Today in Digital Marketing - 128: New Tools from Pinterest, LinkedIn, Spotify, and Agorapulse

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It is Wednesday, April 8th, 2020. Be protected. Be Zen. some nice new features, Spotify's ad platform is expanding, and they ran a Facebook ad saying drinking bleach would cure you of COVID-19. Three guesses as to whether Facebook approved it. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. If you're a brand that uses Pinterest as part of your digital marketing platform, you might be interested to learn about some enhancements it's now rolling out. First, they're adding a new shop option to the boards that you create. Here's how Pinterest describes it. When a pinner visits their home decor or fashion board, they'll now see a shop tab that shows products from or inspired by the pins on

Starting point is 00:01:16 their board. Just as if a shopping list has been created for their boards, pinners will see in-stock products based on what they've been saving for a room or a look. So, might be a way to encourage more purchase behavior in-app. They're also adding a new shop tab to the search results. They say 97% of the top searches on its platform are unbranded, so people are arriving there without a particular loyalty or a specific brand in mind. And they're also adding a new shop similar button in the visual search results, so people can drill down into products that are available to buy while they're on the site. There's been a lot of talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting brands now.

Starting point is 00:01:55 But what do analysts think the retail and e-commerce landscape will look like a year from now, three years from now? How will this have changed consumer behavior overall? Retail Dive has an outstanding piece on this today. One of the experts they talked to, a professor of luxury marketing and branding, said, quote, I think that a lot of people are going to realize that they don't need as much. We've missed an entire month already that we're never going to get back, and people are pressured financially because they're losing their jobs and preparing for a recession. On the other hand, the social distancing and deprivation is really intense. Perhaps the restaurants and bars will be the first to recover.

Starting point is 00:02:37 We will all be craving a bit of entertainment, which is what shopping has always been, unquote. It's a pretty comprehensive piece with a bunch of other experts in the space. You will find a link in this episode's description. One of those experts said wherever the post-COVID-19 evolution of the consumer lands, don't be surprised if it's profound and lasts well into the future along the lines of the aftermath of the world wars and the Great Depression. We are getting some numbers from Facebook on just how many ad review people they have working right now. Back in 2008, they said they had 15,000 people working in that department. Of course, we can expect that number has only increased since 2008. But very recently, Facebook said during the pandemic, they have, quote,

Starting point is 00:03:15 a few thousand working people in that department. Of course, a few thousand is pretty vague, but you can bet it's nowhere near 15,000. The revelation came from an investigation by Consumer Reports. They created a made-up organization called the Self-Preservation Society, then scheduled a bunch of deliberately misleading information about the coronavirus, including that you should drink, quote, small daily doses of bleach. The ads were scheduled for a couple of weeks into the future. That way, they could both test to see if Facebook took them down after a manual review a few days later, and would also give Consumer Reports the ability to take them down before they actually went live.

Starting point is 00:03:54 I know you know where this is going. Facebook approved the ads. Almost all of them. Including one saying that if you're under 30, you are safe from the virus, including one saying the coronavirus was a hoax. Only one ad was rejected by Facebook, but not because of the fake claims. It was because Facebook didn't like the stock photo of a face mask. So they swapped it out for a different stock image of a face mask and presto, ad approved. Agora Pulse's people might all be working from home, but they're still working. And yesterday they released two new features. First, you can now publish to your brand's YouTube channel from within Agora Pulse. This is something that Sprout Social also recently added. Hootsuite's had for a while and Buffer still doesn't have.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Come on, Buffer. They've also added an image cropper. So now when you upload an image to Agora Pulse, you can trim it to an optimal size for whatever social network and post type you'd like. These new additions are available on all the plans, and they say their next release will include even more functionalities for images and video. Speaking of new features, LinkedIn now has its new events option available for all company pages. When they launched it back last fall, they said it would only be available to a small group of brand pages. But now everyone gets it. Spotify Ad Studio is out of beta. Honestly, I didn't realize they'd even considered it still in beta, but whatever.

Starting point is 00:05:35 Also, they said the Ad Studio will be available in more countries later this year. Last month, they launched Ad Studio in New Zealand to join the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Next, they're going to test an English-only version of Ad Studio in 17 markets, but only with select advertisers. These additional markets are Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan. I guess I didn't need the big breath. They say they'll also launch versions of the Ad Studio in Mexico and Spain later this year that are fully translated into local languages. If you're in one of those countries, you can sign up for Ad Studio now, and a Spotify representative will reach out if they think you are a good fit for their test.

Starting point is 00:06:22 Finally, and this has nothing to do with digital marketing, but I still thought it was really cool, the video game Borderlands 3, which is a kind of shooter game, now includes a special mini-game. And by playing it, you actually contribute to real-world scientific research. In the mini-game, you complete levels in a kind of cross between Tetris and the many Match 3 games out there. And by doing it, you're actually helping correct millions of tiny computer errors that arise as scientists try to map the microbiome of the human gut. Researchers say this will lead to a better understanding of the human body, which could lead to advances

Starting point is 00:06:55 in treatment of everything from obesity to diabetes to depression. I hope you're doing well. I hope you're healthy. I hope your people are well. Talk to you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

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Starting point is 00:07:40 Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - 128: New Tools from Pinterest, LinkedIn, Spotify, and Agorapulse

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