Today in Digital Marketing - 4,600 Research Studies vs. 1 TikTok'er

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, there's a reason your brand's Instagram Stories ads are glitching out, Be protected. Be Zen. is having on academia. It's Friday, September 24th, 2021. Happy Heritage Day, South Africa. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing Episode 475. One quick note, owing to some pressing agency deadlines, this episode was produced in the early morning of Friday, and be sure to stick around to the end for a major programming announcement. When it comes to SEO, one of the things Google's search algorithm likes is stability.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Pages at the same URL, content that doesn't change. So what about if your company's product pages all have that related products section at the bottom of every page? You know, the widget that always changes because it's randomly picking something from your catalog. Will that hurt your SEO? On the Friday Quiz, what effect does having a related products or related posts section have on your ranking in Google? The answer, later in the episode. They hooked them up to a heart rate monitor, an eye tracker,

Starting point is 00:01:55 electro-dermal receptors, all in an attempt to learn what happens when people watch ads on TikTok. The study was conducted by neuromarketing research firm MediaScience. TikTok underwrote the research. They wanted to get deeper insights into ad response than a platform dashboard could offer. There were 343 people in the test who had basically free reign on their phones. They could scroll through their TikTok feed as they normally would, or even check out competing apps.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Here's what they found. First, brand recall for TikTok ads were particularly strong. Quoting the study, brand recall increases the longer an ad is watched, but ads on TikTok see strong brand recall regardless of view duration. An ad on screen six seconds or less still delivered 38% of the recall compared to ads viewed 20 seconds or more. Regardless of how long an ad stays on the screen, TikTok draws early attention and physiological engagement within the first few seconds. In other words, ads on TikTok take less time to make an impact with their audience than similar ads on the platforms, unquote.

Starting point is 00:03:01 Again, let's not forget TikTok foot the bill for the research, but it did come from a reputable firm. It also found that response and engagement rates are generally higher than the other three platforms tested against, which the study didn't name, but almost certainly included Facebook and Instagram. There is a link to the full study in today's premium newsletter, which, given the fact it's a Friday, means everyone on the email list is getting it. Microsoft has launched 32 new business attributes you can apply to your Bing search ads. They all fall into the categories of inclusion, environmental, community and social responsibility and accessibility. The full list is in today's newsletter, but here are a few of them. Pet-friendly, alcohol-free, carbon-neutral, local business, LGBTQI plus owned, and wheelchair accessible. To add them to your ads, go to All Campaigns, then Settings, then check the labels you want to apply to your account, and hit save. If you've noticed some audio issues with your brand's Instagram stories this week,

Starting point is 00:04:10 we might know what's going on. Since the release of Apple's iOS 15 update, some users have reported audio glitches on Instagram. The glitch appears to mute the audio of Instagram stories when the iPhone's ringer switch is set to silent. And while you might think that's the way it should work, it's not. That switch is meant to silence system sounds,

Starting point is 00:04:34 like the phone ringer, or text notifications, and not audio from apps. Facebook says they're aware of it and working on a fix. Speaking of bugs, if you were pouring over your Google Ads reports and noticed a big drop-off Wednesday of this week, that wasn't a reporting error. Your ads really did turn off for a period of time. Google has confirmed it had an account outage issue

Starting point is 00:05:01 that resulted in some ads to stop serving for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon. Google says it wasn't you, it was them, and they fixed it. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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 at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Back to the Friday quiz.

Starting point is 00:06:15 Will having a related products or related posts section on your page that is always changing hurt your Google SEO? This week, we got a sort of answer from Google's John Mueller. He tweeted, from an SEO point of view, these links give more context and they make it easier to crawl the website. Usually they don't change all the time, but that wouldn't be terrible. Just makes tracking and debugging harder, unquote. In other words, there are probably bigger issues you need to focus on than that block. Your company could sponsor a full month of the Friday Quiz for less than $100. Go to todayindigital.com slash ads or tap the link in the episode notes. A 25-year-old American TikToker named Sarah is being blamed as the reason thousands of scientific studies had to toss out weeks of data.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Welcome to Side Hustles. I recommend trying part one. Sarah made the video earlier in the summer. It was the start of a series on side hustles you can do to make some quick cash. One of her recommendations, the website prolific.co, a tool used by scientists to conduct behavioral research. And basically, it's a bunch of surveys for different amounts of money and different amounts of time that earns you money. So today I made $14.60. Like much of academic research, many of the studies on the platform pay a small amount of money for participation. Her video resulted in the site being flooded with people responding to those studies, which you'd think would be a good thing, right? Problem is, suddenly almost all of the new

Starting point is 00:07:52 completions were being done by young American women, massively skewing the demographic sample. The site apparently didn't have any screening tools in place to make sure it got representative population samples. The site apparently didn't have any screening tools in place to make sure it got representative population samples. The site says about 4,600 studies were disrupted by the TikTok video. And finally, a programming note. We have been putting out daily episodes of this podcast for the last two plus years, mostly without a break. Though to be honest, that's less about my work ethic, more about the fact that COVID has cancelled two of our family's holiday plans so far.

Starting point is 00:08:32 But next week, a real holiday. My wife and I are going to attempt camping again. We're in British Columbia, so like everyone here, when we were first dating, we told the other person we really liked camping because that's what you say we actually did go camping back then uh and it became clear that neither of us at all were prepared but a decade has passed i feel like we're probably real adults now we have proper gear we aren't trying to impress each other anymore with any rustic survival skills no we are bringing the duvet. What that means for the podcast and newsletter, though, is barring any earth-shattering developments

Starting point is 00:09:10 in our industry, no episodes or newsletter issues next week. Now, normally Sarah or Scott or someone from our agency team would take over, but I kind of screwed up the holiday schedule a little bit, and their time is spoken for on client issues. As you may know, we are hiring an associate producer who, in addition to production

Starting point is 00:09:27 support, would also backfill me when I'm out sick or on holidays. We have not yet made a final decision on that role, so, you know, there you go. Our Slack and Discord communities will still be active. Sarah's in there helping out. When I'm back, we have some big plans for 2022 to share with you. As I mentioned, some of those plans include moving our Slack community into a paid community. But if you get in there now, you will be grandfathered in for free for life. That's at todayindigital.com slash Slack or tap the link in today's episode notes. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories

Starting point is 00:10:04 of the Sunemu First Nation on beautiful Vancouver Island. Production support and fact checking by Sarah Guild. Theme composer Mark Levis is the syncopated downbeat in a jazz song that comes out of nowhere. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend and week ahead. And I will talk to you a week Monday. That's October 4th. 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.

Starting point is 00:11:00 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. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - 4,600 Research Studies vs. 1 TikTok'er

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