You’ll Hate This Stupid, Terrible, Lousy Headline, But Will You Read This Issue?

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

• TikTok’s Fate Up In The Air
• How Headline Negativity Affects Clickthrough Rate
• New Ad Updates from Microsoft and Google
• Emerging Categories to Dominate E-Commerce Sales
• OpenAI Unleashes ChatGPT Plugins
• Robots Will Run Retail Operations Sooner Than You Think

Below is the transcription from this week’s topics

TikTok’s Fate Up in the Air

TikTok's CEO took his turn in the hot seat yesterday before U.S. lawmakers in a hearing that could determine the app's fate in the U.S.

In response to concerns about the potential sharing of American user data with the Chinese government, Shou Chew defended TikTok and assured the committee that it would remain a platform for free expression and would not be manipulated by any government.

But, Social Media Today reports that his appearance failed to win over U.S. senators as he navigated the questions.

Specifically, Chew differed in commenting on whether ByteDance employees had spied on U.S. citizens in the past year. He also questioned the track record of American companies when it comes to user data when asked about a possible divestment from ByteDance, which is unlikely to resonate with officials.

The CEO's pre-prepared testimony stated that Project Texas’, the company's multi-billion dollar plan to separate U.S. user data from its Chinese parent company, will secure user data in the U.S., making it inaccessible to China-based staff.

However, when pressed on whether TikTok would ever consider selling user data, he refused to provide a commitment saying he would need to seek further clarification before answering.

Further, the Chinese Government once again expressed its opposition to the forced sale of the app, so if it is banned, a sale into local hands may not be possible. In the end, the report notes that TikTok's future still remains uncertain and depends on how U.S. politicians perceive the testimony.

How Headline Negativity Affects Clickthrough Rate

As marketers, we’re always trying to improve our numbers — higher ROAS, lower CPA, higher reach, lower frequency. But one of the most important metrics is the one that gets people off the ad and onto our content — the click-through rate. We’ve known that there’s lots that affect this number — the creative, the offer, and so on — but one of the most important is the headline. Get that right, and you may entice people to check your site or products out.

So how can we move that particular needle up? Luckily, we have science to help us with that. Claire Robertson is a Ph.D. student at New York University. She is one of the authors of new research published this month in the “Nature Human Behaviour” journal, and I spoke with her this morning:

TOD: It’s been a hell of a few years — the pandemic, inflation… surely your research found that using positive language in headlines drives visits to web sites, right?
CLAIRE: You would hope. But unfortunately, that's not what we found. We actually found the opposite.
We found that including positive language in headlines actually reduced the likelihood that people would click on them. And we found that increasing the number of negative words and a headline made your headline more likely to be clicked on.
TOD: What do you think people are drawn to negativity?
CLAIRE: I think that that is a question that actually goes all the way back to evolution.
In the past, we benefited from having an awareness of the negative things around us. Sometimes this is referred to as the snake in the grass phenomenon. And it means that the people who were more aware of negative things in their environment, like snakes, were more likely to be able to avoid them, and then go on to procreate and pass down their genes. And this really served us for a long time — we're aware of these threats physically.
We're also aware of them socially. So we are hyper-aware of people who might try to cheat us.
The problem is in the online environment, things are really different. These threats are no longer as imminent as they were to our evolutionary ancestors. So now we still have this tendency to be drawn to negativity, but it's no longer serving us in the same way. It doesn't help us make good behavioral decisions.

Claire Robertson — her paper is called Negativity drives online news consumption.

Our full interview covered everything from how we marketers can use this new research, why they chose Upworthy as their data set, what she thinks of Upworthy's criticism of the research, and much more. That's coming exclusively to the Premium Podcast, tomorrow. You can sign up now at https://todayindigital.com/premium/

New Ad Updates from Microsoft and Google

A few ad updates from Microsoft and Google to report.

Microsoft's Non-Targeting Solution

First, Microsoft has launched a new ad product that targets shoppers based on the categories they browse while using keywords as a booster for campaign bids.

By boosting bids with keywords, advertisers can target ads to customers searching for specific products.

Retailers can optimize the site experience for shoppers through a product taxonomy or product categorization, which lets shoppers find what they’re looking for. Microsoft says by layering keywords as a booster, in addition to categories, its AI algorithms can return more relevant ads to meet shoppers’ intent.

In contrast to traditional keyword targeting, which requires advertisers to research and build a list of keywords per campaign, advertisers who leverage category behaviours only need to test and retain a few high-performing keywords.

Google Discovery Ad Updates

Next, Google Discovery ads have some new features, including:

1. New Layouts and Feeds

Product feeds are now available to all Discovery advertisers. Retailers can now use lifestyle images and short text with their Google Merchant catalogue to deliver more relevant ads.

2. Updated Reporting and Measurement

Advertisers will be able to track how their Google Merchant Center catalogue items perform in product feeds against metrics like impressions or clicks, later this month with product-level reporting.

Then starting in the second quarter, Discovery advertisers can get a more accurate view of their campaign performance through data-driven attribution.

3. Conversion Lift Experiments

Finally, for advertisers who run both Discovery ads and Video action campaigns, you can measure their impact using Conversion Lift based on geography.

Emerging Categories to Dominate E-Commerce Sales

You might want to consider selling couches on your e-commerce platform.

According to a new report from Insider Intelligence, the future of e-commerce sales will be reshaped in the coming years as emerging categories gain ground and traditional big hitters lose their grip.

While apparel and consumer electronics have historically been dominant categories, data indicates that e-commerce sales will become more evenly distributed across categories.

Before the pandemic, 'apparel and accessories' and 'computer and consumer electronics' accounted for more than 40% of U.S. online sales. However, the pandemic boosted e-commerce sales for categories including:

• Food and beverage
• Furniture and home furnishings

According to the report, furniture will become the second-largest category for e-commerce sales next year, while apparel will remain the largest category until 2027. Meanwhile, computer and consumer electronics, which were the largest category until 2020, will drop to third place.

Health and personal care is also expected to become a significant e-commerce category due to the growth of essential goods including personal hygiene and household products. As a result, health and personal care online sales are expected to grow the most among all categories by 2027.

OpenAI Unleashes ChatGPT Plugins

The robot overlords have been unleashed — OpenAI added support for ChatGPT plugins yesterday enabling developers to create tools for the AI system.

Until now, ChatGPT has been limited to pulling information from its training data that ended in 2021. With plugins, the company says the bot will be able to browse the web and interact with specific sites.

OpenAI has made the feature available to a select group of users and launched 11 plugins for external sites, including:

• Expedia
• OpenTable
• Klarna Shopping
• And more

The company also provides some plug-ins of its own, one for interpreting code and one called “Browsing,” which lets the bot gather info from the web.

The Verge points out that this experimental feature is similar to Microsoft's Bing, which feeds GPT-4 data from the internet. OpenAI's plug-in, however, retrieves more than just real-time data. According to the company, it can also tie into APIs, letting it "retrieve knowledge-base information" like business documents, and personal notes, as well as “perform actions on behalf of the user.

Robots Will Run Retail Operations Sooner Than You Think

While on the topic of AI taking over, retailers are also expecting a robot uprising.

A new study has found that retailers anticipate 70% of routine tasks will be partially or fully automated by 2025. In that timeframe, specialty and department stores are forecast to double the use of robots for duties like cleaning and inventory audits.

In the move to automation, some companies expect to shift associates to more customer-facing responsibilities and support business operations.

According to the study, the use of AI to improve operations is projected to increase 9x by 2025.

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