Today in Digital Marketing - Are Breakout Modules the Future of Online Retail?

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

One of the biggest ecomm platforms breaks into pieces — on purpose. Plus: the company that is burning meetings to the ground. TikTok will let you block kids. Expect more programmatic ads in podcasts. And you'll never guess where AI algorithms are finding themselves now. ✅ Follow Us on Social Media✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨   ✓ Ad-free episodes  ✓ Story links in show notes  ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions  ✓ Better audio quality  ✓ Live event replays  ✓ Audio chapters  ✓ Earlier release time  ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts  ✓ and more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed 🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack📰 Get the Newsletter: Click Here (daily or weekly)Or just The Top Story each day on LinkedIn. ✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review------------------------------------🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source AudioSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Tuesday, January 3rd. Happy New Year. Today, one of the biggest e-commerce platforms breaks into pieces on purpose. Plus, the company that is burning meetings to the ground. TikTok will let you block kids, expect more programmatic ads in podcasts, and you will never guess where AI algorithms are finding themselves now. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Shopify is going modular as it aims to woo big retailers in the new year. The company today announcing a new product called Commerce Components, which lets sellers buy only the features they need for their existing online businesses. So instead of the entire end-to-end Shopify service bundle, this new

a la carte option lets brands pick and choose a commerce stack to best suit their needs. The company says its new offering lets mostly enterprise retailers access the platform's core features like Shopify checkout while continuing to manage product inventory or manage customer data elsewhere. Commerce Components also offers enterprise clients access to flexible APIs with no rate limits. The pricing for the service will depend on the retailer's customization and components they choose to use. Speaking of Shopify, if you're already feeling overwhelmed by meetings on day three of the new year, here's a hot tip from the company. Just say no. As employees returned from the holiday, Bloomberg today reported that Shopify

said it's conducting a calendar purge and removed all recurring meetings with more than two people in perpetuity from everyone's calendars. Also reinstating a rule that no meetings can be held on Wednesdays, while large meetings of more than 50 people will be limited to one per week, and it can only happen on Thursdays. The company's leaders will also encourage employees to decline meetings and remove themselves from large internal chat groups. Meetings, though, are not disappearing entirely at Shopify.

The company noted there will be a two-week cooling-off period before anyone can reconvene any cancelled meetings. Going forward, it will only use Slack as an instant messenger with large, unwieldy chat groups used only for announcements. If kids aren't your brand's demographic, TikTok recently announced that it is expanding the ability to restrict videos to adult viewers. Previously, the adult-only audience control feature was only available on TikTok Live. Now, though, brands and creators will be able to restrict content to accounts over the age of 18 for short-form videos as well.

That said, adult content still has to adhere to the platform's policies. Any videos that contain, you know, adult content and other violations of its community guidelines will be removed. TikTok says it sees the setting as a way to keep minors from encountering content aimed at an adult audience or that may be uninteresting to them. What is in store for podcast advertising this year? With the industry's growth, Marketing Brew reports that podcast ad pros expect there will be increasing demand for programmatic inventory, plus measurement transparency and more crossover with video content in 2023. While less than 2% of podcast ads were sold programmatically in 2021, according to the IAB, several executives predicted they might gain some traction this year. One executive suggested programmatic inventory will increase as podcasters, quote, continue to come around to the idea of an

additional revenue source, unquote. According to another executive interviewed by Marketing Brew, if programmatic buying does grow in 2023, the need for transparency into delivery will become more important. A spokesperson for podcast company ACAS noted that some of that increased demand might be a result of the macroeconomic climate, which has led to budget cuts. Quote, for advertisers, this means there are going to be increased pressures to prove out ROI on every dollar spent. Looking specifically at podcast advertising as an emerging medium. Finally, industry executives predict YouTube crossovers will take center stage this year. While podcasters have been distributing their content on the platform for years, one insider predicted the number of them doing so will reach critical disruptive mass in 2023. He explained that as more podcast engagement comes from YouTube, new performance marketing attribution solutions could be required. 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. If you are looking to get your products into the hands of your customers faster,

you may want to flag down one of Amazon's drones. The e-commerce giant is now delivering orders by drones in California and Texas with the goal of flying packages to customers' homes within one hour of them purchasing it online. Residents in selected towns can sign up for the service, and Amazon will then confirm that the company can deliver to their address. Once an order is placed, they receive an estimated delivery time and drone tracking information.

The drone will then fly to the designated delivery location, descend to the customer's backyard, hover at a safe height, and release the package. While the delivery drones fly autonomously and are programmed to avoid running into obstacles like chimneys, Amazon says it is currently using humans to monitor deliveries. A cyber villain appears to be selling stolen info from more than 400 million Twitter accounts. In a posting on a criminal data breach forum last week, the hacker claimed he had obtained data on millions of accounts, including private email addresses and phone numbers of celebrities, politicians, companies, and more. According to the alleged hacker, the records were exposed via a vulnerability that Twitter actually fixed last year, which was previously linked to a data breach

of more than 5 million users. The troll advised Twitter's new CEO, Elon Musk, to pay up and purchase the data before it leads to a big fine under Europe's GDPR privacy law. Meanwhile, the threat actor told media that a copy of the database could be bought exclusively for $200,000 or $60,000 per buyer on a non-exclusive basis. When asked if they contacted Twitter to ransom the data, they said that they contacted

the company and made calls, but did not receive a response. Well, the joke's on you if your bingo card for 2023 doesn't include live streaming appliances. Yesterday, Samsung announced an oven with a camera so that you can live stream the view from inside your oven to social media. It also, predictably, has an AI algorithm that can automatically detect what you're cooking and it will recommend the appropriate temperature, time, and mode. Right now it recognizes

about 160 dishes. How was your New Year's? Mine was fine, Thanks for asking. Actually, my wife and I just played video games. I know this will shock you. We played video games pretty much nonstop, like from the moment we woke up until... It's this one game called Fallout 76. It's rather engrossing.

And you have to get these caps, which is the currency of the game. And it's multiplayer. So you can set up little vending machines. And other players real people will come along and uh buy things from you and i have found i don't know an exploit a glitch a cheat but all day today while i was working on my second monitor i had the game up and running and every three or four minutes i have to move my mouse over to convince it that I'm still in the game. And I just watch my vending machines sell things, and money just starts rolling in.

And every once in a while I have to go restock it. And then I realized, this is the life of an e-commerce vendor, isn't it? Wake up every morning, keep feeding the machine, and hopefully if you've done things right, just watch the money roll in. No reports to generate, which is awesome. No pixels to worry about. It's kind of bliss. I'm not going to lie.

Anyway, I hope you had a restful holiday, whatever you celebrate. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Welcome to my house. Everybody's welcome. Welcome to my house, my house. Welcome to my house everybody's welcome welcome to my house my house welcome to my house