Today in Digital Marketing - A thick jungle canopy and a dark body of water.

Starting point is 00:00:01 Today, Google may be changing your campaign without your permission, YouTube may soon place ads on your brand's videos, also without your permission, you can buy TV ads through a portal now, Facebook apparently has a new relaxed moderation flag for brand assets, and the top trending color for 2021 reads like a bad LSD trip. It's Wednesday, November 18th, 2020. Happy Republic Day, Latvia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. So this would suck. Imagine starting your day with a quick check on your Google Ads performance and discover to your

Starting point is 00:00:36 horror that your campaign's keywords have been overspending by 50% of your target budget. So you go to check the keywords and, hey, that's weird. I didn't put that keyword in there. And this one, I didn't give it that keyword. So you check the change history to see who on your team has been monkeying with your campaign. And there's no change listed. Well, this is happening to marketers as we speak. And the entity which is pushing keywords into your campaign? Google Ads itself. Turns out, almost two years ago, Google launched a program that would insert keywords into your campaign

Starting point is 00:01:13 if Google's algorithm thinks that you'll get better results. So a lot of people did, then nothing much happened. Until this month, when it seems Google suddenly turned that feature on. One guy that SearchEng searchengineland.com interviewed said his client's account was opted into the maximum impact setting in this program. This account was marketing tax preparation services and Google added the kind of bizarre keyword of taxes space com. What the hell kind of keyword is that?

Starting point is 00:01:47 Turns out this client of his opted into that program when it was in beta two years ago and i guess didn't realize that it would literally add keywords in but then in a different client's account it turns out some of the keywords were manually added by a google rep a human being a rep that neither this guy nor his client had ever heard of. Google says it's looking into that one. And it's not just keywords. Google can change your extensions, bidding, targeting, and more. So, how do you fix this? First, unless you are 100% sure that you did not opt into this,

Starting point is 00:02:18 go to your Google Ads account, to your campaigns, and check your keywords. Make sure they're the ones that you intend to have there. And then, there's actually a settings checkbox for this. Here's how to find it. Again, in Google Ads dashboard, be sure you're on the all campaigns tab on the far left, then click settings, then account settings. And in there, you will find an item called ad suggestions. There is a very good chance that Google has checked on for you the option reading automatically apply ad suggestions after 14 days. Turn that off. Meanwhile, while Google is adding campaigns to your campaign you didn't ask for over at YouTube, they announced today they will be putting ads on your videos, ads that you did not ask for. In fact, maybe even on videos you specifically set as do not monetize.

Starting point is 00:03:11 The company this morning emailing people to alert it to an update of its terms and service, which says YouTube can now start inserting ads into your videos regardless of whether you're part of its partner program or have turned monetization off. In other words, said socialmediastudy.com, quote, if you chose not to put ads in your YouTube video, YouTube's probably going to do it anyway. But you won't gain any subsequent revenue from those ads unless you sign up to the partner program, unquote. By the way, to be in that partner program, you first have to live in a region where it's even available, and then have 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Oh, and more than 1,000 subscribers. I suspect this is going to be a problem for a lot of brand managers who've used YouTube as their video hosting platform. Many people upload their company's videos to YouTube and then embed that video on their company's own website. There is a potential upside for us digital marketers, as this could very well increase the available inventory. More inventory with the same demand usually translates to lower CPMs. These changes are in effect for the U.S. today and will come to other countries by the middle of next year. One of the best developments that came with the birth of digital marketing was the self-service ad platform. Before those, placing ads meant suffering through a three-martini lunch with Jim, the guy from sales, and then booking a run of radio or newspaper ads. Now, of course,

Starting point is 00:04:42 we can do pretty much everything online. Facebook campaigns, Google ads, radio ads on Spotify. But there's been one gap all this time. Television. Television has, with a few exceptions, mostly kept to the old school method of booking ad space. And that's because the budgets involved are often five or six or seven figures and who the hell would do that on their credit card through a web browser? Well, that is changing. And while you might not be placing your Super Bowl campaigns through a mobile app anytime soon, you can now book television ads through a self-service platform. That's the good news. The bad news is that those ads will only appear on Amazon's Fire TV. The company this morning announcing its new self-service platform for Fire TV. In addition to video ads, you can also get a placement in a sponsored tile on the home screen.

Starting point is 00:05:30 There's interest-based targeting, a real-time analytics side as well. One other nice touch, Fire TV ads are cost per click, so you pay only when viewers click or tap on your ads. The artwork is breathtaking. It's black and white, looks at first like a pixelated photo of an old lady, but when you look closer, you can see it's been painstakingly constructed using right angles, boxes, and subtle shades of gray.

Starting point is 00:05:57 The piece is called Digital Geronimo, and it's by an Oklahoma artist named Stephen Grounds. It's just one of the many pieces of indigenous art available at wyld.gallery. You can look at all the pieces they have, zoom in on the fine details. There are originals and prints and posters, and it's a great way to support the many Indigenous artists

Starting point is 00:06:16 whose stories continue to shape who we are as a people. Again, the website is wyld.gallery. Visit them today, wyld.gallery. Visit them today. wyld.gallery. J. Hall, who is the chief strategist at Sync Digital Solutions, says, We've had that GMB messaging bug for over a year on several accounts. It's intermittent. Google told me on several occasions that this is isolated and there's no timeline for a fix. But we did find that if we send ourselves a message before clicking to go through, it forces both to show. I don't know if that will work for everyone, but worth a try,

Starting point is 00:07:05 unquote. So that's a workaround that might help. Jay also mentioned that their team had a call with a Facebook rep. Facebook reps are usually one of two things, either recruits fresh out of college whose job it is to convince you to spend more, or reps who would love to help you with that issue, but that's handled by a different team. Well, Jay reported that his call was actually quite productive. Quoting Jay here, A few things we got solved. They gave us ad credits because of downtime, restored a couple of our pages,

Starting point is 00:07:34 worked through some problems we were having with budgeting, and here's the most shocking. After discovering that all of a PPE company's competitors were getting ads through, while our client wasn't, without any needling or elbow drops at all, they pushed everything through and said the account is, quote, flagged for relaxed moderation, unquote. Wait, what? Flagged for relaxed moderation? That's a new one to me. And, you know, might just be a straight up lie from that Facebook rep,

Starting point is 00:08:04 but who knows? As for how Jay and his team got access to such me. And, you know, might just be a straight-up lie from that Facebook rep, but who knows. As for how Jay and his team got access to such a helpful person, he says, quote, daily poking the Zuckerbear with reports, challenges, review requests, and emails, unquote. And so, sounds like the squeaky wheel does get a bit of the grease after all. Jay is one of 200 super smart digital marketers in this podcast's Slack community. There are SEO experts, Google ad pros, social media content managers, marketing VPs. You should be in there too. Just go to todayindigital.com slash Slack or tap the link in this episode's notes.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Twitter is apparently thinking about adding a dislike button or some kind of downvoting system. This was hinted at by the company's head of product yesterday. To be clear, Twitter experiments with new things a lot, and as often as not, doesn't ever launch them. But, as Mashable reported, quote, hearing it straight from the horse's mouth suggests a dislike button of some kind may very well be an actual thing coming to Twitter. In the digital marketing world, you can only be sure of two things. One, Facebook will eventually ban one of your pages or ad accounts arbitrarily. And two, near the end of each year, companies will start rolling out their forecast news releases as a way of inserting themselves into the news cycle. That second truism is starting now, and Shutterstock is first out of the gate with their forecast news releases as a way of inserting themselves into the news cycle. That second truism is starting now.

Starting point is 00:09:27 And Shutterstock is first out of the gate with their forecast of trending colors for 2021. Actually, a lot of sites do this now. Pantone does it. I think Pinterest tried their hand at it. But anyway, Shutterstock says they've looked at all the colors of all the photos uploaded and they see three big trending colors on the way. First, something they call set sail champagne, which they describe as pastel orange, because that's nicer sounding than what it actually looks like, which is that beige color that was big on interior walls in the 90s.

Starting point is 00:09:57 Fortuna gold, a slightly dark yellow, and Tidewater green, a slightly dark teal. My favorite parts of these color trends are the description of the colors. Listen to this one of tidewater green, and tell me they were not stoned when they wrote this. Like the sun rising, the seasons changing, and the earth spinning on its axis, the ebb and flow of ocean tides is constant. Tidewater green is a reminder that

Starting point is 00:10:25 change is a given. This deep molten teal presents with both yellow and blue tints, adding to its dynamic power. At once, a thick jungle canopy and a dark body of water, the beauty of tidewater green lies in its fluid nature. Okay, I mean, it's literally just a dark teal. Like, no need to get excited. They have also helpfully provided region-specific color trends. In the U.S., apparently bright purple will be the hot color next year. Australia, you will have a light purple. The U.K., kind of a muted red.

Starting point is 00:11:00 And predictably, Canada gets beige. By the way, I'm going to be starting something new as of today. And predictably, Canada gets beige. Why? I don't know. We all work from home now. It's a little lonely. The URL is twitch.tv slash Todd Maffin. There's also a link you can tap in this episode's notes. They usually start around 11 a.m. Pacific, maybe noon, maybe 1 p.m. It varies based on what's happening with the agency, but you can set a little notification when you follow the account to get a, you know, you know how those things work. Anyway, that's it.

Starting point is 00:11:43 Hope to see you. Talk to you tomorrow. My heart's calling I'm free falling Straight down to an endless love I'm free stalling River rolling Straight down to an endless love

Today in Digital Marketing - A thick jungle canopy and a dark body of water.

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