#5Things: This Week in Social

"Stuffing the Bird App"

Joey Scarillo: Welcome to the Five Things: This Week in Social. This is the Webby award-winning podcast that looks at five stories from social data, content, and tech to give you something to listen to that will hopefully leave you feeling ready for seconds. If you're a marketer, an advertiser or a creator, or anyone who makes a living by using social platforms, then you are listening to the right podcast today on the show.

We welcome back Daniel Avon. Hello, Daniel.

Daniel Avon: Hello, Joey. It's been a while. Happy to be back.

Joey Scarillo: Glad to have you back. Okay, here's a question for you. What is your favorite Thanksgiving side dish?

Daniel Avon: This is a tough question.

Joey Scarillo: It's the toughest question of the day.

Daniel Avon: It is one of the toughest questions. I'm gonna cheat and I'm gonna say two things.
One is mashed sweet potatoes, with or without marshmallows. It honestly does and doesn't need it. Like they're both beautiful experiences unto themselves and stuffing. And I'm gonna. Maybe controversial opinion stuffing without sausage. Just plain stuffing. Give me only carbs.

Joey Scarillo: All the carbs. That all sounds delicious.
And now I'm very hungry. And back again on the show. It's Jayda Hinds. Same question to you, my friend. What's your favorite Thanksgiving side dish?

Jayda Hinds: I knew you were gonna ask this before you even started. Okay, and I had it in my head. It's stuffing this year. I've been craving it. for months, but I just haven't bought it because it didn't feel appropriate, but now it's the season, so I am ready for that, but usually it's mac and cheese.
You can't go wrong with it, and it's not even like a seasonal thing. You could have it whenever.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, I love that. Well, I'm Joey Scarillo, and I think we're all at the same Thanksgiving dinner because pass me the cornbread stuffing. I love stuffing too. All right, friends. Well, It's time for the five things.
• Jayda kicks us off this week with the EU moving to ban use of personal information for targeted advertising without consent, which could have big implications for meta platforms.
• Then Daniel breaks down the leak of Elon’s quote unquote everything app. That includes dating, finance, and more.
• Jayda looks at YouTube putting the kibosh on ad blockers on its platform.
• Next, Daniel discusses OpenAI's announcement of GPT backed customized tools for specific tasks and industries.
• And finally, Jayda takes us home with Meta, providing new incentives for creators this holiday.

All right, friends, let's get into it. We got a big one to kick us off. This is the main course, Jayda.

Tell us about the EU and their bans for Meta.

Jayda Hinds: Got you. So, soon Meta will have to obtain European users consent before using their personal info for targeted ads on Facebook or Instagram. This was announced by the European Data Protection Board, a group of data regulators representing 30 European countries, and under the General Data Protection Regulation, Meta must cite one of several specific legal justifications to use and collect people's personal data for ads.
They also risk being fined up to 4 percent of its global turnover.

Joey Scarillo: So this is obviously, this is a big deal. Right? And I'm sure we will see some repercussions of this even here in the U. S. Uh, Meta continually seems to be in hot water. Daniel, how did they respond recently?

Daniel Avon: So, they have an interesting solution to this new change in law.
Meta is looking to give consumers an option. So I think part of the stipulation in the law is that consumers must... Be able to opt into collection of their data for use in advertising or possibly have another option. So, um, Meta is proposing to ask for their consent to monetize their data for advertisements, or for the user to pay for Meta not to advertise to them at all.

Um, it's a little misleading because Meta is still collecting users data for experience purposes, for learning, for all of the ins and outs of why, um, providers collect your information in the app, but they're just not going to monetize it. When it comes to the pay itself, by next year, so there's like an initial rate that they're going to charge, but by next year, it'll be the equivalent of about 17 a month.

That sits above the Netflix’s and so forth of the world. And this is only applicable to the 30 EU countries that Jayda mentioned, including as well Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. You can kind of see this as... A little bit of a false offering or a false option. It's an obscene amount of money.
And in some reporting I read, um, Facebook makes on average about 8 a month off of its users. So essentially they're asking for users to give them two times what they're worth to meta on the platform. And we've seen similar efforts, you know, Netflix has always been ad free, but there's always been talk about having an ad supported version.

Hulu has both, YouTube has both, and other subscription services offer ad free options. But the margin of difference is usually relatively small, like a few dollars here and there. So, it'll be curious to see how this is adopted, and if there is actually a market. For a social platform, something that is used with such frequency and in a different way than maybe a, a video consumption platform, how big that market is for consumers to actually pay into it.

But Joey, I wanted to go back to one thing that you said at the very beginning, which is Europe is usually an indicator of what's going to happen in the U S. So when GDPR came down. There was a similar Data Protections Act that came in California that's been used sort of as law in the U. S. I can only imagine that a similar thing will come about in the U.S. in the next few years, if not sooner.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, Jayda, what do you think? How would this... Law look in in the US and what do you think that would mean for meta users?

Jayda Hinds: Oh, that is a tough question because it already feels like an obscene amount of money to be asking from users I have a hard time even imagining this in my head, but the reality is That is Meta's response to this lawsuit.

Seeing this play out in the U. S., as Daniel said, what happens in the EU could very well predict what happens over here in the States. I just know that there would be backlash to it. On Twitter, when Elon proposed that people had to pay, what was it? One dollar? There's, there's always an amount you have to pay with X now.

Not Twitter, but X. Over on X, when Elon wanted, um, users to pay for the content. There was extreme backlash. People wanted to, to boycott the platforms. And with TikTok being a huge meta competitor, I can see people moving toward that app more than paying 18, 17 to use the platform.

Joey Scarillo: I think I. I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this podcast asking this question, but just like quick hit, Daniel, would you pay this amount for Instagram?

Daniel Avon: Absolutely not.

Joey Scarillo: Jayda, what about you?

Jayda Hinds: … Yes. Oh God.

Joey Scarillo: No, it's good. It's an honest answer. That's a good answer. It's good to know. Good insight. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to our second thing. Uh, Jayda sort of alluded to Elon, so let's just dive right in. Daniel, tell us about Elon's plans for an everything app.

We sort of mentioned this last week on the podcast, but he's talking about getting into dating. He's talking about getting into finance. What, what, what's the deal here?

Daniel Avon: So, we'll also call back to earlier, earlier, when Elon acquired X, or Twitter, at the time, he did say he had this goal of turning Twitter into an everything app but really never substantiated what he was talking about to bring Twitter now X beyond the digital town square that has always been.
So fast forwarding to the end of October, there was a session at X between Musk and Yacarino, the new CEO. It was actually the first engagement that they spoke to together, to employees. And the sound recording of this was leaked to the press. And there's actually a writeup in a Verge article, which I read to prepare for talking about this today on the pod where they actually have.
Every single thing line by line of what was said in it. But I will try to kind of summarize what was intended to be a way for Elon and Yacarino to answer questions from employees. And instead they just talked about the plans for the company. So the plans include adding payments and a financial hub undergirded by Musk's particular experience with PayPal.

Dating, as you mentioned, Joey focused on discovering interesting people. They're also vying with their new features and offerings within the video space to compete with YouTube's video dominance. One thing that they cited as, as a benefit or a different thing that they've done is they have picture in picture on desktop, which is really not that revolutionary, but, you know, it is something that they are touting as a, as a user experience.

And they're also looking to tap into recruiting, like on LinkedIn, and audio video calling, like FaceTime. They actually name dropped every single one of these platforms in like, we wanna do this, we wanna do that. They're benchmarking against existing properties. And saying, yes, we want to be this all in one, everything app.

It's an interesting proposition, but the things that he's looking to connect require a lot of consumer confidence, particularly as it relates to finances, security, integrity, making sure that data is not stolen, that they're not using your information incorrectly, or that you're not subscribing into something that you can't get out of.

All of these different things create a bit of a doubt in consumers minds. Personally, as a general rule, I try my darndest to not give my financial information away, like You purchase something, I don't hit save my information because you never know where it may land and you want to be in control of it as much as possible.

Least of all to say, giving it to a social platform that really does not have a lot of consumer or advertiser confidence. It's interesting because I've heard of things like the only ways to make monies in certain industries is fragmenting.
After cable, we've been in this like massive fragmentation, like streaming services, this explosion and all of that. And there is recently a little bit more of a move to consolidation. So I think he is signaling something that is happening in the market, something that Facebook is doing. They're trying to get into payments.

They already got into dating. TikTok is also trying to do commerce and all of these types of things. So it makes sense in line with what other apps are doing to kind of consolidate all the different things that you can do on them. But it is a little concerning for me knowing that this is one of many things on the list of to do things for their dev and engineering teams to take care of when they still haven't figured out the advertising side of things.

Brought advertisers back and really instilled confidence back into the users.

Building the plane while it's flying type of thing. Even we're concerning that since Elon has taken over. X's value has gone in half. So while there's a lot of good intentions, a lot of good ideas, they need to fix the basics before they can really build these other things on my personal opinion.
I could be eating crow when they succeed in two years, but it just feels a little bit of a miss if they haven't really done all of the things that they. Should be doing to secure the future of the platform for what it is today.

Joey Scarillo: You know, what's so interesting about this is we tout Elon as such a visionary, not we necessarily, but like the proverbial we.

And all of these things that he's touting here feel like things that have been done. And we've even talked about this Jayda on the show, that dating apps. aren't as popular as they used to be. So do you think in everything app will work? Do you, would you trust Elon with your banking and dating information?

Jayda Hinds: When I read this story, I asked the same questions that Daniel did. Do people trust X enough to use it as the everything app? I know some advertisers who have pulled their brand away from posting because the app appears unstable. And I remember when he first acquired it. There were tons of bug and performance issues.

So that alone makes me wonder, and finance is the biggest thing. I wonder if people would trust their finances on the app, but generally speaking, because this meeting was leaked, it sounds like to the reader that they plan to implement this all at once, I imagine that this would happen in stages instead.

And if they. Acquire trust again, little by little. Maybe this could work, but um, X adds to everything up, as it stands right now, to me, sounds... Like a no, as far as trust.

Joey Scarillo: “That's a no for me”. Um, okay, Jayda, talk to us a little bit about what's going on over at YouTube. They're talking about putting the kibosh on ad blockers. What's the deal here?

Jayda Hinds: So YouTube confirmed there is a global effort to crack down on ad blockers. Either by encouraging users to use YouTube premium, which I brought as a present for my partner, or to simply allow ads. So, over the past several weeks, more people using ad blockers are unable to watch YouTube videos.

This initially started as a small global experiment, but it's since expanded. And the YouTube communications manager, Christopher Lawton, said that using ad blockers violates the platform's terms of service and mentions ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions of people to access their favorite content on YouTube.

And my thoughts are that Christopher is not wrong. Um, maybe it's because I work in advertising, but there have been plenty of times where I've sat down. through an ad intentionally, and I didn't skip because I wanted to support my favorite creator on that platform in that type of way.

Joey Scarillo: What a great gift, Jayda.

Jayda Hinds: Yeah, I'm still paying for it, Joey. It's the gift that never ends.

Joey Scarillo: Wonderful, wonderful. Uh, Daniel, when users of YouTube use an ad blocker, Who loses the most? Is it the advertisers? Is it YouTube? Or is it the creators?

Daniel Avon: I don't know if there's a single person that loses the most, to be honest. Like, I will say as the user, there is nothing more embarrassing than playing like YouTube with a, like a group of friends and you have an ad come up, it's like, kind of like takes the experience out.

And so I understand the, the idea to purchase using this and or blocking the ads altogether. There are ad avoiders, we're aware of them in the industry and so forth. But I think like there is. Maybe a little bit of revenue that YouTube is missing out on because of the ad blockers. It amounts to a lot, but you know, they're quite a large company and they do make quite a lot of money.

So the biggest one, aside from the user experience of like, Oh, this is awkward. It's probably the creator. Cause like they need the money more than YouTube likely does. And they're not getting the credit for it because their viewers are using ad blockers.

Joey Scarillo: Do you think it's a technology issue? Like, is the question not that there are ads, but it is the way in which the ads appear on the platform, Daniel?

Daniel Avon: I mean, they have a lot of solutions. Like, this is not a YouTube sales pitch, but like, they have six second bumpers. They have skippable placements. They have force view premium placements and so forth. Like, they have variety in terms of length and engagement, which I think is good from a user and advertiser standpoint.

But since the advent of ad blockers and really like Netflix, having like all of this content that you can stream without advertising has really put in people's heads. I don't like advertising. I can avoid it. So I will try to avoid it. And so I think it's more of like, it's a user experience gap that is being filled either by an ad blocker or by paying into things.

I don't think it's so much to do with like the delivery of advertisements. I can complain for other. Platforms and maybe some news websites that inundate you with like, video, uh, banner, live banner, like all of these different things that make the... Reading an article, which is what you came to the site to do, really unpleasant.

I think YouTube is pretty clean with how they have all the ad placements everywhere.

Joey Scarillo: Jayda, you wouldn't know because you pay for premium, so you, you don't have to worry about the YouTube ads.

Jayda Hinds: I don't even use premium. That is literally just Darius. I, yeah, no, I, I sit down and I watch the ads.

Joey Scarillo: Oh, that's wonderful.
All right. Let's move on to our fourth thing. Daniel, talk to us about what just recently happened at the Developers Conference for OpenAI. It sounded like they... rolled out some new tools.

Daniel Avon: Yeah, so not officially rolled out, but they are in progress of rolling them out and announced that they would be happening.
It's pretty exciting because I feel since we started talking about generative AI on this podcast, it's been like exploratory. What's going on? Responsibility, all these different things. And this conference feels like. a maturing of, of what they're planning to do from a technology rollout perspective and so forth.
So the conference itself was for developers. It was the first ever that they had, and there was a lot of focus, conversation and news about ChatGPT in particular. All of us have probably used it for one purpose or another, and have probably dealt with similar frustrations. Um. The results are not accurate.
Some things are not reliable. It's not specific enough. It doesn't answer the question the way that I want it to answer me. And it may sound human, but it's missing just that one thing. So with this in mind, they are coming out with what are called AI agents or GPTs that will be available in the GPT store.

Um, they're customized. Or specific to industries or tasks. And they're trained on datasets relevant to those tasks. So it has still some of the same technology behind chat GPT, but the goal is to kind of focus things in on tone of voice or style or subject area and so forth. So some examples that were given in an article was think Harry Potter or a Renaissance painter.

So like you may write, give me. Two paragraphs of the story of Harry Potter where Hermione is the lead and blah blah blah blah blah. If you do that within a general Chet GPT environment, it may do okay, but if you do it within the Harry Potter themed one, it'll... give you a better experience, a better result, and something that you as the user likely will have to edit less.

It's to be noted as well that Meta is doing something similar, but their focus is obviously a little bit different, like what lives within the Meta apps. It's focused more on communication style and voice. Possibly one day you could replicate the way that you speak, or the way that you Message and type and have it generate prompts or messages on your behalf.

This feels to be sort of like the general theme and next chapter of AI specialization and really focusing in on having end deliverables, as opposed to using AI as a rough draft, which is what I personally currently am using it for, and it also is kind of exciting from a data responsibility perspective.

It's more manageable chunks of data. It's not this like big data set that you're like. Where are all of these bits and pieces coming from? It's really focused into subject areas and allows for a level of containment, which some companies are already taking advantage of that you can train on your own data, have technology that's based on your own data developed on it and play in that pool as opposed to like going open, opening yourself up to some data security issues, as well as, you know, if you're a brand using AI generated images.

In a campaign, you are kind of taking on a lot of legal responsibility that you could avoid if you're working off of like a brand library or something like that, that you've already paid for.

Joey Scarillo: Jayda. What of all these new features? What do you think might be the most helpful for marketers and for creators?

Jayda Hinds: Maybe the creative writing coach of the GPT called that where you can, you know, upload PDFs of writing samples because my experience with chat GPT has been it. And it's original form and where I've asked a question and gotten a very general response back. I'm very curious to see if something like the creative writing coach would be even useful for my job in the social department.

Or if it'll just simply be a condensed version of what we know, just with a different title. But at least for me in social, I can see me gearing towards something with writing, creative writing, in that space.

Joey Scarillo: That's really great, Jayda. Obviously, each person will find a way to use the AI in a different way, and, and each industry, and so, I think if they can just keep being more specific and really honing this technology, you know, endless possibilities.

Jayda Hinds: The more people use it, the better it gets. So, the more that there are these different GPTs, the more that there's programs or pushes for people to use it, the, the better it's just gonna get over time, so. If it's not perfect now... It'll, it'll inevitably improve.

Joey Scarillo: That's right. There's always room for improvement.
Okay. Let's take it home. Something here for the holidays. Jayda, talk to us about Meta providing new incentives for creators. This holiday season.

Jayda Hinds: Yeah, there are a lot. So Meta is looking to help creators capitalize on the holiday season by providing new incentives for creators, tons of incentives, uh, for Instagram creators with a professional account that has 5, 000 plus followers, and stream gifts are now available in 33 more regions where users can send digital gifts to creators online.

There's also seasonal themed virtual gifts on Facebook. Meta is also implementing a new invite only holiday bonus program for creative talent that rewards top Instagram creators based on photo views or real views during the holiday bonus period. There's also a new subscribe button that will appear when a creator's followers see their content in feed to create a stronger sense of community between creators and followers.

And then over on Facebook, creators have the ability to offer free 30 day subscription trials to their fans. And then lastly, Meta is adding some best practices for creators to make their posts eligible for ad partnerships. This sounds like a lot at once, and it just also sounds like Meta is trying to have creators not upload something from TikTok, but create an app specifically to Meta.

But hearing that Meta is providing in stream GIFs to Instagram creators on live reminds me of this NPC trend on TikTok that got famous by one creator. Saying ice cream so good whenever she received an ice cream digital gift that
Eventually brought a string of content creators doing that type of NPC content acting out a digital gift And I remember going on tik tok going on my live and scrolling through and every type of content was live with people doing things specifically to receive gifts that was a way for creators to make money and They made a lot of money, and I think Instagram is trying to capitalize off that type of content.

Joey Scarillo: Daniel, can you break down a little bit of what Jayda said about NPC content?

Daniel Avon: Yes. I wish I could do the Mariah, it's time, because it's time. This is one of my favorite trends. NPC, I'm gonna get the abbreviation wrong, but it's like a non player character within a video game. Essentially, somebody that you may or may not interact with, but they are not a character that you can play within a game.

So, this person that Jade is referring to in particular, which she says, ice cream so yum. She, or so good or whatever, she puts on this voice that's like, not human. It's like very, like, think back in the day on Grand Theft Auto when you're like going by somebody and they have like a side conversation and they sound crazy.

Like it's essentially that, but it's kind of genius to like, you know that these reward tokens exist that translate to money for the creator and to incentivize people to give you those tokens. For joy, for laughter, for whatever. I'm curious to see if this migrates its way over to Instagram. Like my following feed, I don't think that any of the people that I follow and do lives and whatever would do that.

But perhaps with this new holiday set, they'll be inclined to do so. And we may see that trend migrate over to Instagram if it's not already.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, and I'm sure, you know, a version of it will make its way to other creators, maybe not the exact same way, but manifest itself in some other creative look and feel, if you will.

Well friends, I am thankful for both of you for being here on the show today.

Next week, we will have something special in the podcast feed before we take off for Thanksgiving. So look out for that. That does it for us today. If you don't already, be sure to follow us, share us, review us, like us, or write to us with your questions, comments, concerns, points of interest, or complaints. Or just send us a thing you want us to discuss.

You can do all of that by emailing us at podcasts at Grey.com. Connect with us on Spotify by sharing your thoughts on the show. Just look for the Q&A field.
The topics discussed on this show are written and researched by the social and connections team at Grey New York, with help this week from our panel, Jayda Hinds and Daniel Avon.

This podcast is produced by me, Joey Scarillo and Samantha Geller with post production by Amanda Fuentes, Guy Rosmarin, and Ned Martin at Gramercy Park studios, marketing and communication support from Adrian Hopkins, Christina Hyde, and Jayda Hinds.
Listen to Grey Matter: A Podcast about Ideas where we speak to founders, artists, and innovators about bringing their ideas to life. You can find Grey Matter: A Podcast About Ideas, wherever you find this podcast, all episodes are available now.

That's it for us this week. Thank you, listener. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And please, be social.

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