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  • Three Revolutions Are Converging 🤝 Paramount Merger Impact On Ads 🏔️ Meta Updates Business Tools 🛠️

Three Revolutions Are Converging 🤝 Paramount Merger Impact On Ads 🏔️ Meta Updates Business Tools 🛠️

Also: Google Ads To Phase Out Enhanced CPC Bidding Strategy

Happy Friday Marketing Engineers!

If you’re new, welcome aboard 👋. If you're a seasoned Engineer, thanks for sticking around! Coming up today: the most influential people in AI in 2024, cognitive load and UX design, and how to use freebies to optimize your lead generation.

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

B2B marketing is gaining prominence as a major growth opportunity, shifting focus from traditional B2C practices. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s research introduces new strategies based on mental and physical availability, while advancements in AI enhance marketing efficiency, enabling faster and more cost-effective practices.

Existing campaigns will transition to manual CPC or newer AI-driven options by March 2025. New campaigns will not be able to select Enhanced CPC starting October 2024, and existing ones will be automatically migrated to manual CPC after March 2025. This shift reflects Google's push towards more advanced AI-driven bidding strategies, which are expected to improve campaign performance and efficiency.

Paramount Global is merging with Skydance Media. The merger involves a $1.5 billion investment to rejuvenate Paramount, aiming to blend its entertainment legacy with Silicon Valley-style innovation and enhance its streaming services through AI and tech advancements. This leadership change is set to overhaul advertising strategies and content distribution, potentially reshaping media formats and audience engagement in line with trends in connected TV.

Meta is tightening data restrictions on its Business Tools, which could impact custom audiences and ad sets used by advertisers. This means advertisers might need to adjust their tracking and reporting strategies, with some ad sets potentially being paused and changes in data reporting. Industry experts recommend reviewing tracking parameters, monitoring for paused ads, and preparing for these privacy-focused updates.

🤖 AI

"OpenAI o1-preview," aims to address more complex tasks and enhance reasoning abilities. The model is said to perform similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmarks in various scientific fields but lacks some features of earlier models, such as web browsing. It has also undergone extensive safety testing, showing improvements in handling vulnerabilities, though it still faces limitations and occasional inaccuracies.

Pre-trained video generative models, particularly diffusion models, are being adapted to create interactive video games directly from text descriptions, demonstrating their potential in advancing procedural content generation. Significant challenges remain, such as issues with controllability, continuity, and coherence, which currently limit these models' ability to produce consistent and realistic video game scenes. Looking ahead, enhancements in model capabilities could allow these models to replace traditional game engines by generating interactive gameplay directly from video outputs.

The AI tool enables users to create 3D environments using text prompts, simplifying the design process even for those with limited skills. The AI predicts the next 3D block in a sequence and uses a secondary 2D model to ensure logical consistency, addressing the challenge of limited 3D data. This tool is expected to save developers time and will be open-sourced to foster innovation and support less experienced creators.

Check it out! It's a nice resource to explore to understand the landscape. {m}

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Overloading the brain's limited working memory can hinder task completion and information retention. The three types of cognitive load—intrinsic, germane, and extraneous—can be managed to enhance user experience, with a focus on minimizing the negative impact of extraneous load caused by poor design. Strategies like simplifying interfaces, using familiar design patterns, and providing clear feedback lead to improved efficiency, reduced errors, and better overall accessibility for users.

Regularly updating lead-generating freebies is important to keep them effective and aligned with your brand. Optimizing these freebies involves ensuring they deliver high value, remain relevant, and avoid outdated content. Actively promoting your refreshed freebies and scheduling consistent reviews help maintain their performance and support long-term business growth.

To effectively organize your video footage, create a dedicated folder on your phone and mark key shots that could serve as engaging hooks. When capturing content, focus on recording a high volume of short clips using the "wide, medium, close" shot format to keep viewers' attention. Finally, include yourself in the footage by using a Bluetooth tripod or having a friend record you to ensure your videos are personal and relatable.

⚙️ Machine Shop

A structured workshop approach that involves stakeholders from various departments working together to identify, articulate, and prioritize entry points where potential customers experience significant pain that a product or service can address through a series of steps including defining customer profiles, mapping journeys, and strategizing entry points. Also, a guide to develop targeted strategies and messaging that effectively engage customers at these entry points, aligning marketing efforts with customer needs and enhancing product features to meet demands.

Despite the efficacy of AI in crafting prompts for both text and image generation, the role of prompt engineers is evolving rather than disappearing, as human expertise remains crucial in developing, deploying, and managing AI applications across various industries. This shift suggests that while the method of engineering prompts is changing, the professional landscape will continue to adapt and incorporate these new technologies.

A marketing funnel represents the journey customers take from discovering a brand to becoming paying customers and advocates, divided into stages like Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU), Middle-of-the-Funnel (MOFU), and Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BOFU). Building and tracking these funnels involves mapping the customer journey with frameworks like AIDA and using web analytics tools to monitor key events and goals, helping to visualize customer pathways and analyze conversion rates. Optimizing marketing funnels requires continuous monitoring and improvement, setting clear purposes for each stage, assigning appropriate strategies, and regularly refining marketing assets to focus on providing value and addressing customer needs.

Set up Google Alerts to notify you about relevant industry milestones indicating potential growth or expansion of your ideal customers. Craft a simple and passive direct message template that focuses on congratulating the potential customer and subtly mentioning your relevant background. Schedule a consistent weekly time to send out these personalized DMs based on your Google Alerts, ensuring systematic and efficient outreach.

🔮 The Future

US monthly social network users are projected to surpass linear TV viewers, reaching 236.4 million compared to 228.6 million. Despite this shift, linear TV will still command more viewing time than social media and YouTube, with viewers spending an average of two hours and 49 minutes per day on linear TV in 2025. Consequently, digital advertisers should consider reallocating their ad spend to social media and YouTube as viewing habits evolve.

Creatives in marketing who possess technical knowledge are important for producing authentic and compelling content that resonates with technically sophisticated audiences. Traditional marketing pipelines often fail to capture the nuances needed to address the diverse needs of various tech roles effectively. Integrating technical understanding with creative skills, these proficient creatives enhance the effectiveness of marketing efforts, leading to more engaging content and improved efficiency in B2B tech spaces.

Recent trends highlight an increase in the length of short-form videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, with growing engagement for clips ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. TikTok is also seeing a rise in business and finance content, with topics like financial tips and business success gaining popularity. Also, Instagram's engagement is up due to Meta's AI-driven content recommendations, and Facebook is experiencing more video uploads, partly thanks to the popularity of Reels and changing user behaviors.

U.S. ad spending is forecast to hit $397 billion but is expected to slow down in the latter half of the year due to tougher year-on-year comparisons and anticipated challenges for digital ads. Digital ad spend growth is expected to decelerate in Q3 and Q4, while commerce media, despite continued growth, may face reduced rates and potential budget cuts. Also, television ad spending is projected to decline by about 2.1% in 2024 and continue to decrease in the coming years, despite strong growth in connected TV advertising.

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