AI Overviews, ChatGPT-4o, & Meta's AI content labels
Happy Friday and welcome back to a fresh edition of Unified Digital Digest!
It's been a big week in digital, specifically in the AI space, so we're excited to dig into some of the biggest updates from the past few weeks. But first, we're introducing a new section, the spotlight, where we'll feature individuals, businesses, partners, and collaborators of ours that we think are making an impact in the digital marketing space. Meet this week's spotlight, Dennis Still.
Spotlight - Dennis Still, Bigfoot Analytics
Dennis Still is the Founder and Chief Insights Analyst at Bigfoot Analytics. As a thought leader in the data analytics space, Dennis works with companies of all sizes to answer their toughest business questions. He shares his passion for data analysis, data science, and insights analysis by presenting at conferences, teaching students, writing, and blogging.
Recently, Dennis worked with the Perrill team on a blog post where he discussed the importance of first-party data and how to leverage it. Even though Google pushed back the third-party cookie deprecation timeline, it's still important to prioritize first-party data, especially as privacy continues to be a priority for many users. As Dennis puts it, "First-party data collection and curation will be incredibly important for companies of all types. It will be one of the only ways to get at potential differences in customer behavior or audiences."
Read the full blog post here, and be sure to check out Dennis and his work at Bigfoot Analytics.
Featured story - AI Overviews
We're kicking off the updates with a pretty big announcement from Google I/O 2024 that you might've heard about. Google announced the public launch of AI Overviews, previously called Search Generative Experience, which is Google's generative AI search feature.
AI Overviews began as an experiment in Search Labs, where users have been testing out the functionality of the feature. Now, it's a default part of Google Search, offering a new way to quickly get conversational, human-like answers to their queries through AI-generated overviews. AI Overviews provide users with links to learn more if they want to dive deeper.
Google shared in a blog post that, "people are visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions", and "links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query", which are both pretty big claims.
The SEO community has had mixed reactions to this update. Many are saying it's the end of SEO (which it isn't), while others are pushing to embrace the change. Regardless, SEOs will have to learn how to work with the AI Overviews feature rather than against it to find new ways to direct organic traffic to websites.
Perrill perspective:
We don't know what the impact will be on SEO or even Google Search Ads yet, but there is a lot that suggests SEO and Ads will get through this relatively unscathed. We all know that Google makes the majority of its revenue through ads, so it's not going to do anything that takes away from that money. In other words, the impact on ads should be non-existent. Ads will appear above AI Overviews, and AI Overviews will likely be limited on SERPs that feature ads. SEO is a little trickier to predict because Google doesn't have as much incentive there, but let's consider the long history of changes that reportedly were going to kill SEO: voice search, featured snippets, people also ask, TikTok, and many more. The result: organic traffic keeps going up (at least for our clients). There are almost 9 billion Google searches a day, so there is still plenty of traffic to go around even if AI Overviews takes a few clicks away. The biggest impact will likely be on informational queries that AI Overviews can tackle easily. Just be on the lookout for bad information, and don't drink urine to pass a kidney stone even if AI Overviews tell you to do it. - Nate Tower , President
Introducing GPT-4o
At a glance: The latest model of ChatGPT is here, and it's named for its ability to simultaneously process inputs from text, audio, image, video, and more, making it a fully omnichannel large language model.
ChatGPT-4o can also respond using combinations of audio, image, video, and text. Here are a few of the many use cases for ChatGPT-4o:
AI labels on Meta
At a glance: Meta is adding an AI-generated content label to its platforms to ensure users are disclosing AI-generated content.
Meta already has AI detection tools in place to try to identify AI-generated content, which is apparently a pretty necessary addition as users have been using AI to generate content to make a grab for likes. This type of content can range from strange to uncomfortable to downright disturbing. And while right now AI-generated content isn't too difficult to spot, as AI gets better, it will become more and more difficult, making this update beneficial.
Perrill perspective:
I believe this is a positive move forward. AI-generated content can seem incredibly lifelike, making it understandable how scammers could exploit unsuspecting users–even Katy Perry's own mother was fooled by AI-generated Met Gala photos of the singer-songwriter! By clearly indicating when content is AI-generated, users can become more discerning about what they consume. Nonetheless, I am concerned that merely labeling AI-generated content might not suffice. Users should have the option to filter out such content if they wish. While not all AI-generated content is problematic, some users may prefer content from genuine people. - Bailey Mutschler , Copywriter and Social Media Specialist
Alphabet is working on acquiring HubSpot
At a glance: Alphabet, Google's parent company, is reportedly making progress in acquiring HubSpot, which could lead to waves in the digital marketing space, specifically related to data collection and CRM integration.
There is no certainty behind this deal actually taking place, but it's important to keep tabs on if you're currently using HubSpot. It could create more opportunities for data analysis by offering more data integration opportunities between Google's platforms and HubSpot.
Perrill perspective:
If this does happen, it will be a really good thing for HubSpot users (as long as Alphabet doesn't screw up the platform, which I don't think they will). The vast amount of data flowing between Google and HubSpot would be a massive gain for the CRM and the marketing features as well. That said, there are some big hurdles here. Even if HubSpot accepts an offer, this still has to get through the FTC. That's going to be a tough one. They've certainly blocked smaller acquisitions from happening, and with all the scrutiny Google has been under, I'll be surprised if there isn't a big fight. - Nate Tower , President
Reddit's Public Content Policy
At a glance: Reddit's new policy around data use outlines the information available to publishers and how they're able to use that information in an effort to increase user data privacy.
At a time when data privacy is such a hot topic, this update is important in demonstrating Reddit's commitment to its users. Here are a few of the policy specifications:
Conversion annotations in Shopping Ads
At a glance: Google is now allowing its merchants to enable conversion annotations that show how many users have purchased a product in the selected period of time in Google Shopping Ads.
These annotations can increase demand for a product through perceived popularity. The annotations rely on merchants sharing conversion data from sales, which could call into question the integrity of advertisers and their commitment to data privacy.
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Meta's new AI ad creative features
At a glance: Meta is adding new AI-powered features to its Ads program to help users automate parts of the ad creation process.
The features are available for image generation and text generation, giving advertisers options for backgrounds, headlines, text overlays, and more.
Reddit hires ex-Google employee as first VP of Ads Product
At a glance: Reddit and Google have had plenty of overlap lately, and now Reddit is hiring a VP of Ads Product who previously worked at Google for 11 years in the Display business.
This update seems to indicate Reddit's commitment to making the platform better for advertisers, especially after going public. Reddit is trying to scale its ads business, focusing on bringing AI technology into the platform while providing better options for advertisers.
Perrill perspective:
Reddit is a great platform to advertise on as there are a vast amount of communities/subreddits to leverage targeting your audience and people like them. That being said, Reddit lags behind other social platforms when it comes to advertising as they don't have a ton of reporting or a wide variety of ad types. I'm hoping the changes they have announced previously, plus this new VP of Ads Product, will overhaul their ads offering so it competes better with other social platforms. - Kelsey Switzer , Paid Media Manager
Netflix is creating its own ad server
At a glance: Netflix is adding an in-house ad server to its platform, bringing it up to speed with Hulu, which has had an ad server for years now, and Google, Amazon, and Comcast.
Netflix's President of Advertising, Amy Reinhard, stated "we're being incredibly strategic about how we present ads because we want our members to have a phenomenal experience." Bringing ad efforts in-house will allow Netflix to better personalize ads based on their viewers.
New "web" filter on Google
At a glance: Following the release of AI Overviews, Google announced plans to add a new search filter that will only show text-based links.
This will allow users who aren't interested in seeing the AI results or who just want to see more traditional search results for a query to have the option to filter out the AI Overviews. It will work exactly how the "images" and "videos" filters work.
Google hides search results count
At a glance: Google is making it more difficult to learn the number of results for a search query, hiding the search results count under "tools".
Google has mentioned previously that the count is an estimate, not an actual number, and the platform has been discussing removing the count for years. It seems like Google's plan moving forward is to do away with the count. For now, users can still access it–just not as easily.
Enforcing Google's site reputation abuse policy
At a glance: Google began punishing websites that violate its site reputation abuse policy on May 6th by deindexing parts of websites.
This is a manual change rather than an algorithmic one, so any affected sites should receive notifications in their Search Console account.
New additions to Meta verification
At a glance: Interested in purchasing a blue checkmark on Meta platforms? Meta is expanding its verification subscription program to businesses in more countries while also adding new subscription packages.
With four subscription options at varying price points, Meta is trying to demonstrate the benefits of the subscriptions, which include:
Add Notes to posts and Reels on Instagram
At a glance: Users can now live test new Notes options on Instagram. The goal is to create more opportunities for conversation starters to ultimately boost engagement in the app.
The feature originally launched in late 2022 and resonated most with younger users, an audience that Instagram wants to keep on the platform. And for those who aren't interested in Notes, they're easy enough to avoid or not use.
Threads new 'recent' search filter
At a glance: Threads has been trying to improve the user experience in the platform, taking notes from Twitter (now X) in the process. Its newest update is adding a 'recent' filter that allows users to filter through the latest responses.
Initially, Meta was concerned with adding chronological features to Threads due to the possibility for spammers to take over the results. But with content discovery an ongoing issue on the platform, it seems the pros outweigh the cons of adding this filter option.
Instagram expands creator marketplace to more countries
At a glance: Instagram's creator marketplace offers brands a way to search for creators to collaborate with. The marketplace is now available in 10 new countries, allowing for even more opportunities to collaborate on influencer marketing projects.
TikTok tests creator collaboration features
At a glance: TikTok collaborations have been happening for years now, and it looks like TikTok is leaning into that creator behavior by testing a feature that allows users to add multiple creators to collaborative posts.
The posts will then appear on the profiles of every creator who collaborated. It's extremely similar to Instagram's collaborative post feature and could be a pretty significant value add for creators.
That's all for this week's newsletter. Thank you for reading!