Today in Digital Marketing - 75% of X’s Ad Clicks Were Fake: Report

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, February 20th. Today, X on the hot seat over what some say are wildly inflated ad results. Also, the quick way to get more product reviews, a huge bump in programmatic spend is on the way, and Twilio considers a fire sale. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

Starting point is 00:00:31 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. and fake users said more than 75% of traffic from X to its advertising clients' websites during Super Bowl was fake. Quoting Cech's founder, quote, I've never seen anything even remotely close to 50%, not to mention 76%, unquote. Cech tracks how visitors from different sites and apps act once they land on one of their

Starting point is 00:01:22 clients' websites. Their pool of data comes from the websites of 15,000 clients. Mashable has a report up on this, quoting from that piece, quote, most X users who are regularly on the platform can attest to a noticeable uptick in seemingly inauthentic activity in recent months. When a post goes viral on X, it's now commonplace to find bots filling the replies with AI-generated responses or accounts with randomly generated usernames, spamming a user's mentions with unsolicited link-in-bio promotions. Now there's data which backs up that user experience. Advertisers have also noticed X's bot issues. In a recently published piece in The Guardian, Gene Marks, a small business owner, shared his ad campaign results

Starting point is 00:02:05 from X. After a small $50 advertising spend, X's analytics showed that his website had received 350 clicks from approximately 29,000 views. However, according to Google Analytics, X wasn't the source of any of the actual traffic his website had received during that time period. Unquote. Full disclosure here, Check has been an advertiser of this podcast. any of the actual traffic his website had received during that time period, unquote. Full disclosure here, Cech has been an advertiser of this podcast. They had no part in this story, financial nor editorial. Want more people to review your product? Try giving them a little nudge with a reward.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Recent research published in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that customers are more likely to leave a review and a positive one at that if there's something in it for them. And it doesn't have to be big. A discount on their next purchase or the chance to win something cool can do the trick. The researchers found your best bet here is to offer this only to your happiest and most loyal customers. From the study, people were 83% more upbeat in their reviews for a home improvement store when a sweepstake was involved. And mixing up rewards, like a chance to win Apple AirPods or a $200 gift card, upped positive reviews by half for a video streaming service. The study didn't ask for only positive reviews, just reviews.

Starting point is 00:03:22 The researchers did not test what would happen if you specifically asked for positive feedback. About half of Americans say they've been offered a reward for a review at some point. And one fine point here, it is against the terms of some platforms, like Amazon, to incentivize reviews. So make sure you check the rules where you sell. E-Marketer says programmatic digital display ad spend in the U.S. will increase 16% year over year in the next three years, growing at three times the rate of non-programmatic spend. That brings digital display to 90% coming from programmatic bidding systems. Quoting E-Marketer, quote,

Starting point is 00:04:09 although transacting programmatically can lead to challenges in transparency and control, often with unknown intermediaries and limited performance reporting, there are still many benefits. Automation enables greater control over spending cadence and channel mix, unquote. Next year, U.S. programmatic digital display ad spend will grow by more than 13%, mostly because of the increasing number of video ad formats on free ad-supported streaming TV channels and ad-supported video-on-demand tiers. Twilio is considering selling off Segment, the customer data platform it recently acquired. been pushing for Twilio to sell off assets to boost shareholder value, especially as the company's stock price has plummeted from its peak in 2021. Segment, which Twilio acquired for $3.2 billion in 2020 amid the pandemic,

Starting point is 00:05:18 was seen as a way to quickly grow market reach, but the acquisition has since been questioned due to Segment's underperformance and the the broader markets shift post-pandemic. Segments' recent earnings show a modest year-over-year revenue growth and a decline in revenue quality. TikTok has published a new 34-page guide for marketers to help them navigate marketing on the app. The guide covers three main areas, ideation, production, and optimization. You're not going to find any mind-blowing revelations here. They're mostly the basics like define your target audience, show off your products, and so on. But there might be a good refresher or a quick start guide for a new team member. One nice section is how to maximize the impact of the first six seconds of a video.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Studies have shown on TikTok you only have a couple of seconds before someone decides to watch or swipe away. There's also a section on using the editing function within the app, which has become more complex over the years. And a section about the platform's so-called smart creative ads, which are aided by AI. There is a link to download the full report in today's email newsletter, which you can sign up to at todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Do you have business insurance?

Starting point is 00:06:37 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. And finally, Google says it will refund advertisers after a technical hiccup led to some being overcharged. This glitch affected a handful of campaigns on its Display & Video 360 platform between July and December of last year.

Starting point is 00:07:13 If you ran campaigns during this period, you may want to reach out to Google to kick off the credit refund process. The overcharges were apparently for a small number of impressions. Google says the impact was minor and the glitch was fixed in December. All right, a programming note for you. My wife and I are leaving tomorrow for a vacation out of the country. So the next few days will be a little different. Tomorrow, you will get an episode of Jill Saskengale's new podcast called Inside Google Ads. Jill is, of course, our Google Ads correspondent.

Starting point is 00:07:49 This is a must listen if you buy Google Ads. Thursday, a deep dive interview with a marketing scientist who discovered some surprising reasons people abandoned their online shopping carts. And spoiler here, it's your fault. Friday, when good deeds go unpublished. online shopping carts. And spoiler here, it's your fault. Friday, when good deeds go unpublished, I talked to a marketing professor who published a research paper about why consumers turn against a brand that supports a good cause.

Starting point is 00:08:16 And the following week, we'll explore what one thing you should be putting in your product photos that you're probably not, a ranking system to find the perfect brand alliance partner, and the surprising group of consumers that complain more than any other. And then I'll be back Thursday of next week to pick up where we left off with the day's developments in digital

Starting point is 00:08:36 marketing. So I'll be gone, but still an information-packed week for you ahead. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.

Today in Digital Marketing - 75% of X’s Ad Clicks Were Fake: Report

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