The Future of AI: Automated LinkedIn Inspiration Porn <sigh>

Today In Digital Marketing is a daily podcast and daily newsletter showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. This week, Tod touches on:

Pinterest's ad load increase has led to Wall Street raising estimates.

YouTube has released its 2023 Creative Trends report, providing insights into audience interests and behaviours.

Reddit's sales growth has slowed down, a situation that occurred before a dispute over new API fees.

LinkedIn is testing a new feature that allows users to generate AI posts, aiming to make content creation more efficient, though it raises concerns about authenticity.

YouTube is implementing AI-powered dubbing, aiming to make dubbing videos in other languages easier.

YouTube is testing a feature called "Test & Compare" that allows creators to upload multiple thumbnails for a single video and determine which one performs best.

A trucking company is using a driving game to recruit drivers amidst an ongoing driver shortage.

Pinterest's Stock Surges as Ad Revenue Soars

Pinterest — long seen as a decent place for ad campaigns, but not a critical one — is getting some increased attention this week. This after the company's stock price surged by 15% yesterday year-to-date, driven by increasing ad revenue.

The rise has attracted investment firms' attention, prompting RBC Capital Markets to reassess its estimates for the company.

Factors Driving Increases

RBC liked Pinterest's recent third-party media deals, like the recent multi-year partnership with Amazon — deals that let Pinterest place more ads in categories where it lacks first-party data.

According to analysts, two opposing forces are at play:

1. Increased ads, and
2. Amazon's involvement leading to higher auction density that should drive CPMs higher platform-wide

So good news for Pinterest, less so for media buyers I guess.

Conversion support will also become a factor. Pinterest reports that 10% of enterprise customers using its conversion API have seen a 15% reduction in cost-per-action, a 30% increase in conversions, and a 30% growth in ad spend in the most recent quarter vs. 5% overall.

Image: Canva

"Fandom" is a Growing YouTube Trend

Looking to get more views on YouTube? The company released its 2023 Creative Trends report yesterday, which looks at current shifts in audience interests and behaviors on the platform.

The report identifies a few main trends marketers might want to keep at the back of their heads — also keep in mind, YouTube is incentivized to report the trends that are beneficial to its business strategy. That said, it noted that fandom is alive and well and that in the last year, almost half of all Gen Z viewers have watched videos made by fans of specific artists or public figures.

Quoting the report:

Key to this dimensionalized fandom is the growth of formats beyond long-form, most notably short-form but also livestreams and podcasts. Creators have embraced storytelling across these offerings, which lets audiences personalize their consumption even further: 87% of people have watched at least 4 of the content formats that YouTube offers over the past 12 months.

You can download the report here.

Images: YouTube

Reddit's Ad Sales Slow Ahead of Planned IPO

Reddit is facing more than a user uprising. Prior to thousands of subreddit communities going dark this month in protest against its massive API fees, Reddit faced another stark reality: slowing sales growth.

The Information reports today that Reddit’s revenue increased 40% last year, reaching $670 million, according to sources. While this growth rate outpaced many other internet ad firms, it's a significant deceleration compared to the previous year, when the company's revenue more than doubled.

The slowdown in sales growth adds to the uncertainty surrounding its plans to go public. This newly reported 2022 sales figure suggests Reddit would face a significant valuation cut from its last private round if public investors valued it similarly to peer companies.

Reddit's Ad Business

While online advertising-dependent firms, including social networks and news sites, suffered from reduced marketing spend in the past year, Reddit's growth rate was faster than its larger competitors like Meta Platforms, Twitter, and Snap, reflecting the progress it has made building its ad business.

Despite this progress, Reddit's ad sales still pale in comparison to other companies. The company, however, has said it wants to generate $1 billion in ad revenue by 2023. To reach that goal, Reddit's growth rate would have to reach nearly 50%, again.

The battle has highlighted the challenges for many internet firms that rely on content from users but are trying to build profit-making businesses.

Image: Canva

LinkedIn Tests AI-Powered Post Generation

Is it just me or are LinkedIn posts getting worse? It seems every time I check the feed, there are dozens of effusive posts celebrating how amazing someone's team is, or the lessons they learned watching their kid have a lemonade stand.

Well, it's probably about to get worse, with LinkedIn nearly set to unleash new AI that can write posts for you.... the company announced it has officially started testing its AI post-generation tool.

To use the feature, users must share a minimum of 30 words expressing their thoughts and perspective. Then the AI generates a first draft, providing a basis for users to review, edit, and personalize the content before posting it on the platform.

We can only imagine the language model has been trained on millions of other LinkedIn posts. This does not bode well.

The tool is currently being tested with select members.

Image: LinkedIn

YouTube’s New AI Dubbing Tool and Thumbnail Face-Off

If you're looking to expand your brand's content into new markets, YouTube is boosting its AI offerings with a new tool that can dub your videos in different languages.

The company announced yesterday that it's bringing over the team from Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing service from Google’s Area 120 incubator.

How it Works

1. First, the tool transcribes your video, giving you a transcription to review and edit.
2. Then, it translates and produces the dub.

Currently, English videos can be dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese, with more languages coming soon.

The Perfect Thumbnail Doesn’t Exi—

On another front, Youtube also introduced a tool yesterday that lets brands and creators A/B test thumbnails for their video that drives results.

The platform is testing a feature called “Test & Compare,” which lets users upload up to three thumbnails for a single video and let YouTube experiment behind the scenes to see which one performs the best.

A preview of the feature shows that the tool will provide a percentage-based report of the "watch time" for each thumbnail after completing an A/B test.

YouTube is currently testing the feature with a limited group of users, with plans for a wider launch next year.

Virtual Billboards, Real Jobs

Gamers are now being targeted by recruitment ads from a trucking company amidst an employee shortage.

The company recently placed recruitment ads on in-game billboards in American Truck Simulator, a popular game that encourages players to build business management skills while driving a truck through the Midwest, which all point to the company's web site.

Who said playing video games could never get you a job? Let’s just hope this isn’t a marketing strategy the military starts to deploy.

Image: SCS Software

Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com

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