A mixed bag this week. Some good news, some not quite so good—and one or two moments to leave you scratching your head, too.
First we check in with Meta, whose new promotional ads are empowering users to discover amazing deals more easily than ever. Meta has also rolled out Meta Verified in the UK—but it’s not quite as simple as just getting that blue badge.
Elsewhere, Google pledges allegiance to user data privacy as it launches Privacy Sandbox in anticipation of the deprecation of third-party cookies. OpenAI rolls out an iOS app for ChatGPT, marking a big opportunity for brands to leverage a chatbot if they haven’t already, and over at Amazon there’s been a distinct change in the wind as younger customers start looking elsewhere for their online goods.
- Meta’s new ad format makes it easy than ever for shoppers to find bargains
- Privacy Sandbox marks Google’s next-level commitment to users’ data security
- The majority of shoppers still favour Amazon—but there’s been a shift among Gen Zers
- Meta Verified comes to Blighty—but what could this mean for your digital marketing?
- OpenAI has entered the chat—with its new iOs app for ChatGPT
- Meta has launched promotional ads, a new ad format designed to help users more easily find deals from retailers.
- Now when users encounter an ad with a special promotion they can click through to claim the offer, and the discount code is applied automatically. Reminder notifications are sent if the purchase isn’t completed before the deal ends.
- Meta’s testing of promotional ads and expansion of lead ad capabilities signal its intention to give users more information about products and services and better access to deals.
- The company’s focus on enhancing its eCommerce capabilities comes in response to Apple’s privacy changes, which have limited Meta’s ability to track user behaviour. But as Meta’s platforms likely constitute a big part of your own marketing strategy, you’ll want to watch this space, as concerns surrounding privacy and data handling continue to evolve.
- Google plans to make its Privacy Sandbox live for the online advertising industry in early 2024. The company intends to migrate 1% of Chrome users to the Privacy Sandbox and disable third-party cookies for them, before they’re deprecated in full in H2 2024.
- The Chrome 115 release this July will make Privacy Sandbox’s relevance and measurement APIs generally available to all Chrome users.
- The deprecation of third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users will help developers assess their readiness for the bigger changes coming in late 2024. They’ll be able to simulate their readiness for this deprecation starting in Q4 2024.
- Google has committed to guidelines to avoid self-preferencing practices in implementing Privacy Sandbox, ensuring no unfair advantage over competitors. But as an advertiser reliant on Google to continue generating sales for your brand, how this shift will impact the overall ecosystem you operate in remains to be seen.
- Amazon is still the top starting point for online shoppers, with 50% of respondents saying they begin their online shopping journeys there. Google follows closely at 32%. Brand, retail and review websites have smaller shares.
- But among Gen Zers, Google surpasses Amazon as the preferred starting point: 38% vs 36%. Gen Zers are also more likely to begin their shopping journeys on social media platforms.
- Ratings and reviews play a crucial role in influencing purchase decisions. 77% of respondents actively seek out websites with reviews, which increases to 81% for Millennials and 87% for Gen Zers. 56% of respondents consider ratings without accompanying reviews to be untrustworthy.
- A key takeaway here for marketers is that they must recognise the rising importance of user-generated images and videos. 60% of shoppers reference them when learning about new products, 77% trust this content, and 53% say it influences their purchase decisions.
- Meta has rolled out its paid verification programme Meta Verified in the UK, priced at ￡9.99 a month each for Facebook and Instagram.
- Initially launched in the US, Australia and New Zealand, the programme is designed with creators in mind, offering perks like customer support access, proactive impersonation protection and a verification blue badge.
- Users must be at least 18 to get their blue badge. They also need to enable two-factor verification and provide a government-approved ID to verify their identity. Moreover, their display name must match that on their ID. This requirement in particular has drawn criticism from privacy advocates.
- If your brand already has legacy verification on Meta, don’t worry—the company has no plan to remove it, as happened with Twitter. Just be aware that there’s no visual difference between legacy verification badges and the new subscription verification badges. Meta is also working on tools to enable changes to names, usernames and profile photos, all of which are currently prohibited under their rules.
- OpenAI has released an iOS app for ChatGPT, offering all the features available on the web version of the tool.
- The app provides convenient access to ChatGPT for SEOs, content creators and search marketers. This enables users to maintain their chat history, as well as offer a more user-friendly interface than that provided by a mobile browser.
- Users need to have subscribed to ChatGPT Plus to access the GPT-4 model and other Plus features.
- If you’ve been considering incorporating AI chat into your brand’s support system, this could be a golden opportunity. For now the app is available only for users in the US, but OpenAI intends to expand it to other countries in a matter of weeks. There’s also an Android app in the works.
If you’d like to find out more about any of the topics in this week’s The 5 in 5, or you want to enhance your performance marketing but don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to contact us today! You can either reply directly to this email or get in touch via our website.
