Today in Digital Marketing - 143: “You talk too fast. Sit up straighter. Stop saying Um.”

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, May 1st, 2020. Happy Convocation of the Constituent Assembly of Latvia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, yes, Q2 spending will be down in the ad market, but by how much? Google has some bad news for you if your brand's website goes down a lot. LinkedIn adds a creepy new tool for job applicants. TikTok, turning into a surprisingly solid video editing tool. And a super smart partnership between Pinterest and Levi's that you might be able to borrow from.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Well, just before this pandemic closed down a lot of the world, Facebook deactivated advertising on the brand page for this very podcast, saying it had violated policy. It hadn't, of course. It was probably some automated trigger-happy algorithm. But since then, I've been in kind of a holding pattern because the people who are normally at Facebook to review appeals like this

Starting point is 00:00:58 have been out of their moderation centers and the workforce generally down in size. You might be experiencing something similar with your ad campaigns. Perhaps a creative got flagged incorrectly and nobody seems to be reviewing your appeal of it. Well, that could be changing soon. The BBC reporting today that Facebook is now reopening some of its moderation and review centers, although staff are only being asked to return on a voluntary basis. Apparently those who do return will have masks, the offices will be adapted to provide more

Starting point is 00:01:30 physical distancing, and employees checked for fevers before they start their day. One thing we don't know is how many Facebook reviewers will be coming back. But hopefully Facebook ad approvals will be coming back soon. Even approvals for AR filters, which were also caught up in this. Cross your fingers. Lots of news about how the last quarter has been in the digital ad space. But what about this quarter? How will April, May, and June fare?

Starting point is 00:01:59 The IAB yesterday released its most recent survey of media buyers. Here's what they found. Quoting Search Engine Land, YAB yesterday released its most recent survey of media buyers. Here's what they found. Quoting Search Engine Land, buyers said they expected digital ad budgets to be cut by 33% on average in the second quarter. In contrast, traditional media spend projections for the second quarter fell from expected cuts of 39% on average in March, to 44% in April. Search and social appear best positioned for a rebound. These budgets are still below planned, but the planned cuts for the quarter have shrunk considerably in the period between the two monthly surveys.

Starting point is 00:02:37 The IAB also found an increased interest in national and local geotargeting, as well as in direct buys with premium publishers, which is kind of interesting there. In contrast, there was actually a decline in interest for the demographic and audience targeting buys between March and April. This may be reflective of the dramatic shifts in consumer behavior that have rendered existing audiences less effective.

Starting point is 00:03:02 Regardless of spending changes, 73% of advertisers say that they are modifying or developing new creative assets. 73%. Of those who are updating creative, 58% say they plan to mention coronavirus, COVID-19, or in some way reflect the crisis in their ads. Certainly advertisers don't want to be tone deaf, but it begs the question of whether consumers will become corona weary or even corona blind to an inundation of ads talking about these uncertain times. So your brand's website goes down on a Friday afternoon and you know, your IT folks aren't there on the weekend, but hey, you don't really get much weekend traffic anyway, so we'll just pop it back up Monday morning, right?

Starting point is 00:03:49 Not if you want to stay in the search engines. Google engineer John Mueller said that Google may start to remove web pages from its index within 48 hours of it detecting that the page has gone down. Basically what happens is if it notices the page or site is offline, it will recheck a handful of times over the next two days, but if it's still down, Google could drop them. On Twitter, Mueller said, this happens on a per URL basis. Also, when it comes back, often we can catch up quickly too.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Do you remember the days when the biggest decision you had to make when applying for a job was whether to print your resume on that really fancy paper? You remember that paper with the threads you could see and the really bumpy texture? Well, today's candidates may have a lot more to consider, especially with some changes now coming to LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:04:42 So heads up if your digital marketing efforts include HR and recruitment. One big change, a new AI-enabled candidate assessment function. Basically a video interview, but one with more in common with Hal from A Space Odyssey than Max Headroom. God, I am really showing my age with these shitty metaphors. Anyway, here is how LinkedIn describes their tool. With video intro, once you receive applications for a job posting, you can invite the most qualified candidates to answer up to two questions from a list of options that include questions like

Starting point is 00:05:15 tell me about yourself, what is your greatest strength, and describe your most challenging project. Candidates can choose to submit their answers via a quick video recording or a written response. But on the candidate side, it can get a little creepy. On their end, LinkedIn will start detecting poor speech patterns while they're recording their video, like speaking too quickly or saying um too often or using the same words over and over, and will present that assessment to the candidate on screen, live as they speak. Welcome to the new world, friends. The TikTok app is continuing to develop itself into a full-featured video editing tool,

Starting point is 00:05:57 and today they are releasing a new Adjust Clips feature that lets you reshoot and rearrange specific sections of your videos. In the app, once you tap that button, you can reshoot a specific segment in your video timeline. And then after previewing it, you can move it around or crop the time on it. Until now, you've really only been limited in editing. All you could do was shoot and then delete and reshoot clips section by section. So, you know, nice little touch there for brands who have dipped their toes into the TikTok waters. Levi's has launched a really clever partnership with Pinterest. It's called Styled by Levi's. Users select from a handful of looks shown off by models wearing Levi's wear,

Starting point is 00:06:40 and then Pinterest will generate a customized page of Levi products. Levi products? Levi's products? I'm too lazy to look it up. Anyway, based on that person's preferences. Each pin, of course, linked back to the Levi's.com e-commerce site. Despite how cool it sounds, it actually isn't a whole new creative partnership as much as just using the advanced marketing tools that Pinterest already provides to brands like you. Like the Shop the Look recommendation engine, or image recognition, or the More From function that Pinterest rolled out last year. All three of those used in this effort. The link in this episode's notes contains a short

Starting point is 00:07:16 video with more about it. And one thing that I thought was interesting in the video was the biggest concern the brand had, and fair point, I should say, is how do we make this cool without being yet another personality quiz? Shopping engagement on Pinterest is increasing 44% year over year. There are 335 million active users there. Which brings us to the lightning round. Facebook has been having an issue all day with their audience network. They're not saying exactly what's going on, of course, only that it is impacting ad delivery across fan. They're working on it, of course.

Starting point is 00:07:54 Hootsuite suffered a brief outage of its inbox yesterday with incoming messages just not showing up, being delayed. Apparently that's fixed now. WordPress Today released an update that fixes 17 bugs and patches 7 vulnerabilities. If you manage your brand's websites, log in, click updates, and make sure that you are on version 5.4.1. Facebook ad guru Andrew Foxwell says CPMs on Facebook are creeping back up. He says it's been noticed by many ad buyers that their CPMs have risen 10 to 15 percent since significantly dropping back on March 20th. Looks like cheap times at the auction may be coming to an end. And finally, Buffer has launched a kind of scaled down campaigns function on their publish platform.

Starting point is 00:08:37 You can group posts into a single campaign to make it easier to track. But if you want to get reporting on that campaign, you will need to also buy their Buffer Analyze add-on. Buffer's third add-on, Reply, which was an engagement tool, was shut down by Buffer a couple of weeks ago. I hate ramblecasts. You know, those industry podcasts that are like an hour and a half long and people just go on and on and on about really obvious stuff without actually getting to their point. And that is why I try really, really hard to make this a valuable

Starting point is 00:09:09 use of your time. Short, punchy, no rambling. And if you find this valuable, I'd really appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review this podcast. I have made it easier for you than you think. There is a link in this episode's notes that will take you right to the review page of your podcast app. Also there, a link to buy a classified ad on this podcast if you would like to reach about a thousand digital marketers. It's only 20 bucks. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I will talk to you on Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - 143: “You talk too fast. Sit up straighter. Stop saying Um.”

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