Today in Digital Marketing - Account Banned? Just Buy a New One!

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Tuesday, September 20th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, did your ad account get banned? Don't worry, just buy a new one. Also, Meta joins the post-cookie party. How to get more in-mail replies. The cameras in the sky that are watching your products. And the vote is in, friends. Your brand's use of animated GIFs is cringe.

Starting point is 00:00:21 Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. We begin today with a look at Amazon's grey market. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. buy these accounts to bypass bans imposed on their original accounts. These sales, of course, break Amazon's rules and let shady sellers evade security and verification checks. New merchants are subject to a range of checks, sometimes as detailed as mandatory video calls and letters sent to their physical addresses to confirm their location. An existing and verified account, though, lets sellers bypass these steps. Quoting Business Insider, On Telegram and forums like Swapped and PlayerUp, thousands of brokers openly sell accounts with prices ranging from a few hundred bucks for a new account to thousands of dollars apiece for years-old accounts with established histories. Some brokers are so confident in their ability to avoid Amazon security, they even offer a two week money back guarantee.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Also, these accounts sometimes steal random people's identities to disguise themselves and sellers use these fake credentials to engage in questionable behavior. In some cases, the people whose names and addresses had been stolen have been bombarded with returns from unhappy customers. In response, an Amazon spokesperson said the company is, quote, dedicated to protecting customers' brands, selling partners, and its store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse. Everybody's got a privacy solution. Google's got one. Walmart has one. And now, Meta is throwing their hat into the post-cookie ring.

Starting point is 00:02:06 It's called the Interoperable Private Attribution and is actually being developed by both Meta and Mozilla. The companies say IPA is an attribution framework that doesn't track users across the web. Quoting Adweek, A key facet of the protocol is its basis in multi-party computation, where the process of matching user and action is shared between multiple servers. In other frameworks, all computing happens in one browser. User data is broken up like pieces of a puzzle and encrypted in something called a match key, which anyone on the web can operate. Parties only have access to data if their match keys

Starting point is 00:02:41 correspond to one another, indicating the same user visited a publisher as, say, made a purchase on a website. However, once an advertiser gets access to this data, it would be batched and aggregated, meaning the user's identity is never revealed, unquote. Of course, IPA's backers don't account for much browser share market. Mozilla had 3% market share last month. If you don't include the in-app browser, Meta doesn't even really have its own web browser. But according to a source quoted by Adweek, who claims to be an ad tech expert, IPA's lack of incumbency might actually be an advantage.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Quoting them, The big problem is a trust problem. There's nothing wrong with Google's approach and Apple's approach, but they do depend on you trusting that Google's or Apple's code is effective and non-biased, even if it's open sourced and people don't trust it. Unquote. They added that while people may generally be in favor of IPA, the industry itself still has a long way to go before adopting a standard, which may end up actually combining a variety of solutions. Big tech isn't sold either, quoting a Google spokesperson, we believe it's too early to tell whether the IPA proposal is the right solution for the ecosystem, and we look forward to exploring it alongside other proposals from the industry. Inflation is not scaring consumers away from shopping this spooky season.

Starting point is 00:04:02 According to a survey released yesterday by the National Retail Federation, 7 out of 10 American consumers plan to celebrate Halloween this year, returning to pre-pandemic levels. Due to spikes in participation, spending on costumes, decorations, and candy is expected to reach record levels. Consumers plan to spend $100 on average for items like candy, decor, cards, and costumes. Costumes, of course, make up the biggest category of purchases,

Starting point is 00:04:26 with kids and adult costumes expected to hit nearly $3 billion, while dressing up your pet is also expected to exceed last year's record high. As for where consumers will get inspiration for their Halloween costumes this year, more than a third will search online, a quarter will look inside retail stores, and consumers apparently will be shopping early, with half planning to start shopping this month. Finally, where will consumers be spending their money this Halloween?

Starting point is 00:04:52 Two out of five will shop at discount stores, while over a third plan to shop at specialty Halloween stores. Only three out of ten say they'll make their purchases online. The data comes from the NRF's survey of more than 8,000 consumers. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Be protected. Be Zen. Hey B2B marketers, is your LinkedIn in-mail response rate a problem? The Professional Network recently shared results from a study it commissioned to analyze emails in order to gain a better understanding of what can be done to maximize your reach. They suggest five things. First, the data showed that shorter in-mails turned out to be better. Cold emails, especially with 25 to 50 words, would receive 65% more responses than emails with 125 words. You probably hear this tip all the time, but here it is again. Simplify your writing. 70% of in-mails are written at or beyond a 10th grade reading level. The study found that if you take that 10th grade writing and bring it to a 5th grade reading level, you will see

Starting point is 00:06:17 50% more replies. Also, personalization is really important. The data showed, of course, that when you personalized the template, you saw twice as many replies. Four, passive language invites replies. LinkedIn says information tones destroy reply rates, which are typically measured when you're talking about yourself or trying to educate, air quotes, your buyer. Quoting LinkedIn, prospective customers don't want to be talked at, they want to be talked with. Instead of using an informative tone, try to create a more tentative, unassuming, or even unsure tone, unquote. By asking questions like, if that sounds right, then let's connect, you can invite engagement and align with the reader's thinking rather than telling them to listen. And finally, after you've got the reply, stay curious.

Starting point is 00:07:07 LinkedIn's analysis says asking more questions and inviting further personalizations once you've received a response will get you better results. One of the biggest retailers in the world is combating empty shelves with artificial intelligence technology. Walmart recently announced that in Canada, it is rolling out a new technology in its stores that uses AI to reduce out-of-stocks with real-time data.

Starting point is 00:07:32 In Walmart's terms, out-of-stock is when an item is not available on a shelf when a customer is looking for it. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's sold out. It's just not physically out there on the shelves. And it uses cameras to do this. Cameras are installed throughout the store, pointed directly at shelves to target out-of-stock detection. At predetermined intervals, the cameras scan the shelves. When a product goes out of stock, it will trigger replenishment through Walmart's existing inventory systems. Employees will then receive an alert and restock the shelf. With the rollout, Walmart Canada claims it is one of the first retailers in the country to deploy an AI solution for on-shelf availability.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Which brings us to the lightning round. Meta announced the launch of its Facebook Reels API yesterday, which lets social media managers post content through third-party tools like Sprout Social and Agorapulse. The API enables a share-to-Reels feature and follows the Instagram Reels API which lets social media managers post content through third-party tools like Sprout Social and Aurora Pulse. The API enables a share-to-reels feature and follows the Instagram Reels API, which the company launched back in June. LinkedIn recently announced a new focused inbox user interface,

Starting point is 00:08:39 which reroutes less valuable messages into a tab called Other, which is basically a nicer word for kind of spam, not really spam. You know what I mean. Some people call this bacon, by the way, B-A-C-N. With the update, you will have access to two separate in-mail tabs, focused and other. It'll be interesting to see where your sponsored in-mails end up. Jiffy, the catalog of Jiffs, said young users think the format is for boomers, out of fashion, cringe. And that it's seen an overall decline in use. Why would Jiffy say this and kick itself in the face?

Starting point is 00:09:11 He made the remarks in filings with the UK's competition watchdog, which is trying to block Meta's $400 million acquisition of it. Jiffy also said it had, quote, no meaningful revenue generating business. TikTok's clone of Be Real, TikTok Now, launched over the weekend as a standalone app outside of the U.S. The new independent mobile app is similar to the TikTok Now feature that was introduced into the U.S. TikTok app itself last week. But less users opt in to receive push notifications, even if their TikTok notifications are silenced. And finally, from the who-could-have-seen-this-coming archives,

Starting point is 00:09:45 the grocery chain Wegmans recently announced that it is killing off its self-checkout app after too much theft. The app, called Wegmans Scan, let customers scan, bag, and pay for groceries while they were shopping and skip the checkout line entirely. It turns out, funky cool app zero, shoplifters one. A very quick survey happening in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:10:07 We'd love to know how you feel your company's Q4 will be compared to last year. You can vote better, worse, or the same. Just go to the show notes. It is literally one tap. See you tomorrow. Attention. If you were a loved one, was diagnosed with mesothelioma, you may be entitled to a financial compensation. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer.

Starting point is 00:10:27 Think to as fast as exposure. Call now.

Today in Digital Marketing - Account Banned? Just Buy a New One!

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