Today in Digital Marketing - Amazon Court Ruling Could Affect Your Online Store

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Twitter's numbers are looking good. Amazon's accountant's are also happy. Its lawyer, on the other hand, are not. YouTube is accused of playing dirty in negotiations. And TikTok plucks a new CEO out of their Chinese headquarters.Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at TodayInDigital.com/newsletterPodcast 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, Twitter's numbers are looking good. Amazon's accountants are also happy. Be protected. Be Zen. headquarters. It's Friday, April 30th, 2021. Happy Russian State Fire Service Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Twitter's answer to Clubhouse, which it calls Spaces, may be just days away from a full launch. Some accounts are now able to create a space. I got that ability last night. If you want to check to see if you have it, tap and hold the Compose New Tweet button on the mobile app, and you will see a Spaces icon.

All you do then is give your space a name, and you're on. This could cost Clubhouse a big share of usage. Remember, many of the most popular Clubhouse rooms are hosted by people who have large Twitter followings. And Clubhouse is still invitation-only and only works on iPhones. As they say in the newspaper business, watch this space. Twitter has now reported its financials for the first quarter of this year. They're now up to 199 million monetizable daily active users,

getting some growth momentum back after a small slowdown in the previous quarter. In terms of revenue, Twitter was up 28% year over year, crossing the $1 billion mark for the quarter. They specifically pointed out demand for ads promoting mobile apps was particularly strong. The company says it doesn't expect Apple's changes to have a major impact for its advertisers, but also say they're in kind of a wait-and-see position, like we all are. This will be a big year for Twitter. Spaces is out, or almost out.

I'm sure there'll be some kind of video format to challenge TikTok. We already know they're working on a so-called super follow, which will monetize tweets, plus their integration soon with the email newsletter product that they recently bought. I guess this shouldn't be a big surprise. Amazon continues to benefit from the stay-at-home economy. The revenue they got from ad sales jumped 77% from a year earlier in the first three months of this year.

When you factor in revenue from everything else, they were up 44% in total. One interesting note, nobody talks much about Amazon Prime Video, which is their Netflix competitor, but apparently streaming hours there climbed 70% year over year. As good as those numbers are, nobody's quite sure what's next, especially with people slowly returning to their offices or traveling more. Even so, eMarketer says it expects Amazon's U.S. business will grow 30% this year to exceed $20 billion for the first time and will surpass $30 billion by 2023, almost all of which at the expense of Google. So while the accountants are bringing Jeff Bezos good news, the lawyers are most certainly not.

You might recall last year, a California appellate court ruled that Amazon was liable for marketplace items it fulfilled. Now, an appeal of a different case has gone even further. California ruling this week that this liability even applies if Amazon doesn't do the fulfillment. This could have a huge impact on any of these marketplaces and might even provide you with a bit of shield if you sell things on them. The case was brought by a woman who was surfing Amazon for a hoverboard for her son.

She found one she liked and ordered it. Amazon took payment, sent the details to the manufacturer, a company called Turnip Up, and that manufacturer handled the shipping, but it didn't get there in time for Christmas. The court ruled that Amazon cannot shuffle responsibility because the manufacturer wasn't allowed to communicate with the customer directly. Everything, including returns, had to go through Amazon. Amazon claimed it was basically just an online mall, But as Eric Goldman wrote

on his blog, quote, owners of malls typically do not serve as conduits for payment and communication in each transaction between a buyer and a seller. Moreover, they do not typically charge a per item fee rather than a fixed amount to rent their storefronts. Instead, these actions, interacting with the customer, taking the order, processing the order to the third-party seller, collecting the money, and being paid a percentage of the sale are consistent with a retailer or a distributor of consumer goods, unquote. That ruling was in California. In Illinois, a different case last month, coincidentally also about a hoverboard, reached a different finding.

The court there wrote, quote, The key criterion for being a seller is exercising control over the product, not over the purchasing process. 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.

The online video site Roku today said it would no longer allow new users to use its YouTube app after claiming YouTube overplayed its hand in negotiations. Quoting TechCrunch, Roku had argued that as part of its attempts to renew the carriage agreement for YouTube TV, Google was asking for special treatment, including a preferential ranking of YouTube content in search results and even the permission to override Roku customers' default settings when the YouTube app was open. That is, if a customer used the voice search button to ask for music,

Google wanted YouTube music to play the request, even if the customer had set another app like Pandora as their default, unquote. Roku also said YouTube's parent company was asking for more customer data than industry standard practices and said if Roku didn't take the deal, they'd increase the hardware requirements for YouTube, which could mean Roku's players wouldn't be able to play videos. a Google spokesperson has disputed the claims. Which brings us to the lightning round. Instagram is rolling out two new features for its Instagram Live, the ability to mute your audio during a live stream,

and the option to switch your video during a live stream broadcast off. This, of course, a response to Clubhouse and Spaces and all the rest. The WordPress page builder Elementor's new update focuses on faster page loads. They hope the changes will improve core WebVitals scores. TikTok has a new CEO. You might recall they hired an American for the role when former U.S. President Trump threatened to ban the app. Well, that guy lasted eight months before he quit.

Another American executive stepped in as interim CEO. But now that the heat's apparently off, the final selection went to the CFO in their Chinese headquarters. That person will also still be the CFO as well. And YouTube is testing popping video comments up on the playback timeline, sort of like how SoundCloud ties comments to specific moments in the file. So I had two Slack DMs and one Twitter DM asking for more details on the

dandelion weed puller-upper. I've made a little video about it, well I haven't yet, but I will before this podcast gets out. Showing off the dandelion weed puller-upper. It's really amazing. You know, the most satisfying part of it is when you actually get in there and it starts to rip the root out, you can hear it, like,

just tear the very life out of the fucking weeds anyway. Let's not get me started, I promise. All right, that's it for this week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced on beautiful Vancouver Island by EngageQ Digital. Production support and fact-checking

by Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio I'm Todd Maffin Have a restful weekend, friends I will talk to you on Monday That's okay, I got some pills Some that make you walk the walk

And some that make you chill I'm working on a wheel Got the world spinning back Like the man made of steel Now I'm running from the devil. Need the kings to rebel just to get up on my level. And I don't know a dang dang. Every single day is the same thing.