🗞️ Links & Thinks from 2023.02.13
The COVID Economy
It's official, COVID is no longer an economic issue (which is not to be confused with not being a health issue, that's still a thing). This is just the economy now.
The lasting impacts broadly fall across 4 categories:
- The workforce has changed (back to this in a minute)
- Work has changed - hybrid work impacts more than just office capacity, traffic patterns and economic activity changes too
- Money is no longer free (which is what hit tech and VC so hard)
- Supply chains splinter (specifically diversifying away from China)
Back to the workforce:
In the U.S. we've gone from a labor market of plenty to one of scarcity. A half-million workers died, many retired earlier than expected, and immigration fell. The workforce itself is still short on workers.
What caused all that retirement? The housing market explosion. Increased housing wealth allowed older Americans to dip out of work early, for good.
AdsGPT
Yes, ChatGPT powered Bing will have ads.
Citation links load the “blue link” look we’re all familiar with. Including an ad in the style we’re all familiar with.
One of my theories on why Google let Microsoft get the drop on them is prioritizing monetization over launch. Certainly not the only reason, but had to be a consideration for a company almost entirely funded by ad revenue seeing that revenue contract and staring down a seismic shift to that search foundation.
OopsGPT
A researcher used a prompt injection attack (get used to this term: it’s when a user enters a prompt that overrides the interfaces programmed controls for model behavior) to get the ChatGPT bot to give away its secrets.
The secrets are just the instructions for “behavior,” nothing too crazy it seems. Mostly stuff like be polite and informative. But the bot’s name is Sydney, which we aren’t supposed to know.
Let's Get Visual
Talenthouse has released its Visual Trends Report for 2023. The trends include:
- Freedom
- Solarpunk
- Active Optimism
- Soft Fascination
- Chaos of Creativity (courtesy of AI)
- Red as color of the year
Increase Your Sales
A great Twitter thread on how to improve your ecomm store performance (which I will now summarize as a hedge against The Bird’s looming implosion):
- Turn interested but non-converting traffic into leads
- Most leads purchase within 14 days. If they haven’t purchased after 28, the probably won’t. (Analysis specific to your business is a good idea.) Go big in the first 14.
- Use campaigns to feed flows
- Email should drive 30% of sales, minimum.
- Actively tend to your email efforts.
More Ads in More Places
Uber has rolled out a new ad type: post-checkout. Users see the ads when tracking their order’s delivery status.
Ad dollars are shifting from Meta to Amazon. Makes sense for brands that can leverage Amazon’s trove of data, but means less competition on Meta.
Ad dollars are also shifting to influencers.
A survey by Advertiser Perceptions found that 53% of advertisers plan to increase creator marketing spending in 2023
And spending keeps on splintering. I’ll say it again: when advertisers pull money from a platform/medium, they leave a potential opportunity in their wake.
Just The Headlines
This edible blob filled with water means you don’t need a plastic bottle (This is cool. I'm bullish on seaweed and algae as paths to a sustainable future, so I love seeing any innovations like this.)
Biden calls for ban of online ads targeting children (This includes teens.)
Google Search Feature: Coupons From Stores (The Shopping feature is coming to Search, or is at least being tested.)