Today in Digital Marketing - 122: Kiss Your Google Ads Rep Goodbye

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, March 31st, 2020. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, Google is taking away human account managers from most agencies. Facebook expands its ad experiment option. Instagram considers letting you live stream with more than one guest at a time. And are those Snapchat stories in another app? Yep. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:27 Facebook is working on a new reaction. You know reactions, don't you? Those clicks you make to indicate sentiment on a post, like love, angry, wow, sad, laughing. And this reaction? COVID-19 themed. Looks like a heart made from a ribbon against a purple and blue background.

Starting point is 00:00:43 It would replace the love icon temporarily. This isn't the first special reaction that Facebook has done. They've done a pride flag before. In the lead up to Mother's Day back in 2016, they added a flower reaction in some countries. It's not clear what emotional message this ribbon is meant to carry, but perhaps they're just intending it to show support. Social media today speculates it could be tied to a charity drive of some sort to help raise funds on the platform. Or, quoting them, maybe it's just a rallying cry, a response to everything, given the overwhelming impact of the pandemic. Maybe users are just exhausted and don't know how to feel.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Just COVID-19. That's all. One disappointing part of Facebook's API is that third-party platforms don't have the ability to use any reaction other than like. This didn't used to be the case. For a few brief, glorious months, we could select from any of the six. And then Facebook took that away because reasons. You'll soon be seeing a new section in Facebook's Ads Manager, a new experiments area that will include multiple types of tests. They used to be called Test and Learn and Split Testing. The new experiments will have four tests available, A-B tests, holdout tests, brand surveys,

Starting point is 00:02:01 and campaign budget optimization tests. Let's walk through each one, quoting from WeRSM.com. A-B tests let marketers compare their creative and audience strategies and other variables in order to find out what works best for them. This will allow them to optimize their next campaigns. A-B tests help them answer questions, such as which creatives perform better, which CTAs perform better with a particular

Starting point is 00:02:25 audience, and so on. Holdout tests make it easier for marketers to measure conversions that are driven by their ads. The way they work is rather simple, as Facebook compares conversion rates of people who saw the ads with those of people in a holdout group. Members of the holdout group are never shown the ads. The test uses this information to calculate lift in conversion events like purchases. Brand surveys help marketers understand the brand impact from their ads. The idea is to find the effect on things like awareness, perception, recall, and more. Brand surveys work by polling people who've seen an ad and polling a holdout group who hasn't. Facebook then aggregates and compares the results,

Starting point is 00:03:10 thus making it easier to measure how ads impacted a brand objective. This also helps marketers confirm whether they are investing in the right strategy. And campaign budget optimization tests allow marketers to test campaign using budget optimization versus others that aren't, measuring the difference between the two. The test automatically randomizes an advertising audience to determine which of the two strategies work better. Unquote. So, partly an update, partly a reorganization and renaming of previously available tests, but still, definitely welcome. Some agencies woke up to a surprising email from Google yesterday telling them that as of tomorrow, April 1st, they won't have a dedicated Google account manager anymore. And it's not just a few agencies. Google said the majority of agencies will have their human contact taken off the case.

Starting point is 00:04:01 They also didn't explain what the criteria was. They also didn't say whether an increase in ad spend would get your rep back. They also didn't give a reason for this change, although oddly they went out of their way to say that it has nothing to do with the planned change to the Google Partners program coming in June. If you have lost your rep, Google says, just use the regular old support options. Great. Instagram is considering letting brands and people on Instagram live stream with more than one guest. This isn't the first change they're making in response to the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:04:39 Well, let's be honest, in response to apps like Houseparty getting a lot of eyeballs. Instagram launched a co-watching feature, which lets users share photos and videos with up to six people at a time via video chat. Instagram chief Adam Massari said this in a series of Instagram stories, quote, Right now, you can only go live with one person at a time. We are looking into if we could just expand that. But it's not clear that that is the most pressing thing that we can add to live versus just getting stability up, adding more features, making it available on the web, etc. Unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Facebook has briefly reversed itself on its policy of not fact-checking posts from politicians. It's not a wholesale reversal. The policy isn't any different, but they appear to have made an exception and deleted a post from a politician. That politician? The Brazilian president, who on the weekend claimed that a drug which is in very early test is, according to him, quote, working in all places.

Starting point is 00:05:34 This is the same drug that US President Donald Trump touted. Researchers and health authorities say it is way too early to tell if that drug will help. It's an interesting decision from Facebook, though, and maybe it signals that it fell into one of their other policies that doesn't permit misinformation that could lead to physical harm. For the record, Twitter deleted two of the Brazilian president's tweets, and one tweet from Rudy Giuliani as well. Among regular non-politician people, Facebook prohibits false claims regarding cure, treatment, the availability

Starting point is 00:06:06 of essential services, and the location or intensity of contagion outbreaks. Perhaps soon they'll be applying that to politicians as well. And finally, Snapchat is expanding beyond its app, adding a way for developers to incorporate Snapchat stories into their apps. This means users will be able to be more specific about who gets to see their stories since they could choose to share on external apps, but not to their Snapchat friends. This is, of course, good news for digital marketers since it basically just means more reach. Actually, this has been around in beta with a select group of apps, but that is starting to expand now. If you want to see it in action, the Hilly app, that's H-I-L-Y, has it. There, stories from Snapchat users show up on the profile bars of all users who connect Hilly to Snapchat.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Among other apps that have integrated this in one way or another, Octi and Squad. No, I'd never heard of those apps either. In the case of Squad, this will let users co-watch Snapchat stories during video calls, among other places. So far, there are 150 apps using the new tools. That's it, friends. I hope you're well and staying at home. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 122: Kiss Your Google Ads Rep Goodbye

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