Fried Bids, Digital News - 20-27 May 2024
Andrea Girelli
MarTech Director | Adjunct Lecturer | Exploring AdTech Innovations, Driving Martech Strategies, Bridging Marketing & IT, and Championing Digital Transformation to Unlock Business Growth and Future-Ready Solutions
This is my personal selection of the most interesting stories published from 20th-27th May 2024. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you want to receive the 50+ news full newsletter, please reach me through Direct Message.
In a recent event, Google executives revealed plans to prioritize AI-powered overviews in search results over organic listings. Philipp Schindler, Google's SVP and Chief Business Officer, stated that the purpose of search results is to display advertising, indicating a shift in the company's priorities. Vidhya Srinivasan, Google's VP and GM of Advertising, further explained that AI overviews will appear in search results to provide users with more helpful information, but these overviews will also feature search and shopping ads that will be matched to the user's query, effectively pushing organic search results further down the page.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai discusses the company's focus on AI and its impact on Google Search. Pichai explains that Google is rolling out AI-powered "Overviews" in Search, which will provide AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. This feature, previously tested as the "Search Generative Experience," aims to make search more efficient for users. However, Pichai acknowledges the potential disruption this could have on the existing web ecosystem, as it may reduce traffic to websites. He argues that the changes are about creating value for users, but recognizes the concerns of creators and website owners about AI potentially "swallowing the internet forever."
According to a recent Social Media Trends Report from consumer research company GWI, shoppers are now discovering brands and products primarily through social media channels like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest, surpassing traditional methods such as search engines and TV ads. The report highlights the growing influence of social media, especially among younger generations like Gen Z, who are increasingly using these platforms for product research and inspiration-driven shopping. TikTok has emerged as a key platform for brand discovery, while Pinterest is leading the trend of inspiration-driven shopping.
In its fiscal Q1 of 2025, Walmart's U.S. advertising business, Walmart Connect, grew by 26%, and its global advertising business was up 24% year-over-year. The overall active advertiser counts on Connect increased by nearly 19%, with strong growth from marketplace sellers or smaller and emerging brands that sell through Walmart, up over 50%. Walmart's advertising foothold is set to expand further with the acquisition of smart TV manufacturer Vizio and a new streaming agreement with Disney, allowing the retailer to leverage its first-party data and drive performance beyond its own platforms.
Audience curation has become a growing trend in the online ad industry. Publishers, with their insights into user behavior, are working more closely with advertisers to provide custom ad inventory. This trend is driven not only by the end of third-party cookies but also by advertisers' concerns about brand safety and inventory quality on the open web. Sell-side platforms, such as PubMatic, Xandr, and others, have launched specialized curation offerings, helping the curation market grow to $1 billion over the past five years and potentially reaching $5 billion in the next 2-3 years. Sell-side curation benefits publishers by enhancing their contextual targeting capabilities and offering off-site audience extension, while also addressing buyers' concerns about the scale of individual publishers' first-party data.
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In the gaming industry, immersive brand integrations are gaining traction over traditional programmatic ad formats. Marketers have been quick to capitalize on the gaming boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, investing in bespoke in-game experiences rather than intrinsic ads. While intrinsic ads are still growing, they lack access to premium, high-engagement games. Instead, brands are partnering with game developers to create value-added experiences, such as branded in-game events or seamless product placements. User-generated content platforms like Fortnite and Roblox also offer opportunities for brands to integrate themselves into existing gaming experiences.
Meta announced new functionality for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, allowing users to share photos directly to their Instagram Stories without needing their phone. Users can now say "Hey Meta, share my last photo to Instagram" or "Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram" to capture and share images hands-free. Additionally, the smart glasses gained integrations with Amazon Music and the Calm meditation app, enabling users to stream music and access mindfulness content directly through voice controls. Meta is also expanding the availability of the smart glasses to 15 more countries. This update builds on the smart glasses' previous AI-powered features, like the ability to translate text in foreign languages, positioning them as a personal AI assistant beyond the smartphone.
Media buyers are still assessing alternative identifiers (alt IDs) like UID 2.0, ID5, and Lotame's Panorama ID as they prepare for the loss of third-party cookies. However, these alt IDs are not proving to be the silver bullets that buyers and sellers had hoped for. Brittany Schermerhorn of Razorfish cited the lack of scale as a key challenge, as the more Google pushes its cookie deprecation deadline, the less seriously marketers view the threat. While UID 2.0 has emerged as a favorite, it still lacks the necessary scale. Agencies are working to convince marketers to invest in testing alt IDs by explaining that performance comes in later phases, and the current focus should be on ensuring data accuracy and match rates with first-party data before scaling.
X has updated its creator ad revenue share program documentation, now requiring all participants to submit a government-issued ID for verification. This change is implemented through X's third-party verification partner, Au10tix, an Israel-based company that has been verifying X user profiles since September 2023. The move is likely aimed at addressing issues such as far-right influencers, misinformation spreaders, and spammers earning payouts from the program. While some X users are concerned about the privacy implications and the involvement of an Israel-based company, the ID verification requirement makes sense as X moves towards expanding its payment and banking services, where such identification will become a bigger necessity.
The European Union has approved its flagship, risk-based regulations for artificial intelligence, known as the EU AI Act. The law, which is the first of its kind globally, adopts a tiered approach to AI regulation, banning certain "unacceptable risk" use cases, defining "high-risk" AI applications that must meet specific requirements, and subjecting "limited risk" AI apps to lighter transparency obligations. The legislation also establishes a new governance framework, including an AI Office within the European Commission and an AI Board comprising member state representatives. The law aims to ensure trust, transparency, and accountability in the development and deployment of AI, while also fostering European innovation in this fast-changing technology sector.
Salesforce has launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products including Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants, and Einstein Personalization. These products are built on Salesforce's evolving architecture, known as the Einstein 1 platform, which now includes the Salesforce Data Cloud. The Einstein Copilot provides contextual assistance to users within their workflows, while Einstein Personalization offers real-time decision-making capabilities powered by Data Cloud. Salesforce emphasizes the importance of data privacy and security, with measures in place to ensure customer data is protected when interacting with large language models.
Love it! Thanks Andrea Girelli for sharing