Bullseye Strategy Special Correspondent

In this week’s digital marketing news roundup, podcasts now show up in Google results, experts predict a chatbot takeover on Facebook Messenger, and Instagram’s new @Shop channel is basically a mall. In other words, just another day at the water cooler over here.

Podcasts Pull Rank

Google announced at their Google I/O developer conference last week that podcasts will soon show up in Google Search results. Listeners will be able to listen directly from search result or save podcasts for later. To quote TechCrunch on this new development, “Google will begin to index podcasts so the engine can surface relevant episodes of a given program, based on the content, not just the title.” We’re all podcast addicts over here, so we’re looking forward to the day when we shout at Alexa to tell us who the biggest serial killer in Australia is and immediately hear the chilling answer directly from the lips of the charming anonymous narrator of Casefile.

The Bots are Coming, the Bots are Coming!

Social Media Today published 14 predictions about Facebook Messenger, and we can summarize them all with one word: chatbots. Facebook Messenger’s chatbots, which can be incorporated into a business’s website directly, soon will replace other types of chatbots and live chat, and are forecasted to grow to become the largest marketing channel. In the future, in fact, virtually all business-to-customer interaction will be bot-driven, according to our SMT soothsayers. Is this sounding eerily like a scene from Brave New World? Maybe, but looking forward to the day when we never again have to hear a recording, “Please remain on the line; your call is very important to us.” And we predict chatbots will get everything done, faster and with better grammar.

Instagram Pretty Much Becomes a Mall

Remember when Instagram was just about sharing pictures of your life? Like that time you went to the mall and shared a selfie of yourself on the escalator with the hashtag #fashionista? Fast-forward a handful of years, and now you don’t even need to go to the mall, because Instagram now has a @Shop account where you can buy your next #OOTD without clicking outside the Instagram platform, let alone getting out of bed.

Bye, malls! We’ll miss you about as much as we’ll miss waiting on hold for the next customer care representative.

“Mark Eting” is the pen name of the Bullseye Strategy team. Check back with us next week for more news on what’s buzzing in the digital marketing industry.