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You Can’t Spell “Brain Drain” Without AI
The Silicon Valley giant is betting on machine learning software to automate its business, and it’s bringing the same automation to advertisers.
Executives from Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft used the word “AI” more than 200 times on conference calls with investors last week. bloomberg.
Also last week, Amazon announced an upgrade to its machine learning capabilities. This will be built into the advertising system, said Neal Richter, director of data science engineering at Amazon DSP. Ad Exchanger.
AI products have some responsibility. Some programs auto-generate code or content, but Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+ shopping campaigns allow algorithms to withdraw from your bank account.
and that gone horribly wrong A week ago, advertisers’ hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted due to a glitch in Meta’s campaign automation technology.
Bloomberg writes that AI is “one area where executives are strongly committed to spending big cash” during this downturn.
Another way to frame it is that as AI products improve, companies can automate those roles.
But in the case of Meta, the AI derailed the train and the engineers needed to fix the problem were laid off.
pindu shopping
Pinterest and Amazon have announced a multi-year partnership. This makes Amazon Ads the first third-party advertising technology to serve ads on Pinterest.
on Pinterest blog post Starting with Amazon Ads, it says it’s “cultivating third-party advertising demand,” but plans to add other partners eventually.
The deal makes sense for Pinterest, which has to enter new advertiser categories and add competition in verticals where it has strong roots. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors on Amazon that sell party supplies and don’t advertise on Pinterest. Pinterest also got a PR for its earnings release.
But Amazon Ads is the big winner here too. Until Pinterest adds other third-party demand partners, Amazon has dedicated ad serving windows (not counting Pinterest itself) for addressable and shoppable media.
Also, Pinterest only earns CPMs from ads served by Amazon.
“Naturally,” you say.
Aside from that, it’s a big deal. Pinterest turns customers over to Amazon, who owns their purchase data entirely. Amazon also tweaks Pinterest ads to convert at a higher rate, so the revenue goes to Amazon. If Pinterest charges an affiliate-style commission or CPC, it will increase as Amazon becomes more efficient.
bird cage
Brands aren’t the only ones fleeing Elon Musk’s Twitter feed. Publishers are also cutting ad spend and content on their platforms following Musk’s “free speech absolutist” approach to content moderation and an overhaul of user authentication. Digiday report.
“Nobody wants to put the budget or energy into maximizing a platform that feels toxic and unstable,” says Melissa Chowning of audience development firm Twenty-First Digital.
A recent MediaRadar study found that 17 major U.S. publishers, including Axios, CNN and HuffPost, spent January-February 2023 on Twitter advertising, compared to $1.7 million for the same period last year. and only $279,000. The Atlantic, The Guardian and The Gist have also confirmed to Digiday that they are no longer paying to post on their platforms.
In addition to Musk’s policy changes, Twitter isn’t a great source of traffic for most publishers these days. According to Chartbeat, referral traffic from Twitter to media sites will drop by 20% in 2022. Also, his 2023 referral traffic for some publishers has almost halved year-on-year.
But some publishers are more aggressive. According to news organization 1440, he has been spending six figures per month on his Twitter ads since December, which generated his 10% of the audience that grew during that period.
But wait.
Two years after Apple’s ATT, ad tech is still growing despite the slowdown. [Digiday]
I was able to fool my bank and my family with AI-generated clones and videos of my voice. [WSJ]
Brands consistently send cheap goods to social influencers. But they have low sustainability and ROI ratings. [Ad Age]
Snap became the first public company to see its ad revenue decline while other companies regained growth. [NYT]
