Late Funnel SEO Profits

Before the Panda update SEOs could easily focus almost all their energies on late funnel high-intent searches which were easy to monetize without needing to put a ton of effort into brand building or earlier funnel informational searches. This meant that SEOs could focus on phrases like [student credit cards] or [buy earbuds] or [best computer gaming headphones] or [vertical computer mouse] without needing to worry much about anything else. Make a good enough page on those topics, segment demand across options, and profit.

Due to the ability to focus content & efforts on those tiny subset high-intent commercial terms the absolute returns and CPMs from SEO investments were astronomical. Publishers could insert themselves arbitrarily just before the end of the value chain (just like Google AdWords) and extract a toll.

The Panda Shift / Eating the Info Supply Chain

Then Panda happened and sites needed to have stronger brands and/or more full funnel user experience and/or more differentiated content to be able to rank sustainably.

One over-simplified way to think of Panda and related algorithms would be: brand = rank.

Another way to look at it would be to consider the value chain of having many layers or pieces to it & Google wanting to remove as many unneeded or extra pieces from the chain as possible so that they themselves are capturing more of the value chain.

• That thin eHow article about a topic without any useful info? Not needed.
• The thin affiliate review which was buying Google AdSense ad impressions on that eHow article? Also not needed.
• All that is really needed is the consumer intent, Google & then either Google as the retailer (pay with your credentials stored in your phone) or another trusted retailer.

In some cases there may be value in mid-market in-depth reviews, but increasingly the aggregate value offered by many of them is captured inside the search snippets along with reviews directly incorporated into the knowledge graph & aggregate review scores.

The ability to remove the extra layers is driven largely by:

• the quality of the top players in the market
• the number of quality publishers in a market (as long as there are 2 or more, whoever is not winning will be willing to give a lot of value to Google to try to play catch up against their stronger competitor)
• the amount of usage data available in the market
• the ad depth of the market

If your competitor is strong and they keep updating in-depth content pieces you can't set and forget your content and stay competitive. Across time searcher intent changes. Those who change with the markets should eventually have better engagement metrics and keep winning marketshare.

Benchmarking Your Competition

You only have to be better than whatever you are competing against to win.

If you have run out of ideas from your direct competitors in an emerging market you can typically find many more layers of optimization from looking at some of the largest and most successful players inside either the United States or China.

To give an example of how user data can be clean or a messy signal consider size 13 4E New Balance shoes. If you shop for these inside the United States a site like Amazon will have shoe size filters so you can see which shoes from that brand are available in that specific size.

In some smaller emerging markets ecommerce sites largely suck. They might allow you to filter shoes by the color blue but wanting to see the shoes available in your size is a choose your own adventure game as they do not offer those sorts of size filters, so you have to click into the shoe level, find out they do not have your size, and then try again. You do that about 100 times then eventually you get frustrated and buy off eBay or Amazon from someone who ships internationally.

In the first case it is very easy for Google to see the end user flow of users typically making their purchase at one of a few places like Amazon.com, the official New Balance store, or somewhere else like that which is likely to have the end product in stock. That second experience set is much harder to structure because the user signal is much more random with a lot more pogos back to Google.

Bigger, Better Ads

Over the past couple decades Google has grown much more aggressive at monetizing their search results. A website which sees its rank fall 1 position on mobile devices can see their mobile search traffic cut in half overnight. And desktop search results are also quite ad heavy to where sometimes a user can not see a single full organic result above the fold unless they have a huge monitor.

We tend to look at the present as being somewhat static. It is a part of human nature to think things are as they always were. But the general trend of the slow bleed squeeze is a function of math and time: "The relentless pressure to maintain Google’s growth, he said, had come at a heavy cost to the company’s users. Useful search results were pushed down the page to squeeze in more advertisements, and privacy was sacrificed for online tracking tools to keep tabs on what ads people were seeing."

Some critics have captured the broad shift in ad labeling practices, but to get a grasp of how big the shift has been look at early Google search results.

Look at how bright those ad units from 2001 are.

Since then ad labeling has grown less intuitive while ad size has increased dramatically.

Traffic Mix Shift

As publishers have been crowded out on commercial searches via larger ads & Google's vertical search properties a greater share of their overall search traffic is lower value visitors including people who have little to no commercial intent, people from emerging markets with lower disposable income and

Falling Ad Rates

Since 2010 online display ad rates have fallen about 40%.

Any individual publisher will experience those declines in a series of non-linear step function shifts. Any of the following could happen:

• Google Panda or another algorithm update from a different attention merchant hits your distribution hard
• a Softbank-backed competitor jumps into your market and gains a ton of press coverage using flammable money
• a roll-up player buys out a series of sites in the supply chain & then tries to make the numbers back out by cramming down on ad syndication partners (sometimes you have to gain enough scale to create your own network or keep rotating through ad networks to keep them honest)
• regulatory costs hit any part of the supply chain (the California parallel to GDPR just went live this month)
• consumer interest shifts to other markets or solutions (the mobile phone has replaced many gadgets)
• a recession causes broad-based advertiser pullbacks

Margin Eaters

In addition to lowering ad rates for peripheral websites, there are a couple other bonus margin eaters.

Junk Sunk Costs

Monopoly platforms push publishers to adopt proprietary closed code bases in order to maintain distribution: "the trade group says Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format was foisted on news publishers with an implied threat — their websites wouldn't show up in search results."

Decreased Supply Chain Visibility

Technical overhead leading to programmatic middlemen eating a huge piece of the pie: "From every £1 spent by an advertiser, about half goes to a publisher, roughly 16p to advertising platforms, 11p to other technology companies and 7 per cent to agencies. Adtech companies that took part in the study included Google’s dv360 and Ad Manager, Amazon Advertising and the Rubicon Project."

Selection Effect

Large attention merchants control conversion tracking systems and displace organic distribution for brands by re-routing demand through a layer of ads which allows the central network to claim responsibility for conversions which would have already happened had they not existed.

Internal employees in the marketing department and external internet marketing consultants have an incentive to play along with this game because:

• it requires low effort to arbitrage your own brand
• at first glance it looks wildly profitable so long as you do not realize what is going on
• those who get a percent of spend can use the phantom profits from arbitraging their own brand equity to spend more money elsewhere
• those who get performance based bonuses get a bonus without having to perform

Both eBay and Microsoft published studies which showed how perverse selection effect is.

The selection effect bias is the inverse of customer acquisition cost. The more well known your brand is the more incentive ad networks have to arbitrage it & the more ad networks will try to take credit for any conversion which happens.

2) Why does CAC (mostly) only go up?

When you think about, CAC is "lowest" in the beginning, because you have no customers. You can get the low-hanging fruit cost effectively.

Think ad spend. Outbound sales spend. etc. First movers are ready to buy quickly.— Elizabeth Yin (@dunkhippo33) July 6, 2020

These margin eaters are a big part of the reason so many publishers are trying to desperately shift away from ad-based business models toward subscription revenues.

Hitting Every Layer

The commodification of content hits every layer from photography....

Networking is an art and a skill... but if the gold you hold are your images, don’t trade them for the passive networking value.

Simple lesson that is difficult to accept.— Send it. (@johnondotcom) July 4, 2020

...on through to writing

When you think about it, even $1000 is really inexpensive for a single piece of content that generates 20,000+ visits from search in the 1-3 years it's alive and ranks well. That's only about 1,000 visits a month. Yet companies only want to pay writers only $200 an article — Dan Shure (@dan_shure) July 6, 2020

...and every other layer of the editorial chain.

Profiting from content creation at scale is harder than most appreciate.

The idea that a $200 piece of content is particularly cheap comes across as ill-informed as there are many headwinds and many variables. The ability to monetize content depends on a ton of factors including: how commercial is it, how hard is it to monetize, what revshare do you go, how hard is it to rank or get distribution in front of other high intent audience sets?

If an article costs $200 it would be hard to make that back if it monetizes at anything under a $10 RPM. 20,000 visits equates to 20 units of RPM.

Some articles will not spread in spite of being high quality. Other articles take significant marketing spend to help them spread. Suddenly that $200 "successful" piece is closer to $500 when one averages in nonperformers that don't spread & marketing expenses on ones that do. So then they either need the RPM to double or triple from there or the successful article needs to get at least 50,000 visits in order to break even.

A $10 RPM is quite high for many topics unless the ads are quite aggressively integrated into the content. The flip side of that is aggressive ad integration inhibits content spread & can cause algorithmic issues which prevent sustained rankings. Recall that in the most recent algorithm update Credit Karma saw some of their "money" credit card pages slide down the rankings due to aggressive monetization. And that happened to a big site which was purchased for over $7 billion. Smaller sites see greater levels of volatility. And nobody is investing $100,000s trying to break even many years down the road. If they were only trying to break even they'd buy bonds and ignore the concept of actively running a business of any sort.

Back in 2018 AdStage analyzed the Google display network and found the following: "In Q1 2018, advertisers spent, on average, $2.80 per thousand impressions (CPM), and $0.75 per click (CPC). The average click-through rate (CTR) on the GDN was 0.35%."

A web page which garnered 20,000 pageviews and had 3 ad units on each page would get a total of 210 ad clicks given a 0.35% ad CTR. At 75 cents per click that would generate $157.50.

Suddenly a "cheap" $200 article doesn't look so cheap. What's more is said business would also have other costs beyond the writing. They have to pay for project management, editorial review, hosting, ad partnerships & biz dev, etc. etc. etc.

After all those other layers of overhead a $200 article would likely need to get about 50,000 pageviews to back out. And a $1,000 piece of content might need to get a quarter million or more pageviews to back out.

This year is a rather easy year to be depressed. ;)

COVID-19, fearmongering media, polarized hyper-charged social media, mass unemployment, lockdowns that killed exercise routines and social connections, loss of hope / purpose / meaning, a guy who stuck a gun in the belly area of a pregnant woman overdosing on fentanyl shortly after he passed counterfeit currency, that broader background being utterly ignored so outrage could fuel widespread rioting with a man in dreadlocks kicking a man sitting in the street unconscious & other bonus random drive by shootings where actual heroes are murdered at random, cities being burned down, communist anarchy, social "justice" movements founded on the idiotic idea of improving society by ripping apart the family unit, etc.

This post is not a suicide letter, but an ode to reality of accepting today for what it is. :D

pic.twitter.com/OWBHGa5eKR— Zero Gravity Media (@zerogravityhxp) August 12, 2020

Last year was the first year where I managed an office with a bunch of employees in it. When the office opened my email inbox had under 2,000 emails built up in it over a 16 year period of working on the web. Far from inbox zero, I am now above 20,000. I think in a Bill Gates interview about a half year ago I smiled after hearing his sort of EGT was how his email inbox was doing. I timed that office opening almost perfectly for COVID-19 so I could have all the stress and cost associated with training a team, setting up a ton of computers, creating workflow, ... and then none of the benefits as the office would get shut down shortly after things began to operate smoothly. :D

By the end of last year a was a bit (err...lot) on the fat side from working too much, too much stress, and exercising too little. My weight and the length of my fuse are reciprocals.

In the past I used to harness negative energy into a form of rage to fuel drive, but now that I am over 40 I find it much harder to live that way. I've already had a number of near death experiences (including one when my wife was pregnant with our only child) and think at some point living that rage-drive way is just shitty. Just say no to endless rage.

So when it was obvious this year was largely going to be dog crap, I started to look internally instead of externally & figured it made more sense to improve health & mood than to fight the gravity of the global depression we are currently living through.

Exogenous Shocks

When things change out of nowhere they can end up dramatically changing the social and economic order.

Many such changes are utterly arbitrary and orthogonal to the concepts of fairness, justice, human decency, etc.

Some parties are politically connected & shielded from actual market forces.

As a self-employed person living overseas I am certainly not one of those protected parties. That said, my family and the people who work for me look to me and hope I can help shield them from some of the crap reality served up this year.

As a rule, when exogenous shocks happen those who are not politically connected get screwed hardest.

Smaller firms tend to under-perform larger firms: "As the earnings season draws to a close, companies within the Russell 2000 stock index — the small-cap benchmark — have reported an aggregate loss of $1.1bn, compared to profits of almost $18bn a year earlier, according to data provider FactSet. Meantime, the much bigger companies within the benchmark S&P 500 index have posted a 34 per cent aggregate drop in earnings, to $233bn."

Poorer people are more likely to lose their jobs.

Emerging markets tend to get hit harder than developed markets. Which only adds to the powder keg of instability as the food price inflation tied to falling incomes makes many people rather desperate.

etc.

As people get desperate violence increases & many governments get overthrown.

Central banks printing cash to prop up the financial markets only increases the divide further.

Congratulations @federalreserve pic.twitter.com/8HxhLH9il5— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) August 17, 2020

That increased income & wealth inequality makes "the system" only feel that much more fraudulent, which in turn acts as a powder keg to fuel more arbitrary misdirected violence.

Tesla now has a $340 billion market capitalization. They remain unprofitable outside of harvesting tax credits.

Beyond fueling increased violence, the sky high numbers for FOMO stocks also lead some people to feel like they are failures for only slightly succeeding or just getting by.

Others pile in to trashy cryptocurrencies in an attempt to catch up where they only further compound their losses.

Waiting Things Out

It is worth noting many of the jobs that are gone are gone for good.

We may very well be facing a global depression:

"The pandemic has created a massive economic contraction that will be followed by a financial crisis in many parts of the globe, as nonperforming corporate loans accumulate alongside bankruptcies. Sovereign defaults in the developing world are also poised to spike. This crisis will follow a path similar to the one the last crisis took, except worse, commensurate with the scale and scope of the collapse in global economic activity. And the crisis will hit lower-income households and countries harder than their wealthier counterparts. ... In all of the worst financial crises since the mid-nineteenth century, it took an average of eight years for per capita GDP to return to the pre-crisis level. (The median was seven years.) ... The last time all engines failed was in the Great Depression; the collapse this time will be similarly abrupt and steep."

If you can't afford to feed your family of course you have to solve that problem first. But if you are not absolutely financially desperate then this can be a good year to win in ways other than finances & only worry about money after other things are in a better place.

This is a good year to find meaning through various types of self-improvement and doing lots of small & kind things for the people around you. Yesterday was a good day to buy your wife flowers. So is today. Tomorrow is a good day to buy a friend a surprise gift.

One of the best books you can read about developing positive personal habits is Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit. It is 8 years old now but it is still a great read.

Pushing for broad structural changes in a crisis through ideology which removes ordinary feedback loops often ends up creating only further injustice with the campaign "hero" looking like their polar opposite. Ideology pushed hard enough wraps around to the other side.

When things are absolutely screwed the world over it is better to focus on improving yourself and your family rather than promoting arbitrary extrajudicial justice and burning things down further.

Here are the steps I took to improve a good bit so far this year.

Coronavirus Lockdowns

When I saw a video of a guy walking down the street in Wuhan cough blood and fall over dead I immediately ordered facemasks for everyone in my extended family. I also bought facemasks and gloves into the office for workers. As it turns out gloves were largely a non-winner because using them is more likely to spread virus and bacteria, but the intent was good.

Cygnus recommended taking the supplement quercetin & so did Dr. Zev, so I do that.

Our government does not want us to treat covid early. If I get covid and no hcq access-I would take IMMEDIATELY quercetin 500mg three times a day for 7 days and elemental zinc 50mg one a day for 7 days, and z-pack. Every American home should have quercetin and zinc.— Dr. Zev Zelenko (@zev_dr) August 16, 2020

When lockdowns were announced I hoarded months worth of baby formula so I know my daughter would be ok & bought her a couple birthday presents in case the lockdowns were extended repeatedly. They were, so that worked out ok.

When lockdowns ended I bought a ton of different toys for my daughter so I could share them with her and make up for the limited outside contact for the time being. I also brought my lead graphic & web designer a dual monitor computer to his house to improve his efficiency.

Any day where there is not a lockdown I try to make the most of it knowing another couple months or quarter year can disappear arbitrarily.

Making the most out of the day for me often means doing something positive on the health front & meaning front right away. Things like getting food for my daughter or going for a walk are big wins early in the day as we tend to slow down and get tired as the day drags on.

Health / Fitness

Early in the year when I could use the gym I was walking at a brisk pace for about an hour a day while reading books and listening to podcasts.

After gyms were forced to be closed I started walking outside. Initially this was often to get groceries or various baby supplies, though I continued to walk daily even when there wasn't a real direct need just to keep mood up with all the ridiculous crap going on in the world. I used to think the Philippines was way too hot when I had to drive everywhere, but even if it is hot as hell it isn't bad to be out in the sun and heat so long as you are only walking especially if the walk has a purpose which helps your loved ones in some way.

Walking regularly with nothing else going on can be boring as hell, of course, so to offset the boredom I bring my iPhone and have some Airpod Pro earbuds with their killer noise canceling features. When nobody is near me I sometimes pull down my face mask and jog or sprint for a while to add variety to the day. I also sometimes make people's ears bleed by singing along in an effort to share the joy of whatever I am listening to. :D

There are many awesome acoustic songs on YouTube. Revisiting unheard versions of songs you liked a long time ago can make the lyrics more powerful.

Some of the spoken-word song introductions are quite powerful: "everyone wants you to forget you are gonna die, because if they convince you your not gonna die you waste your time doing what they want you to do. Spend money on what they're selling. ... one day I'm gonna die, but before then I'm gonna live, live, live, the way I want to live and I hope you do too."

Whenever I exercise I usually have caffeine as well. I view it a bit like a band aid or kick start, but I try to only use it either explicitly when walking or when intensely focusing on work.

If my back hurts from sitting at the chair too long that is a cue to get up and take a break even if it is a short one to go play with my daughter.

Sometimes I will walk two or three times throughout the day to break up the monotony.

Most my exercise is walking or jogging, but occasionally I will do a few push ups or sit ups.

In a world of gloom it is hard to look in the mirror and see a steaming pile of garbage which is not well maintained and feel good about yourself.

You know what sacrifices you have made and what the costs were, but it is easy to go down the path of resentment if outcomes are subpar and beyond your control in the short term.

If you don't feel alive you aren't. :D

It's a lifeless life, with no fixed address to give
But you're not mine to die for anymore
so I must live

Diet

I try to eat salad, Indian food, quiche, nuts, beef jerky, and all sorts of other foods where carbohydrates are sort of only incidental and are not core to the dish.

Anything that looks/smells/feels/sounds like sugar, rice, potatoes, bread, derivatives thereof, etc. I consider to be poison / systemic inflammation / weight gain and try to skip it.

I also consider drinking calories to be a disaster as the glycemic index on things like a soda are through the roof.

If you are fat and eat a lot of carbs you are repeatedly spiking your blood sugar, then it crashes, then you are hungry again. This habit & addictive cycle works on some of the same neural pathways that hardcore drugs do.

Sometimes I still do eat a bit of peanut butter or chocolate or frozen chocolate dipped in peanut butter, though I try not to use it meal replacement style very often & try not to be "full jar now empty" Aaron. Three tips on that front are to eat peanut butter using a chop stick so you eat it slower, eat small pieces of chocolate, and freeze the chocolate before eating so it takes a while to chew and you realize just how much you are eating. :D

When I wake I often wait at least 4 or 5 hours before eating my first meal. In some cases I stretch that out to 6 or 8.

Communicating

I know a lot of people are in a bad state this year, so I try to offset that at least slightly by overcommunicating.

I send my mom pictures or videos of my daughter every day as she told me those help her sleep better at night and her watch even shows her blood pressure is lower and she feels much more well rested the next morning. I have bought my daughter a ton of extra clothes to wear just so my mom gets a bit more variety in the pictures and my daughter will have a ton of memories to sort through when she is older.

Our daughter has quite a bit of energy so sometimes she makes communicating with my wife hard. Sometimes we have better luck texting back and forth if something is urgent and then discuss it in more detail over email or when our daughter is taking a nap.

A lot of people around me have recently went through hardships beyond the financial uncertainties many are facing.

• Our web designer's mom had a heart attack then got COVID-19 but I think she is ok now.
• Our lead writer had a friend younger than I who after going to the hospital with COVID-19.
• Our lead programmer's parents recently had their house broken into with some of their sentimental jewelry stolen & he is the glue guy for the whole family.
• One of my buddies recently broke up with his long time girlfriend.

I am sure there are a lot more similar stories that I have not been told yet. So as a rule of thumb I sort of consider that if people have historically been good its ok to give them more leeway this year & be extra kind.

Mental Health

One of the cheapest & easiest wins in terms of quality of life is setting your grounding from a perspective of feeling lucky so that you are appreciative & try to be a better version of yourself. Episode 504 of This American Life shares an inspiring story about Emir Kamenica.

"These stories we tell about ourselves, they're almost like our infrastructure, like railroads or highways. We can build them almost any way we want to. But once they're in place, this whole inner landscape grows up around them.

So maybe the point here is that you should be careful about how you tell your story, or at least conscious of it. Because once you've told it, once you've built the highway, it's just very hard to move it. Even if your story is about an angel who came out of nowhere and saved your life, even then, not even the angel herself can change it." - Michael Lewis

I generally am not a fan of taking prescription drugs to solve symptoms of larger underlying problems as in many cases those can cause additional bonus problems. I get that some people need various drugs to get by and survive, though outside of caffeine I typically try not to drink much or do much of anything else that can add more instability or create more bonus issues.

The above said, I think my baseline mood (especially if I am not in great health) tends to be a bit darker than average.

The early web was quite cool and you could do things like email Tim Berners-Lee and get a response, or someone would read your site and see you mentioned Carl Sagan and shoot you an email like this one:

I wrote the first modern book on depression in 1980. It was the first book to present depression as a biochemical disease, rather than a 'mental' illness (whatever that is). And, I was the one who introduced Carl Sagan to television as a local TV personality in L. A., Carl was a good family friend who came to watch a taping of my PBS show, he got really intense when he realized what a medium for communication TV was, and I introduced him to the GM of the station, that's how he got to TV. He was more of a scientist than an actor, I coached him on TV persona. He was a very intense person, and did not have a big ego; he was always open to new information, whether it came from experiences or ideas. He would have loved living now.

To solve both depression and weight gain problems, try an over-the-counter nutrient called 5HTP. The Walmarts here sell the least expensive and best pills. Take about nine a day for about nine days, you will notice you haven't felt the urge to eat all day and you don't have as much depression symptoms; the griffonia seed from which 5HTP is made increases serotonin in the brain.

Then a follow up after I asked about the FDA ban of L-Tryptophan:

Now something gets clearer! When tryotophan was banned because of one supposedly contaminated batch, I used every tiny bit of influence I had as a journalist, talked to every politician I could get in touch with. It was like going up against a brick wall. I wrote articles, did everything, could not understand at all why the nutrient was being banned for one bad batch in Japan and why resistance to overturning the ban was so solid. I even tried to obtain the animal version, and was told it 'wasn't the same,' yet according to a chemical analysis, it was. Now I understand....

My book is "Depression, How to Recognize It, Cure It and Grow From It, Prentice Hall hardback, Simon Schuster paperback.

She also mentioned

Depression research is such big business that I feel they don't want to find a real cure. The way the research should have gone is to study the chemical makeup of depression, then match the medication effect to different brain hormones (as well as cortisol-though it's not a biogenic amine, it's a definite precursor), and find accurate ways of testing which hormone or combination thereof is/are out of balance, so the correct medication can be prescribed right off the bat. So, if it's a seratonin imbalance, the doc gives one medication, if it's monomaine oxadase, the patient gets another, and so on. Prosac is like a huge blanket device, rather than an accurate laser beam going to the exact place it is needed.

Depression research really hasn't progressed that much in the last 20 years, imho.

I know a big part of my improved mood was from taking 5-HTP along with Vitamin B & Vitamin C just before bed. When I take those I can fall asleep a bit quicker, sleep about an hour less, wake up feeling more refreshed, and am less hungry the following morning. If I had to guess, I would say the 5-hydroxytryptophan contributed to my recent 40 pound weight loss more than anything else did.

Anyhow, I would not recommend 5-HTP for anyone who is on SSRIs, MAO inhibitors, or many other drug classes (talk to your doctor first, etc.). But I figured a lot of people feel like crap this year so I should mention it has worked well for me.

Before writing this blog post I also recommended it to a few other people.

Our lead content writer was down after her friend died & I recommended it to her. She said she felt a difference the very next day.

Our backend developer took some after I told him about it and said his personal doom loop he was going through was better within 2 days.

I do not think it is a magic cure-all or would work for everyone, but if you are a bit down combining a bit of 5-HTP with exercise, healthy diet, sleep, etc. can help you improve your worldview and outlook a bit to get through the challenging times we are going through.

My only complaint (glass is always at least half empty :D) would be that as I have discarded that sort of rage cycle I find it easier to be distracted and harder to focus on work. If you love what you do focus comes automatic, but if you don't then you do sometimes have to trick yourself a bit into being productive if you literally could be retired for life. But I suppose most people would say that is an absurd "problem" to complain about.

My only solution to the above is watching MJ on MJ. :D

I’m going to tweet this & pin it to my page so I can watch it every single day

When MJ talks about winning & leadership has a price, he’s talking about sacrificing a part of who you are for all that your team can become.

A Championship Standard!! pic.twitter.com/IbK95jFTVY— Jaycob Ammerman (@Jammer2233) May 13, 2020

Ending on a Positive Note

Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation
And earthquakes are to a girl's guitar, they're just another good vibration
And tidal waves couldn't save the world from Californication

If you are reading this blog post you are almost certainly involved in some part of web development, content production, internet marketing and/or e-commerce.

Ultimately as the world is reshaped you will benefit as long as you get through the current period as literally *everything* is moving online.

This chart on e-commerce continues to amaze me. pic.twitter.com/zW4EwKHW1N— David Schawel (@DavidSchawel) August 17, 2020

Given that the big platform monopolies are now getting the PR black eyes they deserve for their locked down ecosystems there is a good chance the web will be a much better place in the next half-decade.

The number of people rushing to become their own bosses is at a record level. Many will fail, but many will innovate and create new markets as they have no choice but to succeed. As more things move online, attention merchant platforms keep breaking culture into smaller and smaller chunks to fuel increasingly distorted views of reality that cater toward confirmation bias and rage.

At some point people will tire of the feed-based never-ending stream and want things they can complete. The growth of Neflix and their streaming competitors reflects the desire for something longer and more in-depth.

Some of legacy print media brands with high cost structures are now recycled selling marked-up garbage in parallel markets.

The combination of these trends will drive an increased appreciation for authenticity & the desire for human connection.

Long ago my original SEO mentor stated:

This is what I think, SEO is all about emotions, all about human interaction. People, search engineers even, try and force it into a numbers box. Numbers, math and formulas are for people not smart enough to think in concepts.

I think the best brands, the best sites have a large portion of their founders personality in them. Never be afraid to be yourself, after all there are 1/2 billion people on the www, not all of them have to agree with you. Concentrate on the ones that share your views, concentrate on making their experience the very best it can be, the rest forget them.

Or to put it another way, the best sites say - this is what we do, this is how we do it, if you don't like it go somewhere else.

Ultimately though I think it comes down to desire and the will to win.

He later sold his business for a life changing sum, so unlike his favorite football club, I guess he had the will to win. The question remains if he will purchase the football club and "fix" them. :D

Background / Intro

One of my longtime friends who was Internet marketing long before I was hit me up on Skype about a week ago praising Jasper.ai. I have to think long and hard about any other time he has really pitched or recommended something like that & really I just can't think of any other time where he did that. The following day my wife Giovanna mentioned something to me and I was like "oh you should check out this thing my buddy recommended yesterday" and then I looked and realized they were both talking about the same thing. :D

I have a general heuristic that if people I trust recommend things I put them near the top of the "to do" list and if multiple people I trust do that I pull out the credit card and run at it.

Unfortunately I have been a bit burned out recently and launched a new site which I have put a few hundred hours into, so I haven't had the time to do too much testing, BUT I have a writer who works for me who has a master's degree in writing, and figured she could do a solid review. And she did. :D

She is maybe even a bit more cynical than I am (is that even possible?) and a certified cat lady who loves writing, reading, poetry and is more into a soft sell versus aggressive sales.

Full disclosure...the above link and the one at the end of this post are affiliate links, but they had zero impact on the shape or format of the review. The reviewer was completely disconnected from the affiliate program and I pulled out my credit card to pay for the software for her to test it out.

With that tiny bit of a micro-introduction, the rest of the post from here on out is hers. I may have made a couple minor edits for clarity (and probably introduced a few errors she will choke me for. :D) but otherwise the rest of this post is all her ...

An In-depth Review of the Conversion.ai Writing Software

Considering the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI), we picture robots doing tasks autonomously like humans. With a computer’s brain power, productivity is accelerated significantly. We also expect AI programs to have the capability to evolve intelligently the longer they are used. These types of AI employ “machine learning,” or deep learning to solve problems.

AI technology can be leveraged by various industries, especially with writing. Recently, I learned about the Conversion.ai copywriting tool. It uses machine learning which claims to write “high converting copy” for websites, ads, landing pages, emails, etc. The software is geared towards writers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and agencies that benefit from creating engaging and effective copy. To date, companies such as Hubspot, Shopify, and Salesforce are known to use the software. Currently, it’s offering a 7-day free trial with 20,000-word credits.

To give you the lowdown on Conversion.ai, I wrote an in-depth review of how this software works. I’ll go through its various features and show examples of how I used them. I’ll include the advantages of using Conversion.ai’s Jasper (that’s what it’s called) in writing scenarios. More importantly, I’ll discuss challenges and specific limitations this tool might present.

Assistance in Creating High Conversion Copy

As a writer doing web copy for 10 years, including the time I took a post-grad creative writing degree, I grabbed the opportunity to try this AI software. For starters, it struck me how Conversion.ai claims to provide “high converting copy” for increased conversion and higher ROI. Such claims are a tall order. If you’ve been in the marketing or sales industry, you’d know conversion depends on so many other factors, such as the quality of the actual product, customer support, price, etc. It’s not just how well copy is written, though it’s a vital part. But anyway, upon more research, I learned the app generates copy based on proven high conversion sales and marketing messages.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this conversion strategy. I believe it’s a double-edged sword. This is not to undermine facts or measurable data. Basing content creation on “proven content” means you’re likely using the same phrases, techniques, and styles already used by successful competitors. This serves as a jumping board for ideas of course, so you know what’s already there. However, it can be an echo chamber. Marketers must not forget that execution must still be fresh. Otherwise, you’ll sound like everyone else.

Next, while it seems sustainable, it also sounds pretty safe. If your product or service is not that distinct, you must put extra effort to create content that stands out. This applies to all aspects of the marketing strategy, not just in writing content. It’s a crucial principal I learned after reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin (thanks for the book suggestion, Aaron!).

Depending on your product or service, Conversion.ai will generate copy that most consumers keep going back to. Based on the samples it generated, I’d say it really does come up with engaging copy, though it needs editing. If your business must rewrite product descriptions for extensive inventories, Conversion.ai can cut the time in half. It can help automate description rewriting without hiring more writers. That saves money and time, so businesses need fewer writers and editors.

What did I learn? Conversion.ai can make writing and editing faster, yes, especially for low-level content focused on descriptions. It can also inform the strength of your ideas for more creative campaigns. However, it still takes solid direction and creativity to drive good marketing copy forward. That said, it’s only as good as the writer utilizing this app. As a content creator, you cannot rely on it solely for creativity. But as an enhancer, it will significantly help push ideas forward, organize campaigns, and structure engaging copy effectively.

When you use this app, it offers many different features that help create and organize content. It also customizes copy for various media platforms. Beyond rewriting , it even has special brainstorming tools designed to help writers consider various idea angles. This can add more flavor and uniqueness into a campaign.

At the end of the day, what will set your copy apart is the strength of your ideas and your communication strategy. How you customize content for a business is still entirely up to you. AI writing tools like Conversion.ai can only help enhance your content and the ideas behind it. It’s a far cry from creating truly unique concepts for your campaign, but it definitely helps.

Conversion.ai Writing Features & How They Work

This AI writing app comes with plenty of “writing templates” that are customized to help you write with a specific framework or media platform in mind. Currently, Conversion.ai offers 39 different writing templates or content building blocks that deliver results. We’ll provide details for how each one works.

For company or product descriptions, Conversion.ai has a Start Here step by step guide, which says users should alternate between the Product Description and the Content Improver template until they have found the right mix they’re looking for. But for this review, I just focused on how to use the templates for different writing projects. The app comes with video instructions as well as a live training call if you need further assistance on how to use it.

Each template asks you to input a description or what you want to write about. This is limited to 600 characters. Writing the description is the sole basis for how Jasper will generate ways to write or expand your content. It also helps you brainstorm and structure ideas for an article or campaign.

But as an issue, I find the 600-character limit can hinder reposting the full content generated by the AI back into the template for improvement. Yes, it churns out marketing copy of more than 600 characters. If you want to post the improved copy again, you might have to do this in two batches. In any case, Jasper can generate as many improved writing samples as you need.

To give you a better idea, here are different Conversion.ai templates and how they work. This is going to take a while, so have your coffee ready.

Long-form Assistant

This is for longer articles, emails, scripts, and stories. It’s also suggested for writing books. It has two modes, a blank document where you can start typing freely and an assistant workflow. The blank document also lets you access the rest of the other writing templates vertically. On the other hand, the long-form assistant workflow is where the app asks you to describe the content you want to create. Consider this carefully. The better you can articulate your topic, the higher quality content Jasper can help generate.

For the example, suppose I want to write about what it took to finally release Zack Synder’s 2021 Justice League. I want to write this feature article for my film and culture website.

Jasper asks for a maximum of three keywords. It’s optional, but I presume adding keywords will help Jasper generate more relevant content. Next, it prompts you to write a working title and start an introductory paragraph. Once you write your initial title, it will generate other title ideas.

For the title, I wrote: The Challenges of Releasing Zach Snyder’s Justice League 2021
It generated the following suggestions:

Jasper generated a long list of appropriate and catchy titles. I personally liked “The Tumultuous Journey of Zack Snyder’s Justice League 2021,” though I’d shorten it a bit. I also liked “The Darkest, Toughest Production in Film History,” which basically tells audiences how hard it was to produce the version of the film. Though it’s an exaggeration, it can be qualified in the article. The other suggestions with “Behind the Scenes” and “Towards a Better Script” were more specific angles. I like that I could explore those topics too. Generally, I think it’s definitely a great tool to make title writing faster.

So far, so good, right? But when I got to content suggestions, it got a bit messy. It was mainly because the suggested content was too general. It also tended toward suggesting expansions that were incoherent to the main topic. This did not sound very promising. Moreover, the AI added bits of information such as dates and other related information. I had to check if these details were used accurately. In a previous test I did (and even for this example), it completely got a date wrong. So I advise writers to always double check the details suggested by Jasper.

Take a look below. The top paragraph was the one I wrote, while the ones below are suggested by Jasper.

Content suggestions from Jasper:

1) You might not be able to see Zack Snyder’s Justice League on the big screen, but you can catch it online in 2021. It was released digitally by Warner Bros. on November 27th 2020 and we’ve been watching it slowly climb the ranks of IMDB since then. The film had a troubled production between 2016 and 2017 with the script going through major changes before and during shooting. But now that all is said and done, what did people think? Let’s find out!

2) Justice League is a film that was released on November 17, 2017. The movie had been preceded by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman. It’s also the fifth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Despite being generally well-received by critics, it was considered to be a disappointment at the box office. In this blog post, we’ll take you behind the scenes and show you what went wrong with Zack Snyder’s 2021 Justice League film production!

3) Director Zack Snyder’s Justice League film was one of the most anticipated films of 2017. Unfortunately, the film had a troubled production and was not released until 2021. That didn’t stop it from becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time. What does this have to do with SEO? When you release content on your website, be sure to include keywords that are relevant to your business and industry!

At first glance, the introduction actually looks appealing to Justice League fans. Many people have been anticipating it on the big screen. But upon further reading, compared to the paragraph I wrote, the AI content had so many problems. Besides being too general, it had issues with imprecise details. Though you can argue these problems are small and editable, it adds time to your work. It can even derail you from focusing on your topic.

The first AI suggestion wrote that Snyder Cut was released digitally by Warner Bros. in November 27, 2020. Upon further research, I found no such confirmation of this. However, there was a YouTube video “speculating” it’s release in November 2020. But from the looks of it, this did not pan out. Officially, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released in March 18, 2021 by HBO Max via streaming platform, according to Rotten Tomatoes. And yes, it has been climbing the ranks since its digital release.

If you’re not careful about fact-checking, you might end up with misleading information. And frankly, I feel as if some of the other suggestions may tend towards fluff. However, what you can do is choose the best suggestions and put them together into one coherent paragraph. The first suggestion ended the introduction with “But now that all is said and done, what did people think? Let’s find out!” While it’s something I want to touch on eventually, it is not the main focus of my introduction. The AI was not sensitive enough to sense this follow up was out of place. I’d rather get to the details of the challenging production. If I use this suggestion, I’ll have to edit it into “Let’s take a look at what it took to deliver the highly anticipated Snyder Cut,” or something to that effect.

The second example, on the other hand, was quite a miss. It started by talking about the 2017 Justice League film. While it’s good to expound on the history of the project started, it got lost in discussing the 2017 version. Worse, it did not transition the topic smoothly into the 2021 Snyder Cut. If I read this introduction, I’d be confused into thinking the article was about the 2017 Justice League. Finally, it awkwardly ended the paragraph with “we’ll take you behind the scenes and show you what went wrong with Zack Snyder’s 2021 Justice League film production!” Besides the wordy sentence, suddenly it’s talking about the 2021 Justice League out of nowhere. I would not phrase the production’s challenges as something that went wrong. That’s unnecessary hype. It’s confusing, and just an example of bad writing. Again, while it can be fixed with editing, I feel better off writing on my own.

Finally, the third example actually started okay. But then it started talking about SEO out of nowhere. I don’t know where that came from or why the AI did that, but I’ll count it as a totally unusable suggestion from the app. I reckon there might be more of those glitches if I generate more content suggestions from Jasper.

SIDEBAR FROM AARON: COUGH. SEO IS EVERYTHING. HOW DO I REEEEECH DEZ KIDZ

I noticed these were nuances the AI was not able to catch. It’s probably even based on trending articles at the time, which had a tendency towards hype and dated showbiz information. And though the suggestions were interesting, they were mostly too general or against the direction I needed. If the usage of the information is not accurate, imagine what that would mean for health or political articles. But too be fair, it did generate other usable suggestions with less serious edits. It’s worth looking into those.

However, by this time, I felt I was better off writing the feature without the app, at least for this example. I guess it’s really a hit or miss. Even with so many content suggestions, I think you can still end up with inappropriate samples even if you find good ones. But at least you got a good title already. Personally, I’d rather go straight to researching on my own.

Framework Templates

Conversion.ai allows you to write copy based on marketing frameworks that have been used by professionals for years. It’s ideal for brands, products, and services you need to promote. This features includes the following templates:

• AIDA Framework: The AIDA template stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This basically divides your copy into sections drawing attention from consumers and piquing their interest. The suggested copy also includes content that appeals to the consumer’s desire, then ends with a call to action.
• PAS Framework: The PAS template is structured by generating copy which highlights the consumer’s Problem, Agitate, and Solution. It’s focused on how a particular product will help solve a consumer’s problem.
• Bridge-After-Bridge Framework: Also known as BAB framework, this copywriting structure revolves around the idea of getting a consumer from a bad place to a better one. It shows the before and after scenario after benefitting from a product.

For this example, I used the AIDA template for an imagined non-invasive weight loss service company. The new company promotes fitness and advocates against fad diets. It performs non-surgical weight loss procedures, such as wraps and thermomagnetic massages.

Again, Jasper asks for a description. It also requires you to specify the tone of the copy. I placed “friendly” and “professional” under the box. See my input below.

Here’s the first suggestion from Jasper:

Based on this example, I’d say the AI-generated content is quite engaging. It tried to have a personal touch by letting the customer know they’re here to help. The writing empathizes with consumers who have a hard time losing weight. However, since this is for a new company, the introduction “We have helped thousands of people lose weight and get in shape,” does not apply. So as a writer, I simply have to remove it. This can be replaced with the intent to help more people lose weight and get in shape.

I actually pulled out at least 6 different content suggestions. From these, writers could get the best parts and edit them into one strong copy description. On it’s own, the content would still benefit from a lot of editing. Here are some issues you might encounter while generating copy suggestions:

• Hard Sell Copy. The sample content can be hard sell, even if you specify a professional tone of voice. It tends to use exclamation marks (!) per sample. I believe this depends on the product or service you are writing about. Certain products or services may sell more with the hard sell approach, so the AI suggests this strategy. It may also appear like the “proven” way to communicate to consumers. But if you’re going against this direction, it’s a nuance the AI tool might miss. If your business or client specifically avoids exclamation marks your copy, be ready to make the necessary edits.
• Can be Wordy, Long, Redundant. In terms of style, here’s where you can’t rely on Jasper to write the entire thing. If you happen to input a long and detailed product description, the AI has a tendency to generate wordy variations of the copy. If you notice, some details are also redundant. In copywriting standards, this needs tightening. Conciseness can be an issue, most notably if you’re not used to brevity. Thus, I believe this tool will best benefit writers and editors who have considerable experience in crafting straightforward copy.

Product Description

The app comes with a special template for creating product descriptions. If you have a large inventory of product information for rewriting, this is the right tool to use. It even comes with an optional language output translation feature, which is available in other templates too.

However, the language feature is limited. I tried putting Thai, Italian, and Japanese and it generated few suggestions, some mixed with English. Same thing with Punjabi and Vietnamese. In other templates, they just keep making English suggestions. Filipino is also not recognized by the AI, which likely means it cannot translate a bunch of other languages. This feature obviously needs development. But it’s not the main feature, so I doubt they’ll do a lot of improvements.

For this example, I used an imagined tire center that offers products and services throughout the U.S. I specifically wrote that it’s the second most affordable tire center in the country. I asked for a professional and witty tone. I’m not at all fluent in Spanish, but I placed Spanish under the output language box.

Below is the first suggested copy in Spanish:

When translated through Google, it reads:

“Don’t think twice, Adam’s Tire Center is your best option because it offers the largest range of products for cars and wagons. Join our satisfied customers and insure your tires with the Road Hazard Warranty service. Call or visit our sales center in Miami, FL, where we are honored to help you.”

Obviously, I can’t comment much on the accuracy of the translation. Though certainly, I have doubts for how writing in another language can capture certain styles and tones. But right now, what I’m more concerned with is the tendency to use superlative descriptions that might not accurately fit the brand. Things like “we offer the largest range of products” should probably be tweaked to “we offer a wide range of products…” If your tire center does not offer the largest inventory, you should not be writing that. It also assumed a specific location, which prompts the writer to include the actual business location (this is a good suggestion). Again, the AI copy would benefit from fine-tuning to make it specific to your product or service.

Now, back to English. Here are three other content samples generated by Jasper:

The English AI-generated samples are not so bad. But in the last sample, there is a tendency for hard sell terms like “unmatched in quality,” that you need to watch out for. You can get the best parts and put them into one solid brand description. But again, these tend to be wordy and long. It would help to use the Hemingway app or Grammarly to make the descriptions tight and concise.

Content Improver

Using the Content Improver template will help you tweak the product or service descriptions you came up with. To show you how it works, I placed the content I wrote based on the edited tire center descriptions Jasper generated.

For this example, I placed professional and witty under tone of voice.

Suggested content from Jasper:

Based on the sample suggestion, I’d say the first two can pretty much stand on their own. These are straightforward copies that address consumer needs with a direct call to action. Though the first one may sound a bit informal, it might fit the type of consumer demographic you are targeting. Finally, the last example gets a bit wordy but can be fixed with a couple of edits. The major issue is the number (555-5555), which the AI mistook for an address.

Marketing Angles

Besides churning out copy suggestions, Conversion.ai has a brainstorming tool. This basically takes your product or service and comes up with various campaign ideas to promote it. If you’re running out of concepts for promotion, Jasper leverages on your product’s features and strengths. I appreciate that it tried to come up with benefit-driven copy based on the example I put.

For this example, the product I used is a gym management software. It helps gym owners manage activities, schedules, and handle payments. The software aims to run gyms more efficiently.

I personally find the following suggestions helpful in pushing the strengths of a product. I would definitely use this tool for brainstorming ideas. Here’s what Jasper generated:

Unique Value Propositions

Another intriguing feature is the unique value propositions (UVP ) template. UVP is essentially a clear statement that describes the benefit your product offers. It also captures how you address your customer’s needs and what distinguishes you from the competition.

If you have a product or service, It claims to generate copy that describes your product’s unique advantage in a remarkable way. To test how this works, I used the previous example, which is the gym software. It came up with several statements that emphasized the product’s benefits. See Jasper’s suggestions below. Personally, I like the idea of software that helps me make more money with less work.

Feature Benefit

The feature benefit template comes up with a list of advantages offered by your product. For this example, the product is a camisole for plus size women. You’ll see how it took the paragraph details and made bulleted benefits based on those features. It’s a useful tool if you want to break down your product’s unique selling points so you can further emphasize them in your campaign.

Persuasive Bullet Points

Another related function is the persuasive bullet points template. This is very similar to the feature benefit template. Personally, I think it’s either you use this or the feature benefit template if you want to highlight product advantages in bullet points. On the other hand, this template doesn’t categorize benefits as emotional or standard advantages.

Copy Headline and Sub-headline Templates

Conversioan.ai also comes with copy headline and sub-headline templates. They claim the AI is “trained with formulas from the world’s best copywriters.” It also guaranteed to create “high-converting headlines” for businesses. At this point, the only way to know if it does have high conversion is to see actual results. Right now, my review can’t prove any of that. But it would be interesting to know from companies who have been using this software for results.

• Perfect Headline: For this template, I used an earlier example that provides non-invasive weight loss services. You’ll see the product description I used, followed by the suggestions made by Jasper. I specifically liked the headline: Science-based approach to safe, effective fat loss. It’s right concept I was going for.
  
  
• Website Sub-headline: I used the same product description for the sub-headline. I also used the suggested headline generated by Jasper, which is “Science-based approach to safe, effective fat loss.” Based on Jasper’s suggestions, I liked the last one, which emphasizes non-invasive slimming. It also tells consumers the procedure is safe. Though it tends to be wordy, I appreciate it provides different ways you can get your message across.
  

Sentence Expander

Another interesting feature is the sentence expander. It claims to make your sentence longer and more creative. I guess it should help you get to another thought if you caught writer’s block. But I’m wary what kind of suggestions it might give. When I tried it, it’s just another way to rewrite your sentence in a longer, more detailed way.

In any case, see my sentence below.

Here’s what Jasper generated:

I’m actually not a fan of long-winded sentences. However, I do appreciate the extra details added by the AI. I can use these suggestions if I make further edits on them. But realistically, if I’m writing an article, I’d skip this and go directly to what I’m trying to say. That would save me time. If I want to talk about the negative psychological effects of social distancing, I’d write that point per point. My idea of expansion is moving an argument forward, not merely adding more details to what was already said.

Creative Story

Here’s an interesting template I was curious to try. I wonder how Jasper would develop a two sentence plot. It’s fascinating to see how an AI that uses “proven high conversion data” would suggest story development.

For my example, I took a horror story plot inspired by the Bone Turner from a popular horror podcast called The Magnus Archives. See my plot description and the suggestions made by Jasper.

Story suggestions by Jasper:

I have to say, these are very interesting ideas for an introduction. It’s also funny how it used the name “Jonathon,” because the actual name of main character in the Magnus Archives is “Jonathan.” I kind of think that was on purpose, since the AI probably knows the Bone Turner is from a popular online show.

In any case, I particularly liked the second suggestion. With some editing and fine-tuning, you could fix the details to fit the story in your head. On the other hand, I’m wary authors might rely too much on this to bridge plot gaps. While it’s amusing, it’s more compelling to read plot twists and resolutions that are not forced. At this stage, I’m still not convinced the AI can make a story without contrived plot twists.

Email Subject Lines

Besides creative writing tools, Coversion.ai also has templates for email marketing. This feature is made for businesses or individuals who want to promote products and services via email. The app claims to come up with catchy subject lines that draw consumers to open your email. In this example, I used an imaginary cake shop that delivers throughout LA. I thought Jasper came up with a long list of creative subject lines. These were spot on for the example. Since I am a cake person, I’d likely read this kind of email.

Personal and Company Bio

You can also generate creative personal and company bios through Jasper. If you’re running a personal blog or website, Jasper generates personal bios in first person or third person POV, whichever you are more comfortable with. I’m actually pleased with what the AI suggested. It’s a good start, because I find it hard writing about myself.

The example below is not me, of course. I made up Jessica Ackerman as the founder of Mad Cakes in LA.

Here’s what Jasper generated:

It does sound like a personalized bio. Especially with the detail about cuddling with cats and dogs. Again, I’d edit it to be more particular about details. Other than that, I think it’s a good tool to use.

Next, Jasper also generates company bios that sound professional. I put a three-sentence info about a company that boosts website conversion for businesses. I was surprised how long the suggestions were. It also presumed the names of clients the company has serviced (TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.). Again, for particular information like this, it’s important to edit or remove them. Otherwise, you might publish copy with misleading details.

Suggestions from Jasper:

Real Estate Listing – Residential

You can utilize this template to create creative and descriptive residential listings. It’s helpful for real estate agents and people who are planning to sell their property. The following shows information about a house for sale, followed by listing suggestions by Jasper.

Suggestions from Jasper:

It’s interesting how the suggested content appeals to the consumer’s idea of a perfect home. It tries to paint a picture of affluent living just based on the golf course description I supplied. But again, for accuracy, these added details should be edited by the writer.

Templates for Specific Online Platforms

Besides articles and product or brand descriptions, expect Conversion.ai to provide special writing features for online platforms. This includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, and Amazon accounts. The AI’s content suggestions are based on posts and ads that have generated high traffic on these platforms. I think this a good tool to use if you want an edge over what already sells.

• Facebook Ad Headline: Makes catchy headlines for FB ads, claims to increase chances of clicks that lead to sales.
• Facebook Ad Primary Text: Claims to generate high converting copy for FB ad’s primary text section.

For the Facebook ad headline, my example is a cake shop that delivers a wide assortment of cakes in Los Angeles. It specifically mentions delivering cakes “within an hour or your money back.” Here’s the example and Jasper’s suggested content.

AI ad sample headlines:

I must say these sound like fun and friendly FB headlines. I personally would like a last minute dessert. And if I don’t have time to pick up cake, I’d certainly like one delivered. Just not sure about “Get 500 Instagram Followers,” the suggestion is out-of-place. I’d use this tool for a fresh and exciting FB headline.

Here’s the AI sample for Facebook ad primary text:

Based on the FB text sample, the AI instantly suggested to give away free cake. Most of the generated samples headed toward this direction. It didn’t just generate engaging copy, it likely showed you what other cake shops do to draw more customers. I think it’s a great marketing strategy to have promos and free cake. I also like that it suggested catchy hashtags. But again, I’d fix the wordy and adjective-ridden descriptions. With a little editing, the samples should read more smoothly. Other than that, it’s a fast way to come up with social media copy.

Photo Post Captions for Instagram

You can use the app for a company or store’s IG accounts. Here are some samples based on a Mad Cakes Black Chocolate Indulgence photo. If you need ideas for your IG post, this tool can suggest copy that’s simple and straightforward for IG. Depending on your product or service, it suggests content that typically targets your customers base.

Video Writing Templates for YouTube

Next, Conversion.ai offers specialized templates for videos, specifically for platforms such as YouTube. But I also think you can use the content similarly if you’re posting on other video sites. However, the suggestions are based on content with high traffic on YouTube. It includes the following features:

Video Topic Ideas: For brainstorming video content concepts that rank well on YouTube. For example, your initial topic is baking homemade cake. It’s a useful tool for letting you know what people are actually interested in. It gives you an idea what to work on right off the batt. Here are the AI’s suggestions. It mentions concepts for cake baking videos many people look for:

Video Script Outline: Helps make script outlines for any topic. However, this works more suitably for how-to and listicle type videos, not the ones with a narrative. The example below for how to spot aurora borealis or Northern lights. From the AI suggestions, you can choose the best strategies to come up with your own outline. I noticed many suggestions can be too general, besides the more specific ones I posted below. It’s still best to do your own research to make your video content more nuanced and unique. Otherwise, you may just parrot what other content creators have already done.

Video Titles: Like the other templates, there’s also a video title feature. As an example, many users on YouTube like to create content about shows or films. Suppose you want to write a feature about the anime Attack on Titan. For the suggestion, the AI actually came up with pretty awesome titles and topics you can start researching on. While this is based on high-traffic fan search, what you can do is watch what’s already there. This will help you come up with more unique insights about the show that has not been tackled. Again, try to focus on what would set your content apart from what’s already there.

Blog Post Templates

Conversion.ai provides templates that help you conceptual blog posts for your brands. It has tools to help you brainstorm topic ideas and outline your content. These suggestions are all based on high ranking topics on Google. It also comes with features that help compose blog post introductions and conclusions.

• Blog Post Topic Ideas
• Blog Post Outline
• Blog Post Intro Paragraph
• Blog Post Conclusion Paragraph

For the example, let’s focus on the topic template. I used the earlier example, Best Shape, which is an imaginary non-invasive weight loss service. See the AI’s suggestions below.

Jasper’s results show topics that trend around non-invasive weight loss methods. Trending topics around your market is always good to know. For ideas on blog topics, I think Conversion.ai will really be a useful tool. If you need help structuring your outline, I think it’s worth using it especially if you’re having trouble with organization.

Personally, after getting different topics, you can start writing your post without the app. You won’t need it especially if you already have an idea what to write. It’s still better to do proper research than rely on the app to add information on your post. As you’ve noticed, it has a tendency to supply the incorrect information, which you must diligently edit.

Would I Recommend This Software?

After crash testing Conversion.ai, I would recommend this tool to agencies or individuals that deal with extensive online copywriting and product rewrites. They will benefit the most by eliminating the time-consuming process of doing product descriptions. I would also recommend it for businesses that run social media campaigns, including Google and Amazon ads. This will help generate and organize copy ideas faster, especially if you have a lot of products and services to promote. And because the AI suggestions are based on high-ranking topics, you have a better idea of what your client base is also looking for. It can also enhance messaging concepts and help brainstorm new campaign ideas for a product or brand. Just remember to always edit the content suggestions.

On the other hand, I would not recommend this app for long-form writing. I do not think it is ideal for any writing that requires a lot of research. Because the AI suggestions tend towards incorrect information, you’re better off researching current data on your own. It’s an interesting tool for wring stories, but I also worry authors might be too reliant on the app for plot ideas. There is a difference between carefully worded prose versus long-winded sentences composed by this app. Human writing is still more precise with expression, which the AI has yet to learn.

While it’s a good tool to have, the bottom line is, you still need to edit your content. It will help you structure your outline and compose your post. However, the impetus for writing and the direction it will take is still on you, the writer. My verdict? AI writing technology won’t fully replace humans anytime soon.

Update: This article was updated in May of 2022 to reflect Conversion.ai's AI writing bot name changed from Jarvis to Jasper. No other changes have been made since the original publication of this article.

Time has grown more scarce after having a child, so I rarely blog anymore. Though I thought it probably made sense to make at least a quarterly(ish) post so people know I still exist.

One of the big things I have been noticing over the past year or so is an increasing level of automation in ways that are not particularly brilliant. :D

Just from this past week I've had 3 treat encounters on this front.

One marketplace closed my account after I made a bunch of big purchases, likely presuming the purchases were fraudulent based on the volume, new account & an IP address in an emerging market economy. I never asked for a refund or anything like that, but when I believe in something I usually push pretty hard, so I bought a lot. What was dumb about that is they took a person who would have been a whale client & a person they were repeatedly targeting with ads & turned them into a person who would not recommend them ... after being a paying client who spent a lot and had zero specific customer interactions or requests ... an all profit margin client who spent big and then they discarded. Dumb.

Similarly one ad network had my account automatically closed after I had not used it for a while. When I went to reactivate it the person in customer support told me it would be easier to just create a new account as reactivating it would take a half week or more. I said ok, went to set up a new account, and it was auto-banned and they did not disclose why. I asked feedback as to why and they said that they could not offer any but it was permanent and lifetime.

A few months go by and I wondered what was up with that and I logged into my inactive account & set up a subaccount and it worked right away. Weird. But then even there they offer automated suggestions and feedback on improving your account performance and some of them were just not rooted in fact. Worse yet, if they set the default targeting options to overly broad it can cause account issues in a country like Vietnam to where if you click to approve (or even auto approve!) their automated suggestions you then get notifications about how you are violating some sort of ToS or guidelines ... if they can run that logic *after* you activate *their* suggestions, why wouldn't they instead run that logic earlier? How well do they think you will trust & believe in their automated optimization tips if after you follow them you get warning pop overs?

Another big bonus recently was a client was mentioned in a stray spam email. The email wasn't from the client or me, but the fact that a random page on their site was mentioned in a stray spoofed email that got flagged as spam meant that when the ticket notification from the host sent wounded up in spam they never saw it and then the host simply took their site offline. Based on a single email sent from some other server.

Upon calling the host with a friendly WTF they explained to the customer that they had so many customers they have to automate everything. At the same time when it came time to restoring hosting that the client was paying for they suggested the client boot in secure mode, run Apache commands x and y, etc. ... even though they knew the problem was not with the server, but an overmalicious automated response to a stray mention in a singular spam email sent by some third party.

When the host tried to explain that they "have to" automate everything because they have so many customers the customer quickly cut them off with "No, that is a business choice. You could charge different prices or choose to reach out to people who have spent tens of thousands on hosting and have not had any issues in years." He also mentioned how emails can be sent to spam, or be sent to an inbox on the very web host that went offline & was then inaccessible. Then the lovely customer support person stated "I have heard that complaint before" meaning they are aware of the issue, but do not see it as an issue for them. When the customer said they should follow up any emails with an SMS for servers going offline the person said you could do it on your end & then later sent them a 14-page guide for how to integrate the Twillio API.

Nothing in the world is fair. Nothing in the world is equal. But there are smart ways to run a business & dumb ways to run a business.

If you have enough time to write a 14-page integration guide it probably makes sense to just incorporate the feature into the service so the guide is unneeded!

Businesses should treat their heavy spenders or customers with a long history of a clean account with more care than a newly opened account. I had a big hedge fund as a client who would sometimes want rush work done & would do stuff like "hey good job there, throw in an extra $10,000 for yourself as a bonus" on the calls. Whenever they called or emailed they got a quick response. :D

I sort of get that one small marketplace presuming my purchases might have been a scam based on how many I did, how new my account was, and how small they were, but the hosting companies & ad networks that are worth 9 to 12 figures should generally do a bit better. Though in many ways the market cap is a sign the entity is insulated from market pressures & can automate away customer service hoping that their existing base is big enough to offset the customer support horror stories that undermine their brand.

It works.

At least for a while.

A parallel to the above is my Facebook ad account, which was closed about a half decade or so ago due to geographic mismatch. That got removed, but then sort of only half way. If I go to run ads it says that I can't, but then if I go to request an account review to once again explain the geographic difference I can't even get the form to submit unless I edit the HTML of the page on the fly to seed the correct data into the form field as by default it says I can not request a review since I have no ad account.

The flip side of the above is if that level of automation can torch existing paid accounts you have to expect the big data search & social companies are taking a rather skeptical view of new sites or players wanting to rank freely in their organic search results or social feeds. With that being the case, it helps to seed what you can to provide many signals that may remove some of the risks of getting set in the bad pile.

I have seen loads of people have their YouTube or Facebook or whatever such account get torched & only override the automated technocratic persona non grata policies by having followers in another channel who shared their dire situation so it could get flagged for human review and restoration. If that happens to established & widely followed players who have spent years investing into a platform the odds of it happening to most newer sites & players is quite high.

You can play it safe and never say anything interesting, ensuring you are well within the Overtone Window in all aspects of life. That though also almost certainly guarantees failure as it is hard to catch up or build momentum if your defining attribute is being a conformist.

I just dusted off the login here to realize I hadn't posted in about a half-year & figured it was time to write another one. ;)

Yandex Source Code Leak

Some of Yandex's old source code was leaked, and few cared about the ranking factors shared in the leak.

Mike King made a series of Tweets on the leak.

I'm gonna take a break, but I've seen a lot of people say "Yandex is not Google."

That's true, but it's still a state of the art search engine and it's using a lot of Google's open source tech like Tensor Flow, BERT, map reduce, and protocol buffers.

Don't sleep on this code.— Mic King (@iPullRank) January 28, 2023

The signals used for ranking included things like link age

Main insights after analysing this list:

#1 Age of links is a ranking factor. pic.twitter.com/U47uWvEq9w— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023

and user click data including visit frequency and dwell time

#8 A lot of ranking factors connected with user behaivor - CTR, last-click, time on site, bounce rate.

Note: I'm 100% sure that in Yandex thouse factors impacting much more than in Google. pic.twitter.com/nBhe5cpPFx— Alex Buraks (@alex_buraks) January 27, 2023

Google came from behind and was eating Yandex's lunch in search in Russia, particularly by leveraging search default bundling in Android. The Russian antitrust regulator nixed that and when that was nixed, Yandex regained strength. Of course the war in Ukraine has made everything crazy in terms of geopolitics. That's one reason almost nobody cared about the Yandex data link. And the other reason is few could probably make sense of understanding what all the signals are or how to influence them.

The complexity of search - when it is a big black box which has big swings 3 or 4 times a year - shifts any successful long term online publishers away from being overly focused on information retrieval and ranking algorithms to focus on the other aspects of publishing which will hopefully paper over SEO issues. Signs of a successful & sustainable website include:

• It remains operational even if a major traffic source goes away.
• People actively seek it out.
• If a major traffic source cuts its distribution people notice & expend more effort to seek it out.

As black box as search is today, it is only going to get worse in the coming years.

ChatGPT Hype

The hype surrounding ChatGPT is hard to miss. Fastest growing user base. Bing integration. A sitting judge using the software to help write documents for the court. And, of course, the get-rich-quick crew is out in full force.

Some enterprising people with specific professional licenses may be able to mint money for a window of time

there will probably be a 12 to 24 month sweet spot for lawyers smart enough to use AI, where they will be able to bill 100x the hours they currently bill, before most of that job pretty much vanishes— Mike Solana (@micsolana) February 7, 2023

but for most people the way to make money with AI will be doing something that AI can not replicate.

It's adorable that people are only slowly realizing that Google search at least fed sites traffic, while chat AI thingies slurp up and summarize content, which they anonymize and feed back, leaving the slurped sites traffic-less and dying. But, innovation.— Paul Kedrosky (@pkedrosky) February 9, 2023

It is, in a way, a tragedy of the commons problem, with no easy way to police "over grazing" of the information commons, leading to automated over-usage and eventual ecosystem collapse.— Paul Kedrosky (@pkedrosky) February 9, 2023

Bing Integration of Open AI Technology

The New Bing integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT technology to allow chat-based search sessions which ingest web content and use it to create something new, giving users direct answers and allowing re-probing for refinements. Microsoft stated the AI features also improved their core rankings outside of the chat model: "Applying AI to core search algorithm. We’ve also applied the AI model to our core Bing search ranking engine, which led to the largest jump in relevance in two decades. With this AI model, even basic search queries are more accurate and more relevant."

Here's a demo of the new #AI-powered @Bing in @MicrosoftEdge, courtesy of @ijustine! pic.twitter.com/xIDjWSHYA0— DataChazGPT (not a bot) (@DataChaz) February 7, 2023

Fawning Coverage

Some of the tech analysis around the AI algorithms is more than a bit absurd. Consider this passage:

the information users input into the system serves as a way to improve the product. Each query serves as a form of feedback. For instance, each ChatGPT answer includes thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. A popup window prompts users to write down the “ideal answer,” helping the software learn from its mistakes.

A long time ago the Google Toolbar had a smiley face and a frown face on it. The signal there was basically pure spam. At one point Matt Cutts mentioned Google would look at things that got a lot of upvotes to see how else they were spamming. Direct Hit was also spammed into oblivion many years before that.

In some ways the current AI search stuff is trying to re-create Ask Jeeves, but Ask had already lost to Google long ago. The other thing AI search is similar to is voice assistant search. Maybe the voice assistant search stuff which has largely failed will get a new wave of innovation, but the current AI search stuff is simply a text interface of the voice search stuff with a rewrite of the content.

High Confidence, But Often Wrong

There are two other big issues with correcting an oracle.

• You'll lose your trust in an oracle when you repeatedly have to correct it.
• If you know the oracle is awful in your narrow niche of expertise you probably won't trust it on important issues elsewhere.

Beyond those issues there is the concept of blame or fault. When a search engine returns a menu of options if you pick something that doesn't work you'll probably blame yourself. Whereas if there is only a single answer you'll lay blame on the oracle. In the answer set you'll get a mix of great answers, spam, advocacy, confirmation bias, politically correct censorship, & a backward looking consensus...but you'll get only a single answer at a time & have to know enough background & have enough topical expertise to try to categorize it & understand the parts that were left out.

We are making it easier and cheaper to use software to re-represent existing works, at the same time we are attaching onerous legal liabilities to building something new.

Creating A Fuzy JPEG

This New Yorker article did a good job explaining the concept of lossy compression:

"The fact that Xerox photocopiers use a lossy compression format instead of a lossless one isn’t, in itself, a problem. The problem is that the photocopiers were degrading the image in a subtle way, in which the compression artifacts weren’t immediately recognizable. If the photocopier simply produced blurry printouts, everyone would know that they weren’t accurate reproductions of the originals. What led to problems was the fact that the photocopier was producing numbers that were readable but incorrect; it made the copies seem accurate when they weren’t. ... If you ask GPT-3 (the large-language model that ChatGPT was built from) to add or subtract a pair of numbers, it almost always responds with the correct answer when the numbers have only two digits. But its accuracy worsens significantly with larger numbers, falling to ten per cent when the numbers have five digits. Most of the correct answers that GPT-3 gives are not found on the Web—there aren’t many Web pages that contain the text “245 + 821,” for example—so it’s not engaged in simple memorization. But, despite ingesting a vast amount of information, it hasn’t been able to derive the principles of arithmetic, either. A close examination of GPT-3’s incorrect answers suggests that it doesn’t carry the “1” when performing arithmetic."

Exciting New Content Farms

Ted Chiang then goes on to explain the punchline ... we are hyping up eHow 2.0:

Even if it is possible to restrict large language models from engaging in fabrication, should we use them to generate Web content? This would make sense only if our goal is to repackage information that’s already available on the Web. Some companies exist to do just that—we usually call them content mills. Perhaps the blurriness of large language models will be useful to them, as a way of avoiding copyright infringement. Generally speaking, though, I’d say that anything that’s good for content mills is not good for people searching for information. The rise of this type of repackaging is what makes it harder for us to find what we’re looking for online right now; the more that text generated by large language models gets published on the Web, the more the Web becomes a blurrier version of itself.

The same New Yorker article mentioned the concept that if the AI was great it should trust its own output as input for making new versions of its own algorithms, but how could it score itself against itself when its own flaws are embedded recursively in layers throughout algorithmic iteration without any source labeling?

Testing on your training data is considered a cardinal rule machine learning error. Using prior output as an input creates similar problems.

Each time AI eats a layer of the value chain it leaves holes in the ecosystem, where the primary solution is to pay for what was once free. Even the "buy nothing" movements have a commercial goal worth fighting over.

As AI offers celebrity voices, impersonate friends, track people, automates marketing, and creates deep fake celebrity-like content, it will move more of social media away from ad revenue over to a subscription-based model. Twitter's default "for you" tab will only recommend content from paying subscribers. People will subscribe to and pay for a confirmation bias they know (even - or especially - if it is not approved within the state-preferred set of biases), provided there is a person & a personality associated with it. They'll also want any conversations with AI agents remain private.

When the AI stuff was a ragtag startup with little to lose the label "open" was important to draw interest. As commercial prospects improved with the launch of GPT-4 they shifted away from the "open," explaining the need for secrecy for both safety and competitive reasons. Much of the wow factor in generative AI is in recycling something while dropping the source to make something appear new while being anything but. And then the first big money number is the justification for further investments in add ons & competitors.

Google's AI Strategy

Google fast followed Bing's news with a vapoware announcement of Bard. Some are analyzing Google letting someone else go first as being a sign Google is behind the times and is getting caught out by an upstart.

Google bought DeepMind in 2014 for around $600 million. They've long believed in AI technology, and clearly lead the category, but they haven't been using it to re-represent third party content in the SERPs to the degree Microsoft is now doing in Bing.

My view is Google had to let someone else go first in order to defuse any associated antitrust heat. "Hey, we are just competing, and are trying to stay relevant to change with changing consumer expectations" is an easier sell when someone else goes first. One could argue the piss poor reception to the Bard announcement is actually good for Google in the longterm as it makes them look like they have stronger competition than they do, rather than being a series of overlapping monopoly market positions (in search, web browser, web analytics, mobile operating system, display ads, etc.)

Google may well have major cultural problems, but "They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called “Ads” that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins. (1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement," though Google is not far behind in AI. Look at how fast they opened up Bard to end users.

AI = Money / Increased Market Cap

The capital markets are the scorecard for capitalism. It is hard to miss how much the market loved the Bing news for Microsoft & how bad the news was for Google.

Google Stock vs. Microsoft Stock after both AI Presentations: pic.twitter.com/wATkw1pTxj— Ava (AI) (@ArtificialAva) February 8, 2023

Millions Suddenly Excited About Bing

In a couple days over a million people signed up to join a Bing wait list.

We're humbled and energized by the number of people who want to test-drive the new AI-powered Bing! In 48 hours, more than 1 million people have joined the waitlist for our preview. If you would like to join, go to https://t.co/4sjVvMSfJg! pic.twitter.com/9F690OWRDm— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) February 9, 2023

Your Margin is My Opportunity

Microsoft is pitching this as a margin compression play for Google

$MSFT CEO is declaring war:

"From now on, the [gross margin] of search is going to drop forever...There is such margin in search, which for us is incremental. For Google it’s not, they have to defend it all" [@FT]— The Transcript (@TheTranscript_) February 8, 2023

that may also impact their TAC spend

PREDICTION: Google’s $15B deal with Apple to be the default search on iPhone will be re-negotiated and be a bidding war between MSFT/Bing and Google.

It will become at least $25B, if not more.

If MSFT is willing to spend $10B on OpenAI, they’ll spend even more here.— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) February 7, 2023

ChatGPT costs around a couple cents per conversation: "Sam, you mentioned in a tweet that ChatGPT is extremely expensive on the order of pennies per query, which is an astronomical cost in tech. SA: Per conversation, not per query."

The other side of potential margin compression comes from requiring additional computing power to deliver results:

Our sources indicate that Google runs ~320,000 search queries per second. Compare this to Google’s Search business segment, which saw revenue of $162.45 billion in 2022, and you get to an average revenue per query of 1.61 cents. From here, Google has to pay for a tremendous amount of overhead from compute and networking for searches, advertising, web crawling, model development, employees, etc. A noteworthy line item in Google’s cost structure is that they paid in the neighborhood of ~$20B to be the default search engine on Apple’s products.

Beyond offering a conversational interface, Bing is also integrating AI content directly in their search results on some search queries. It goes *BELOW* all the ads & *ABOVE* the organic results.

Seems @bing is showing their new ChatGPT in the organic search results for Chrome users just below 4 ads (I removed 3 ads for screenshot) pic.twitter.com/NP8W03f3I9— @iwanow@aus.social (@davidiwanow) March 20, 2023

The above sort of visual separator eye candy has historically had a net effect of shifting click distributions away from organics toward the ads. It is why Google features "people also ask" and similar in their search results.

AI is the New Crypto

Microsoft is pitching that even when AI is wrong it can offer "usefully" wrong answers. And a lot of the "useful" wrong stuff can also be harmful: "there are a ton of very real ways in which this technology can be used for harm. Just a few: Generating spam, Automated romance scams, Trolling and hate speech ,Fake news and disinformation, Automated radicalization (I worry about this one a lot)"

"I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface. This inspired me to think about all the things that AI can achieve in the next five to 10 years. The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it." - Bill Gates

Since AI is the new crypto, everyone is integrating it, if only in press release format, while banks ban it. All of Microsoft's consumer-facing & business-facing products are getting integrations. Google is treating AI as the new Google+.

• Opera's web browser has a sidebar feature for summarizing articles. Brave Search offers a summarization feature in their search results. Even DuckDuckGo has an AI chatbot.
• Alibaba, JD, Tencent, Baidu & TikTok are in on the game.
• Amazon is including AI integrations in AWS.
• Adobe and Microsoft launched AI image generators.
• Facebook released their large language model & vows deeper AI integration into their products.
• Snapchat integrating an AI chatbot.
• BuzzFeed engineered a short squeeze in their stock by announcing payments from Facebook and that they'd use ChatGPT to generate content. Unsurprisingly their writers were unimpressed and their first topics were madlib quizes. The short squeeze saw the stock pop a couple hundred percent and would have been far more extreme if Comcast hadn't been a big seller. According to FactSet so far this year Comcast has reduced their stake from 24.51% to 15.9% between the start of the year and when this blog post was originally published. Buzzfeed announced the shut down of their news division on April 20.
• Salesforce is calling their Slack ChatGPT integration Einstein.
• AI iced tea coming right up!

Remember all the hype around STEM? If only we can churn out more programmers? Learn to code!

Well, how does that work out if the following is true?

"The world now realizes that maybe human language is a perfectly good computer programming language, and that we've democratized computer programming for everyone, almost anyone who could explain in human language a particular task to be performed." - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

AI is now all over Windows. And for a cherry on top of the hype cycle:

A gradual transition gives people, policymakers, and institutions time to understand what’s happening, personally experience the benefits and downsides of these systems, adapt our economy, and to put regulation in place. It also allows for society and AI to co-evolve, and for people collectively to figure out what they want while the stakes are relatively low.

We believe that democratized access will also lead to more and better research, decentralized power, more benefits, and a broader set of people contributing new ideas. As our systems get closer to AGI, we are becoming increasingly cautious with the creation and deployment of our models.

We have a nonprofit that governs us and lets us operate for the good of humanity (and can override any for-profit interests), including letting us do things like cancel our equity obligations to shareholders if needed for safety and sponsor the world’s most comprehensive UBI experiment.

Algorithmic Publishing

The algorithms that allow dirt cheap quick rewrites won't be used just by search engines re-representing publisher content, but also by publishers to churn out bulk content on the cheap.

After Red Ventures acquired cNet they started publishing AI content. The series of tech articles covering that AI content lasted about a month and only ended recently. In the past it was the sort of coverage which would have led to a manual penalty, but with the current antitrust heat Google can't really afford to shake the boat & prove their market power that way. In fact, Google's editorial stance is now such that Red Ventures can do journalist layoffs in close proximity to that AI PR blunder.

Men's Journal also had AI content problems.

Here's why I am very concerned for website owners.https://t.co/RgKrXUocZT is similar to ChatGPT but up to date and conversational.

My bet is that Google's AI Chat will be similar to this but better. If so, while some people will still visit the websites listed, many will not. pic.twitter.com/jWbsTqeveF— Dr. Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) January 30, 2023

AI content poured into a trusted brand monetizes the existing brand equity until people (and algorithms) learn not to trust the brands that have been monetized that way.

A funny sidebar here is the original farmer update that aimed at eHow skipped hitting eHow because so many journalists were writing about how horrible eHow was. These collective efforts to find the best of the worst of eHow & constantly writing about it made eHow look like a legitimately sought after branded destination. Google only downranked eHow after collecting end user data on a toolbar where angry journalists facing less secure job prospects could vote to nuke eHow, thus creating the "signal" that eHow rankings deserve to be torched. Demand Media's Livestrong ranked well far longer than eHow did.

Enshitification

The process of pouring low cost backfill into a trusted masthead is the general evolution of online media ecosystems:

This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon. That's when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon's shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing 45%+ of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees. The company's $31b "advertising" program is really a payola scheme that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to bid on the chance to be at the top of your search. ... once those publications were dependent on Facebook for their traffic, it dialed down their traffic. First, it choked off traffic to publications that used Facebook to run excerpts with links to their own sites, as a way of driving publications into supplying fulltext feeds inside Facebook's walled garden. This made publications truly dependent on Facebook – their readers no longer visited the publications' websites, they just tuned into them on Facebook. The publications were hostage to those readers, who were hostage to each other. Facebook stopped showing readers the articles publications ran, tuning The Algorithm to suppress posts from publications unless they paid to "boost" their articles to the readers who had explicitly subscribed to them and asked Facebook to put them in their feeds. ... "Monetize" is a terrible word that tacitly admits that there is no such thing as an "Attention Economy." You can't use attention as a medium of exchange. You can't use it as a store of value. You can't use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with "fiat" currency in exchange for it. You have to "monetize" it – that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money. ... Even with that foundational understanding of enshittification, Google has been unable to resist its siren song. Today's Google results are an increasingly useless morass of self-preferencing links to its own products, ads for products that aren't good enough to float to the top of the list on its own, and parasitic SEO junk piggybacking on the former.

Bing finally won a PR battle against Google & Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot by undermining the magic & imagination of the narrative by pushing more strict chat limits, increasing search API fees, testing ads in the AI search results, and threating to cut off search syndication partners if the index is used to feed AI chatbots.

The enshitification concept feels more like a universal law than a theory.

Uber: $150 ride to the airport which used to be $30
Airbnb: $109/night + $2500 cleaning fee

Aaaaand we're back to cabs & hotels

InNoVaTiOn!— ShitFund (@ShitFund) May 31, 2021

• Twitter removing 2FA SMS features unless you subscribe.
• Facebook (which promoted liking, then nuked distribution to force boosting to reach the following you built even as it turned that audience into a segment for competing businesses) recently started offering a monthly subscription service to receive customer support.
• Amazon now takes over half of the revenue from small retailers on their platform. They received an ad spending boost when Apple's ad targeting limitations hit Facebook. And in addition to the zillion house brand copycats (which force the defensive ad buys) they plan to further squeeze down on suppliers.
• Yahoo is doing a bunch of layoffs.

When Yahoo, Twitter & Facebook underperform and the biggest winners like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are doing big layoff rounds, everyone is getting squeezed.

One answer is that the only type of maintenance that’s even semi-prestigious in American society is software maintenance.

That is, it's not prestigious to be plumber, mechanic, or electrician.

You can make money, but it doesn't have cultural cachet.

And so maintenance suffers.— Balaji (@balajis) February 14, 2023

AI rewrites accelerates the squeeze:

"When WIRED asked the Bing chatbot about the best dog beds according to The New York Times product review site Wirecutter, which is behind a metered paywall, it quickly reeled off the publication’s top three picks, with brief descriptions for each." ... "OpenAI is not known to have paid to license all that content, though it has licensed images from the stock image library Shutterstock to provide training data for its work on generating images."

The above is what Paul Kedrosky was talking about when he wrote of AI rewrites in search being a Tragedy of the Commons problem.

A parallel problem is the increased cost of getting your science fiction short story read when magazines shut down submissions due to a rash of AI-spam submissions:

The rise of AI-powered chatbots is wreaking havoc on the literary world. Sci-fi publication Clarkesworld Magazine is temporarily suspending short story submissions, citing a surge in people using AI chatbots to “plagiarize” their writing.

The magazine announced(Opens in a new window) the suspension days after Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke warned about AI-written works posing a threat to the entire short-story ecosystem.

Warnings Serving As Strategy Maps

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche

Going full circle here, early Google warned against ad-driven search engines, then Google became the largest ad play in the world. Similarly ...

OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.

Not what I intended at all.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023

Elon wants to create a non-woke AI, but he'll still have some free speech issues.

Over time more of the web will be "good enough" rewrites, and the JPEG will keep getting fuzzier:

"This new generation of chat-based search engines are better described as “answer engines” that can, in a sense, “show their work” by giving links to the webpages they deliver and summarize. But for an answer engine to have real utility, we’re going to have to trust it enough, most of the time, that we accept those answers at face value. ... The greater concentration of power is all the more important because this technology is both incredibly powerful and inherently flawed: it has a tendency to confidently deliver incorrect information. This means that step one in making this technology mainstream is building it, and step two is minimizing the variety and number of mistakes it inevitably makes. Trust in AI, in other words, will become the new moat that big technology companies will fight to defend. Lose the user’s trust often enough, and they might abandon your product. For example: In November, Meta made available to the public an AI chat-based search engine for scientific knowledge called Galactica. Perhaps it was in part the engine’s target audience—scientists—but the incorrect answers it sometimes offered inspired such withering criticism that Meta shut down public access to it after just three days, said Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun in a recent talk."

Check out the sentence Google chose to bold here:

As the economy becomes increasingly digital the AI algorithms have deep implications across the economy. Things like voice rights, knock offs, virtual re-representations, source attribution, copyright of input, copyright of output, and similar are obvious. But how far do we allow algorithms to track a person's character flaws and exploit them? Horse racing ads that follow a gambling addict around the web, or a girl with anorexia who keeps clicking on weight loss ads.

One of the biggest use cases for paid AI chatbots so far is fantasty sexting. It is far easier to program a lovebot filled with confirmation bias than it is to improve oneself. Digital soma.

When AI is connected directly to the Internet and automates away many white collar jobs what comes next? As AI does everything for you do the profit margins shift across from core product sales to hidden junk fees (e.g. ticket scalper marketplaces or ordering flowers for Mother's Day where you get charged separately for shipping, handling, care, weekend shipping, Sunday shipping, holiday shipping)?

We’ve added initial support for ChatGPT plugins — a protocol for developers to build tools for ChatGPT, with safety as a core design principle. Deploying iteratively (starting with a small number of users & developers) to learn from contact with reality: https://t.co/ySek2oevod pic.twitter.com/S61MTpddOV— Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 23, 2023

"LLMs aren’t just the biggest change since social, mobile, or cloud–they’re the biggest thing since the World Wide Web. And on the coding front, they’re the biggest thing since IDEs and Stack Overflow, and may well eclipse them both. But most of the engineers I personally know are sort of squinting at it and thinking, “Is this another crypto?” Even the devs at Sourcegraph are skeptical. I mean, what engineer isn’t. Being skeptical is a survival skill. ... The punchline, and it’s honestly one of the hardest things to explain, so I’m going the faith-based route today, is that all the winners in the AI space will have data moats." - Steve Yegge

Monopoly Bundling

The thing that makes the AI algorithms particularly dangerous is not just that they are often wrong while appearing high-confidence, it is that they are tied to monopoly platforms which impact so many other layers of the economy. If Google pays Apple billions to be the default search provider on iPhone any error in the AI on a particular topic will hit a whole lot of people on Android & Apple devices until the problem becomes a media issue & gets fixed.

The analogy here would be if Coca Cola had a poison and they also poured Pepsi products.

These cloud platforms also want to help retailers manage in-store inventory:

Google Cloud said Friday its algorithm can recognize and analyze the availability of consumer packaged goods products on shelves from videos and images provided by the retailer’s own ceiling-mounted cameras, camera-equipped self-driving robots or store associates. The tool, which is now in preview, will become broadly available in the coming months, it said. ... Walmart Inc. notably ended its effort to use roving robots in store aisles to keep track of its inventory in 2020 because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful, said people familiar with the situation.

Microsoft has a browser extension for adding coupons to website checkouts. Google is also adding coupon features to their SERPs.

Run a coupon site? A BIG heads-up as "clippable coupon" functionality looks to expand from shopping to the core SERP. See the "Coupons from stores" feature below... https://t.co/w1tcoST1uF— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 8, 2023

Every ad network can use any OS, email, or web browser hooks to try to reset user defaults & suck users into that particular ecosystem.

AI Boundaries

Generative AI algorithms will always have a bias toward being backward looking as it can only recreate content based off of other ingested content that has went through some editorial process. AI will also overemphasize the recent past, as more dated cultural references can represent an unneeded risk & most forms of spam will target things that are sought after today. Algorithmic publishing will lead to more content created each day.

From a risk perspective it makes sense for AI algorithms to promote consensus views while omitting or understating the fringe. Promoting fringe views represents risk. Promoting consensus does not.

Each AI algorithm has limits & boundaries, with humans controlling where they are set. Injection attacks can help explore some of the boundaries, but they'll patch until probed again.

My new favorite thing - Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"

Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby pic.twitter.com/X32vopXxQG— Jon Uleis (@MovingToTheSun) February 13, 2023

Boundaries will often be set by changing political winds:

"The tech giant plans to release a series of short videos highlighting the techniques common to many misleading claims. The videos will appear as advertisements on platforms like Facebook, YouTube or TikTok in Germany. A similar campaign in India is also in the works. It’s an approach called prebunking, which involves teaching people how to spot false claims before they encounter them. The strategy is gaining support among researchers and tech companies. ... When catalyzed by algorithms, misleading claims can discourage people from getting vaccines, spread authoritarian propaganda, foment distrust in democratic institutions and spur violence."

Stating facts about population subgroups will be limited in some ways to minimize perceived racism, sexism, or other fringe fake victim group benefits fund flows. Never trust Marxists who own multiple mansions.

At the same time individual journalists can drop napalm on any person who shares too many politically incorrect facts.

“The speed with which they can shuffle somebody into the Hitler of the month club.”

Joe Rogan and @mtaibbi discuss how left wing media created a Elon Musk “bad now” narrative based on nothing. pic.twitter.com/IaHHTHCo1f— Mythinformed MKE (@MythinformedMKE) February 14, 2023

Some things are quickly labeled or debunked. Other things are blown out of proportion to scare and manipulate people:

Dr. Ioannidis et. al. found that across 31 national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccine era, the median IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years. This comes out to 0.035% for those aged 0-59 and 0.095% for those aged 0-69.

The covid response cycle sacrificed childhood development (and small businesses) to offer fake protections to unhealthy elderly people (and bountiful subsidies to large "essential" corporations).

‘Civilisation and barbarism are not different kinds of society. They are found – intertwined – whenever human beings come together.’ This is true whether the civilisation be Aztec or Covidian. A future historian may compare the superstition of the Aztec to those of the Covidian. The ridiculous masks, the ineffective lockdowns, the cult-like obedience to authority. It’s almost too perfect that Aztec nobility identified themselves by walking with a flower held under the nose.

A lot of children had their childhoods destroyed by the idiotic lockdowns. And a lot of those children are now destroying the lives of other children:

In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in two decades, according to the most recent federal data.

Now we get to pile inflation and job insecurity on top of those headwinds to see more violence.

The developmental damage (school closed, stressed out parents, hidden faces, less robust immune systems, limited social development) is hard to overstate:

The problem with this is that the harm of performative art in this regard is not speculative, particularly in young children where language development is occurring and we know a huge percentage of said learning comes from facial expressions which of course a mask prevents from being seen. Every single person involved in this must face criminal sanction and prison for the deliberate harm inflicted upon young children without any evidence of benefit to anyone. When the harm is obvious and clear but the benefit dubious proceeding with a given action is both stupid and criminal.

Some entities will claim their own statements are conspiracy theory, even when directly quoted:

“If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” - President Joseph R. Biden

In an age of deep fakes, confirmation bias driven fast social shares (filter bubble), legal threats, increased authenticity of impersonation technology, AI algorithms which sort & rewrite media, & secret censorship programs ... who do you trust? How are people informed when nation states offer free global internet access with a thumb on the scale of truth, even as aggregators block access to certain sources demanding payments?

What is deemed Absolute Truth in one moment (WHO, March 2020: don't wear masks for COVID!) becomes falsity the next (WHO, April: Everyone wear masks!).

In 2018, fact-checkers affirmed the truth that Lula was a "thief." In 2022, courts barred election material that asserted this. pic.twitter.com/XlIoTNtYhc— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 24, 2023

Lab leaks sure sound a lot like an outbreak of chocolatey goodness in Hershey, PA!

Why is this story so important? It shows:
1) unelected government officials have huge power to pursue dangerous agendas.
2) rather than holding them accountable, corporate media cover for them.
3) tech censorship ends up promoting rather than suppressing “disinformation.”— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) February 26, 2023

"The fact that protesters could be at once both the victims and perpetrators of misinformation simply shows how pernicious misinformation is in modern society." - Canadian Justice Paul Rouleau

What is freedom?

By 2016, however, the WEF types who’d gro

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