Today in Digital Marketing - 176: Finally… Links in Instagram Captions (Sort Of)

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Today, the Google guarantee and how it might help you get more customers. Facebook increases its video ad inventory. Finally, links in Instagram captions, sort of, and how to get your business a promoted pin on Google Maps for free. It's Thursday, June 18th. Happy Sustainable Gastronomy Day. I'm Todd Maffin, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. There is a new place to run your video ads, Spotify. Yes, that Spotify. They are available now in the US, UK and Canada. You can either

Starting point is 00:01:15 run horizontal video on both desktop and mobile or the vertical stories format, which will run on their mobile app only. If running video on an audio and music app sounds weird to you, Spotify says it shouldn't. In fact, they say, they're kind of the perfect place for your video ads. Quoting their announcement, on other platforms,

Starting point is 00:01:36 video ads are often viewed while muted, but on Spotify, listeners are engaging with their sound on, offering a valuable opportunity for your message to be seen and heard. This multi-sensory experience can complement your audio messaging, unquote. Now, while it might be a little precious calling audio and video a multi-sensory experience, the company says that they have measured a doubling of ad recall and a tripling of brand awareness for the video ads they've tested in the past.

Starting point is 00:02:07 What they didn't say, of course, is whether this was an average result or the best result that they saw. In the absence of that clarity, assume the latter. Anyway, you'll find the video ads in their ad studio. And if you market a music artist, the platform will tell you how well those ads led to people listening to your music. This probably shouldn't be a huge surprise, but Google searches for local services companies have been up during this time when people are at home more, up about 50% in the last few months. Local services, of course, we're talking about things like carpet cleaners and air conditioning repair people, that sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:02:46 Now, Google is helping those companies book more clients through local services ads in the U.S. These are mobile-only ads that include a built-in appointment booking system. And that's cool and all, but what actually caught my eye in their news release was this statement, quote, local services ads help people discover and connect with trustworthy local professionals backed by the Google guarantee, unquote. Wait, the what? Maybe this Google guarantee is old news to you, but this is the first I'd heard of it. It turns out it's a badge that your business can get if you pass a qualification process. And if you're approved, customers of yours that came through a Google Local Services ad are covered by a kind of small insurance policy. If your customers don't like your work quality, Google will refund them up to

Starting point is 00:03:38 $2,000 in the US and Canada only for now. That said, it doesn't cover cancellations, damages to property, or dissatisfaction with your price or your responsiveness. Here's Google on how it works. Quote, if one of your customers submits a claim, we'll contact you to learn more. You'll have an opportunity to make things right with your customer. After investigating the claim, Google will decide on a resolution. Unquote. So if this interests you, you can apply by signing up for Google Local Services ads. The mobile app Flipboard is introducing a new feature for news publishers and other content groups to highlight content. It's a format they call storyboards. Quoting TechCrunch, until now, Flip the other hand, are more a one-time collection ofboard that they bought and then killed the Zite app.

Starting point is 00:05:04 Zite was an amazing app with a super smart algorithm that really did figure out what I wanted to read next. CNN bought it and then Flipboard bought it and then told everyone to migrate over. But the Flipboard content algorithm just wasn't anywhere as smart. So I stopped using it. I've reinstalled it to give it another shot,

Starting point is 00:05:20 but I have to say the Google app is actually ridiculously good at finding that kind of personalized content. And like you could with Zite, you can manually tweak the algorithm, telling it to stop showing you articles about specific topics. Oh yeah, sorry, Flipboard. Their CEO told TechCrunch he thought that these new storyboards would be a great way to, and I'm not making this up here, make money with affiliate links. Always a good sign when the platforms appeal to the affiliate marketers, am I right? These storyboards also come with analytics and is part of their new Curator Pro platform, which is rolling out around the world right now.

Starting point is 00:06:03 A new test apparently underway with Instagram could let you tag products that you sell. I know you're thinking, but Todd, we've been able to tag products in our Instagram images forever now. Yes, you have. What's new here is you can tag in the body copy of the Instagram post. The links have a little tag icon to their left left and when tapped, take people to your shoppable product page. It looks like it's in testing now with a handful of American accounts. What's not clear is whether this will be open to organic posts or paid campaigns only. My bet is the latter, or at the very least, gated behind some account numbers, kind of like how you need to have 10,000 followers on a business account

Starting point is 00:06:45 if you want to add that swipe up link in your stories. There is a link in this episode's notes if you'd like to see what it looks like right now. Some more Facebook video inventory opening up for us digital marketers, this time coming from the streams of gamers. Facebook has been trying to sneak into the Twitch territory for a while now. Twitch is the live streaming platform where people can watch others play video games. Facebook's been testing video ads in the streams for a while now, and it looks like they're happy with the tests and have rolled it out to all partnered gamers.

Starting point is 00:07:19 So these ads appear as a pre-roll or a mid-rollroll or an image ad will show up below the live video. One thing that Facebook's ads will do that's a nice touch, at least for viewers and fans of these gamers, is that while your mid-roll ad will play in the main window, Facebook will keep the gaming stream running in a small picture and picture box in a corner. They're also adding something called live breaks, where the streamer manually triggers a 90-second or 3-minute ad break while they get something to eat or visit the bathroom or something. And that break isn't just ads. It's a combination of video ads, gaming clips and past highlights from that streamer. Both this window in window idea and this blended breaks format is something

Starting point is 00:08:00 that Twitch doesn't have, at least not yet. Google wants your business to stand out on its map, and it's planning to let you do just that for free. It's in the form of a new ad placement called the Promoted Pin. This basically means that your business stays visible even after a zoom-out level would have hidden you, and the pin is more prominent and square shaped i have to say the pins really do stand out google says from now until the end of september you won't be charged for any clicks calls or sales from your promoted pin they're rolling them out now

Starting point is 00:08:37 to smart campaign advertisers who have a google my business profile if you don't have it yet it'll be in your account in a couple of weeks another Another really nice touch they've added, soon you will be able to check the status of your Google Ads right within Google. I don't mean in the Google Ads platform, I mean the main google.com search engine. What you'll do is search for the phrase My Ads and then a little box of ad performance will pop up. This too should be working in the next week or two. Nothing to add here other than the usual pleading to rate and review. You know the drill. Our theme was composed by Mark Blevis.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Ad sales by Podcorn. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 176: Finally… Links in Instagram Captions (Sort Of)

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