directly to the grocery delivery platform to place orders.

This integration marks another point in the growing trend of retail media networks leveraging their shopper data to power campaigns on offsite marketing channels.

Instacart, which went public in September, has been expanding its offsite advertising efforts, including partnerships with The Trade Desk, Roku ads, and Google Shopping ads.

Offsite programmatic retail media is forecast to generate $20 billion in sales this year, up from $7.5 billion last year.

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