Today in Digital Marketing - 180: Twitter Has Good News and Bad News For Marketers

Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today,

Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, more ad inventory on Twitter at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It's Wednesday, June 24th. Happy Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, mes amis Québécois. I'm Todd Maffin, and here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing, brought to you by Swanson Health. They're not saying it outright, but Twitter appears to have increased its ad inventory, putting more ads into their users' feeds. One reporter at Social Media Today noted, quote, My own Twitter feed now has around one promoted tweet every six slots or so. And now it updates every time I refresh when I used to only see ads early in the stream. Twitter has been slowly upping its ad load for some times, but it seems to have been pushing them a little harder in recent weeks, unquote.

Starting point is 00:01:20 The site then, of course, asked Twitter if it had, in fact, increased ad load. Twitter sent that off to their PR department who came back with this steaming pile of nonsense. Quote, we regularly experiment and deploy changes to our advertising experience while aligning to our principles and standards of a high quality experience on Twitter. We are constantly innovating and testing and will continue to adapt as we learn. Unquote. Come on, Twitter. Can't you just say yes or no? Well, social media today thinks that's a yes. You are seeing more ads in your feed and speculates that it could be their way of generating more revenue after the pandemic-related ad spending declines. From March 11th to March 31st, Twitter's ad revenue was down about 27% compared to the same date range the previous year. Mind you, in the first quarter, which included that COVID-heavy range in March, Twitter saw a 24% increase in usage.

Starting point is 00:02:16 While they might not be outright confirming any inventory changes, they are confirming a change to their algorithm, saying recent code changes let them react much faster to a user's changing interests. Quoting here from a Twitter engineering blog post, quote, our model learns how to make these predictions via training. However, since user interest is constantly changing, this model must be updated regularly. In a recent effort, we have successfully reduced the time to refresh this model from seven days to about one day, unquote. So for us digital marketers, in theory, this is all good news. More ad inventory should drop CPMs a bit, and a stronger algorithm should keep people sticking around.

Starting point is 00:03:00 That said, Twitter's ad prices have always been way overpriced to the other social platforms. In our experience here at my agency, EngageQ Digital, the only social media platform that is more expensive is LinkedIn, who still thinks that $40 a click is a great deal. It's not just Twitter that saw a drop in ad revenue. eMarketer says Google's U.S. revenue will drop more than 5% in 2020. That might not sound like a big drop, but it is notable for one reason. This is the first time ad revenue has dropped at Google since eMarketer began tracking it 12 years ago. As for Facebook and Amazon, eMarketer expects that they will end the year up a bit, although not by as much as they usually do.

Starting point is 00:03:46 More interestingly, I thought, wasn't as much the raw dollar amount of the ad revenues as it was the share of that ad revenue? Last year, Google got 32% of all digital ad spending and Facebook got 22%. This year, Google will be down to 29% from 32% and Facebook up to 23%. If that is too many numbers to track in your head, what I'm saying here is that Facebook is closing the gap and is on track to perhaps one day take over Google as the top place where us digital marketers spend our money.

Starting point is 00:04:29 Instagram is expanding access to its shopping platform to more businesses, including influencers who want to sell their own branded apparel and other merch. There are some rules, of course. For one, quoting TechCrunch, the Instagram account must represent the store or website where the products are being sold from. In other words, product listing must be available for direct purchase on the seller's own website or through either Facebook or Instagram checkout. The account cannot serve as a front for some kind of affiliate network selling like the Amazon affiliate program. The Instagram account must also demonstrate trustworthiness by having an authentic established presence and a sufficient follower base, unquote. These requirements go into effect July 9th. You still have to sign up to get in and you'll get an email if you are approved. If you're not approved, that email should tell you

Starting point is 00:05:15 why you failed their check and what you need to do to get approved. Probably not by coincidence, this happened the same week that some YouTube creators were able to start selling their merch in a shelf directly below their video. YouTube takes a small cut on all of those sales. Still ahead, Snapchat is going infomercial, Twitter has some bad news for some of its business customers, and Facebook finally comments on the growing boycott by some of its biggest advertisers. That's in a minute when Today in Digital Marketing continues. This episode is sponsored by Swanson Health. They've been in business for more than 50 years now. From quality vitamins to cruelty-free beauty items to eco-friendly home products,

Starting point is 00:06:06 Swanson Health can help you keep healthy, all backed by strict quality standards that provide purity and potency. In fact, they carry more than 20,000 wellness products, all at a great value. And listeners of this podcast can get 20% off any order using the code TODAY20 at checkout. That's on swanson.com and use TODAY20 at checkout. Swanson.com. A new study has found that two-thirds of digital agencies around the world saw revenue fall because of the pandemic. This research coming from digital outsourcing firm Uplers. 9% of agencies reported revenue dropped by half or more because of COVID-19. A quarter dropped by 30 to 50%, and a third dropped by less than 30%. As for the number of inbound leads, just under half of all the agencies polled saw a decrease in leads, but 27% actually saw those numbers go up.

Starting point is 00:07:04 So what did those firms do to try to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on their business? Just under 30% of them tried offering new services to existing clients, and 17% prospected in new industries. Only 7% outsourced their work. The report was from a survey of more than 130 digital agencies of various sizes from around the globe. Well, this is embarrassing for Twitter, today sending out emails to some of its business customers saying their billing information might have been compromised. Apparently, the data of some brands, like phone numbers and partial credit card numbers,

Starting point is 00:07:45 were able to be retained in web browsers' caches. So, not a hack in the traditional sense. Nobody hacked in and downloaded a big database of credit card numbers. But, if you advertised on Twitter recently, and the computer that you used to do that is shared with others, that data could be pulled out of the cache if people knew to go looking there. And this data didn't get dropped into your cache only by visiting their ad site, even if you took a gander at your numbers on their analytics site at analytics.twitter.com. That could have been affected as well. Twitter would not say how many customers were affected. Snapchat is going kind of infomercial,

Starting point is 00:08:28 launching what they call their first ever shoppable original show. It will be called The Drop and focus on exclusive streetwear collabs from celebrities and designers. Quoting Variety, The Drop is the first Snap original that features commerce as part of the narrative. Although Snapchat has long run ads that allow users to link out to make purchases, each episode will explore the relationship between the designer and celebrity collaborator. Viewers will learn about the item for sale and how it came together, as well as what time that day the item will go up for sale. Later that day, at the afore launching later this year and will be a weekly show, and they have more planned, including one called Fake Up, a cosmetics design show.

Starting point is 00:09:33 A couple of smaller items to wrap up today. That maybe Google algorithm change I reported on yesterday? We are still seeing volatility in search results, and some webmasters now talking about that maybe this was a partial rollback of the core update that happened last month. Also, apparently some businesses are able to add separate hours for different departments in Google My Business. So, you know, like how a grocery store might have different hours for its pharmacy or its bakery. Also, a new policy now prohibits brands from using their Google My Business profile as

Starting point is 00:10:03 a forum for general political, social commentary or personal rants. If you decide to go political on your GMB page, Google says that they will delete the content. And more brands joining the boycott of Facebook advertising set to start next month. Now, Eddie Bauer, the film distributor Magnolia Pictures and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream all say they won't spend a penny on Facebook next month. For its part, on a conference call with a Canadian marketing industry trade group today, a Facebook rep admitted they had a, quote, trust deficit with advertisers. Finally, this is your last day to enter the contest for a free subscription to Crello. Crello is just like Canva. It comes

Starting point is 00:10:45 with half a million stock images, 32,000 videos and animations and templates for videos and Instagram stories and shopping posts. And the subscription I am giving away is lifetime access, not just for you, but for you and two team members. You will be able to use Crello forever and for free. To enter, click the link in this episode's description. It will be able to use Crello forever and for free. To enter, click the link in this episode's description. It will take you to a pre-filled tweet that you can change if you want to. Just make sure that my account name stays there so that I can see that you

Starting point is 00:11:14 entered it. Tweet it and you are entered. I will announce the winner tomorrow. Special thanks to Swanson Vitamins. Try them today with 20% off by using the code TODAY20 at swanson.com. The ad that follows, even though it's written in the first person, is not about me, but from another individual. Just so that's clear.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Theme music by Mark Blevis. Ad sales by Podcorn. I'm Todd Mathen. Talk to you tomorrow. What goes perfectly with incredible digital marketing? An energetic, data-driven, people-focused customer service leader. I'm a seasoned and excited customer service leader looking for my next dream gig. I'm based in Northern California and willing to travel anywhere in the U.S. And hasn't this pandemic taught us that where we are might be less important than ever? If your company is searching for a customer service leader, or if you'd just like to chat about the fun world of customer service and customer experience with someone that is interested in digital marketing, visit customerservice.fun and send a message.

Today in Digital Marketing - 180: Twitter Has Good News and Bad News For Marketers

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.