Today in Digital Marketing - 119: Unpopular Opinion: Now Is a GOOD Time to Advertise Online

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It is Thursday, March 26th, 2020. at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Reasons why now might be a great time to advertise your brand online. And how do you market a region when nobody can travel there? Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Is Netflix rolling out an outdoor billboard campaign across the U.S. right now? I know you're thinking like me, outdoor billboards? What the hell?

Starting point is 00:01:03 Aren't people supposed to be avoiding public places? Yes, they are. And these billboards have actual spoilers for the most popular Netflix shows on them. Spoilers like Dave Dies in the End, The Good Guy Doesn't Win in Narcos, and Susan is Still Alive. The idea being, don't go outside, because if you do, you will spoil your favorite Netflix show. It turns out, sadly, this is not actually happening. It's not from Netflix. It's actually an idea from students at the Miami Ad School, which actually isn't in Miami, but in Germany. To be clear, there are not real billboards going up, and Netflix is not behind it.

Starting point is 00:01:40 But the idea, completely solid. The students even mocked up the ads they would run on social media. Just white text on a black background reading, warning, gathering spaces might contain the ending of your favorite series. Absolutely genius. Since last Monday, when people began quarantining, Netflix's stock has increased by 17%. Pinterest today announced a number of upgrades to its marketing platform. First, a verified merchant program. These are sellers who meet Pinterest's qualifications for good customer service. Verified merchants will get that blue checkmark on their profiles and, quote,

Starting point is 00:02:18 become eligible for increased distribution within high-intent shopping experiences, unquote. I'm not 100% sure what that baffle gap means, increased distribution within high intent shopping experiences, unquote. I'm not 100% sure what that baffle gap means, but I think what they're trying to say here is that when they detect a user is actually looking to buy something rather than just browsing, that the pins of verified brands will get more reach than unverified brands. And side note, Pinterest, would it kill you to just use normal person language? High intent shopping experiences? Come on. Anyway, more at Pinterest.com slash verified if you're interested in that.

Starting point is 00:02:52 Also, they now have conversion insights. This is still in early access, but you get to see conversion insights. You can measure Pinterest's impact on your site visits, checkouts and sales over multiple attribution windows. Nice touch there. One interesting thing, this includes conversions for organic pins as well. Catalog updates. Now there is less time from feed ingestion to product pin creation, and they've added some new metrics and even the ability to schedule your feed ingestion. And finally, dynamic retargeting. You can now reach people who have engaged with your brand online or who have unpurchased items in their cart

Starting point is 00:03:27 by retargeting exact or similar products they search and save on Pinterest. If your brand uses YouTube to get your message out, you may be interested in these updates that they announced today. You can now see a breakdown of viewers for live broadcasts versus regular uploaded videos. Previously, you couldn't tell how much viewer activity came from the live stream and how much came from a replay. They've also expanded smart replies, which are still in beta. Smart replies are an experimental feature

Starting point is 00:03:54 for creators. They can now be edited before posting, so you can tweak them a bit. They're getting rid of channel bulletins as well. That's a legacy holdover feature, which really wasn't used much anymore. You'll be able to export your previous bulletins if you need to for compliance reasons or whatever until May the 18th. Google algorithm researcher Mary Haynes asked her 25,000 Twitter followers if they are seeing organic search traffic declines for their customers' sites during this whole pandemic period. And yes, most say they have seen a change in the last week. About 60% reported a drop. Only 16% saying they saw an increase in traffic. 14% said they saw no change. One person, though, did say that they

Starting point is 00:04:39 have noticed a big increase in Bing desktop impressions and conversions, all while other traffic is decreasing. Their theory? People have been sent home with new laptops, and those laptop settings are still on the default search engine, which on Windows is, of course, Microsoft-owned Bing. Interesting article on social media today. First, they recap all the changes that Facebook has made to its platform regarding COVID-19,

Starting point is 00:05:05 removing posts that have false claims about cures and treatments, banning all ads and commerce listings which capitalize in fears like face masks and hand sanitizers, invested funding into fact-checking resources, removed all non-official COVID-19 accounts from recommendations listings on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:05:22 They're highlighting to people when they've received a forwarded or chain email on WhatsApp and a whole bunch more. And the article asks, in essence, hey, if you guys can do it that fast for the coronavirus, why can't you do that for other obviously inaccurate topics like climate change is a hoax or removing ads from politicians that just have blatant lies? Zuckerberg's response was a little underwhelming, saying basically, well, it's a pandemic, so that's more important. Anyway, the article is worth a read.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Link in description. So you are a destination marketer promoting a region for tourism or business, and all the shelter in place orders have all but killed your ability to get people to your area. So what do you do? Maybe take a page from what the U.S. state of Michigan is doing. They have launched a project inviting people to experience the state virtually. It includes things like live cams of beaches, virtual tours of museum exhibits, and more. They are posting these new experiences across their tourism group's social media channels. My favorite idea they've put up, you can virtually paddle into the St. Mary's River on a 360-degree guided tour. The state's Ann Arbor

Starting point is 00:06:32 Film Festival will be live-streamed for free. The Henry Ford Museum is putting its digital collections online, and virtual visitors can also explore the Mathematica, Detroit Institute of the Arts, and the Michigan History Museum all from their own home. Social media today also has a great article up today called Four Reasons Why Facebook Ads Are Critical for Your Business During COVID-19. The summary. First, digital attention is at an all-time high. People are at home, and in many cases not working, so social media is getting a lot more eyeballs.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Second, a lot of other brands, like your competitors, have paused their campaigns. That is, as I reported earlier this week, resulting in dramatic drops in prices in the ad auction. Analysts say they expect Facebook's ad revenue to be down 19% this year because of the coronavirus. As the article notes, that's a lot of potential competition that won't be in your ad auctions. Third, brand awareness is a low-cost objective. Quoting the piece, since conversions are likely to slow down due, understandably, to larger concerns occupying people's thoughts, it could also be a good idea to shift to a lower-cost objective, like brand awareness with your Facebook ads. Brand awareness ads are geared toward generating as many impressions as possible among your target audience in the hopes of generating greater brand recall.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Facebook measures this by asking those who were served the ad if they remember seeing it two days after being served. This can be seen as a double-dip, because if they don't remember it, they'll be reminded through the process, unquote. And finally, they say you have the opportunity to serve people now and win business later. Again, great piece, link in the description. And speaking of serving people now and winning their business later, and you knew this would happen sooner or later, Pornhub has now made their premium offering free. Not free as in 30-day trial and then we'll bill your credit card.

Starting point is 00:08:30 Free as in no credit card required. They have also renamed their site Stay Home Hub. And they say they've also donated 50,000 surgical masks to New York City's health workers. So that's it. So far my wife and I are healthy. No symptoms. I did have to leave briefly to get groceries.

Starting point is 00:08:49 It's weird out there. People aren't looking other people in the eye. Whole shelves are completely gone, like flour randomly and canned tomatoes. None to be found, at least here on Vancouver Island in Canada. Strange times. I hope you're well. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 119: Unpopular Opinion: Now Is a GOOD Time to Advertise Online

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