Today in Digital Marketing - 142: New YouTube and TikTok Ad Placements

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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, April 30th, 2020. Be protected. Be Zen. What is incremental conversion optimization and how will it help your ad campaigns? This might be the best time to buy ads on LinkedIn. And yes, that probably was a Google algorithm update you felt yesterday. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. An interesting experiment underway at YouTube, which could prove quite valuable for brands that sell products direct to consumer and use YouTube videos as part of their strategy. It's a new feature they're testing called Products in This Video. Quoting YouTube here,

Starting point is 00:01:10 We are running a small experiment that shows some viewers of specific videos which products are discussed in those videos, with new visual elements overlaid on the video and below the video. For example, in a Top 10 smartphones of 2020 video, some viewers will see an icon on the video along with more information below listing the phone models included in the video. Savvy YouTube marketers will probably recognize this as being very similar to the platform's TrueView for shopping ads, which show products related to a video below the video window. But this test sounds a little bit more advanced with a different UI. Some analysts thinking this could be an AI play where the software would listen for words, then try to match an item or two from your product feed. Maybe it'll come from the closed captioning. Who knows? For now,

Starting point is 00:02:01 it's just a small test and only in the U.S. Those of you in the B2B space might be interested to know that LinkedIn's membership numbers are booming during the pandemic. And even better, fewer ads and job listings have been posted, meaning less competition for you. LinkedIn says it's up to 690 million total members. That's about 15 million up from January. But that number, as I said, are total members, not daily active users, which is a metric that the other platforms tend to use. And, you know, it's a bit more realistic. They do say, though, they have been seeing record levels of engagement since COVID-19 lockdowns started in the U.S. But how you view that will be relative. Quoting social media today, some businesses are seeing significantly more referral traffic from LinkedIn and increased engagement on their posts,

Starting point is 00:02:48 while others believe that much of that extra engagement is actually being fueled by Facebook-like personal posts and gimmicky updates designed to draw clicks, as opposed to communicating professional information. Your own experience will inform how you view such, but in overall terms, LinkedIn now has more users than ever before, to communicating professional information. Your own experience will inform how you view such, but in overall terms, LinkedIn now has more users than ever before,

Starting point is 00:03:11 and those users are more active on the platform than in times past. That could facilitate greater opportunity to connect. Here's a crazy thought. As of this quarter, Facebook got just shy of 3 billion total users. Now, let's not forget that the population of the entire world is 7.8 billion. Take away kids under, say, 15. Take away a billion and a half from China and other countries where Facebook is banned.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Then take away those people who don't have any internet access at all. And you end up with the fairly stunning stat that pretty much everyone who can access Facebook's apps use them. The increases this past quarter came, as they have for a while now, in the Asia-Pacific market, specifically India. Little surprise that Facebook just bought a chunk of the Indian mobile service Jio. TikTok has now reached 2 billion app downloads. They didn't say this themselves. This came from a consulting agency called Sensor Tower. What's notable here?

Starting point is 00:04:10 This puts TikTok in some exclusive company. Very few apps have broken past the 2 billion downloads mark. Just five months ago, TikTok was at 1.5 billion downloads. This past quarter, they had the highest number of downloads for any app. And number two position, by the way, was WhatsApp from Facebook. And even more interesting, I think, while more than three quarters of the downloads

Starting point is 00:04:34 came through the Google Play Store, so Android phones mostly there, despite that, nearly all the actual spending has come from Apple devices. Speaking of TikTok, word today that they are testing a new ad placement for us digital marketers. It will be a prominent call to action button right on top of some videos. Whose videos? At the start, they're more popular influencers and TikTok will split the ad revenue with that creator. Well, split might be a little generous, some reporting suggests TikTok will keep 80% of their revenue.

Starting point is 00:05:08 But still, it's obviously a pivot toward the YouTube model of rewarding creators with some ad revenue. So far, these new creator call-to-action test ads are only available to select advertisers and agencies. Though it's not entirely clear to me how this new call-to-action test differs from the Shop Now button that is already available to any advertiser. Perhaps the look is different.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Perhaps creators or advertisers can choose when it pops up. The reporting just wasn't clear on that point today. Shout out to John Loomer, who brought this to my attention yesterday. Some of you may have noticed a new option in our Facebook ad campaign setup screen, something called incremental conversion optimization. As usual, Facebook hasn't published, you know, a blog post or anything about it. The tool tip is not particularly helpful, but one of John's members got some intel from a Facebook rep. So here's what it is. Incremental results only happen because of your ads. This means, and I'm quoting Facebook here, that we don't count

Starting point is 00:06:06 results from people who would have converted even if they hadn't seen your ad. This metric estimates incrementality with a statistical model trained and validated on historical lift test data. So in a nutshell, essentially they're doing the same kind of thing as they're doing for brand awareness, where if you don't have a huge budget, you don't get to access the poll, the survey, you know, in the feed to find out whether or not people genuinely are going to remember your brand. Instead, if you have a small budget and you choose brand awareness, they use statistical models to try and figure that out. So I guess they're doing the same thing here. Of course, they're never quite clear on things. They never really release it. But incremental conversion optimization, if you see it pop up, it is in testing.

Starting point is 00:06:48 It'd be worth a try with one of your campaigns and see how it works for you. All right, three items in the lightning round today. SEO folks believe that there was a Google search ranking algorithm update Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Sounds like it was moderate on the Richter scale. Although there was a Google Analytics problem for a couple of hours a few days back, so that might be having an effect on the numbers that people are seeing.

Starting point is 00:07:13 As always, check your brand's own position if you are concerned about where you appear in Google. Facebook today launches a new tool that lets users in the US and Canada move their photos and videos to Google's ecosystem. You can find it in Facebook settings under Your Facebook Information. And this might be the most exciting thing I've heard all week. New fonts are apparently coming to Instagram Stories.

Starting point is 00:07:36 Well, new font styles, anyway, like outline, shadow, stamp, and so on. But a guy can dream, can't he? I would love to know how you have changed the online advertising or social media strategy that you do for your brand or clients. What will your digital marketing plan look like post-pandemic? Tweet me, at Todd Maffin. I will read some out over the coming days. I may even want to interview you. Links to my own personal social media are in the episode notes. That's also where you will find a simple one-click link to spread the word about this podcast on Twitter. As you may have noticed, I'm starting to double down on this little podcast idea, and this would help a lot in keeping it afloat.

Starting point is 00:08:14 I'm Todd Maffin. I will talk to you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

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Today in Digital Marketing - 142: New YouTube and TikTok Ad Placements

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