Influencers Are Overpaid According to 41% of Marketers, Here’s How That Can Be Fixed

The marketing industry has been relying on influencers for quite some time now because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up connecting products to willing consumers. The success of this industry is so pronounced that 64% of marketers said that they are planning to increase influencer budgets in a recent survey. This is despite just 45% of marketers saying that they plan to increase overall advertising budgets.

In spite of the fact that this is the case, 41% of marketers also feel like influencers are being paid too much with all things having been considered and taken into account. 40% also stated that the biggest hurdle associated with working with influences involves figuring out a payment rate, so clearly there is a need for a strategy that can make things fairer than might have been the case otherwise.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that there is a new form of influencer payments that has been gaining a lot of steam. This method is referred to as pay per performance, and it generally gives payouts based on results instead of having influencers determine a flat rate at the outset.

Such a method can prove useful since it creates clear goals and only justifies full payment once these goals have been reached. Around 56% of marketers are already using this strategy, and given its surge in popularity many more might start switching over to it in the near future.

However, 64% of marketers are still paying influencers per campaign. This makes the results of the campaign less of a factor in determine a pay rate, allowing influencers to make all of the rules. Pay per performance might have trouble becoming the dominant form of influencer payments since many will be hesitant to switch to a payment method that will strip them of much of their power.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here on out. The influencer industry is going through a period of change.

H/T: Capterra
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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Experiment Shows 35% of Americans Can’t Tell if Images Are AI Generated

One of the most significant trends that is taking the internet by storm as of late is that of AI generated images. Countless images that were created by AI such as DALL-E are flooding social media platforms, and it turns out that people are actually quite easily fooled by them. Images depicting former US Donald Trump being dragged away by police officials and Pope Francis wearing an out of character jacket were widely believed to be true.

Such a trend is dangerous because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up contributing to the spread of misinformation. Concured recently conducted a poll that revealed the extent to which AI has progressed, asking users to pick one of two images that they thought was generated by some form of AI.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that 35% of respondents picked the wrong image. This seems to suggest that finding the differences between AI generated images and the real thing is becoming harder than might have been the case otherwise.

Even images of the moon were difficult to parse, with just 64% of users selecting the correct image once they were shown a pair of pictures. In spite of the fact that this is the case, there are some easy ways to recognize AI generated images for what they are.

For example, if the picture depicts a human being, the best thing to do would be to take a look at their hands or teeth. AI is notoriously bad at generating realistic hands or feet, with most images that it creates having an uncanny valley effect.

All in all, AI is here to stay, and that makes it essential that steps be taken to prevent it from being misused with all things having been considered and taken into account. The more AI advances, the harder it will be for people to trust anything that they see, especially when they are scrolling through their social media feeds on various online platforms.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Microsoft’s Bing Search Gets More Exciting Updates And Here’s What You Can Expect

The past week has been awfully busy for Microsoft’s team at Bing Chat.

Last weekend, we saw the computational giant experiment with new and improved limits for its daily chat turns which were raised to 200. At the same time, the sessions were raised to 20. And during the start of this week, we saw the team mention how this trial was going to be permanent so the number of chat turns and session increases were going to stay.

Now, we’re hearing more about how the firm plans to include some more exciting features.

The news was confirmed through a recently published post on the Bing blog. This is where Microsoft mentioned that it was adding a means by which users can search for pictures and different videos on the chat dialog. Moreover, users would now see better results under such chats as the answer card and they’ll end up tapping on the tab that says ‘See More’ which would enter the regular image search for Bing so more content can be added.

This blog mentioned how the team included some more improvements on the Bing Chat that would give rise to some local grounding effects. So in reality, if you’re on the hunt to search for some sort of local eatery at a nearby location, you’ll see better results when using this AI chatbot.

Other than that, there’s an entire list of what users can expect coming soon to the ever-so-popular tool by Microsoft.

For instance, you’ll see it bringing a lot of context enhancements that were unveiled in the middle of last month to the Edge sidebar. This would further help summarize so many larger pages as well as documents.

Next, you’d get support for the Image Creator of Bing seen in the sidebar for Edge when the creative mode gets selected. Moreover, this makes sidebar loading so much faster and stops it from showcasing a blank screen during the start of the launch.

Last but not least, you’ll see the chatbot no longer allow for a reset of chats that were seen whenever the Edge search was kept on for long periods of time.

The plans were set out by the computational giant at the start of this week and that’s also when they announced the arrival of ads across Bing Chat’s replies. There will similarly be links to firms and content creators. It also hopes to enable enhanced formatting so the replies linked to math sums are displayed better.

Read next: Google Unveils Upgrade To Its Bard Chatbot With Enhanced Math And Logic Capabilities
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Google Unveils Upgrade To Its Bard Chatbot With Enhanced Math And Logic Capabilities

Search engine giant is upgrading its AI-powered Bard chatbot named Bard with the addition of new enhancements and capabilities.

The tech giant announced today how the goal is to include better features taken from the firm’s PaLM which is the Pathways Language Model. This new addition would enhance both math and logic capabilities that were already present in the software but needed some tweaking and finetuning.

The news was published today by the company’s AI team member on Twitter who began by hoping users were testing the feature out well as they make room for more innovative adjustments.

Today, they’re very keen on producing some more new features and sharing them with others as it's time the chatbot was taken to a new level of greatness with this incorporation. He also hoped this launch would make Bard even more useful for others. But how exactly can Gogole’s language model better Bard’s performance is a commonly asked query by so many people?

For starters, Bard combined with PaLM is a powerful combo. While the former is produced to give rise to human chats, the use of LaMDA in its programming enables the chatbot to generate replies that are very lifelike and similar to text responses.

On the other hand, PaLM is a decoder transformer design that is designed to multitask and that’s one of its greatest benefits. Similarly, one of the biggest advantages is related to solving math sums and arithmetic questions.

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And by combining PaLM’s capability, Bard carries the potential to better handle math-related problems. So at the end of it all, what you benefit from is a more versatile end product and a tool that’s practical for solving both word and math problems.

The unique collab was one that many people feel should have come to a while back but now that it has, we can see the chatbot benefiting in a long list of areas including better comprehension of math sums with more accuracy in replies. This is very true when the sums are embedded into natural language.

At the same time, we are seeing enhanced logical inference which can better the chatbot’s ability to conduct reasoning via math sums that require logical explanation and deductive steps.

So as you can tell, the combination of PaLM’s new math and reasoning additions into Google’s Bard would add power and make the software more capable of dealing with all types of math tasks, no matter how comprehensive they might be.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Alarming Study Proves 50% Of Adolescent Girls Feel Addicted To TikTok, Particularly Those With Depression

A new study is shedding light on the harmful effects of the popular social media app TikTok and how nearly 50% of adolescent females feel an addiction to the platform.

This study was conducted to see what effects various social media apps of today have on the minds of young girls and the addictive potential of TikTok on them was alarming, including for those struggling with depression.

While so many young females claim they adore what they found online through the platform, they were also exposed to both bigotry as well as the urge to keep on going back for more.

Similarly, most girls know that they keep returning for more, even though their duration is longer than what they may have intended as per the report taking into consideration the effects of social media trends on American girlhood.

TikTok has been at the forefront in terms of the greatest amount of time that young females spend on social media apps and there are days when girls tune in for nearly 2 and a half hours. Moreover, the researchers at Brown University as well as the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media revealed how YouTube is just a tad bit behind and equally takes over the minds of young female audiences.

But then we’ve got Snapchat and Messenger taking the third position with 2 hours of logging into the app while Instagram was the fourth highest with 90 minutes. In the same way, the study proved that most females that were surveyed were between the ages of 11 to 15 and make use of not one but several apps daily.

Most females claim the impact of social media on individuals their age has been positive. Nearly one in four people that use this app, Snapchat and Instagram were said to go through some negative comparisons in society while undergoing pressure to appear as the best version of themselves in real life.

Among those individuals that were the most vulnerable to the disadvantages of social media included females that had moderate to serious depression symptoms. They felt that life would be so much more meaningful if they didn’t let social media enter their lives. And it’s interesting because most of them are using the apps daily and in a constant fashion without fail.

When it came down specifically to the TikTok app, 68% felt a sense of urgency to use the app like an addiction while 33% of those included had no symptoms of depression.

Another top researcher at Brown University was quick to point out that those females with depression that used Instagram felt like taking their own lives. While 69% felt the same with TikTok and 64% with YouTube and Snapchat.

As pointed out by the authors of this study, there is a huge number of females that are really finding it hard to lead a life of normalcy. They’re seeing such content online and getting influenced and that’s not helping them mentally.

H/T: WP

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

YouTube Expands Its Analytics For Artists With New ‘Total Reach’ Metric Across All Formats

YouTube is working hard to give its music creators better insight into how well their tracks are doing across various target audiences.

The company mentioned how it plans on expanding its Analytics for Artists feature with the addition of a new metric called ‘Total Reach’. This is what provides artists and their respective teams the chance to glance over how the music section is doing.

Before the launch of such a feature, we saw how this Total Reach metric only entailed official content put up by artists as well as other long-form types of video content put up by fans.

But the popular video platform says that this new and updated feature display how many audience members are engaging with music artists’ content online through so many types of formats.

The news was confirmed today by YouTube Music’s global head, Lyor Cohen who explained in her recently published blog post that Shorts made by fans were experiencing a rise in the average audience’s viewership by nearly 80% since the start of this year. Additionally, so many artists happened to be active on the Shorts app and they witnessed more than 50% of new subscribers through Shorts posts.

The firm is also making big plans for the launch of an innovative Songs section across its Analytics feature. This would be designed to assist artists and respective teams to witness how fans are paying attention to music or how they’re creating it through so many video formats.

The new section designated for Songs features artists and their famous tracks that arose in the past month and which tracks were being utilized on Shorts the most.

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Shorts are best seen as the driving force that allows so many followers of the platform to explore new depths of a celeb’s catalog. This entails music videos, live performances, interviews, and lyric videos among others.

Just take a look at leading music celebs like Selena Gomez and Rema that have made it big across all the video formats on the app. They’ve crossed the 60 million mark for their music and Shorts for the hit title track ‘Calm Down’. And when so many fans put up their Shorts using that song, the viewership skyrocketed further with nearly 350 million viewers arising in January of 2023 only.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Digital Ad Spends Decline 2% YTD Amid Inflation

Inflation has been hitting virtually every single industry quite hard. For a time, digital ad spends seemed like they were immune to the effects of inflation, and they managed to grow as a proportion of total ad buys to 59% with all things having been considered and taken into account. In spite of the fact that this is the case, inflation has finally hit the digital ad market as well, with the market recording a 2% decrease in ad buys year to date.

This data comes from a recent analysis conducted by the Standard Media Index, and it revealed that the overall ad industry is in dire straits. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the 2% decline seen in digital ads is still better than the 6.9% decrease across the entire ad market, and that seems to suggest that digital ads are overperforming when compared to other forms of marketing.

This seems to suggest that digital ads are doing better than might have been the case otherwise, although this segment is still appearing to run out of steam. The worst hit form of digital ads is that of digital video, which registered a staggering 9% decline in the same period.

Paying attention to these trends is important because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up determining the direction in which the industry might be headed. However, it should also be mentioned that 2022 was a unique year in that it had the Winter Olympics, which necessitated an increased number of ad buys among media agencies.

All in all, the turmoil that is being caused by rampant inflation doesn’t look like it will be abating anytime soon. It will be interesting to see if 2023 indicates any further declines. If that were to occur, the future of the industry could look very different than what it does right now, and many major companies relying on ad revenue will need to look for other sources lest the inflow of ad buys dries up even further.

H/T: Mediapost

Read next: SEOs Say Bing Chat is Better Than Google Bard
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World