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This week’s most important Marketing News

​GOOGLE RELEASED A NEW SEARCH ENGINE, TALK TO BOOKS​

This new search engine pulls results only from the content of books. As a book worm, I think it’s very cool for the following reasons:

• The most obvious is that there hasn’t been a search for book content like this ever before. You see search results for pages that sell a book or talk about a book, but the book’s content wasn’t indexed.
• Sentence-based, natural-language queries function better than keyword queries on Talk to Books. The AI behind it was trained more on human conversation, according to Google. So it feels like a jump back to Ask Jeeves to me, and makes me wonder if Google would want to try to recreate that functionality in their main search at some point.
• This is a new way of discovering books!

​META RELEASED ADVANTAGE+ FOR HIGHLY-AUTOMATED SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS​

Meta has been amping up the AI capabilities of their campaign creation process. These features are housed under the title Meta Advantage, and Advantage+ shopping campaigns are the latest addition. Meta says, “It eliminates the manual steps of ad creation and automates up to 150 creative combinations at once.”

Whether or not high automation is best for your business comes down to the resources and time you have to craft intentional ads. In general, I’d say these features still can’t beat a strategic ad based on audience research. But if you have limited resources and are throwing ads together, then why not give the machine a shot. And either way, testing for your brand is the only sure way to know what works.

​INSTAGRAM SHARES HOW THEY SUGGEST NEW CONTENT ​

The article goes decently in-depth on how Suggested Posts end up in a home feed on Instagram. This topic is interesting for us who hope to have our account’s content suggested, and the article gives an overview. But ultimately, I think Instagram is failing at their recommended content (especially to users who feel so known by TikTok). Still, it’s interesting to see their thought process behind the algorithm.

​TIKTOK’S PARENT COMPANY, BYTEDANCE, RELEASED ALGORITHM DETAILS ​

The Cybersecurity Association of China (CAC) acted on disclosure requirements and collected details of algorithms from many internet giants. Some of the details were published (in Chinese though, so a little tricky for many of us to go and read). However, Bloomberg reports, “The algorithm list available for public review is confined to short descriptions of how they work, and the product and use cases where they apply.”

So that might feel a bit anticlimactic. The bigger deal here is that—to some extent—China has enforced transparency around algorithms. In the US, companies like Google have won the argument that their algorithms are trade secrets that can’t be revealed. And to a group like us whose jobs depend on these algorithms, the transparency around them is a hot topic.

​GOOGLE ADS API UPDATES​

Country targeting in Shopping Ad campaigns is getting updated this month and the Feed label will replace the target country in the Content API for Shopping.

​TWITTER TESTING MULTIMEDIA TWEETS​

The test allows different forms of media (video, gif, image) in one tweet.

​SNAPCHAT SHARES PROOF OF A UNIQUE AUDIENCE AND LAUNCHES PARENTAL CONTROLS​

Snapchat released statistics stating that its platform can reach different audiences compared to other social media platforms. The research found that “51% of daily Snapchatters age 16+ do not use TikTok every day, 41% do not use Facebook every day, and 67% do not use Twitter every day.” Snapchat also released Family Center which allows parents to get insight into their teen friends and interactions without revealing their conversations. 

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USEFUL LINKS

​Wonder Tools helps you discover the most useful sites & apps. Get a concise, free weekly email written by a former Time Magazine reporter. A well-known reader recently Tweeted, “One of the most useful weekly newsletters I get.” Sign up for free.

​This article gives you an SEO refresher on crawling: rendering, indexing, and ranking. If it’s been a while, we highly recommend reading it.

​This study compared repurposed TikTok ads to see how well they perform. Repurposed ads can be very effective if you have barriers in place. Check them out to see what they are.

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IS YOUR COMPANY THROWING YOU UP IN THE AIR AND CATCHING YOU?

There’s an age-old dynamic we’ve seen with moms, dads, and their kids. Where the dad tosses the little one up, they scream and giggle, and the mom tries to act cool about it. But her smile is all teeth and gives her away.
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Well, turns out that the way many dads rough house with their kids isn’t just an irresponsible release of energy. There are a bunch of benefits to this kind of “scary play.” In particular, kids are able to get minor bumps and bruises in an environment that’s safe. It gives them a place where they can learn how to handle pain and fear in small doses with coaching on how to get back up and recover. Apparently, it helps kids grow up to take smart risks and know how to set boundaries with friends and peers.

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A work environment should offer this too.

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What do you imagine the reaction would be from your supervisor or team if you told them about a creative idea you haven’t done before. It comes with risks, there’s not a guarantee that it will result in the usual number of monthly leads your typical strategy does. But there’s also a chance that it could be way more successful. What would be their reaction?
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And what about your own ability to propose and embrace risk-taking? Is it as developed as you’d like?

Ways to get yourself more willing to take on risks

Do some research

Read books and articles that prove the benefits of taking risks.

Here are a few books to get you started:

• ​The Art of Risk by Kayt Sukel
• ​Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
• ​Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

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Start with a minuscule circle of effect and move bigger

Start with risks that could only affect you, then try things that would only affect your immediate team, then your department, then company, then the world, the universe, etc.

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Maybe it’s a risk to build out an excel sheet that could run a report faster than you can manually. You’re not sure if it’ll work, so it could be a waste of your time. But really you’re the only one who would suffer or gain much from the risk.

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Ways to get your manager or team more willing to take on risks

Offer to give a team training on risk

Share success stories of marketers and companies who took risks. Are there times your organization has done that and succeeded? Offer up some stats on how risk benefits people and businesses.

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Take risks (that won’t get you fired) and then share the positive results

You could start being more risky incognito. Do some secretive risky business (on a small scale here people, don’t be stupid). And then when some of those taking chances result in cool stuff, tell your manager about it.

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INTERESTING STUFF

📸 Eight photo-centric social sites that are not Instagram – The Verge

💻 How are Google’s changes to ad spacing sustainable? – Credo

🗣 How do I convince an old-fashioned team to embrace modern marketing? – Carney

🤓 Can you explain a complex idea using only ten hundred most used words? – Splasho

🇺🇸 Political ad spending soars for midterms – WSJ

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