Digital Debrief | November 2022

The Digital Debrief is a monthly digest of the top digital marketing news. My goal in creating it is to give professionals a "by marketers, for marketers" download of what's happening in social, websites, SEO, and tech. If you have thoughts or feedback, please drop me a line.

Trends I'm watching / TLDR:

• Visual search will play a bigger role in the future of SEO
• Twitter's future is still up in the air, expect changes to the platform that will ripple out to audience usage
• Meta is pushing into bigger VR plays with sporting, and events, this is the future of marketing
• New AI tools have massive potential but require oversite and management

Little blue bird, big-time drama.?

Elon picks a fight with Apple?

In what feels like a toss-up between attention-seeking and mobilizing supporters for business benefit, Elon Musk made a bold move in attacking Apple via a series of tweets. Apple is a key Twitter hosting platform with a significant number of users accessing the app via their iOS for decreasing their Twitter Ad spend. Apple was Twitter’s top advertiser in Q1 of 2022, spending approximately $50 million on Twitter marketing.??

Twitter Verification is getting even more complicated?

Elon Musk revealed that the $8 Twitter Blue verification program will now include a range of color-coded check marks to limit the potential for misrepresentation of corporate and government accounts. Gold verification check marks will be granted to business accounts, grey will be granted to government accounts and blue will remain representing individuals who are celebrities, or not.??

Twitter expands content recommendations??

If you’re suddenly seeing a heap of random accounts in your Twitter feed you are not alone. Twitter is ramping up the number of accounts and tweet activity that is displayed in uers’s Twitter feeds for accounts they are not yet following. This suggested content is based on:??

• Interests based on tweet activity?
• Topics you follow?
• Tweets you’ve engaged with?
• Tweets people in your network like?
• People followed by people you follow?

This is a social media-wide trend it seems following Facebook and Instagram also showing more AI-based content recommendations.??

To the Metaverse and beyond??

Meta launches new sports VR experience??

XTADIUM on Meta Quest enables VR users to experience sports in a more immersive, engaging way. As explained by Meta: ?

“Developed by YBVR, XTADIUM gets you closer to the action than ever before by delivering 180-degree virtual reality (VR) footage in up to 8K video quality. Real-time statistical overlays that you can toggle on or off let you stay on top of the game, and you can choose from up to eight different camera angles to get the best view. You can enjoy an event by yourself or create a private watch party for your friends to join.” The presence of live sports and events adds a new perspective on the potential for VR and experiencing events in a new way.??

‘Galactica’ AI system can produce academic papers based on simple prompts ?

Meta?released and then took down a demo of their new ‘Galactica’ language model for scientific papers . The tool is used to summarize academic literature, solve math problems, generate Wiki articles, and more, all based on simple text prompts. On the demo site, users could enter any subject and it would produce articles and explainers based on that prompt. However, the demo site was taken down shortly after launch with the following replacing the tool: ?

“At Meta, we believe the way to advance AI research is through an open, transparent and reproducible process. We also believe that progress is best served by inviting a wide and diverse community to participate and provide feedback. The Galactica research paper, model, code, and corresponding demo are intended for the research community and are not being used in production. At launch, we outlined the limitations that come with large language models such as Galactica, including the potential for it to generate inaccurate and unreliable output, even though Galactica was trained on high-quality scientific and academic data. We believe it is critical for the public to understand the strengths and weaknesses of these language models in an open and transparent way. We also believe this is the best way to get feedback on these systems, and learn how to mitigate the weaknesses. However, given the propensity of large language models such as Galactica to generate text that may appear authentic, but is inaccurate, and because it has moved beyond the research community, we chose to remove the demo from public availability. Our models remain available for researchers who want to learn more about the work and reproduce the results in the paper.”?

Joelle Pineau?

Managing Director, Fundamental AI Research at Meta?

Facebook adds unpopular new group options??

Much to the annoyance of group admins everywhere, Facebook launched a new feature that allows every group member to set themselves as moderators. The new tool seems like a path to confusion and endless problems for group admins and communities. Luckily, the feature is optional!??

?

Live stream rules the tube

A holiday push for in-stream shopping??

A new series of shopping streams and other in-app activations hosted by some of the most popular creators on YouTube are planned to promote in-stream shopping ahead of Christmas. YouTube is positioning this video shopping experience as a one-stop-shop for holiday shopping and calling it the “From YouTube to You” series . YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are all working to develop their own live-stream commerce elements, after seeing the process become a huge drive of in-app shopping activity in Asian markets.??

Live-Stream guests feature rolls out to more users ?

YouTube announced that the ‘Go-Live Together’ option for live streaming with guests will be available to more users. Hosts can invite another YouTube user to join the live stream in a split vertical layout and then rotate guests in and out throughout the stream. This should enable creators to interact with followers more and host more event-like and interactive live streams on their channels. The new feature is available to channels with 50+ subscribers. ?

Instagram??

Instagram adds music feature to still image posts??

Providing another way to integrate music into their experience, Instagram has added the ability to add music to still image posts . When users share their still images on Instagram, they are now given the option to add music. It seems a bit unnecessary, yes TikTok has seen success and massive trend virality with music and sounds but do still images really need a soundtrack???

Pinterest?engagement is on the up and up

Shuffles is available to everyone?

The new ‘Shuffles’ visual collage app is not generally available . The app enables users to create their own artistic collages from Pinterest-oriented images. The collages can be animated and set to music and then shared in other apps with the product images linked back to Pinterest.??

Details on algorithm update boosting Pin engagement ?

Pinterest experienced an increase in engagement and usage in November and they are pointing to a technical update to their algorithm for the boost. The Pinterest engineering team provided a technologically dense overview of the update. In essence, the new system takes in more recent user actions in the app and uses that input to provide recommendations that are timely and relevant. The update has created a cycle of activity leading to a 6% increase in the volume of re-pins. ?

More options for LinkedIn advertisers

New brand safety hub will help LinkedIn advertisers manage audience network placements ?

As part of ongoing efforts to improve brand safety, LinkedIn launched a new Brand Safety hub for audience network ads. The new tool will enable advertisers to find out more information about LinkedIn’s partner platforms and create allow and block lists to manage the same. The LinkedIn Audience Network enables advertisers to extend campaigns beyond LinkedIn itself but performance and placement visibility has been limited. ??

?Is TikTok?here to stay?

What could stop?TikTok’s rise to the top? An FBI ban of the app. ?

The US Communities on Foreign Investment has been investigating TikTok for several years and recently several senior officials related to the investigation have publicly called for the app to be banned over concerns related to the app’s potential ties to the Chinese Government. In November, the FBI chimed in with Director, Chris Wray saying that in his assessment the app does pose a national security threat. TikTok continues to reassure users that the app will not be used by the Chinese Government to control data collection or impact software on the millions of US devices it is installed on. Time will tell if TikTok becomes a victim of tensions between the CCP and US governments. ?

Visual search takes center stage

AdWords is sunsetting similar audience segments ?

Advertisers who are using similar audience segments to expand their campaigns and ad groups in AdWords will lose access to the setting in May 2023. Google says that similar audience segments will transition to “more powerful, tested, privacy-centric automated solutions. These solutions will help advertisers connect with relevant audiences, all while meeting people’s expectations for privacy.” The new option will be called Optimized Targeting (for video, display discovery and performance campaigns) and Audience Expansion (for brand campaigns.) ?

Google Lens button lands a spot on the Google homepage?

In a rare move, Google has updated their desktop home page by adding the Google Lens button next to the search box. Google Lens allows users to search by uploading a photo to Google Search and then Google matches visually similar search results to the image. This may lead to more visual searches and an increase in different types of traffic to the images and content on your website. ?