We touch on a few themes in this week’s The 5 in 5: automation; the incredible new features and products coming out of a variety of platforms; and the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and the major changes it’s forcing tech companies and marketers alike to face up to.
We begin at Amazon, whose AI-powered image generator is completely transforming the playing field for brands—although what does this mean for the future of graphic design?
We also look at the data Amazon has revealed in compliance with the DSA—and how marketers can leverage it to their brands’ advantage. And we explore how DSA regulations have also led to TikTok releasing seismic data about their active user base—and consider how this can help marketers ensure their efforts are being channelled in the right direction.
Elsewhere, we check out Google’s awesome new AR beauty ads, and look at Microsoft’s innovative automated audience segmentation.
That’s a lot of news packed into one week—so let’s get into it!
This week:
- Amazon marketers who love AI, take note: you can now up your creative game like never before
- Amazon’s first store transparency report holds precious data for marketers who know where to look
- TikTok marketers: are you actually reaching your EU target audience?
- Augmented reality like you’ve never seen: Google’s lip and eye product ads turn heads
- You can now automate the segmentation of your Microsoft audiences with unparallelled precision
- Until now, if the most sophisticated drawing you could produce was a stick figure, it was no big deal—you’d just outsource to a designer.
- But now, if you’re an Amazon merchant—and even if your artistry leaves something (or much) to be desired—it doesn’t matter. Not as long as your description skills are up to scratch, anyway.
- Amazon has launched the beta version of its image generator to help advertisers make ad creatives. The tool places objects in more appealing scenery—no need to build sets or photoshop images yourself.
- In one test conducted by Amazon, an AI-generated lifestyle image of a toaster saw CTRs 40% higher than standard product images. And speaking of Amazon…
- Amazon’s first store transparency report has revealed that the company boasts a remarkable 181m customers in the EU alone. This vast active user base puts the tech behemoth squarely in the recent Digital Services Act’s category of ‘very large online platforms’—and therefore subject to regulations.
- Amazon is reportedly not best pleased with this, but good things are happening there nevertheless—with implications for all marketers who use the platform.
- For example, Amazon merchants are experiencing especially good ROAS and engagement at present. And given how tough the marketing landscape is right now, seeing green across the dashboard surely can only be a perk.
- And staying with the Digital Services Act…
- Regulations from the EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act mean social media apps must now provide periodical updates on their active users in the EU.
- This census has generated invaluable data for marketers, who get a sneak peek to see whether their campaigns are on the mark—or way out in the sticks. And the data is particularly telling for TikTok.
- France and Germany take the top spots, with 21.4m and 20.9m users engaging with the short-form video app. Malta and Luxembourg come in at the bottom.
- Marketers should peruse this data with a keen eye to ensure their targeted TikTok campaigns are hitting the right audiences, or to gauge their market size if they’re considering branching out into other EU countries.
- Google has introduced AR beauty ads—and they’ve certainly been catching eyes.
- Through mobile-specific channels, the ads enable brands to promote lip and eye products through ‘virtual try-on’ experiences.
- The ad is paired with pricing information and a product description, along with a simplified checkout flow designed to streamline the purchasing process.
- It seems like a smart move from Google. Especially when you consider the Shopify data that shows the average 3D AR ad boasts a 94% higher conversion rate than its 2D counterpart.
- Microsoft has rolled out automated audience segmentation to enable marketers to find their most engaged users across a variety of screens and devices.
- The innovation will empower analysts to layer their brands’ data—or indeed other segments from Microsoft’s data marketplace—on top of their existing audience segments.
- Right now Microsoft’s automated audience segmentation is available exclusively in Microsoft Invest, the company’s hub of programmatic advertising.
- But given the feature’s capacity to help marketers build customised omnichannel media strategies, it may not be long before Microsoft’s competitors get itchy and innovate their own versions.
If you’d like to find out more about any of the topics in this week’s The 5 in 5, or you want to enhance your performance marketing but don’t know where to start, don’t hesitate to contact us today! You can either reply directly to this email or get in touch via our website.
