57% of Small Businesses Leverage AI in Marketing; Facebook Leads Channels with High Satisfaction in Ads

Small Business Marketing Trends Report by LocaliQ explored different marketing trends among SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses), their growth and what challenges small business owners are facing nowadays. The report was based on a survey of 730 small businesses. The report highlights the marketing channels and tactics SMBs are using nowadays. 52% said that they are focusing on social media marketing, 47% are using social media ads and 40% are search advertising. SEO and email outreach isn't as popular among small businesses.

The survey also found out what social media channels small businesses are most interested in nowadays. Facebook (76%), was the top social media channel used by SMBs, followed by Instagram (63%) and LinkedIn (43%). Facebook makes sense as it has the highest number of users among social media channels, but LinkedIn being this popular among SMBs didn't make sense.

76% of SMBs said that they are very satisfied with the results they get by search advertising. 74% were satisfied with video marketing, 75% with content marketing and 73% were satisfied with the results of social media ads. Even though only 29% SMBs use video marketing, it still came second for the most satisfactory marketing tactic. 58% SMBs said that they are very interested in using social form videos for marketing. 48% and 30% also want to try influencer marketing and podcast marketing respectively.

SMBs were also asked if they have tried AI for marketing or not. 57% answered with yes, while 33% said no. 10% said that they are not sure about AI. 61% said they are using AI to save time while 50% are using it to generate ideas. AI is mostly being used for content creation (52%), social media management (39%) and chatbots (34%) by SMBs.

Take a look at the charts below for more insights:

Read next: AI Growth in 2024 Coupled with Data Quality Issues: A Challenging Landscape for Companies
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

LinkedIn's Data Scandal: The Alarming Truth Behind Your Information and Targeted Ads

Popular networking platform, LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, was accused of targeted advertising by Ireland’s Data Protection and therefore fined a staggering amount of money as punishment.

The company was said to be involved in the processing of users’ personal information to target them accordingly with ads on the app. This penalty will come with an investigation into how fair and lawful the practice was when data was processed.

It all began with a complaint from the French non-profit La Quadrature company a few years back. As per the DPC, the app failed to meet the standards to get the consent of users. The list of articles the company breached was also outlined as per the GDPR. This includes failing to get third-party consent, using its legitimate rights and overtaking users’ rights, invalid data processing, and not being transparent about its activities. It also violated fairness principles by processing data in a way users didn’t understand.

This is why it’s now getting orders to be more transparent about its workings so they are compliant with the EU’s legal requirements. This will come with a whopping $335M fine (or €310 Million to be exact).
 
As a whole, LinkedIn was fined with three administrative fines. The full decision would be published later on and entails all details regarding the app’s data practice findings.

LinkedIn tried to respond to media outlets’ requests for comments. It spoke about assuming they were in compliance with the GDPR but now after seeing all of this, it’s changing its practices. It will work on bettering ad systems so it’s more compliant with the regulation.

The company’s spokesperson says it was never aware that it was violating the GDPR but it hopes to bring changes as outlined by regulators before the stated deadline.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: A Long-Awaited WhatsApp Update Just Made Reactions So Much Easier!
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

A Long-Awaited WhatsApp Update Just Made Reactions So Much Easier!

WhatsApp beta for Android update 2.24.22.16 is here and now users will be able to react to messages using recent emojis. WhatsApp had been working on a feature that would enable users to react with emojis they have recently used. This feature is helpful for users to react quickly to messages with their recently used emojis. This feature is now available for beta users and will be soon available on Google Play Store.

Previously, users had to react to a message by choosing an emoji on the reaction tray. All the emojis were commonly used but if someone wanted to use a different emoji, they had to search for it in the tray (ugghh a lot of those extra taps). With the addition of this feature, all the recently used emojis will be available in the reaction tray which will make it easier to react to messages. Thank you whatsapp engineers and Meta platforms🫡.

When the reactions were first introduced on WhatsApp, they only consisted of six emojis. WhatsApp then updated this feature and made all emojis available for users to react. Now this new feature is also going to prove itself useful. In other news, WhatsApp is also rolling out a video autoplay feature for channels for beta users. It is going to be available to more people soon.

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• AI Growth in 2024 Coupled with Data Quality Issues: A Challenging Landscape for Companies

• Read This Before It's Too Late: A Guide to Highest Paying Academic Fields
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Read This Before It's Too Late: A Guide to Highest Paying Academic Fields

Education is the most empowering and the greatest blessing one can receive in this world and life. The more educated a person becomes, the more aware they know what's right or wrong and can navigate their life through its ups and downs. However, this definition of education acting as a gospel to a human being is old. In the 21st century, education means getting educated formally and seeking employment to make as much money as possible, at least for most people.

Since the accumulation of materialistic wealth is the new paradigm, it often conflicts with which path to take on their education journey will fulfill their wish to make six monthly figures.

If you’re in high school and have a conflict of opinion of which major to select, then this post is for you, or if you’re a parent and want to help your kids choose the right degree in 2024 for the highest salaries in the world, then continue reading.

The following statistics are from the analysis of CollegeNPV from the evaluation of data gathered from the U.S. Department of Education and Bureau of Labour Statistics. These stats depict the average return on investment of a degree in the U.S.

The highest-paying field is engineering, which comprises majors like electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, and chemical engineering. The average return on investment in the engineering field is $570,616.

Next up in the second place, we got Computer and Information Science fields like IT, cyber security, and data science. The average return on investment for computer science is $477,229, and it is more likely to increase in the coming decade due to the high demand for computer scientists. As for Computer Science, Harvard’s CS program ranked number 1 on the CollegeNPV list with the highest return on Investment. Computer science graduates have a return of over $4 million of what they invested $256,539 as median income and a median debt of $14,000.

• Also read: New Research Shows AI Can Take Over High Paying Jobs that Require Years of Training Easily

Next up, we got Mathematics with the average return on investment of $340,875. Business fields have a RoI of $205 191, and Architecture brings $196,711 of RoI. Fields related to social sciences are at the lower end, with fewer job opportunities, and the RoI is $118,454.

Humanities field with degrees like performance arts, English literature, theology, and the most least valuable degrees in terms of opportunities and lifetime earnings. Humanities degrees have a negative return on investment of $39,000, and majors like English have the highest decrease in graduates, with 32% of students likely to even complete their degree.

Field of Study	Average return on investment
Engineering	$570,616
Computer and Information Sciences	$477,229
Mathematics	$340,875
Engineering Technicians	$311,141
Business	$205,191
Architecture	$196,711
Nursing and Health Professions	$194,756
Physics, Chemistry and Geology	$168,822
Social Sciences	$118,454
Interdisciplinary Studies	$69,656
Biology	$63,913
Agriculture	$59,556
Area, Ethnic, Cultural, Gender and Group Studies	$42,959
Legal Studies	$38,999
Natural Resources and Conservation	$28,985
Communication and Journalism	$28,654
Homeland Security, Law Enforcement and Firefighting	$27,284
Foreign Languages	$25,750
Public Administration and Social Services	$7,787
Philosophy and Religious Studies	$6,011
History	$4,938
Fitness, Parks and Recreation	-$1,078
Liberal Arts and General Studies	-$13,337
Psychology	-$15,644
Education	-$20,075
Family and Human Sciences	-$24,540
Communications Technologies	-$28,911
English Language	-$39,057
Theology	-$91,749
Visual and Performing Arts	-$104,015

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by Ahmed Naeem via Digital Information World

Google Open Sources Its SynthID Text Tool For Watermarking To Better Identify AI Text

Google has confirmed that its SynthID Text tool will soon be open-sourced. The company says the goal is to make it generally available for the masses.

The tool can be installed from the leading AI app Hugging Face and also through the company’s Responsible GenAI Toolkit. This was confirmed in a post through X which signaled its free use by developers and brands. Hence, many can now better identify content made from AI.

For those still wondering how the tool works, here’s a little breakdown. When a prompt is added in the form of a query, the model predicts the sequence of tokens. This could be a single term or a character and can be looked at as building blocks to process data.

Every model assigns tokens a score which is the likelihood that it would be a part of the output. The tool will add more data if needed by modulating the probability of token generation.

The final design of scores for every model’s choice of terms is totaled with the probabilities to give a watermark. So the pattern for scoring varies for watermarked content and those without a watermark. So this helps SynthID detect when and if content is made using AI or if a combo of different sources was used to give the output.

As per Google, it’s been a part of Gemini since the start of Spring. Hence, it won’t compromise quality, accuracy, or even the speed at which text is generated. It also works great for text that’s cropped or paraphrased.

However, the firm even admits that the watermarking approach does come with its a fair share of restrictions. For instance, it doesn’t do a great job when short text is considered. The same is the case for text rewritten from other languages or replies to factual queries.

In terms of replies to actual prompts, there are fewer chances to make adjustments for tokens without impacting the real accuracy. For instance, asking for the capitals of certain cities or content where little variation can be seen will give inaccuracies.

Google is not the only firm working on AI text watermarking. We’ve seen the makers of ChatGPT experiment with different watermarking methods for a while now. There is a delay in the release, thanks to commercial and technical considerations.

As per experts, this kind of tool can assist in removing inaccuracies in content and better detect AI. today, a growing problem is the rise of AI detectors that falsely flag content when they use generic terms. So if this new tech is adopted, it could be a revolution.

Today, we’ve seen the government of China make watermarking tech a mandatory option for all AI content. The same goes for the state of California which is trying to adopt similar tech. And given the urgency of the matter, more nations will follow. As per the EU, predictions from research studies go as far as to claim that 90% of all online content could be synthetically generated by 2026.

Read next: AI’s Limitations in Storytelling: What This Study Reveals About Reader Preferences
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

AI’s Limitations in Storytelling: What This Study Reveals About Reader Preferences

A new research published in Journal of Communication says that many readers do not like stories if they assume that they are written by AI. Even if a story is written by humans but they were told that it's AI written, they think of it poorly. This shows that many people still don't trust AI and anything produced by it. The author of the study, Haoran Chris Chu, says that AI is good at writing logical and consistent things, but it is still not the best at creating stories that can engage people. That's why people don't like AI written stories.

• Also read: OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman Confirms AI Won't Replace Human Writers Anytime Soon

AI can help write narratives for people like public health workers and encourage people to come towards healthy lifestyle and behavior but it cannot create compelling stories to keep the interest of readers. Researchers did a survey by giving participants two stories– one written by ChatGPT and the other by a human. They were then asked to rate the stories according to how engaging they were.

The researchers also changed the labeling of some stories by changing AI-written to human-written and vice versa. The survey focused on counter arguing and transportation in the stories. Counterarguing refers to picking apart a story while transportation refers to feeling engrossed in a story. The results of the survey showed that AI-written stories lacked transportation which didn't engage the users. Some AI-written stories showed counterarguing but not perfectly. For now, this survey is good news for many storytellers and writers who were afraid of AI and AI-written content.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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• Facebook Marketplace Dominates with 49 Percent of Shoppers—But TikTok Isn’t Far Behind at 41 Percent!
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Facebook Marketplace Dominates with 49 Percent of Shoppers—But TikTok Isn’t Far Behind at 41 Percent!

According to a survey of 2,000 Americans by Chime, most people tend to shop online on Saturday at 2:30 pm the most. The survey found that 42% of Americans shop on Saturday, followed by 41% who shop after seeing something on social media. Gen X tends to shop on Sundays too (24%) while Gen-Z also shop online on Mondays (17%). 63% of the respondents said that they browse products online during weekdays, with millennials being the generation to do it the most (72%).

The survey was part of State of Social Sending Report which was about online shopping habits of Americans. According to the report, Americans browse products on social media thrice a week, but some also do it every day (18%). There are different channels Americans shop from. Facebook is the top marketplace for shopping for Americans. 49% shop through Facebook Marketplace but sometimes when they are scrolling for entertainment, it also turns into a purchase if they see something worthy of buying (32%). Other shopping channels for Americans include TikTok Shop (41%), Instagram (19%) and Craigslist (11%).

45% say that they are also comfortable in saving their debit or credit card information on social media sites as compared to other brands or websites (21%). Americans also spend three hours on average for window shopping and have full carts on different sites. But there are some reasons why they don't purchase the items in the cart. Those reasons include: Waiting for sale (45%), indecisiveness (31%) and forgetting about the things they have added in the cart (14%). 40% of the Americans make the purchase in the afternoon while 39% do it at night. 74% of Americans have bought a product from social media in the last month with $168 average spent on a product from social media in the last six months. Most of the purchases are of clothes, fashion accessories, tech gadgets and beauty products.

The survey found that 32% Gen-Z shop for personal hygiene products, 20% baby boomers purchase pet supplies and 26% Gen-X are likely to buy home goods from social media. The things that are least likely to be purchased online are food, drinks and kid supplies.

The survey also found what social media shoppers think of ads. 43% find them helpful as compared to 41% who find them concerning. Baby boomers found ads the most concerning (50%). 44% of Americans also try to create targeted ads. 93% of Americans have experienced targeted ads one way or another.

Read next: Do You Rely Too Much On GPS? Here's Why It Could Be Destroying Your Navigation Skills
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World