Today in Digital Marketing - 175: You Won’t Believe What Google Is Banning Now!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Yeah, it's bad. And nobody seems to know why. Many direct-to-consumer advertisers reporting numbers from their Facebook ad campaigns are just abysmal. Also today, targeting parents may become easier, advertising about social issues harder, consumer attention on YouTube worse, and I'm sorry, what platform is overtaking Twitter when it comes to where people get their news from? You won't believe what the totally non-clickbaity answer is today, Wednesday, June 17th. Happy Purple Bra Day, Australia. I'm Todd Maffin, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Next month, Google will roll out a new policy effectively banning clickbait ads, which it describes as ads that pressure the viewer to take immediate action in order to understand the full context of the ad. You've seen plenty of those. Hell, maybe you've written them. You'll never believe what this guy did next. And Kanye West said what to President Trump? As of next month, you can't use ads with titles like that in Google Ads. Over on Facebook, they're not quite as clear on this. They do have a policy prohibiting ads that

Starting point is 00:01:11 quote, prompts users to inauthentically interact with the ad. That's usually applied fairly broadly over there. Also being added to the naughty list for Google Ads, ads that use clearly altered zoomed in body parts, mug shots, or real life accident or disaster photos to promote a product or service. You also won't be able to use before and after images for things like weight loss products and ads that use topics like death, illness, or bankruptcy to induce strong negative emotions no longer allowed. If you are marketing a product that's aimed at parents, you may have found that Facebook's targeting isn't bad. You can certainly target parents of kids within four or five age ranges, but that's always relied on those Facebook users indicating on their profile that they have kids. And many parents don't do that.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Well, now Facebook has added a new feature to groups that may actually help digital marketers in their efforts to reach those parents. The new feature is a set of badges only available in parenting groups that show what stage each parent is at. So we're talking badges like new parent and expecting parent and parent of multiple children. And while Facebook spun this in their news release as a benefit to those people in those groups, it's also certainly a benefit to us as digital marketers. While Facebook didn't specifically say this, we can almost certainly assume that this information will make its way into the pool of parent indicators that we all use for targeting ads. Meaning, hopefully, the number of parents we can reach will increase. That's the good Facebook ad news.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Here's the bad news for some of us digital marketers. Starting today, Facebook users in the U.S. will have the option to turn off all political advertising in one fell swoop. They actually announced this in January, but back then they said the new feature would reduce ads, not eliminate them entirely. That is rolling out starting now and will continue over the next couple of weeks. This affects political, electoral, and social issue ads from candidates, super PACs, and similar organizations.

Starting point is 00:03:24 And apparently it won't be buried in the settings. This option will pop up right on any political ad across Facebook and Instagram. One thing they say they still won't do, fact check any of those ads. Oh, more bad news about Facebook ads. I'm seeing a handful of tweets out there this week from digital marketers in the direct-to-consumer space, many saying things are just kind of going to hell with results right now. Colin Slattery said, I've got clients ripping into me because I don't have answers.

Starting point is 00:03:57 It sucks. I even had one today say after the last bad week or so, maybe you just don't know what you're doing. Ads guru Andrew Foxwell replied, confirming that, quote, performance is horrible across the board today. He was talking about yesterday. We do know what we're doing. Sometimes Facebook just massively shifts things, tells no one and leave their ad buying community

Starting point is 00:04:19 in the dark, unquote. Here at our agency, EngageQ, we have also seen some pretty dramatic drops in key metrics. So keep an eye on your campaigns, folks. Looks like it's one of those weeks again. Oh, more bad news. This time, YouTube. It looks like they are experimenting with letting people choose how they want to view the ads that your brand is running. Some people in the testing group have seen an overlay pop up on a video before it starts. It says, choose when you see videos. And there are two

Starting point is 00:04:51 buttons, watch during video or watch for ads now, four as in the number four. Why is this bad news? I mean, given the choice, wouldn't you say, sure, dump all the ads in now and then go hit the bathroom or refill your coffee or something? Mid-rolls are effective because they interrupt. That's why mid-rolls usually have a higher CPM than pre-rolls or post-rolls. This would effectively turn that video's mid-rolls into one big pre-roll. That's not interruptive, and probably from an attention point of view, not as good for us advertisers. No idea if they will roll this out more fully, but definitely something to watch if you've got ads running on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:05:38 A new way for you to flex your brand's creativity coming to Twitter soon, the platform has started testing audio clips. Today, that test started rolling out to a small group of users of their iOS mobile app. It's pretty basic. There's a button, you tap it, you record something, you stop, and then Twitter puts that audio into tweet format. The time limit for each audio is 140 seconds, likely a throwback to the days when tweets were limited to 140 characters. But you can keep going, and Twitter will create a thread, just like you can create now with text tweets. Technically, this is not the first time they've introduced audio.

Starting point is 00:06:11 Two years ago, they launched audio-only live streams, so, you know, kind of similar. One limitation, you can't use audio tweets in a reply, only in a main tweet. That decision, apparently, because of fears of trolls and abuse. There is a workaround, though. You can create a main audio tweet and then at mention someone in it to tag them. Of course, this is very new, so it is not in the API yet, meaning you'll be doing this on your mobile devices only for now. But I will certainly

Starting point is 00:06:40 be interested to see if brands pick this up and start doing some fun things with it. Also may be interesting to you. Someone's dug into the code and found references to audio tweets being monetizable, so expect them to become an ad format at some point. If you don't have it now, it'll be on iPhones within the next week or two, and other platforms after that. Where do people turn online for their news? New research suggests that Instagram might soon overtake Twitter as a primary news source. The 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News Report found the number of people finding news on Instagram has doubled since 2018.

Starting point is 00:07:23 And, naturally, younger users are pushing this. Two-thirds of those under 25 say they use Instagram to get news. But when you look at all demographics, 11% of people use Instagram that way. That might not sound like a lot, but Twitter is only one percentage point higher. Facebook, still the top social network for news, with YouTube coming in second and WhatsApp third. But the study noted if Instagram keeps doubling every year, it'll actually be getting close to Facebook and YouTube soon. Even so, Reuters found that social media remains the least trusted source of digital news. Adobe has released a new version of Photoshop, which uses artificial intelligence to make selecting hair easier.

Starting point is 00:08:11 It's an expanded subject selection mode. Some other updates for apps you might be using as part of your digital marketing work. A new color selection tool in Lightroom. And a complete revamp of Adobe Camera Raw. I have said this before, and I will say this again. If you are on a Mac, try Pixelmator Pro. You pay 30 bucks, one time, no monthly fees, and I promise, it is faster, easier to use, and just plain better than Photoshop.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Landing page company Unbounce has raised more than $50 million Canadian. They say they'll actually use the money to shift their model somewhat away from the landing page structure that they have now. Quoting TechCrunch, The ultimate goal is to allow a business to set it and forget it through machine learning, so that they no longer have to create landing pages at all, because the Unbounce platform is doing all the optimization and personalization for them. As a first step in that direction, Unbounce has created a smart traffic product that will automatically use visitor data to send visitors to the best landing page, resulting in an average conversion lift of 20%.

Starting point is 00:09:21 Unbounce is 11 years old now, based in Vancouver. They have 200 people. And aside from a small seed round years ago, this is the first time they have taken outside money. And finally, I think something is broken at BuzzSumo. Today, someone published BuzzSumo's list of the top 100 influential digital marketers for this year. I am number 17. I promise you, this is a mistake. I mean, Google's Danny Sullivan is number 72. Brian Solis is 94? Come on.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Anyway, I'm honored to be on the list at all. And I guess what I'm saying here is my ad rates are going up, bitches. No, that's not true at all. Our theme was composed by Mark Blevis, ad sales by Podcorn. I'm Todd Maffin. 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,

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Today in Digital Marketing - 175: You Won’t Believe What Google Is Banning Now!

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