Marketers Using Google’s Gemini AI Still Need to Use Their Own Brains

Read time: 2.5 minutes

Hi AI Pro!

Welcome to presspool.ai insights, the free newsletter for entrepreneurs and leaders of today’s AI revolution who are successfully bringing breakthrough solutions to market.

Twice a week, insights provides a concise and timely report on how trailblazing AI startups are gaining market share, using the most innovative strategies and tactics, as they emerge.

You can easily unsubscribe anytime with the link below this email, but we think you’ll want to stick around to benefit from the actionable marketing intelligence contained in every issue of insights.

Best regards,
The team at presspool.ai

TOP NEWS

Marketers Using Google’s Gemini AI Still Need to Use Their Own Brains

The big AI news this week is, of course, Google’s official release on Wednesday of its much-anticipated Gemini, a large language and machine-learning model trained not just on text data but also video and audio sources.

The new release, which likely cost Google hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, fires a booming shot across the bow of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the platform that has dominated public attention for its ability to generate content for marketers.

In announcing the release on Wednesday, Google presented several demos on how Gemini can be applied to various tasks, including content creation. In one of these, Gemini was prompted to generate ideas for a new game based on the video of a person drawing images and simple puzzles. Another showed Gemini answering questions about a research paper containing graphs and equations.

Sissie Hsiao, vice president at Google and general manager for the company’s chatbot product called Bard, told Wired that Gemini’s multimedia capabilities make Bard better at tasks such as summarizing content, brainstorming, writing, and planning.

“These are the biggest single quality improvements of Bard since we've launched,” Hsiao said.

Still, any content marketers who hope Gemini means their days of expending thought and energy to engage audiences for their products and brands are over should probably think twice, according to a pre-release analysis of Gemini from Exposure Ninja, a UK-based digital marketing agency.

“With Gemini, it’s likely you’ll be able to create a design for a landing page, for example, and show it to Google Bard and get feedback from the AI on how well-optimized it is for conversions,” according to a statement from the company.

“So, instead of getting the AI to create the work for you, you could work collaboratively with them, using them as an assistant—which is how you should be using AI tools now, rather than just taking what they say word for word.”

Gemini is being released by Google in three different versions, including Gemini Nano, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Ultra, meaning it’s capable of running at different scales -- from data centers to mobile devices.

In case you’ve escaped it so far, here’s a link to Google’s official announcement video:

BRITISH INVASION

Billion Dollar Boy Launches Emerging Tech Unit

U.K.-based influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy announced it has formed a new business unit called Muse, focused on emerging technologies including generative AI.

The company recently completed a survey of 6,000 creators, consumers and marketers in the U.S. and U.K., which it says revealed that three in five consumers preferred content that was designed using AI, while four in five realized better audience engagement. The survey included 1,000 content creators and 1,000 senior marketing decision makers, as well as consumers.

“Technology has a profound influence on the work we do, and how we do it,” the company announced. “This influence, and the rapid speed at which it is changing, presents a number of opportunities and challenges — both for the influencers and creators we work with, and the brands we partner with.”

Billion Dollar Boy recently expanded its presence from the U.K. to New York and New Orleans. Its new Muse unit will be led by Becky Owen, the former head of creator innovations at Meta.

LAWFARE

Book Author Sues OpenAI, Microsoft in Copyright Dispute

Julian Sancton, a book author and editor at Hollywood Reporter, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming that his nonfiction books "Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night,” was scanned and used without permission to train ChatGPT’s large language models.

"While OpenAI and Microsoft refuse to pay nonfiction authors, their AI platform is worth a fortune," Sancton's attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement. "The basis of OpenAI is nothing less than the rampant theft of copyrighted works."

Sancton is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages from the court, as well as an order to block the alleged infringement. Other popular authors including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin have filed similar lawsuits claiming their copyrighted works were used without permission to train ChatGPT.

MAJOR TRENDS

Why Email Newsletters Will Thrive In a Post-Cookie World

With the impending demise of third-party cookies that track online browsing behavior, marketers of new AI solutions need effective alternatives to target prospective customers. As a result, advertising in email newsletters has emerged today as one of -- if not the best – outbound marketing solutions.

Email newsletters provide a one-to-one channel where AI solution providers can capture the attention of highly engaged and receptive audiences. That means marketers can leverage a publisher's trusted relationships with their subscribers, gaining access to highly vetted and targeted sales leads.

The relationship of trust between a reputable newsletter publisher and its subscribers -- who have opted in to access content they want – enables the collection of demographic data on readers’ interests and attributes, enabling the delivery of contextually relevant ads (as third-party cookies have done for many years, but won’t much longer).

Bottom line, newsletters offer a broad range of advertising formats -- including display ads, native ads, and text ads -- providing flexibility and customization options to sponsor content and create brand awareness for new AI solutions.

^{Killer ROIs}

Third-party cookies are already blocked by default in Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox browsers, while Google plans to begin phasing them out in its popular Chrome browser beginning next quarter.

As a result, advertisers are increasingly relying on first-party data that’s collected by newsletter publishers, such as subscriber email addresses and their various opt-in subscriptions.

As opposed to search ads, newsletters typically allow marketers to collaborate with publishers to maximize the use of valuable first-party data they’ve collected on their subscribers, in order to tailor campaigns and target receptive customers.

Email marketing in general boasts the highest ROI among all marketing channels and outperforms affiliate, search, social, and display advertising. In fact, newsletter ads achieve 40X higher customer acquisition results, as compared to social channels, according to a McKinsey report.

Notably, email marketing offers an exceptional return on investment (ROI), with every dollar spent on email marketing yielding $42 in returns, which translates to a remarkable ROI of over 4000%.

Depending on the industry, the ROI can be even higher, for example:

• Retail/eCommerce/Consumer Goods -- 45:1

• Marketing/PR Agencies -- 42:1

• Software/Technology -- 36:1

The Basics

Newsletter ads are sold based on metrics such as cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), cost-per-click (CPC), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA), allowing brands and publishers to collaborate and tailor their approach based on specific goals and budgets.

The four basic steps for launching a newsletter advertising campaign are as follows:

1. Segmenting audiences

2. Developing creative assets

3. Automating distribution and targeting

4. Continuously optimizing campaigns to maximize revenue

In some cases, opportunities exist for advertisers to underwrite or sponsor entire editions of a newsletter’s content. Likewise, depending on the newsletter, there are often opportunities to arrange for first-person product testimonials from the writers and editors who are the faces and trusted influencers for their publications.

The continuously growing user base of email communication, which now exceeds 4 billion users worldwide and is projected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025, means that newsletter advertising promises to grow right alongside, especially in a post-third-party cookie world.

That’s it for today’s edition of presspool.ai insights.

Watch your inbox this coming Tuesday for the next issue, full of actionable marketing insights and trending news stories most relevant to AI startups and solution providers.

Want to learn how to get your brand referred at scale to your target customer? Check out Presspool.ai to learn more.

Cheers!