You could do worse.

In This Issue:

🔒 Advertising: Meta introduces new ad placement controls to ensure brand safety and boost marketer confidence

🤖 AI: Google Assistant might be doomed as division "reorganizes" to focus on Bard, a new project

🛍️ E-commerce: Amazon sues sellers for issuing bogus takedown requests on competitors, taking action against unfair practices

💸 Economy: Ad spending trends indicate possible recession, sparking concerns for marketers and businesses

📜 Regulation: Senators introduce new bill targeting big ad tech, seeking to address monopolistic practices

📈 Analytics: YouTube's new metric reveals artist reach across all formats, including Shorts, enhancing data analysis

🏠 Ad Creative: Two agents fired over their controversial "You could do worse" ad campaign double down, gaining popularity and new clients

Meta: New Brand Safety Controls in Ad Placement 

Meta is giving advertisers more control over the content their ads are placed next to. The company launched new inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram feeds yesterday. 

Advertisers now have three settings to choose from to control the type of content that appears alongside their ads. 

🟢 Expanded Inventory 

The default setting, called 'expanded inventory,' shows ads next to content that adheres to Meta's Community Standards and meets its monetization eligibility criteria. 

🟠 Moderate Inventory 

The 'moderate inventory' setting excludes high-risk content for advertisers who want to take a moderately conservative approach. 

🔴 Limited Inventory 

For those who want to take the most conservative approach, the 'limited inventory' setting excludes both high- and medium-risk content. 

To ensure these requirements are met, Meta will use a range of content classifiers and advanced AI tools to scan content in both text and visual form. 

Meta is also collaborating with Zefr to create an AI-powered process that can report the context in which ads appear on Facebook Feed, based on the GARM suitability standards. The tool lets advertisers measure, verify, and understand the suitability of content near their ads.

Image: Meta 

“Hey Google, You’re Being Replaced” 

Years ago, when Google trotted out its Google Assistant, the company told us marketers that we should get on board, make sure our brand has a presence, kick the tires — you know, that sort of thing.

And most of us... didn't. That may have proved to be the right decision, as CNBC is now reporting that the company is reorganizing its voice assistant team to prioritize the new bot in town: Bard. 

📝 Bard's Big Break

In a memo to employees this week, titled “Changes to Assistant and Bard teams,” the VP and lead of Google Assistant’s business unit, outlined changes that prioritize Bard and put its voice assistant product on the back burner.

🚧 Setbacks for Google Assistant

This move comes after several setbacks for the AI Assistant in recent years, including:

• The cessation of hardware releases

• The removal of Assistant support from some Google products

• The shutdown of core features like driving mode and Duplex on the web

🔴 Assistant Team Joins "Code Red" Fight 

As Ars Technica points out the recent memo suggests that the Assistant team is now supporting the company's "code red" fight against ChatGPT.

Quoting the piece:

Amazon Sues Copyright 'Con Artists'

Amazon has taken legal action against three groups who allegedly abused its takedown system by filing false copyright complaints against other products on the platform to encourage consumers to buy their products instead.

🕸️ Fake Websites 

However, according to the lawsuits, the alleged bad actors didn’t just file fake complaints. 

The e-commerce giant says the parties also created fake disposable web sites, using product images scraped from Amazon listings, and presented them as evidence that they were the rightful copyright owners. 

Amazon claimed one defendant, named “Sidesk,” used a fraudulent trademark application to get into the Amazon Brand Registry program, which lets companies search for and manage scans of fraudulent listings that copy their products. 

The complaint alleges that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office cancelled the trademark application but Sidesk used it anyway.

🚨 "The Worst Offender"

Sidesk was apparently the worst offender, filing almost 4,000 takedown requests. According to the lawsuits, in some cases, the scheme worked, and materials related to some product listings were temporarily taken down from the Amazon Store in response to the invalid complaints.

⚖️ Balancing Act

Although Amazon's copyright takedown request systems have legitimate purposes, the recent lawsuits show it can be challenging to balance the need to make it easy for legitimate claimants to file takedown requests with the risk of letting bad actors abuse the system.

Image: Amazon

Ad Spend Hints at Looming Recession

Ad spending trends suggest that a recession may be on the horizon… but no need to panic, yet.  According to a new report from financial research company S&P Global Ratings, U.S. advertisers are cutting back on spend, indicating they are preparing for an impending recession. However, it's not all bad news, as the downturn may be less severe than initially expected. 

📊 Ad Spending Shifts

Historically, ad spending has lagged behind macroeconomic performance, making it less apparent until contractions have already occurred.

The report says that's changed, as the media buying windows have shortened, making ad spending potentially more of a "leading indicator" of where the economy is headed.

🔄 Rethinking Ad Spending

The research firm predicted that the recession will be 'shallower' than originally anticipated, and consumer spending will grow 1.2% this year, ahead of what was expected.

The report also suggests that industry watchers may need to change how they view ad spending as a bellwether of macroeconomic health.

Traditionally, media activity drops after a recession is in effect.

However, with digital media's ascendance over the past decade and changes in the media ecosystem, the firm says this equation could reset, making forecasting more challenging.

🔮 Future Ad Trends

Finally, while ad spending trends are more liable to fluctuate in this new media landscape, the report said that brands may ramp up buying again sooner than anticipated.

Senators Take Aim at Big Tech’s Online Ad Empire 

U.S. senators have introduced a new antitrust bill aimed at cutting Google and Facebook's clout in online advertising.

📊 The AMERICA Act

The AMERICA Act, introduced by Senator Mike Lee in Congress this week, would force digital advertising companies that process more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions to divest or sell part of their businesses, AdExchanger reports. The bill also requires companies processing more than $5 billion in digital ad transactions to disclose their revenue streams, detailing where the money comes from, according to the report.

🤝 Bipartisan Support

The bill has bipartisan support from a number of senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz. The Department of Justice and state attorneys general would handle enforcement.

💼 Potential Complications

If passed, the bill would of course complicate things for Big Tech, as Google is already facing a lawsuit from the DOJ for allegedly operating an ad-tech monopoly.

YouTube Expands ‘Analytics for Artists’ Tool

YouTube's push to Shorts continues — this time it's giving marketers more data. 

📊 Analytics for Artists

The company expanded its 'Analytics for Artists' tool yesterday by adding Shorts-related data to the “Total Reach” metric, which gives artists an overview of how their music is reaching audiences across the platform. 

Previously, the Total Reach metric only included official content uploaded by the artist and long-form videos uploaded by fans.

The company says the updated metric shows how many people an artist’s music reaches across all formats.

🆕 New Songs Section 

The company is also launching a new ‘Songs’ section in its Analytics tool.

The new section will show artists their top songs from the past 28 days and what songs are being most used in Shorts. 

Images: YouTube 

And finally...

A pair of real estate agents from London, Ontario have proved that when in doubt, self-deprecation is the ultimate branding strategy. 

After getting fired from one realty firm for their "you could do worse" catchphrase, they continued to double down on their branding and use it on billboards and social media. And guess what? It worked. 

The agents claim that the polarizing slogan humanizes the industry and resonates with some consumers. Their latest billboard campaign features photos of them as awkward teenagers proudly proclaiming "Zero awards won! (No fine print required)."

At least it's not misleading.

Image: Johnny Hewerdine