Ciaran: Hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Target internet.com.

My name is Kieran Rogers

Daniel Rowles: And I am Daniel Rowles

Ciaran: and today we have a big debate on non keyword signals.

Daniel Rowles: Okay, so non keyword signals i've become a big thing Initially, where I first came across this was actually you a few months ago,

Ciaran: When you first voiced out to me about the AI

Daniel Rowles: campaigns Within Google Ads.

And

Ciaran: what basically says, you

Daniel Rowles: in there and it

Ciaran: says not.

Daniel Rowles: on keywords anymore.

So just talk to us about that for a second.

Ki.

Ciaran: With the advent of, AI summaries and like AI questions and AI answers, you know, Google has sat on, not just what keywords did people type in, but also what did they do next.

And we all know that, you know, there's been a big drop.

For a lot of us on like organic phrases that people used to click on.

You know, if you look in your search console reports very common thing I see in lots and lots of different brands.

Search console is massive increase in impressions but quite a big drop in the actual number of clicks that you're getting.

And that makes sense, right?

Because actually people are getting the answers given to them.

They're not necessarily having to click around anymore.

Daniel Rowles: Just to give you an example, our data, so to interrupt Kirin, but the, if we look at ours, our impressions have pretty much doubled over the last 12 months.

So we've done a really good job of SEO.

Our clicks at the same time have halved, so that kind of gives you the scale that you

Ciaran: Yeah.

Daniel Rowles: with.

Ciaran: Yeah.

And the click-through rate isn't as good as it was necessarily.

And that's, again, people aren't just, aren't clicking, right?

Because they're getting, giving the answers to lots of, you know, top of funnel questions through the ai.

And that's bad news.

If you're a publisher that spent years optimizing for, you know, the obvious phrases and fighting to get your way to the top you could still be at the top.

No one's clicking.

Why?

Because the AI means they don't need to.

But you see there are lots of signals that Google are getting that tell it or who's asking that question.

So I don't know whether you then went on to click 'cause they didn't click, but I know not just what question.

Did they ask then in that moment of time, but what questions have they been asking today and yesterday and over the last 21 days and what can we infer from that?

Now, AI is brilliant at joining dots on data like that,

Daniel Rowles: Right.

Ciaran: think that's exactly what, you know, Google's engineers have turned their attention to teaching the AI how to manage it.

But it goes beyond that.

Because actually they're also seeing what videos are we watching, you know, and what emails are we getting?

If we've got Gmail.

Daniel Rowles: 'cause

Ciaran: Yeah.

Where are you going?

'cause of your Google maps.

And actually they're able to pull together literally, potentially, or who knows, you know, it's a secret source, isn't it?

But potentially millions of different data points for millions of different people.

And to build, you know, a really.

Interesting map of like almost anticipating what you might be interested in or looking at next.

Potentially with that kind of level of data, if you've got enough data points it's not too hard to make inferences on that.

And I think, you know, this is all, it's all key wordless, you know, it's not stuff that people have necessarily searched on or clicked, but actually when you start joining multiple pieces of information together like that, it presents a really.

Interesting picture and could, you know, indicate that certain people are in the market for certain different products or services.

And I think that's for me anyway that's what I'm assuming the AI max type campaigns are enabling.

And they, you know, they won't necessarily get it a hundred percent right.

But actually they get close to it.

And close is good enough actually, when you're in a competitive marketplace.

And actually I've seen, I was very impressed with the sort of, research campaigns that they'd run with various beauty brands.

And the uptick levels were.

Were really impressive.

They were sort of quoting 20, 30% uplift in results basically by using the, this key wordless, these key wordless signals.

And that's exciting, right?

It's particularly exciting in an environment where, you know, we've perhaps seen the bottom drop out of our organic clause, should we say, from our search engine optimization.

Actually a new thing like this comes along and actually it makes sense to me that actually Google is not just using AI to generate.

You know, very brief summaries, but actually it's using it to help join the dots together and work out well.

Who can we help more based on what they've told us or what they've done, or what they've searched on or where they've been?

Let's join all of that together and present a unified like solution to it.

All

Daniel Rowles: Right.

So

Ciaran: let's

Daniel Rowles: just

Ciaran: say why?

Daniel Rowles: we call this the big debate, non keyword signals, is we want to find out how you feel about the privacy implications of these things.

Okay?

Because already some people were concerned

Ciaran: About privacy because, and it's not stupid.

Daniel Rowles: You know,

Ciaran: We're gonna talk about meta in moment.

Daniel Rowles: of other people, they're all

Ciaran: all collecting lot data about, and then use

Daniel Rowles: for targeting stuff at

Ciaran: apps as well.

Daniel Rowles: But we wanna get

Ciaran: I get your opinions on this.

So for the first time, what we're gonna do,

Daniel Rowles: Is we're gonna

Ciaran: set up a bit of a starting

Daniel Rowles: for a conversation in LinkedIn.

you can go

Ciaran: go to

Daniel Rowles: internet, LinkedIn.

You can just find

Ciaran: Me on LinkedIn and

Daniel Rowles: actually if

Ciaran: target.

Daniel Rowles: internet.com/podcast, you will

Ciaran: Find the link through

Daniel Rowles: conversation.

But we want as

Ciaran: Many of you as possible,

Daniel Rowles: to

Ciaran: go through and join the debate, and

Daniel Rowles: if

Ciaran: you do

Daniel Rowles: the debate.

Ciaran: join the debate.

We encourage people to do that.

We

Daniel Rowles: got some gifts and prizes to give

Ciaran: way we

Daniel Rowles: books and merchandise,

Ciaran: something

Daniel Rowles: randomly pick some people that engage

Ciaran: in debate to get some of those

Daniel Rowles: as well.

Ciaran: now.

I said it's not just, I

Daniel Rowles: because

Ciaran: was interviewing Alex

Daniel Rowles: Schultz a couple of weeks ago.

We

Ciaran: podcast.

Daniel Rowles: He was the CMO of Meta,

Ciaran: And

Daniel Rowles: And

Ciaran: he'd written this amazing book clip here about

Daniel Rowles: Digital

Ciaran: market analytics.

But one of the things he

Daniel Rowles: which

Ciaran: totally relates to this non keyword signal side of this,

Daniel Rowles: He

Ciaran: he said that our business changed

Daniel Rowles: in the last six years.

What we do is completely changed.

I said, well, what do you mean?

And he said,

Ciaran: Well,

Daniel Rowles: essentially

Ciaran: we, everything we showed was connected.

I, we showed you some content across

Daniel Rowles: Facebook or Instagram

Ciaran: because

Daniel Rowles: you'd

Ciaran: like to technique, you follow someone

Daniel Rowles: indicated you

Ciaran: you like to.

Daniel Rowles: of content.

You are

Ciaran: Connecting to

Daniel Rowles: in some way.

And we could use all

Ciaran: some of those connections to wait things to work it out,

Daniel Rowles: You know what

Ciaran: but it is, you'd be interested in

Daniel Rowles: Suddenly it was all

Ciaran: all about disconnecting content.

What for

Daniel Rowles: or in terms of reels.

Short

Ciaran: videos.

So suddenly they've got billions of millions of these videos and depending on what you search

Daniel Rowles: you clicked on but

Ciaran: for, what you clicked on and you've actually sat and watched

Daniel Rowles: That

Ciaran: sequel is

Daniel Rowles: then steering the

Ciaran: the out.

Daniel Rowles: But the

Ciaran: Point that he made is the algorithm then has to change

Daniel Rowles: hour by hour day by.

day because

Ciaran: might be the

Daniel Rowles: for watching

Ciaran: recipes at one moment and the next week might interest fitness or whatever.

And that's gonna change

Daniel Rowles: as the day of the week, the hours go on as well.

So

Ciaran: Again, that's the example of meta

Daniel Rowles: using lots of non keyword signals to

Ciaran: type what shows up on your time.

Daniel Rowles: as well.

Ciaran: So, and it's a good example actually, 'cause I think for many years meta have been using non keyword signals, right?

Because it's not.

That well known as a search engine.

I mean, people do searches on it, but the majority of their signals have always come from other stuff.

Daniel Rowles: On things.

What did

Ciaran: yeah,

Daniel Rowles: on?

Who did you connect to?

All

Ciaran: exactly that.

Now

Daniel Rowles: what I'd say is that there's a couple of things kind of here as

Ciaran: what

Daniel Rowles: What Meta have come out and said, and this gets into the privacy, side of things as well, is they are going to start Later on this year.

They've just changed their terms and conditions to Say when you are talking to a kind of agent or a chat bot, within meta, those conversations, what they, learn from those conversations and the insights they can glean, can then be used to target advertising.

And different things at you.

Okay, Now, on first inspection, to me, that didn't seem any different to what Google are doing.

'cause Google are looking at the conversations you're having and then they're potentially going through and showing you content.

So, you know, there's a discussion there about how much are we expecting these conversations to be private?

Do we expect our ai?

chats to be anonymous?

I mean, I know that if I'm within my paid for account, for chat gpt, that's locked down and it's private to that kind of platform.

Whereas if I'm searching Google, I'm expecting Google.

to be looking at that and using it for targeting ads at me.

But you did point something out.

That's an area of potential risk.

And I hadn't got my head around, this is all, so we should say this is our opinion.

This is not something that's necessarily

Ciaran: Yeah.

What they gonna do?

The

Daniel Rowles: the data, but it's a scenario which could cause an issue.

Ciaran: I read the meta press release and we'll put a link to this in the show notes so you can read it to and form your own opinions.

But my, I suppose the thing I was overriding, the concerned about is, okay, so it seems to be saying to me that if any interactions with like AI chats within the meta platform, like to how far does that extend?

If I'm a brand that's implemented a chatbot functionality within WhatsApp, for example, does that mean then that, you know, any like purchasing signals that chatbot that, you know, we've worked with developers and had it built.

Like if it's given signals on what sort of products that people wanna buy, does that mean that those signals are gonna be used by my competitors and available to buy within, within the ad space?

Because actually that.

Instantly has me as a marketer, has me worried.

Oh, I dunno.

I dunno how safe or secure that would be.

I mean I've been playing around with this actually.

You can just have chats with llama within WhatsApp now, you know, you can just open up that box and just start chatting about stuff.

But, you know, it's the user explicitly aware of that.

You know, how ethical is that?

And I guess the answer actually comes down to how it's, this is implemented.

Like this isn't gonna be something they roll out until December, and we'll have to take a look and see where that's at.

But actually if it's just like, is that okay if it's just in somewhere hidden in the terms and conditions in small print?

Like, these are all the kind of ethical questions I've got in my mind as a marketer.

'cause actually as a, as an advertiser.

If I'm making use of that, that data, that could be, quite.

Quite sensitive data and they did say within the press release that, you know, obviously sensitive data issues are gonna be filtered for.

And, I, and I applaud that, but then my mind's working overtime again.

Yeah, how do you define sensitive data, actually?

'cause it's not a black and white thing necessarily from a consumer perspective, especially when you are aggregating millions of conversations up into a larger system.

Like where do you draw the line with that?

How far does sensitive go?

Daniel Rowles: But I'll give you, I've just had a business idea, right?

So I'm gonna take something like chat to pt,

Ciaran: Yeah.

Daniel Rowles: do it via the API, And I'm gonna train it up on loads of stuff, to digital marketing training.

Ciaran: Right.

And then I'm gonna go to all the digital marketing training business

Daniel Rowles: and I'm gonna say do you wanna embed a chat.

bot for free?

Ciaran: Yeah.

Daniel Rowles: Into your website.

Okay?

Ciaran: And

Daniel Rowles: if you do

Ciaran: do that.

It'll be an

Daniel Rowles: expert on digital market.

Better answer people's

Ciaran: question.

Daniel Rowles: It'll find

Ciaran: Find out what they're interested.

Daniel Rowles: for you.

It's really gonna be great for your

Ciaran: Your website.

Yeah.

Daniel Rowles: benefit.

Ciaran: Yeah.

Daniel Rowles: And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna Take all that data and I'm gonna use it to target ads.

at People for me.

'cause I know what they're interested, in.

Ciaran: right.

And all I've done is my terms conditions.

I've just said,

Daniel Rowles: you can have this for free, but in exchange we get to use the data.

for Target.

Ciaran: Right.

Daniel Rowles: So,

Ciaran: and you could get away with that really.

Could you though?

Is that explicit concept, was that made clear?

Did I opt into that?

Like I think this is a gray area

Daniel Rowles: if you signed up for a free tool in exchange for giving

Ciaran: giving

Daniel Rowles: to the

Ciaran: the data.

Daniel Rowles: I think that the brands have just Given that away by accident.

The people on the website would've had to go in and say, yes.

I know that if I'm using this chat bot, but you know, who's responsible for that.

Is it the website that it's sitting on?

Is it the platform that have provided the AI chat?

So that Absolutely.

There's some gray areas that get into this,

Ciaran: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Rowles: the point

Ciaran: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Rowles: being a little

Ciaran: Bit.

Daniel Rowles: but I

Ciaran: I do think that

Daniel Rowles: we're

Ciaran: starting

Daniel Rowles: you implicitly, when

Ciaran: with each,

Daniel Rowles: somebody, you implicitly trust it a little bit more.

Like you

Ciaran: you start having a much more human conversation with it.

And I think that.

Daniel Rowles: if people knew that everything they

Ciaran: Type into chat

Daniel Rowles: or Google Gemini was gonna become

Ciaran: public.

Daniel Rowles: be horrified.

And

Ciaran: And that's not what we're saying is gonna happen, but

Daniel Rowles: there is

Ciaran: it's a debate here

Daniel Rowles: be had

Ciaran: about how a

Daniel Rowles: should

Ciaran: AI conversation,

Daniel Rowles: And

Ciaran: I think your example of

Daniel Rowles: I

Ciaran: build an AI

Daniel Rowles: chatbot of

Ciaran: chat box

Daniel Rowles: to go into my

Ciaran: background.

Yeah,

Daniel Rowles: then whoever provided it could then use the data afterwards.

Ciaran: yeah.

Is.

Daniel Rowles: clear on that?

So I think it's a really, it's a really important As well.

Ciaran: A lot of this is gonna shake out in, in, in the final implementation of it.

Right.

That's the thing.

You know, I guess all I'm saying is actually, for me, it just had alarm bells ringing and I thought actually it's a really interesting, like, conversation that we could have and actually it's not something we've done a lot of like opening up the debate to all our listeners, we'd really love you to get involved with it.

Absolutely, like share your opinions on this.

We, I'd really, I'm really interested to know what people feel.

I'm really interested to know if any of you have come across similar situations within your own implementations of systems and how you've overcome it.

I could think it's just an interesting area.

Daniel Rowles: big one that's coming up at the moment from a privacy point of view with AI is that people have bought a paid for version.

They've locked it down within, their organization, and Maybe they're using co-pilot, maybe they're using chat bt, but suddenly it's got access to their OneDrive and.

They haven't got their settings set up right in their OneDrive.

So people have got access to folders they probably weren't even aware they had access to, but also they haven't cleaned out their OneDrive folders in 15 years.

And it's just a mess of files in there.

And suddenly I can say, how much does Kiran earn?

And somewhere on a thing somewhere, it's got your salary listed and my salary list and that kinda stuff.

And actually I Can access that by accident.

Now, this isn't AI errors, this is human errors that are in place already, but the AI has made that accessible.

So there's Lots of interest things coming out.

what if I use AI agent mode and I give it the login to my LinkedIn and my Facebook and my X and I'm getting it to Access those accounts and then someone hacks my CHATT PT account.

'cause I didn't sound too factual authentication, I didn't use a strong password.

All those kind of things as well.

So there's lots of interesting challenges we, would love to hear from.

you.

What do you think about AI chatbot data being used to target ads?

How have you got any concerns about security from an AI point of view at the moment?

Um, What is it that you think is acceptable and what's not acceptable of this as well?

Ciaran: I, I'd love to know what people think about how companies respond to changing their terms and conditions.

Like that's the big thing, isn't it?

I think 'cause actually you make a whole bunch of assumptions at the time and then suddenly an announcements made up with changing this.

Actually, you might already be using it.

You might, you know, how does that work for all the businesses that are already.

Using this technology you know, and therefore actually already engaged with users.

And again, all of it comes down to how it's actually rolled out and implemented.

But I think there's some big questions there.

Big questions.

Daniel Rowles: So it gets over to LinkedIn.

If you just search Target internet, you'll find it.

If you just search for Daniel Rolles, R-O-W-L-E-S, you'll find it on my platform as well, and then Easy as well Target internet com slash podcast and you'll find the link through to debate there.

Get involved lots of prizes to give away, We'll list all the prizes, um, there as well.

We'll pick out some random people engaging.

And then we will feed back into another episode.

what the results of all that engagement have been.

So Thank you for.

listening to Digital Marketing Podcast, and we look forward to joining the Big Debate.