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  • Marketers Shouldn't Fear Reddit 🫣 Costco Is Building An Ad Business 💸 Google's New TV Ad Network 📺

Marketers Shouldn't Fear Reddit 🫣 Costco Is Building An Ad Business 💸 Google's New TV Ad Network 📺

Also: Apple Intelligence And Every New AI Feature For iPhone And Mac

June 14, 2024

Happy Friday Marketing Engineers!

If you’re new, welcome aboard 👋. If you're a seasoned Engineer, thanks for sticking around! Coming up today: a grand unified theory of the AI Hype Cycle, creating a data advantage in marketing, and 20 Neuromarketing techniques for better converting copy.

Is there something else you’d like to see here? Got a hot tip? Hit reply and let us know what you think. 🧠 Or smash a button on our feedback poll at the bottom!

🚀 Adam

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🗞 Marketing News

A beta version of an advertising tag for email newsletters, providing a new channel for advertisers as web browsers phase out tracking cookies by 2025. This new feature supports three types of email ads—sponsorships, context-based ads, and subscriber-targeted programmatic ads—each with distinct pricing models and targeting methods. Also, the implementation details and limitations, and the necessity for images to be displayed and the potential for ad blockers to remove the image tags.

Costco is developing an ad network using its loyalty membership data to target ads on and off its website, leveraging the shopping habits and past purchases of its 74.5 million household members. Costco sees significant potential in this space despite being late to the party. The company aims to grow its relatively small advertising revenue, to reinvest profits to keep consumer prices low, and plans to expand its capabilities to attract more advertisers by utilizing its extensive membership data.

Google has introduced a new advertising network on Google TV, offering targeted, in-stream video inventory across more than 125 channels on Google TV and other Android TV OS devices. Google TV provides access to over 10,000 apps, Google Assistant, smart home control, personalized entertainment recommendations, and boasts over 20 million monthly active users, with 60% of U.S. households using free, ad-supported streaming services. The Google TV network is integrated with Google Ads and Google Display & Video 360, allowing advertisers to plan, buy, and measure campaigns, supporting standard CTV ad formats such as non-skippable and 6-second bumper ads, with more formats to come.

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

We think you should watch. Siri will gain enhanced capabilities, such as managing notifications, summarizing text, and performing actions across multiple apps with onscreen awareness. Emphasizing privacy, Apple stated that many AI functions will be on-device, while more complex requests will use a secure "Private Cloud Compute" system, and announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri while ensuring user data privacy.

The use of AI in education has surged among K-12 students and teachers, with nearly half using it weekly and students generally viewing it positively. Organizations are implementing AI tools to enhance learning experiences, save teachers time and personalize education for students. Concerns about AI's impact on cheating, its effectiveness compared to human teachers, and the need for proper training and professional development for educators remain.

Each cycle begins with a novel mechanism (N) requiring significant computing resources, leading to inflated expectations and a subsequent boom in AI activities. As the limitations of N become apparent, skepticism grows among investors, leading to a decline in hype and funding, marking the onset of an AI winter. Historically, each cycle, from neural networks to deep learning, has contributed to technological advancements, and we are currently in the midst of another AI hype cycle with recent developments still broadly labeled as "AI" despite their specific capabilities and limitations.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Reddit offers significant opportunities for marketers, including community engagement, amplified reach, market research, feedback, innovation, and partnerships. Marketing Engineers can approach Reddit as creators, engagers, or listeners, depending on their resources and goals, to maximize their presence on the platform. Overcoming the fear of Reddit by understanding and utilizing its unique benefits can help reach a highly engaged audience and enhance strategy. {m}

The hub features customized skill assessments, video tutorials, articles, live streams on AI marketing topics, and resources on campaign automation, predictive insights, and dynamic ad creation. Aimed at centralizing AI resources for advertisers, the initiative is currently available in the U.S., Germany, and India, with plans for global expansion.

Elizabeth Tucker emphasized the importance of creating content that is helpful, satisfying, and provides a good user experience, advising SEOs to focus on overall quality rather than technical details. She detailed the extensive March 2024 core update, the largest in Google's history, which took 45 days to roll out and aimed to improve search quality and reduce unhelpful content by 45%. Also, Google defines "low-quality content" through comprehensive guidelines and search ranking volatility can result from various factors, including user behavior changes, content updates, and ongoing system improvements.

⚙️ Machine Shop

Companies must prepare for a future without third-party cookies by focusing on first-party data and creating direct-to-consumer experiences. Leveraging first-party data involves optimizing websites for data acquisition and creating value exchanges to gather more customer information. To adapt, companies should develop independent marketing performance measures, upgrade their tech capabilities with privacy-centric solutions, modernize their tech stacks, and embed test-and-learn methodologies to continuously improve their marketing strategies. {m}

Comprehensive guidance on maximizing event effectiveness, covering strategies ranging from event selection to negotiation tactics, with a focus on driving revenue and brand building concurrently. The best approach is a balanced approach that aligns event marketing efforts with broader business objectives while emphasizing the importance of measuring outcomes to ensure impactful investment.

Ensure the economic viability of the program, measure its impact, and continuously test and refine its components to optimize efficiency and mitigate risks associated with bad-quality users and fraud. Select suitable incentives tailored to the product, audience, and marketing objectives for a successful referral program.

Neuromarketing is a fusion of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and marketing, aimed at understanding and influencing consumer behavior through subconscious and emotional triggers. Integrating neuromarketing techniques into copywriting and marketing strategies could help gain insights into consumer behavior, optimize design elements, personalize targeting, and enhance content creation. Explore various neuromarketing techniques and triggers, such as authority, scarcity, social proof, and storytelling, and their effectiveness in driving consumer actions and decisions.

🔮 The Future

With AI integration in design, curation is just as important as creation, requiring effective filtering and refinement of ideas shaped by life and work experiences. The distinction between design ideas, generated in early brainstorming stages, and insights, derived from structured research, with AI tools better suited for producing initial concepts rather than validated solutions. Also, the future of design lies in leveraging imagination to integrate new concepts.

Enhanced communication between Android and iOS devices and a phase out of SMS. This adoption is significant for US marketers, enabling more effective campaigns and broader audience engagement for brands already using RCS. RCS addresses several limitations of current cross-platform messaging, offering richer and more interactive customer experiences like personalized messages, quick-reply options, location-based suggestions, and dynamic carousels.

Brazil's government is employing AI to screen and analyze thousands of lawsuits, aiming to prevent costly court losses. Court-ordered debt payments are significantly impacting the federal budget, with expected spending on judicial decisions next year to be a sharp increase from previous years. The AI project is designed to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the solicitor general's office without replacing human workers, ensuring all activities are supervised by humans.

{m} Inspiration

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit has created a documentary with Brian Eno that can rewrite itself before every screening. How does the technology work? Check it out! {m}

⚗️ We Think You Should Try

Brilliant - Learn By Doing [15 min daily exercise]

Brilliant offers fun, bite-sized lessons that make complex concepts intuitive and easy to grasp. With visual, interactive lessons and real-time feedback, the platform makes learning engaging and effective for all levels. Tailored lessons and challenges are designed for a wide age range, allowing users to progress at their own pace and build a consistent learning habit with motivational tools.

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