Good Afternoon, and welcome to the Intelligency digital roundup.

Learn about the targeted ads blunder from the UK Home Office, how X has paywalled what used to be Tweetdeck and OpenAI’s new acquisition.

Let’s get into it.

Home Office spends £35k on ineffective ads

This week, it was discovered that the UK Home Office (HO) has spent at least £35,000 on targeted ads. The intent behind the ads was to try and prevent asylum seekers from using small boats to cross the channel. However, the ads ended up targeting tourists and people who travel for business.

The campaigns, which were published on Facebook and Instagram, told users “don’t risk your life” and to “seek asylum in the first safe country you reach”. This message was repeated in several languages, but the UK government don’t know if it had any effect.

The Independent saw research which showed that the Home Office paid Meta for hundreds of posts. Users in Northern France and Belgium received these posts and ads between Jan 2021 and September 2022.

The HO targeted users who spoke languages such as Arabic and Kurdish and who were “interested” in Arabic Football, and cricket among other subjects. Interest in cities in Syria, Iranian cinema, Vietnamese radio, and “Iraqi “cuisine” also got targeted.

The effectiveness of the ads

Data what The Independent saw showed that users away from home, and users located in Brussels, Calais, and Dunkirk saw a lot of the adverts.

Ben Collier, a University of Edinburgh lecturer said that the HO built its audience as “patchwork”, which resulted in the wrong users being targeted.

“There’s people from Jordan, Mexico – clearly holidaymakers who are getting hit with these ads,” “As far as I can tell, the Home Office are just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, except they don’t have anything to tell them.”

-Dr Ben Collier

Some adverts reached less than 1,000 users, and some reached over 1,000.000. One adverted targeted Arabic speakers visiting Brussels. Another advert targeted Vietnamese speakers travelling away from family in Calais. Clearly, this isn’t the audience the HO expected.

Using the lowest spend on Meta paid social campaigns, it’s estimated that at least £35,000 was spent on these ads.

Ad intent

Dr Collier stated that the campaign aimed to influence behaviour, which had become “fear-based” over the years.

The copy of the ads told users “Even if you survive an illegal boat trip, UK laws will not allow you to work or earn money.”. Researchers found that the ads were being shown to users in Mexico, Oman, Jordan, and Bangladesh.

The ads got removed in the back of 2022, because they didn’t contain the political messaging disclaimer (just a box to tick when uploading ads).

The Scottish Institute for Policing Research stated:

“There is clear evidence that [the campaign] has been seen by Arabic, Pashto, Vietnamese, and Albanian speakers in a number of locations who are extremely unlikely to be seeking asylum” “This means that, for example, in Brussels, there are Arabic-speaking residents who will be targeted by this advert, when their French-speaking neighbours will not see it.”

Let this be a lesson to anyone running paid social campaigns! No matter how much money you put into your ads and budget, building the right audience is key! If you have the wrong audience, the best copy and creative in the world won’t deliver the results you want.

X/Twitter paywalls XPro/TweetDeck

In a surprising move, X paywalled XPro for brand and personal accounts. If you want to access the tool, you need to be a Blue subscriber.

In the past, this tool has always been free, so this may drive away advertisers from the platform more than they already have been. Unfortunately for users, this will impact content discoverability.

What the experts say

This is what Jules F. Bacchini, an expert on PPC had to say:

“For Twitter based communities, like PPC Chat, it is a serious blow to community interactivity. PPC Chat has historically been a Twitter based community with lots of activity centered on our community hashtag.”

“Unfortunately, due to changes in the past six months and culminating with making XPro a paid only feature, we have had to move our weekly chats off of Twitter and onto our other channels.”

“It also potentially really hampers discoverability of content and like minded follows as it is a lot more difficult to follow lists without a tool like XPro. I get that X is trying to increase its revenue, but putting a historically free tool that really enhanced the Twitter user experience behind a paid subscription is disappointing.”

Anu Abegbola, also a PPC expert, told Search Engine Land that the change is disappointing. They also argued that this could be the final nail in the coffin for X:

“TweetDeck was a platform X offered for free – and it didn’t make many updates to it whilst it was free. Yet now they are going to make it a paid service? That is not on!”

“It was a nice way to organise follows and see multiple groups of follows at once without actually having to follow people – for example, you could just view by lists. This change is going to mean a lot less time on X and people seeing important tweets a lot less.”

“X has really become a mess lately and this is the final nail in the coffin for me. TweetDeck was essential for me to drown out troll noise and only pay attention to people who I thought were worth paying attention to. This now goes away.”

XPro Updates

Now that XPro is paywalled, it supports new features to incentivise users to subscribe to Blue. These features include:

• Full composer functionality
• Spaces
• Video docking
• Polls
• And more

X’s Help Center has more info, but they are yet to comment on the change.

OpenAI publically acquires a new company

Our final story for this week concerns OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. It has just acquired Global Illumination, a New York startup that uses AI to create creative tools and digital experiences.

This is the first company that OpenAI has publicly acquired in the last seven years. However, the terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed.

OpenAI wrote “We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI,” “The entire team has joined OpenAI to work on our core products including ChatGPT.”

About Global Illumination

Global Illumination was founded in 2021 by Thomas Dimson, Taylor Gordon, and Joey Flynn. It has been involved in projects with Meta, YouTube, Pixar, and Riot Games.

The most recent creation from them is Biomes, which is an open source game that’s similar to Minecraft. While Biomes’ fate is unclear, it’s safe to assume the team won’t be focusing on entertainment projects as much going forward.

OpenAI has avoided acquisitions up until now, but now it has been backed with billions in Venture Capital by Microsoft. ChatGPT has earned the company global fame, it reportedly cost $450 million to develop. This also included talent acquisition costs.

The company earned $30 million last year, but this year it aims to boost that to $200 million, and then $1 billion next year.

We’ll have to wait and see what work Global Illumination creates under the leadership of ChatGPT.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup.

Good Afternoon, and welcome to the Intelligency Digital Roundup. Letting you know the latest trends and insights in Digital Marketing.

In this week’s news: Learn about OpenAI’s new web crawler, GPTBot. Also, see what’s changed with TikTok’s ad campaigns, and the best way to prune content on your website.

Let’s get right into it.

All About GPTBot from OpenAI

This week, OpenAI launched GPTBot, which is a new web crawler designed to improve future AI models like GPT-4 and GPT-5.

How it works

GPTBot is designed to enhance future AI technology and accuracy capabilities by scanning the web for the following user agent token and string:

User agent token: GPTBot
Full user-agent string: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.0; +https://openai.com/gptbot)

OpenAI has stated that the bot will automatically filter out paywall-restricted sources, any sources with personal information, and any sources which violate OpenAI policies. However, this technology provides businesses with the opportunity to improve the AI ecosystem and future language models by giving it access to your site.

It’s important to note that you’re able to restrict access to your site if you don’t want to give GPTBot access.

Site owners can restrict access by placing the following in the site’s robots.txt file:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

On the other hand, if you want to allow it some access, you can insert this into the robots.txt file:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /directory-1/
Disallow: /directory-2/

You’ll be able to see if GPTBot has crawled your website as OpenAI provided IP address ranges on its site. This is to help provide transparency.

Legality and Ethics

This latest tech launch has sparked discussions on a forum called Hacker News. The discussions involve the legality and ethics of a company scraping web data in order to train AI systems.

Some users argue that because you can disallow it using robots.txt, there aren’t any ethical concerns. Other users argue that there’s no benefit to allowing it access to your site. This is because, unlike Googlebot, it’s not driving traffic to your site.

Another concern is how it will handle copyrighted and licensed products because ChatGPT doesn’t cite sources when giving an answer to a prompt. Additionally, if licensed media such as images or music is used to train AI, it could be copyright infringement.

Other users argue that anything on the public web is fair game, comparing it to a person learning from online content.

Overall, GPTBot has opened up many a discussion on fair use and ownership when it comes to AI. Robots.txt is a good first step.

TikTok Ad Changes

In other news, TikTok has made some major changes to its ads this week in order to meet EU regulations. Targeted advertising capabilities will be reduced, and any ads which violate content guidelines will be removed.

Also, users will see expanded reporting options, and if a creator faces a content moderation decision, they’ll be notified.

Here’s the full list of changes:

TikTok’s ad and platform changes

The full list of changes on TikTok includes:

• Expanded reporting- When reporting content, EU users can now report them as illegal. You’ll be able to report something as hate speech, a form of harassment, or a financial crime/scam/pyramid scheme.
• Global bans- If a piece of content is found to be violating TikTok’s content policies, it will be removed globally from the platform.
• Targeted ads- Brands can no longer create targeted ads for EU users aged 13 to 17. Those users will no longer see personalised ads based on their activities on and off-site.
• Personalisation– EU users can now turn off personalisation, this will mean that their “for you” and “live” feeds will show popular global content, rather than content popular near their location.
• More transparency– TikTok has promised to be more transparent when it comes to decisions regarding content moderation.

Here’s what TikTok has said regarding the changes:

“The European Union has set a clear vision for platform regulation with the Digital Services Act (DSA). Following our updates in July about our Research API and Commercial Content Library, we are providing more information about the work that we are doing to meet our obligations under the Act by the August 28 deadline.” “Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. We know that ensuring the safety, privacy, and security of our European community is critical to achieving that goal.”

These changes are somewhat similar to the potential ones which Meta is making for Facebook, will more companies follow suit? Only time will tell.

Google’s advice on content pruning

This week, Google gave some good advice on content pruning, following an exposé from Gizmodo regarding CNET deleting thousands of articles. Allegedly, the site did this in order to “game Google Search”

CNET did confirm the culling of content, and while Gizmodo said it was in the thousands, CNET did not comment don’t the exact number. The company “redirected, repurposed, or removed” content by analysing the following metrics:

• Pageviews
• Backlink profiles
• Time past since the content was updated

Content deprecation, or removal, tells Google that “CNET is fresh, relevant, and worthy of high page rankings” according to a CNET internal memo.

CNET is incorrect about this. Deleting content doesn’t tell Google the above. If you want to show that your site is fresh, relevant, and worthy of high page rankings, then publish helpful and high-quality content. Not delete existing content.

Showing even more of a lack of SEO awareness, Taylor Canada, CNET’s director of marketing stated “Unfortunately, we are penalized by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site.” This isn’t how SEO works, Google will never punish a site for having old articles live on a site.

Google’s guidance doesn’t state this, if anything, old content can still be helpful to users. Google SearchLiasion’s X account had this to say about deleting old content:

Danny Sullivan, owner of the Search Liasion account, had this to say when asked about old content which has broken links or isn’t relevant anymore:

“The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go ‘oh, now the whole site is so much better’ because of what happens with an individual page.”

What Google said about content pruning

Google once said in 2011 that low-quality content removal could help rankings:

“In addition, it’s important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole. For this reason, if you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.”

However, Danny Sullivan argues that Google never outright said to delete content just because it’s old.

Google’s current advice from experts such as John Mulaney is to repurpose content by improving it, rather than removing it, where possible. Intelligency will always argue that this is much better for SEO too. This is because improving and repurposing old content rather than deleting it improves the overall quality of the content of your site.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup!

Good Afternoon and welcome to the first August roundup for 2023.

In this week’s digital marketing news, Meta has tried to quash disputes with the EU over data collection with a proposed new method. Also, YouTube tested generative AI summaries for videos, and X changed its ad labelling method.

Let’s learn more about each story.

Meta potentially changing targeted advertising data collection method for EU users

Meta has offered to get consent from European users before the company collects any data for targeted advertising this week.

The proposal is a result of a year-long argument with the EU because of the EU arguing the legality of the company’s data collection methods.

What does this change mean for marketers?

Unfortunately, for digital marketers, this could have a significant impact on the quality and effectiveness of targeted ads. This is because there’s a possibility that a large number of EU users refuse to give permission for data collection. If a large number of users refused, Meta would receive fewer signals for identifying behaviours and interests.

If Meta cannot access this data, it would mean that marketers carrying out paid social campaigns wouldn’t be able to build audiences as effectively as they used to. This in turn would make targeted advertising weaker.

Targeted advertising being weaker could result in the value of Meta’s ad space because of company’s spending less on targeted ad campaigns.

When could this change happen?

Meta stated that the change will take approximately three months to implement, so it could be implemented by late October. Although, Meta has also said that it could wait until early next year to coincide with EU regulation changes.

Once a date is confirmed, Intelligency will be the first to let you know.

Meta’s privacy policy contains substantial information about how user data is collected, the video below is a summary.

YouTube testing AI-generated summaries

This week, YouTube has been quietly testing new AI implementation on desktop. The feature summarises a video using AI, which appears when searching for videos, and when watching videos.

While this sounds like it aims to replace bespoke video descriptions, YouTube has said this isn’t the case. YouTube designed this feature to compliment videos and to help generate engagement.

AI generation

As of now, AI-generated summaries only apply videos in English, and can appear while searching for videos, or watching one. While YouTube believes that summaries could help generate engagement, this may not be the case.

If the summary is weak, people may not click on the video, even if they’d enjoy the content. No doubt this is a concern from creators on the platform.

At the moment, the test isn’t public, so we are unable to see what it looks like.

Google are getting more and more into AI, from implementing it into Google Docs, to Google Ads and Search.

Once the test is visible, we’ll be writing more about it, so stay tuned!

X making ad labels less visible

Now that Twitter is formally transitioning into X, once big change has made ad labels less noticeable. Instead of the “promoted” label that used to be in the bottom left corner of Twitter Ads, X Ads now have an “ad label” in the top right hand corner.

What does the label change mean?

Interestingly, this new labelling is similar to how Google and Microsoft “hide” PPC ads in SERPS (search engine results pages). While it’s entirely possible this change could lead to more accidental clicks on ads on the platform, that doesn’t necessarily translate to more conversions.

How have X users reacted?

Like many changes that are implemented to social media, users aren’t too pleased. Many have stated that the ads now look like organic posts, defeating the purpose of ads.

Here’s some X quotes about the change:

• “They made it easier for me to scroll past ads. I used to have to get to the bottom of the tweet to see it was an ad. Now it’s at the top.”
• “Instant block for all ads.”
• “Now it’s closer to the block button.”
• “As a direct response, I’ve stopped just scrolling past ads and now I’m blocking every single ad I see.”

X hasn’t commented on the change as of yet, this could just be a test instead of a permanent feature. It’s likely that the company is trying to get advertisers back on the platform, after they saw a huge drop in ad revenue. We” just have to wait and see for how this works out.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s roundup!

Good Afternoon and welcome to the Intelligency Digital Roundup. Providing you with the latest digital trends, news, and insights.

This week, Twitter rebranded, Threads received an update based on user feedback, and OpenAI abandoned its AI-written detector.

Let’s get into the stories.

Twitter rebrands under ‘X’

The biggest news from this week comes from Twitter. On Monday, the iconic blue bird icon, which is unanimous with Twitter, was removed. Instead, a white X on a black background has taken its place, signifying the change to Brand X.

Not only does it show that Elon Musk is done with the Twitter brand, but it also shows that he wants to change it to be more like an “everything app”. The best example of an everything app is an app such as WeChat.

What Twitter/X has said

Linda Yaccarino had this to say about the change from Twitter to X

“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square,” “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”

Upon branding the Twitter website to X, Musk also tweeted this (notice the X in the top right corner)

Clearly, the senior staff are excited about the change.

What the change means for users and marketers

For users of X, there’s no doubt that the vocabulary of the brand will change. People will go from “tweeting” to “X-ing” as they get used to the change. TweetDeck will become XDeck for instance, and you’ll be able to see recently X’ed users.

The biggest changes will undoubtedly be felt by advertisers and digital marketers though. Primarily the change in content regulation, after all, Twitter/X recently had issues with hate content. Twitter/X has also been going through ad revenue troubles.

SEOs reactions

SEOs speculated that the brand change may break embedded tweets among other issues. Here are some SEO reactions in an embedded tweet format (or image if you’re an email reader)

Threads receives new feeds with an update

Meta also updated its latest social media app, Threads, this week. Following user feedback, Meta has added some highly-requested features.

In a nutshell, Threads now has:

• Separate feeds
• A translate feature
• More organised notifications

Let’s learn some more about each

Follower and For You feeds

Users familiar with Twitter/X will welcome this highly requested. Before the update, the only feed users had was a main one with threads from accounts they do and don’t follow.

Now there are two feeds to choose from, a Follower feed, which you can filter to see by chronological order. There’s also the main For You feed, which is similar to Twitter/X’s For You feed.

Organised notifications

Notifications for Threads are also able to be organised now. You can choose to receive exclusive notifications from accounts you follow, or you can choose to receive notifications from accounts you don’t follow.

Translation

If you see a thread in a language different to yours, you can translate it into your preferred language in the bottom right corner of the post.

All of these changes have been designed to improve the user experience on the app. It underlines the importance of aligning user needs with app functionalities.

OpenAI shut down written-by-AI detector

Our final story this week is from OpenAI. The ChatGPT creators shut down AI Classifier, a tool which claimed that it could detect if an AI had written a piece of text. Unfortunately for anyone relying on the tool, OpenAI shut it down due to a “low rate of accuracy”

You’d think that an AI would be able to tell if a piece of writing was written by another AI or not, but it seems like this isn’t the case. Some pieces of writing have an obvious tell, but it’s an unreliable method of catching AI because language models are getting so advanced.

Techcrunch tested a variety of AI-detection tools and none of them performed well. Seven generated pieces of text were provided, and OpenAI’s classifier only detected one.

OpenAI stated this about the discontinuation of AI Classifier:

“We are working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text”

Is this proof that AI models are getting too advanced? Or does it just show that companies should be putting more effort into AI detection Who’s to say?

As always, thanks for reading!

Good afternoon, happy Friday, and welcome to another instalment of the Digital Roundup!

This week, Twitter faced more issues with ad revenue, adding to its growing list of problems. Meta also improved videos on Facebook for users and creators, and learn about TikTok Music.

Let’s get into the stories!

Twitter Loses Almost Half Its Ad Revenue.

This week, Elon Musk revealed that Twitter has lost almost half of its ad revenue since he bought it in October 2022. In the statement, Musk stated that while the company didn’t see the forecasted revenue it expected in June, July has been “more promising”

When the Tesla CEO took over in 2022, he fired over 7,000 employees in order to cut costs. As well as the ad revenue trouble, Threads, the rival platform to Twitter, now has 150 million users. The potential for Threads users is huge due to the fact it’s connected to Instagram.

If every user who was on Instagram created a Threads account, there would be close to two billion users.

Musk also stated the cash flow for Twitter is currently negative as well, adding to the list of troubles. Here’s the tweet he put out:

What people have said

An investment director called Lucy Coutts told the BBC that she thought Musk could turn Twitter around, but it’s going to take longer.

“But unfortunately he has got $13bn of debt to pay by the end of July so we may see more pressure on the shares in Tesla if he has to sell more of his stake in that company.”

Musk expected Twitter to be on track for £2.29bn in 2023, which is down from Twitter’s $5.1bn in 2021. Despite cutting costs with employees and cloud services, it’s still not enough. A significant amount of advertisers left Twitter after content moderation rules were changed.

Interestingly, Meghana Dhar, who’s the former head of partnerships for Snaps and Meta told the BBC

“Elon and Twitter are in a candidly tough position right now,” “To be fair to Elon though, we’ve seen that decline in Twitter revenue and growth in revenue since pre-Elon – there’s been kind of a steady decline.”

Is Twitter still a sustainable platform, or is it the end of days for the renowned platform? Whatever the outcome, you’ll find it in a roundup!

Enhanced video features for Facebook

Meta enhanced the video features on Facebook this week in order to make it easier to edit, view, and engage with videos.

The update transfers some features of Reels into the main Facebook feed. Dynamic video capabilities have been enabled to simplify video creation and sharing.

Facebook released details of the update in an announcement:

To sum it up, the new features include:

• Upgraded video editing tools
• A new, dedicated video tab
• Trending video discovery
• Reels integration

But let’s learn more about each feature.

Upgraded video editing tools

The first new feature is an enhanced video editing suite for Reels. Users can use a combo of audio, music, and text to make an engaging video. This is similar to how TikTok allow you to do that in their editor.

Users are also able to slow down or speed up clips, reverse them, or swap them out. Additionally, on the audio front, you can mix songs, record a voiceover, and kill background noise.

If HD isn’t to your liking, you can also swap out the format to HDR if you want to provide a clearer picture.

Video tab

What was previously known as Facebook Watch has been rebranded to the video tab. This tab places Reels, live streams, and long-form videos in one place. The goal is to help users find and interact with content that’s to their liking.

Meta explained the tab:

“The Video tab will look familiar – you can scroll vertically through a personalized feed that recommends all types of video content – but will also feature new horizontal-scroll reels sections that highlight recommended reels, so you can quickly jump into short-form video.”

Trending video discovery

To further help users find interesting content, the Explore feature for videos has been updated too.

The explore section now uses hand-picked recommendations as well as algorithms to recommend relevant and popular videos.

Reel Integration

The main new feature is the integration of Instagram Reels onto Facebook.

This feature allows a user to watch and engage with an Instagram Reel on Facebook, without the need of switching between apps.

Meta’s goal with this feature is to help Instagram creators reach even more users, by putting their Reels on Facebook.

The company is currently undertaking efforts to bring both services close together for Creators:

“We’ll continue developing more tools for creators so they can express themselves, build an audience and earn money, along with the discovery and personalization features that give you more control over your experience.”

TikTok launch TikTok Music in Austalia, Mexico, and Singapore

Social media giant TikTok is taking on the music scene this week by launching a subscription-only music service called TikTok Music. It has been launched in Australia, Mexico, Singapore, Brazil, and Indonesia so far.

Users who subscribe are able to link up their existing TikTok accounts (if they have one) and listen to, download, and share music. Big record labels such as Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music have added catalogues to the service so far.

Who can access TikTok Music?

The full service hasn’t launched yet, it’s still in an invite-only closed beta phase, users who are invited will need to download TikTok music from the App or Android store. If you receive an invite, then you’ll also get a free three-month trial.

A subscription will probably cost £6.99 for UK users when it’s eventually rolled out here as prices in the other countries range from $6.86 to $7.48.

TikTok hasn’t released any details of when the service will come to the UK or US just yet, but the company has promised to share more details soon. The emails sent to users from TikTok stated

“TikTok Music is a new kind of music service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a music streaming service offering millions of tracks from thousands of artists,” “We are now beta testing TikTok Music in Australia, Mexico and Singapore, and will have more news to share on the launch of TikTok Music in the coming months.”

TikTok is already used as a search engine by the younger generations, and users also use it to discover new music. It can even help songs rise in popularity if it’s featured as popular audio. By entering the music space, TikTok is competing with Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

TikTok Music features

Subscribers will be able to access full versions of viral TikTok songs, receive music recommendations tailored to them, see lyrics, create playlists, import music libraries, and search for new songs. One of the biggest features is similar to Shazam and will allow users to discover a song they’re hearing in real-time.

Users can connect with other music lovers, and also comment on songs too, similar to Soundcloud.

When TikTok Music launches in the UK, we’ll let you know!

Thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup!

Good Afternoon, welcome back to the Digital Roundup, offering the lowdown on the latest Digital Marketing news and insights.

This week, Elon Musk announced a company to discover the secrets of the universe- while also blocking any links to Threads on Twitter. Google also launched an AI-powered note-taking assistant.

Let’s get into it!

xAI: The key to unlocking the secrets of the universe

Elon Musk announced via Twitter this week that he’s forming xAI, a new AI company.

xAI‘s mission statement is to “understand the true nature of the universe”. Musk also mentioned a “truthGPT” in a tweet, perhaps xAI will release a ‘truthful’ chatGPT alternative.

So what is xAI?

Well, xAI’s website states that it’s an independent company from X Corp, however, he plans for xAI to work with other companies Musk is involved with. These companies include Teska and X (Twitter).

xAI’s team is well-staffed with AI experts from big companies such as Deep Mind, OpenAI, Microsoft Research, and Google Research. The experts he’s hired have all helped to discover optimisation methods and breakthrough AI systems such as GPT-4.

What’s trending on Twitter about xAI?

The staff at xAI, as well as Musk’s fans on Twitter all shared excitement about the possibilities coming from xAI.

xAI’s cofounder, Greg Yang, encouraged theorists and mathematicians to reach out to him via DMs.

Yang had previously worked at Microsoft Research for more than five years, but left in May for the “next adventure”.

One of xAI’s first tweets asked an interesting question:

“What are the most fundamental unanswered questions?”

Over 12,000 users replied to the tweet, including Musk:

Musk’s future with AI

Intelligency will definitely be keeping an eye on xAI to see if they develop a product more powerful and relevant than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

More information about xAI will be shared today in a Twitter Spaces conversation, where users will also be able to meet the team.

For now, we’ll just have to wait and see.

NotebookLM- the AI note-taking assistant from Google

This week, Google revealed NotebookLM, an ai-driven notebook, which was previously discussed at Google’s I/O event this year as Project Tailwind.

NotebookLM is Google Labs’ approach to note-taking software, and it’s powered by a robust language model. It’s Google’s solution to students and academic workers being overloaded with ideas and facts from a vast amount of sources online.

Forming connections between these facts and ideas can be time-consuming, so Google wanted a tool which can assist users in making the connections quicker using their preferred sources.

An AI-driven assistant

NotebookLM combines the potential of various language models and user content in order to deliver quick and important insights to users.

Think of NotebookLM as a virtual research assistant, it can summarise facts, explain a complex idea, and also help you form new connections from the information in your sources.

Here’s a screenshot of what the interface will look like:

NotebookLM will function differently from other chatbots such as ChatGPT or Bard. This is because users can “ground” the AI in the notes or sources it uses.

As of now, you can incorporate NotebookLM into a Google doc of your choice.

The features of NotebookLM

The features of NotebookLM include:

• Summary Generation– Once a Google doc has been added, it can generate an overview, key topics, and questions.
• Questions- Users can ask specific questions about uploaded materials.
• Idea generation- More than just Q&A, it can help users generate creative ideas.
• Hallucination free- Each Ai response is accompanied by source citations so you can fact-check.

If you want to sign up for NotebookLM, there’s a waitlist you can add yourself to.

Twitter blocks Threads links

Twitter is blocking links to its new rival from Meta, Threads. The reports started to surface on Monday that Twitter was intentionally blocking links to Meta’s latest social networking app. Although some users stated that select links work, the majority do not.

Unfortunately, this means that it will be harder for users to track down tweets and conversations about Threads.

Why Twitter has done this

Threads launched on the 5th of July, and has now broken records, becoming the fastest-growing social media app in history. It also regularly trends on its rival, Twitter.

Social media marketers and experts believe that Twitter is blocking Threads links in order to try and keep users on the platform, rather than letting them move to its rival.

People’s reactions

Andy Baio, an American technologist, was one of the first to notice the block. He used a search query using the “url:threads.net”, which didn’t serve any results.

Here’s the Threads post which Baio made:

When press outlets have asked Twitter for a response about why they’re doing it, they got this response back:

Musk has addressed the tense rivalry between him and Mark Zuckerberg with a simple tweet “Zuck is a cuck”, and proceeded to state in another tweet that he and Zuckerberg should have “a literal d*ck measuring contest”.

There’s a comparison between Threads and Twitter’s traffic levels if you want to see how they’re comparing.

Good Afternoon, and welcome to the first digital roundup for July.

In this week’s roundup, I cover the launch of Threads, Meta’s ‘Twitter killer’. I also cover the official replacement of Universal Analytics, and why ChatGPT’s creator is being sued.

Let’s get right into it!

Threads, a new Twitter alternative launches

Yesterday, Meta launched its new social media app ‘Threads’. Meta launched the app a day early and saw over 55 million users sign up.

But what is Threads?

Threads is a new alternative to Twitter which you link to your Instagram account. The home feed is similar to Twitter, except you see ‘threads’ from everyone on the platform, not just the people you follow. Another key difference from Twitter is that Threads lacks a trending section.

How to get Threads

Before you download Threads, make sure you’re logged into your Instagram account on the same device you’re downloading it to.

Next, download Threads from the App Store or Play Store.

Once it’s downloaded, you’ll be prompted to sign into your Instagram account.

You’ll just need to click the login button. Then it will ask you if you want to change your name, username, or profile picture. It will also ask you if you want to follow everyone you follow on your Instagram.

After that, voila! You’re all set and will be directed to your home feed.

You can create new threads, search for accounts, see your notifications, or view your account using the footer menu.

Your Instagram profile also gets a cool badge showing your user number:

Twitter’s reaction

Twitter did not respond kindly to the launch of Threads. The company has threatened to sue Meta for “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets and IP. You can see the Tweet below:

Stick with us to see what happens with regard to Thread and Twitter’s lawsuit threat.

Universal Analytics replaced by GA4

This week also marked the official replacement of Universal Analytics (UA) with Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

If you logged into UA this week, no doubt you saw this message:

“This property is scheduled to stop processing data very soon. Once this goes into effect, you’ll need a Google Analytics 4 property to measure website performance.”

This message was just to remind marketers that they need to move to GA4 in order to maintain their website analytics. This is a historical moment for marketers, as UA was used worldwide for 11 years before Google’s forced transition.

Unless you want an analytics alternative that’s not Google-based, advertisers and markets have no choice but to use GA4 for campaign and website performance tracking.

How it works

Google rolled the shutdown out in stages as to not cut everyone off from UA all at once. By the time this roundup is published, UA will have stopped recording any new data for everyone.

However, for historic purposes, you can still access data from up to when data stopped recording.

You can see what Google said about it below:

Timeline

I first wrote about the sunsetting of UA back in February 2023, this is when Google warned everyone of the forced switch to GA4.

Then, in March 2023, Google automatically created GA4 properties for businesses if they didn’t have one already unless they chose to opt-out. Now, everyone has moved to GA4.

But Google has warned that by July 2024, no one will have access to the UA interface or API. So make sure all your historic data is exported by then!

ChatGPT’s creator facing multiple lawsuits

OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, is currently facing multiple lawsuits. One lawsuit claims that GPT was trained with books that OpenAI didn’t have the copyright for.

The lawsuit was filed in the federal court of San Francisco, alleging that OpenAI copied various texts from books that were unlawfully obtained. Consent from the copyright holders wasn’t obtained and they also were not credited.

The other lawsuit claims that the machine learning models of GPT and Dall-E breach various privacy laws by illegally collecting data.

Depending on the outcome, AI precedents in terms of copyright and privacy could be changed for companies going forward. But let’s learn some more about each lawsuit.

Lawsuit #1: Copyright infringement

This lawsuit was filed by two authors alleging that GPT copied and used their books without their permission. It has been named Tremblay v. OpenAI inc, and claims that GPT can do precise summaries of the authors’ sci-fi and horror books.

What this suggests is that the Chatbot has been trained on the books, when it’s supposed to only be able to access public internet information up to September 2021.

Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc points towards an OpenAI 2020 paper. 15% of the data used to train GPT came from “two-internet-based books corpora”

However, the authors believe that one dataset contained 290,000 books from shadow libraries. Shadow libraries are huge online databases filled with pirated books that anyone can just download. Supposedly, the copyright notices on books downloaded from these sites were removed by OpenAI.

Lawsuit #2: Privacy violations

The second lawsuit was a bit more lengthy. The plaintiffs alleged that DALL-E and ChatGPT illegally obtain user information which is then used to train the AIs.

PM vs OpenAI LP alleges that data is obtained using the AI systems without a user’s consent, which is breaching numerous data laws. Additionally, its systems are integrated into Snapchat, Spotify, Stripe, Slack, and Teams.

OpenAI has been accused of gathering images, locations, music tastes, financial details, and DM’s from users on the various platforms it’s integrated into. If this is true, then it’s not only breaching the privacy laws in place for the platforms but also serious regulations such as GDPR.

OpenAI has not responded with a comment about either lawsuit.

What are the potential consequences?

If OpenAI is found to be guilty of both charges, then the ramifications could include:

• A damaged reputation to stakeholders such as users, partners, and investors.
• Stricter rules and compliance requirements
• Changes to how data is gathered and used
• No future use of OpenAI services

We’ll have to see what happens with the lawsuits to see what the fallout will be!

But as always, thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup! Stay safe, and see you next week!

Good Afternoon, and welcome back to the weekly digital roundup.

After a brief break, we’re back reporting on the latest digital marketing news and trends. This week, YouTube ads were found to be violating the terms of service. Also, there was a huge leak of user credentials for Chat GPT, and new shopping features were added to Bing and Edge.

Let’s learn more about each.

YouTube Ads violating the terms of service

The famous American newspaper The Wall Street Journal investigated YouTube’s ads this week. It was found that around 80% of the ads that YouTube serve violated its own terms of service. This would make the ads subject to refunds.

Unfortunately for Google, this could end up costing them billions, which is adding to the already existing list of troubles the platform is facing. Troubles include TikTok and AI rivalling searches and two antitrust lawsuits.

However, Google refutes the claims made in WSJ’s report, stating that the “methods are inaccurate”

Ad policy scrutiny

If you’re an advertiser, you pay YouTube to display video ads either before, during, or after a video by a creator. However, Adlytics found that about half of the ads don’t show on the platform.

When you bid for an ad, YouTube also states they’ll show the ads on the “Google Video Partners” program. Google say that these websites (which are third-party) provide the same ad experience as YouTube. This translates to audio-enabled, visible ads which can be skipped.

But when Adlytics investigated, it found that ads on Google partner sites were muted 80% of the time and were hidden off-screen, and unable to be skipped. So advertisers are paying YouTube for ads to display, and YouTube isn’t delivering on the exposure it promises.

The financial consequences of this could be astounding if YouTube is found to be violating the terms of service. Advertisers pay approximately $100 for every 1,000 views an ad gets on a third-party site for high-quality ad placements.

Adlytics found that instead of high-quality placements, lower-quality placements were being used instead, which sell for $5 for every 1,000 views. So to summarise, advertisers are paying top dollar for high-quality placements, but are only receiving sub-optimal placements on non-YouTube properties.

Ads on low-quality sites

The investigation from Adlytics studied over 1,100 brand marketing campaigns between 2020 and 2023.

The brands with inappropriate placements included Disney+, American Express, and Samsung among others. Even US government organisations such as Medicare were impacted.

In addition to being placed offscreen, they were on sites full of misinformation or spreading pirated content. Again, this goes against Google’s pledge of only placing ads on high-quality sites. Advertisers are obviously quite upset about this and are attempting to get their money back.

Unfortunately for Google, this could seriously harm its reputation with key advertisers on the platform, as well as damage its credibility.

The global chief media officer at UM Worldwide, Joshua Lowcock, had this to say

“This is an unacceptable breach of trust by YouTube. Google must fix this and fully refund clients for any fraud and impressions that failed to meet Google’s own policies.”

But how did Google respond?

Google’s response

Google refuted Adlytics’ claim with its own statement.

In the statement, Google stated the report used “unreliable sampling, and proxy methodologies” and also that the claims about GVP (Google Video Partners) were “extremely inaccurate”.

Google wishes to clarify that a majority of YouTube ads are found on YouTube, and not GVP.

GVP is smaller than YouTube and is a separate network, and can be used to increase reach by over 20%.

Advertisers have total transparency and control over GVP campaigns according to Google. Advertisers can also opt out of GVP campaigns at any time, or exclude specific websites and also get real-time reporting.

GVP was defended by Google, stating that the quality and viewability were well above the industry average.

We’ll have to see how Adlytics’ report affects Google’s advertiser relationship and credibility going forward. If there are any developments, you can trust the roundup to deliver them!

Huge Chat-GPT credential leak

In a first for the popular generative AI tool, more than 100,000 usernames and passwords have leaked for OpenAI ChatGPT accounts. The credentials have been found on malicious dark-web marketplaces and span from June 2022 to May 2023.

Group-IB found that the credentials could be found in logs of stolen information sold on underground cybercrime platforms.

A worldwide effect

The credential leak has affected users across the world, India saw the most credentials leaked, with 12,632 being traced back to the country.

This shows that India has rapidly adopted the usage of ChatGPT, many customer service companies or tech companies use it to improve productivity and customer service.

Various other countries come close to the number of Indian account leaks. The countries include Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt, Vietnam, The U.S., France, Morroco, and Indonesia.

Again, this shows that ChatGPT is popular in many different cultures.

Who steals information?

Information stealing is a growing crime role in the world of cybercrime. This is because an information stealer isn’t restricted to email addresses, they could gain access to cookies, passwords, or even credit cards.

Unfortunately, if you don’t practice good data security such as two-factor information or unique passwords, then your accounts will always be at risk.

If an information log is stolen, there’s a high chance it will be traded on what’s essentially an internet black market, located on the dark web.

Due to different factors such as VPNS or proxies, law enforcement agencies struggle to track down cybercriminals who are good at what they do.

Risks and secure practices

Group-IB’s Dmitry Shestakov noted, “Many enterprises are integrating ChatGPT into their operational flow,”.

While it shows that many businesses are willing to adopt AI to increase productivity, it does show that new risks are also being introduced.

Shestakov recommends that users follow standard data protection procedures such as long-form passwords and two-factor authentication. This will reduce the risk of account takeover attacks.

It’s worth noting that you should change your ChatGPT password ASAP, as your account may already be compromised.

Always stay vigilant of threats to your accounts!

Easier shopping with Bing and Edge

Our final story for this week covers Microsoft. The company has added some new AI-powered tools in order to improve shopping on Bing and Edge. Microsoft wants shopping online to be easy for users.

Typical pet peeves for shoppers include finding good deals, determining real reviews, and difficult navigation.

The new tools from Microsoft have been designed to address these pain points. Bing, Edge, and Outlook have all seen the inclusion of these new tools. Accessible shopping is the key focus.

Let’s learn some more about each new feature:

Buying guides

Bing and Edge now offer a buying guide, aimed to help users purchase products even when they’re unsure of what it is they want.

In the video, the user searches for “college supplies”, and receives a customised set of product recommendations such as headphones or laptops which are the best options.

Recommendations are easily readable in side-by-side comparison charts. Currently, only U.S. users can access this feature. However, Microsoft will roll this feature out to more users in the future.

Bing Chat and the sidebar in the Edge browser are where you can find the buying guide.

Review summaries and price matching

Due to the amount of seemingly fake reviews for products, it can be hard to tell the selling points of a product you want to purchase.

However, review summaries will summarise the critical information you need to know from the reviews of a product.

Again, this feature will be rolled out worldwide by September.

Price matching allows you to track an item’s price, even after you’ve purchased it. Most U.S. retailers will allow you to price match. More countries will see this feature over time.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s roundup! Stay tuned for next week!

Good Afternoon, welcome to another weekly digital roundup on this sunny Friday.

This week, you’ll learn about the new integration between GA4 and Google Adsense. We’ve also got some information about what Instagram broadcast channels are, and how Amazon is hopping onto the AI trend.

Let’s get into the stories!

Google To Integrate GA4 and Adsense

This week, Google announced that you’d soon be able to integrate Google Analytics 4 properties with your Adsense account.

This will allow you to see Adsense data in your GA4 reports and explorations with the aim of providing you with a more in-depth view of your website’s performance.

Comprehensive website performance data

The merge between GA4 properties such as user behaviour and Adsense data provides marketers and business owners with a deeper understanding of website performance.

You’ll be able to use the data that you get to identify trends, patterns, behaviours, and insights in order to fully optimise your ad revenue.

Ad clicks, ad impressions, and ad queries will all be collected automatically if you integrate the accounts.

However, it’s worth noting that collecting these events will increase the number of billable events for 360 properties.

How to integrate accounts

In order to integrate Adsense and GA4, you’ll need to do the following:

• Sign in to your Adsense account.
• Click Account -> Access and Authorisation -> Google Analytics integration
• Click +New Link
• Select which property you want from the list
• Click Create link

That’s it! if you follow these instructions, your property will be linked to Adsense

How it works

GA4 and Adsense’s integration works through key processes. The key processes include shared IDs, data joining, and automatic collection of events.

Shared IDs make it possible for tags in GA4 and Adsense to communicate, it matches each ad impression with the corresponding GA4 event.

Inter-tag communication makes sure that logged IDs are consistent between GA4 and Adsense for a single event.

GA4 then collects specific events through the Google Tag. Then, the integration populates GA4 data with ad_impression and ad_click events.

Finally, GA4 joins its data with Adsense log files with shared IDs to match the data.

Discrepancies

Make sure that your tags are set up correctly, and allow up to 24 hours after integrating the accounts. This will allow the data to appear in your reports.

With correct tags, the data should contain very few discrepancies. iframes, security, or blocking software can however cause discrepancies.

All about Instagram Broadcast Channels

Instagram Broadcast Channels are rolling out this week worldwide according to Mark Zuckerberg.

You might find yourself asking “What are Instagram Broadcast Channels?”

Fear not, as Intelligency are here to give the lowdown about all you need to know.

What are Instagram Broadcast Channels?

Broadcast Channels are a very simple concept. They allow creators to send photos, videos, voice messages or polls to channel members. Followers and paid followers make up your channel members.

Here’s an example provided by Instagram:

You can only use Broadcast Channels on mobile.

New features for Instagram

In addition to the Broadcast Channels rollout, Instagram revealed new experimental features coming to the platform. These include:

• Question prompts for AMA content
• A dedicated channel tab in inboxes
• Broadcast expiration dates
• Guest collaborators for Broadcasts
• Content moderators
• Preview links

In a testing session, users wanted AI chatbots and image generators, maybe Instagram will incorporate these in the future.

Where are Broadcast Channels located?

You can access Broadcast Channels through your inbox. Use the search bar in the inbox to search by keywords, or view suggested channels. Channels will also appear below a creator’s bio if they’ve enabled it.

Another way for creators to let you know that a broadcast is available is to send a notification through Instagram.

How to create an Instagram Broadcast Channel

If you have a creator account, you’ll need to do the following to create a Broadcast Channel:

• Login to Instagram on mobile
• Go to your Direct Message Inbox
• Click Create a Broadcast Channel

From there, you’ll be able to set whether it’s for followers or paid subscribers, and if you want it to appear for promotional purposes or hidden.

When creating your first broadcast, make sure that you get members excited about the content you’ll be sharing in the future.

Instagram Broadcasts are a new method to reach and engage with audiences on Instagram, and we’re excited to see how creators will use it to reach new audiences in the future!

Amazon test AI-Generated review summaries

Our final story for this week relates to Amazon.

This week, the company confirmed it’s testing a new feature in the Amazon Shopping app.

The new feature is designed to help users digest how buyers feel about the products they’ve purchased and reviewed. Amazon’s AI will generate a summary of all the reviews for a product listed on Amazon Shopping.

Reviews are one of the biggest factors when it comes to a potential purchaser converting to a purchaser, and this feature could help this process. It could help because it will condense thousands of reviews into a single summary, saving the user from scrolling for hours.

Here’s an example of what the feature looks like:

Amazon hasn’t shared any more details about this feature, such as what language model it’s using for the generative AI.

However, Amazon did comment and say:

“We are significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses.”

Additionally, Amazon is also going to be using more generative AI to enhance the search experience, and to generate videos and images for advertisers.

That’s it for this week, see you this time next week for more digital marketing news and insights!

Good afternoon, welcome to another digital weekly roundup.

This week, we explore why Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped 59%. We also look at the new dimensions that Google added to GA4 and the eligibility criteria for TikTok Series.

Let’s learn some more about each story.

Twitter Ad Revenue Drops 59%

Twitter hired a new CEO this week called Linda Yaccarino, who unfortunately faces some difficulties in this role almost immediately—the New York Times reported that Twitter’s ad revenue dropped 59% YoY (year on year).

While former CEO Elon Musk was optimistic about the advertising progress, stating that “almost all advertisers have returned” after they dropped out. The situation is still uncertain for the company.

From the 1st of April up until the first week of May, the ad revenue was $88 million, or £70 million. However, Twitter repeatedly fell short of the predicted weekly sales forecasts, sometimes up to 30%.

Why advertisers left Twitter

There were multiple causes for advertisers to leave Twitter, which include:

• Twitter charging to access the API
• A rise in hate speech or hate content
• An increase in gambling and marijuana advertising
• Concerns from advertisers about content which violated Twitter’s TOS such as child exploitation

Interestingly, the ad revenue from the U.S. is predicted to drop 56% each week compared to 2022, according to NYT’s report. This is so concerning for Twitter because advertising makes up 90% of its revenue.

Ironically, when Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion, he stated he would make it “the most respected ad platform”. But then key executives left, Musk promoted a conspiracy theory, and then reinstated banned users to the platform.

What’s the advertisers’ and brands’ reaction?

Multiple ad agencies and brands such as General Motors, and VW, suspended any Twitter ad investments. Musk previously predicted that Twitter’s ad revenue would reach $3 billion by Q4 2023.

Additionally, several key advertisers such as Apple, Amazon, and Disney are reportedly spending lower on the platform than they used to. The three former and current employees who shared this also noted that Twitter’s high-value banner ads located on the trends page are frequently unsold.

Twitter has recently been facing PR issues with key advertisers too. One instance saw an account unaffiliated with Disney called “@DisneyJuniorUK” receive a verified advertiser checkmark. Once the badge was received, the account proceeded to post offensive content.

Disney demanded an explanation from Twitter and assurances that it won’t happen again.

Despite all the challenges and controversies associated with Twitter, it’s still a powerful platform that has a global reach, including millions of users who use it daily.

We’ll have to see what changes Yaccarino brings to the platform to see if the ad revenue situation can be resolved.

GA4 Audience Builder Receives New Dimensions and Metrics

This week, Google added six new dimensions and metrics to Google Analytics 4’s audience builder. The aim behind the update is to help track website metrics and goals in further detail.

The five new dimensions for GA4 include:

• Country
• Manual term (UTM Term)
• Mobile device information
• Minute
• New VS Returning

The new metric which has been added to GA4 is Session Duration. Just as a reminder, Universal Analytics will soon stop collecting any more data and everyone will have to move over to GA4.

TikTok Allows More Creators To Apply To TikTok Series

The final story of this week is that TikTok is allowing more creators to apply for TikTok Series. TikTok Series is a new, premium content feature which we wrote about earlier in the year.

But who’s eligible for TikTok Series?

In order to be eligible, creators must meet the following criteria:

• Over 18 years old
• Posted at least four public videos in the last 30 days
• 1,000 authentic viewers in the last 30 days
• 10,000 or more followers

Interestingly, if a creator doesn’t have 10,000 followers but meets all the other criteria, they can apply and provide a link to premium content they’ve sold on other platforms.

What is TikTok Series?

Lastly, if you’re unfamiliar with TikTok Series, here’s a quick explanation. A Series can consist of 80 videos, and each video can be up to 20 minutes. The creator can charge from $1 to $190 for access to a Series.

This is a cool, new revenue stream for creators which rewards them for producing high-quality content.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s roundup. See you next week!