Friday Five: Global Marketing Spend to Hit $4+ Trillion, TikTok Turns to Teaching, and Google’s Sorting Your Opening Hours

No, don’t worry, your eyes aren’t deceiving you! It is Thursday and you ARE reading The Friday Five.

What with it being Good Friday and the Easter break we thought we’d put the Five out a day earlier so as to not deprive you of your fix.

Before we dive into that though, a quick bit of Embryo-related news. We've launched a podcast! It's called Never Mind The Keywords and episode one is out now on Apple and Spotify. In it, we chat to MD and the Founder of the good ship Embryo, Ross Green. We think you'll love it! If you do happen to love it please feel free to leave us a rating and review on whatever podcast platform you prefer.

Anyway, let's get on with the Five and check out some of the most important stories from the last few days here.

“Sorry, We’re Closed” Google Getting AI to Adjust Your Opening Hours for You

It’s fair to say that its’ been a rather hectic few years for businesses, one that has seen them open and close more times than a car door.

Thankfully, Google is on hand to help ensure that a business’s opening hours are as accurate as possible on the search engine results page.

They’ve developed a machine-learning algorithm that uses Google Street View, Google Images, and the content of a business’s website to automatically update business opening hours.

Here are Embryo’s opening hours and while we keep ours updated through our GMB profile if for some reason something were to alter, Google’s clever bots and spiders will scan our online profile to determine if the hours are accurate.

This new update will be perfect for small businesses who are juggling a million things at once and very well may forget to update their opening hours. It leaves them to focus on providing a great service to their customers.

Google hopes to update 20 million opening hours for businesses all across the world in the next 6 months.

Check out what else Google has in store here!

No Comment! YouTube to Roll Out a Stricter Comment Moderation System.

One only needs to scroll down a Youtube video to the comments section to find at best, something moderately funny, and at worst, something objectively terrible.

Youtube’s comment section can become a bit of a cesspit of hate, trolling, and views that should be left in the 1600s.

One particular source of frustration from some of Youtube’s biggest creators is comment spam that looks to impersonate the likes of Marques Brownlee with promises of something good if they message them. This then leads the viewer away from Youtube to be scammed, essentially.

As a result of pretty harsh protestation from these creators, Youtube is looking to roll out a stricter moderating system that will allow them to prevent the aforementioned spammy comments. While Youtube has got plenty of systems in place to prevent this sort of stuff it's clearly not been enough and they are hoping this new safeguard will ensure the comments section is a beautiful, daisy-filled wonderland with not a spammy comment in sight!

The Verge goes into depth with it here.?

Schools Out for TikTok

TikTok is turning to teaching and launching the Creative Agency Partnerships (CAP) University to educate marketers and those that knock around the circles about how to maximise the engagement from this platform.

The CAP Uni really will be a one-stop-shop for all things TikTok. From modules such as TikTok 101 to Trends & Music Licensing every blade of virtual grass will be covered.

While this may seem entirely altruistic from TikTok, there are several modules that focus on creators and ensuring they are getting the most out of their content. It’s all about making sure these massive creators (who are a real boon for the app) stay on the app and continued to get paid by TikTok as opposed to switching to Instagram or Snapchat.

It's easy to see how those graduating from CAP are more than likely going to help TikTok keep lining its coffers.

Here’s Social Media Today’s take on it.

Marketing Spend to Exceed 4 Trillion Dollars by 2025

It’s hard to quantify marketing as a concept or an idea. It’s everywhere yet it tries to be as subtle as possible, it helps businesses make a profit but has a bad rep in some quarters, and is still not seen as a priority by millions of massive organisations.

Yet, despite all that, marketing spending is set to reach $4.7 million dollars by 2025, in just two and half years.

This is according to a report by Forrester called ‘2022 Marketing Investment Forecast’ (catchy title, right?).

The report highlights several things, including how the pandemic has, predictably, affected this level of spend. American businesses spend $1.4 trillion on marketing, the most of any nation. In the coming years, China will contribute 27% of growth from now until 2025, and IT will remain the dominant sector has benefitted greatly from the global shift to remote working. In fact, IT software will drive 14% of the overall growth until 2025.

These numbers are truly staggering and it would take someone cleverer than this author to summarise what they mean and why.

Basically, this trillion-dollar figure just underlines the importance of attracting, retaining and recapturing customers, regardless of industry or sector.

Marketing Tech News goes into it in more detail in their post.

Tailored Ads and Data Capture, You Can’t Have One Without the Other

Answer me this.

According to a YouGov report, one in three people in Briton like adverts that target their specific needs and are personalised, but 70% of them think that data collection is immoral.

This contradiction is stark and highlights the disconnect between the kind of internet experience people want versus the ‘cost’ of having said experience.

The report, done by the agency Rehab, highlights how difficult it is going to be for brands to connect with their audience as 3rd party cookies are phased out.

Businesses are just going to have to be red hot and as transparent as glass when it comes to customer data, how it’s used, and why they have it. Even more than when GDPR came into effect.

Campaign Live goes into detail in their article.

We hope you enjoyed this special edition of The Friday Five! Have a great Easter weekend and stay tuned for next Friday when normal service will be resumed.