Today in Digital Marketing - A Potentially Huge Change to the Facebook Algorithm

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

What Facebook's algorithm update means for your organic content... Amazon moves into another bricks-and-mortar category... Why has influencer marketing jumped to the top spot in digital ad spend.... The U.S. government investigates shady online marketing practices.... And Twitter's change to profiles could mean more sales for you.Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at TodayInDigital.com/newsletterSPECIAL OFFER: Seven days free: https://todayindigital.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=c1232accPodcast Perks: Exclusive Deals for ListenersAdvertising: Perks (free!) • Ads • Classifieds • Brand TakeoversJoin the Community: Slack or DiscordEnjoying the show? Please rate and review us!Follow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok (daily digital marketing tips)Get this as a daily email newsletterLeave a VoicemailToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital. Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, what Facebook's algorithm update means for your organic content, Be protected. Be Zen. marketing practices, and Twitter's change to profiles could mean more sales for you. It's Thursday, April 22, 2021. Happy Earth Day! I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Facebook today announced it's planning one of the most significant changes to its content discovery algorithm ever. Until now, Facebook used engagement as a primary metric to determine how valuable any piece of content was. The more engagement a post got,

the more that post was shown to other people. Problem is, the code didn't seem to distinguish much between positive engagement or negative engagement. What the platform rewarded was volume of engagement, not tone of engagement. That may be changing. This morning, Facebook announcing they will be testing additional signals. First, they'll be conducting a global survey asking some people if they found certain posts to be inspirational or not.

The posts they find are more inspirational will move higher up in the news feed. Two, they'll start asking people if they want to see more or fewer posts about a certain topic, such as cooking, sports, or politics, and then try to deliver on those preferences. Three, they specifically mention political posts here. They'll be looking more closely at posts with lots of angry reactions and then asking people what kinds of posts they want to see less of. And four, they're changing the behavior of the hide post button to make it more prominent and to factor that content into future newsfeed decisions. So as with everything these social platforms roll out, they usually juice the algorithm to reward use of the new posts or

format or ad product or whatever. Remember when Zuckerberg was enthralled with Facebook Lives and you could get huge reach just by going live? And then after his infatuation died down, so did the ranking boost. But perhaps now, inspirational posts are the new lives. If you run content for your brand, it's probably a good idea to start testing content with that tone to see if you get an uplift in your numbers. That's organic turning to the paid media side of Facebook.

The company also today announcing you will soon be able to add Instagram Reels to your list of campaign placements. Reels, of course, it's half-baked clone of TikTok. They look about the same as organic Reels, but have a sponsored tag and a CTA button at the bottom. Again, mostly identical to TikTok's implementation. As with the previous story, it's very likely that this placement will have artificially low CPMs, so might be worth trying out once it's rolled out. Also, we're getting some new targeting options for in-stream video ads, letting us choose by topic,

which is a little weird, to be honest. Well, yes, we've had interest targeting for a while. Facebook's model of ad distribution has always been to show content to your audience independent of the kind of content around it. We've never been able to say, OK, look, only show my ad if the post above and below it is about fitness. But now we can, at least with the in-stream video placement and only for 20 topics. In that way, it's similar to what YouTube calls affinity audiences. But now we can, at least with the in-stream video placement, and only for 20 topics. In that way, it's similar to what YouTube calls affinity audiences.

Reels ads are being tested right now in India, Brazil, Germany, and Australia, with the rest of us getting them in a couple of months. Video topics for in-stream ads are also in testing. And Facebook also today said they plan to start testing monetized stickers for Facebook Stories. The idea being that if you sell something and use a product catalog on their platform, you'll be able to put a sticker on your story that links directly to the product or category page. Facebook will, of course, take a cut of any sales you make from that.

While we're on the topic of new ad products, Reuters today reported that Apple plans to add a second ad slot in the Suggested section of its app store. This one will be for broad placements, not based on keywords in a search. Apple did not comment on the report. Amazon is getting into the hair business. And no, I don't mean they'll be selling more shampoo. I mean they're literally starting up bricks-and-mortar salons.

Well, one salon so far. If that surprises you, maybe you haven't been paying close attention to their pushes into the real world. They have grocery stores you can visit, pop-up locations, convenience stores, mall stores called Four Star that even have a selection of popular Amazon products, and even actual bookstores. So add Amazon Salons to that list. The first one opens in London in a couple of popular Amazon products and even actual bookstores. So add Amazon Salons to that list. The first one opens in London in a couple of weeks. It's a pilot store, so this isn't the start of a huge rollout, at least not yet. And it's going to be a kind of odd salon focusing

more on testing tech, like augmented reality hair consultations and point and learn tools for its stylists. People getting the premium newsletter today are seeing some screenshots of what that all looks like. They will still cut hair, but that sounds like it's sort of a secondary goal. More data suggesting influencer marketing is becoming a mainstay of many digital marketers' budgets. A study by Advertiser Perceptions has found 25% of marketing executives spent more on influencers during the second half of last year than the previous year. And now, when you lump branded content into that bucket, that represents the largest category of digital ad spending. 20% of ad budgets are going there. A caveat, this is a small survey of only 205 ad executives.

46% were in brands, 54% in agencies. That said, this does track with most other research in the space. As for the top channels for branded content and influencer marketing, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the top channels. A surprisingly strong 35% of those polled favor TikTok for influencer marketing. Quoting Marketing Dive, with marketers' supply systems under pressure, many focused on upper funnel activities. However, amid people's worries about the pandemic and growing awareness of social

justice issues, advertisers determined it could be insensitive to hard-sell products, so they embraced branded content and influencer marketing to drive awareness while showing brands' human sides. In addition to raising awareness, advertisers also wanted to engage consumers in lower-funnel activities like direct sales, as homebound consumers spent more time shopping online. If you were on TikTok a couple of months ago, one of the big videos circulating around was from a UI UX designer who pointed out all the dark pattern UI on former US President Donald Trump's fundraising site. Checkboxes that looked like they were soliciting opinions actually turned one-time donations into weekly recurring donations, or doubled the donation the person intended to give.

The New York Times reported that the Trump campaign had to refund $122 million in campaign contributions. This kind of dark pattern is actually pervasive across the web. Little design tweaks that try to coax users into taking an action that isn't always in their best interest. Now, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission says it plans to look into so-called dark patterns with an eye to regulating privacy and online purchases. The state of California has already banned the use of the most egregious of these design

decisions in their sweeping CCPA legislation. It's against the law there to use confusing language like double negatives, such as don't not sell my personal information, or force users to sit through a list of reasons why they shouldn't opt out, or require users to search through a long privacy policy to find out how to opt out of an email list. The FTC will be spending extended time on the topic in a live-streamed workshop next week, which you can watch for yourself at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time on April 29th by going to the ftc.gov website. Some huge problems with Apple's podcast platform. The same week, the company announced it would let podcast producers monetize their shows.

First, on that monetization, it's not particularly good for the podcaster. Unlike other premium feed services, listeners will be required to listen to premium feeds with Apple's podcast app, not the app of their choice. Podcasters won't get any listener info like name or email address. And Apple plans to take 30% of the revenue the first year, then 15% the following years. Other platforms take a much smaller cut.

But regardless, the whole platform seems to have collapsed over the last couple of days. Many podcasters say their shows have completely disappeared from the catalog. That catalog powers a large number of other independent podcast apps, so they've disappeared from there too. Plus, the new back-end for podcasters seems to just not work anymore. A number of podcasters have been stuck on an error message. If you produce a podcast, maybe stay off their back-end for a week or two

until they get it all sorted out. Facebook has them, Instagram has them, LinkedIn has them, Pinterest has them, even the upstart TikTok has them. I has them. Pinterest has them. Even the upstart TikTok has them. I'm talking about business accounts. A different type of profile than a regular person. Profile which usually unlocks advertising options and other tools. One platform that hasn't had them, Twitter. All Twitter has is accounts. One type fits all. Today, though, Twitter began testing professional profiles. This is something they announced last month,

but they are now rolling it out to a test group of businesses in the U.S. When it becomes public, switching your brand's account to a professional profile will give you some additional business information you can display. You'll also be able to add things like product carousels and maybe pick up an extra sale or two.

Well, I've added a new channel to our Slack and Discord communities. It's called Promote Yourself Here. Self-explanatory. So if you want to promote something that you are working on or plug your freelance business or your brand services or your wife's knitting, you can do that for free. Links

to both our Slack and Discord communities are in this episode's notes under the Join the Community bullet. And if you want to plug something on the actual podcast and reach the 2,500 digital marketers who listen to each episode, we have a super cheap $20 option. Check it out today in digital.com

slash classified or tap the link in this episode's notes in the advertising bullet. All right, talk to you tomorrow.