Today in Digital Marketing - 140: This Checkmark Costs $1 Million: ✅ (And hello Product Hunters!)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today is Tuesday, April 28th. I'm Todd Maffin, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. A new ad placement on Snapchat that will be hard to ignore. A way for you to virtually attend a real marketing conference for free. Google isn't showing you everything you think it is. Missing some search console data? Yes, you are. And wait, I'm sorry, TikTok is selling blue checkmark badges to marketers now? A special hello to those of you coming over from Product Hunt, and let's get started. Snapchat has added an interesting new ad placement they call First Commercial.

Starting point is 00:00:35 It's a kind of mass audience reach tool. The way it'll work is your ad would be literally the first ad a user sees when they start using Snapchat on your day. And this is not tied to the kind of content that they've selected. So whether they pick a news show or a fashion show in the Discover tab, everyone's going to get the same ad. It's a kind of takeover. They are six seconds, non-skippable, and you buy them for a full 24-hour run. But don't go looking for it in Snapchat's Ads Manager.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Like many of these high-tiered ad placements, you'll need to talk to a sales rep to book it. And also, you have to be in the US for now. Snapchat did not even hint at what the CPM rate they will be charging for it is, although if you know, please leak it to me. TikTok has a similar kind of placement, though I'd argue theirs is a little bit more impactful. Basically, whenever a user launches the app, your ad can play immediately. If you use TikTok, you've probably seen one of these about every week or so. This probably won't be the first expansion

Starting point is 00:01:30 of advertising options at Snapchat. They recently hired the former head of ad sales at Hulu.com. Last week, Snapchat announced their first quarter ever of positive cashflow. Revenue was up 44% over last year. So heads up if you use Trello.com at work, that planning board kind of website, some really weird changes are coming that might have an effect on the security of your brand's planning boards.

Starting point is 00:02:01 As of Thursday, all members of free teams will have admin permissions. Let me say that again. If your brand or agency is using a free plan on Trello, in two days, everyone on your team will have the to add people, remove people, change team level privacy settings. They can even unilaterally upgrade your team to a paid tier. Yes, anyone, even Karen in accounting. I don't think any of us want to see that. So you're self-isolating at home and maybe missing the information you'd otherwise be picking up at one of the marketing conferences that you'd usually be attending this time of year. Well, one conference has put its entire catalog online for free.

Starting point is 00:02:54 The Discover Martech event happened last week, virtually, of course, and they've actually put all of the sessions online. There are more than 35 presentations on topics like how COVID-19 will change the future of digital marketing, driving marketing success in the cookie-less world, and delivering a personalized user experience in the age of privacy. You will find a link in this episode's notes. If you rely on Google's search console to keep track of the position and health of your brand's web pages, you're not going to like this news. It turns out Google is now tracking fewer pages there. And they're doing it on purpose.

Starting point is 00:03:34 This is specifically happening for the AMP mobile usability and speed reports. They say tracking fewer pages will speed up their reporting system. Which, I guess it probably would, but also maybe just like add more servers. Like you do have a server farm. Anyway, as a result, you might see a decrease in the number of items and pages tracked in these reports next time you log in. To be clear, this doesn't affect your brand's ranking in Google, only data reporting in Search Console. But still. Oh, by the way, Google says it had an outage of data from April 9th to April 25th. So that might explain the missing numbers, if you noticed that.

Starting point is 00:04:17 TikTok is now selling blue verified checkmark. Oh, wait, hang on just a second. Yes, I'm getting an update. Nope, they're not anymore. A little embarrassing moment for them this morning when they published a blog post that read, in part, a blue verified badge is available to advertisers that reach a minimum ad spend. I'm sorry, what? And then as fast as it took me to read that sentence, that section was pulled from the post. Oops. Smart move by Spotify, especially given the increase in video conferencing. Their podcast publishing platform, Anchor, will now let you turn video chats and virtual hangouts into podcasts.

Starting point is 00:05:03 And it works out of the box with pretty much all the major video conferencing tools that let you export a video of the meeting. That's Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Twitch, even Instagram Live. Although you have to be on a paid plan of some of those to be able to download. It's an interesting move and one that you may want to consider if you have shifted your own brand's content strategy to more video meetings or video performances. Once you upload the video, you'll be able to use Anchor's existing audio tools like adding background music, segmenting the podcast, and so on. Incidentally, this past March, the number of podcasts submitted to Spotify was up nearly 70%, 7-0, month over month. That is the largest monthly growth that they have ever seen. This video-to-audio feature is live today to everyone. Revenue that publishers get from the advertising that you and I do on their platforms is,

Starting point is 00:05:55 no surprise, expected to fall thanks to the coronavirus. But it's not the massive debilitating drop you might be expecting. New research from BIA says they expect ad revenue will be down only 3.6% from last year. If that sounds like a smaller drop than you were expecting, yeah, me too. Turns out the ads in local markets for the upcoming US election is going to help here. But some of these publishers rely on razor-thin margins. So 3.6% drop can be a big deal to them. And all local is feeling it.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Quoting Marketing Dive, leisure and entertainment cancellations are hurting out of home ad sales. Local radio and TV are seeing dips in ad sales because of store and restaurant closures and sport and event cancellations. Even direct mail is taking a hit as retailers and financial services firms reduce spending, unquote. But of course, this is actually kind of good news for digital marketers like you and me, because fewer advertisers means less competition in the ad auctions means lower ad rates. Indeed, most digital platforms are reporting that CPMs have dropped since the pandemic really hit.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Which brings us to the lightning round. TikTok is growing up fast. Their ads API is now being used by the social media platform Sprinklr so that users there can manage their TikTok campaigns right in Sprinklr rather than having to do so on the TikTok platform. Shopify has rebranded its package tracking app into an app that they call Shop that lets consumers browse a feed of recommended products, products that are sold on Spotify, of course. Snapchat has released a short study about how their users are spending their time indoors. Top three, cleaning and organizing,

Starting point is 00:07:30 followed by practicing self-care and then exercising. So maybe some ideas for your content strategy there if your demo aligns with Snapchat's. Also in Snapchat news, they are launching a new vertical video conversion tool, which will make it easier for you to make your landscape assets portrait. Well, as I mentioned at the top today, we are on product hunt today. So if you're new, hello, welcome. I'm Todd Maffin. I used to be the national technology columnist for Canada's public broadcaster. But for the last 10 years, I have been a digital marketer like you.

Starting point is 00:08:00 I own a social media engagement agency. And I do this podcast every single weekday. So if you've enjoyed the information and the pace of the show that you just heard, please add it to your podcast app. And if you are already a regular listener, I would love it if you'd take just 20 seconds to cast your vote for us on Product Hunt. There is a link at the very top of today's episode notes. So that's it for today. So far, I have not rage quit Fallout 76, shockingly. The secret appears to be being nice to other players.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Who knew? Well, players with lead and screws specifically, but you know, still. Don't forget this podcast is chaptered. So if your podcast app supports it, you can jump right to specific stories if you want. Links to my social media as always are in the episode notes. I'm Todd Maffin. stories if you want. Links to my social media, as always, are in the episode notes. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 140: This Checkmark Costs $1 Million: ✅ (And hello Product Hunters!)

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