Google Launches New Strategies to Combat SEO Abuse

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A new study on the impact of hyper-personalized audio ads using AI indicates a significant impact on brand awareness. Also, some developments at tech giants Google and IBM are worth noting, while innovative AI startups keep popping up like flowers in springtime…

TODAY’S AI-POWERED MARKETING UPDATE:

• Top News: Google Launches New Strategies to Combat SEO Abuse

• Strategic Partnership: Snowflake Makes Investment in LLM Developer Mistral AI

• Research Finding: AI-Personalized Audio Ads Increase Brand Awareness by 6-12%

• Inhuman Resources: IBM Expects 10x Increase in Designer Productivity Using GenAI

• Up-and-Coming: AI-Powered Market Research Startup Lakmoos Raises Pre-Seed Funding

• Master Marketing Tip: John Romero, co-founder of id Software

TOP NEWS

Google Launches New Strategies to Combat SEO Abuse

Google on Tuesday announced it’s launching a range of new strategies this month to defeat search engine optimization (SEO) methods designed to game search results and achieve high page rankings that direct users to spammy content.

“We’re making algorithmic enhancements to our core ranking systems to ensure we surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results,” Elizabeth Tucker, a director of product management at Google, announced in a blog post.

Based on Google’s evaluations, the company said it expects that the combination of new updates taking effect this month, combined with its efforts begun last year, will reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%, according to Tucker.

In addition, Google said it’s strengthening policies to identify content that’s generated “at scale” using automation tools to boost search ranking, “whether automation, humans or a combination are involved.”

Google also said it’s updating its ant-spam policies to keep the “lowest-quality content out of Search, like expired websites repurposed as spam repositories by new owners and obituary spam,” which are used as click bait to deliver spammy ads.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

Snowflake Makes Strategic Investment in LLM Developer Mistral AI

Snowflake, a data cloud company, has made a strategic investment in the first round of venture capital for Mistral AI, a developer of large language models (LLMs), and announced the launch of a new Snowflake solution that uses Mistral AI tech which allows users to leverage their enterprise data in “a wide range of use cases.”

Through the multi-year partnership, Mistral AI and Snowflake said they will deliver capabilities for enterprises to tap into large language LLMs.

According to the Snowflake, “any user with SQL skills can leverage smaller LLMs to cost-effectively address specific tasks such as sentiment analysis, translation, and summarization in seconds.”

“For more complex use cases, Python developers can go from concept to full-stack AI apps such as chatbots in minutes, combining the power of foundation LLMs — including Mistral AI’s LLMs in Snowflake Cortex — with chat elements,” according to the announcement.

As of January 2024, users at 691 of the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 are customers for Snowflake Data Cloud, the company said.

RESEARCH FINDING

Research: AI-Personalized Audio Ads Increase Brand Awareness 6-12%

Listening to personalized ads increases brand awareness by 6-12 percentage points, according to a study conducted by Veritonic, which was commissioned by Instreamatic, a provider of AI-powered voice and audio marketing tools.

Instreamatic’s platform identifies parameters unique to each listener’s current environment, enabling audio ads that include details such as the listener’s location, the time of day, or their current activity. Personalized AI-generated ads can also include the nearest store and address where the listener can redeem an offer, promo codes for performance tracking.

According to Veritonic, 73% of people who hear personalized AI-generated ads reported being more likely to pay attention to ones that are personalized just for them. And 62% of those exposed to personalized audio ads reported they were likelier to think positively about a brand that personalizes its messages.

INHUMAN RESOURCES

IBM Expects 10x Increase in Designer Productivity Using GenAI

IBM expects its marketing content designers to achieve a 10X boost in productivity through the use of GenAI tools, according to several published reports.

The company has been using Adobe Firefly to create content that’s based on IBM’s own proprietary data, which should negate the possibility of copyright infringement lawsuits brought by publishers and independent artists, such as the cases currently faced by OpenAI.

Billy Seabrook, the global chief design officer for IBM's consulting arm, told Reuters that the 1,600 designers under his management have been using Adobe's tools for the last year to help quickly create content and produce variations for use in different marketing channels.

"What typically would take us two weeks for an end-to-end cycle, we've gotten down to two days," Seabrook said.

Regarding the technology’s impact on jobs, Seabrook said the most likely short-term impact will be to use existing teams to produce more work.

"There's typically a rule of prioritization of what big bets you are going to go after and what staff you're going to put towards a problem. Theoretically, you're opening up more headroom to focus on some of those other problems," he said.

UP-AND-COMING

AI-Powered Market Research Startup Lakmoos Raises Pre-Seed Funding

Lakmoos, a Czech-based startup that’s developing AI-powered marketing simulation software, has raised $327,000 of pre-seed funding in a deal led by Presto Ventures.

Founded in May 2023 and currently employing around 20 people, Lakmoos is developing an AI platform that provides “instant market research” through data models that simulate target-customer behavior, as opposed to conducting human surveys.

The company’s AI model integrates publicly available data, partner data, and its own proprietary data.

In a study of 20 major corporations, Lakmoos identified that over 75% of market research efforts are consumed by administrative tasks rather than engaging with and analyzing actual data in order to develop effective marketing and product design strategies.

“We aim to replace 20% of traditional surveys with real-time insights by 2030, saving $30 billion in research costs and 35 billion hours of fieldwork globally each year,” the company says.

MARKETING MASTER TIP

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THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY, FOLKS!