Today in Digital Marketing - Are Electronic Lollipops the Next Ad Format?

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

A wrap-up of the most important developments in the world of digital marketing over the past five days.✅ Take the survey.📰 Get our free daily newsletter🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers.GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • Cancel.MORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital🌟 Rate and Review Us🤝 Our Slack.UPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell 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.Some 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 Friday the 13th, December 13th, that is. I'm Todd Maffin. Before we start, a thank you to everyone for your patience. We are still trying to tweak how this Friday wrap-up show sounds, how it fits into our workflow and so on. We still want to hear what you think. Monday, though, is the last day for you to fill out our very short survey, which will get you entered into a draw for one of three Amazon gift cards worth $100. That link is at the top of the show notes, or you can go to

b.link slash new format. The survey really just asks two questions. It takes 18 seconds to complete. I did it myself. All right, here is what the past week looked like in the world of digital marketing. We start as usual with changes to the advertising space. Facebook's global ad revenue is expected to hit $100 billion this year. That would make it the second media brand to hit that mark. Yes, Google, of course, being the first one. That is up about 11.5% year over year. But don't break out the bubbly quite yet. Facebook's global market share is still on its way down.

It was 89% in 2013. It's expected to be just 38% in 2025. Positive words in search queries drive more clicks on paid ads. This from a new study that we covered in today's email newsletter. When people search for happy words like joyful or delighted, they are more likely to click on related ads. The research has found that these emotional words trigger interest in products, especially if you are selling hedonic items, things like clothes or dining experiences and so on.

Ad clicks that use positive keywords increase during holidays and weekends. Google is testing a new video asset type, which will let advertisers add video to search campaigns and other Google ads. Microsoft is rolling out some updates focused on household attribution. This will track ad engagement across devices in the same household, which is a nice touch. Back to Google, it has expanded its product studio to 15 new countries, including Ireland, New Zealand, and Mexico. A new study says nearly half of American consumers feel ignored by advertisers. 44% say that brands don't understand their values or priorities.

White, suburban, high-income consumers feel the most overlooked. Podcast advertising is booming, with 41% of marketers planning to increase spending in podcast ads in 2025. Consumers say they find podcast ads trustworthy and attention-grabbing, but some find them repetitive. And Group M predicts the global ad industry will hit $1 trillion in revenue in 2024. That is a 9.5% growth. Digital advertising, of course, driving the increase, accounting for 81% of the total ad revenues. And yes, platforms like Google and Meta will continue to dominate that market.

All right, to the social media changes in the past five days. A Pew Research study that came out just yesterday finds that US teens are highly active on social media. No surprise. But 46% are online almost constantly. YouTube is the most used platform among American teens, followed by TikTok, then Instagram, then Snapchat. There are some gender differences here. Girls favor TikTok, boys prefer YouTube. 90% of teens use YouTube,

60% use TikTok and Instagram regularly, but Facebook and X continue to lose teen users. Threads is testing out its own version of Starter Packs. These are curated lists of accounts that help new users find people to follow based on topics like pop culture and recipes. Meta essentially is copying this directly from Blue Sky, by the way. Tumblr has launched Communities. That's a new feature that lets users create topic-based groups similar to Reddit or Facebook groups. Users will be able to join public or private communities about interests like gaming, photography, and LGBTQ topics. California may require social media platforms to display warnings about mental health risks for users of all ages,

the bill would force platforms to show a black box warning for at least 90 seconds initially on the social media platform and then weekly thereafter. The bill is still before lawmakers there. Is anyone surprised? YouTube's new AI-generated comment replies

are a hot mess. Instead of simple, relevant responses, users are reporting getting bizarre, misleading, or oddly intimate suggestions. Snapchat has some updates for the holiday season, including some new app themes like seasonal backgrounds and buttons for paying Snapchat Plus users, that is. Non-paying users get some things too, holiday themed lenses, and the option to save messages in chats for seven days. Facebook is testing a no edit tag for stories, letting brands and creators highlight when an image they post is untouched. And no views? No problem. Instagram is working on a new option that'll let brands and creators hide view counts in their Reel tabs. This is not live yet, but it would let users turn off the view count

display on the bottom left of Reel's thumbnails. Threads, incidentally, is also testing a hide option that'll let users hide replies entirely, meaning that only threads and reposts would be visible on their profile. This is pretty cool. Instagram is testing a new feature that lets you test Reels on random users before posting it to your followers. They call them trial Reels. They will gather engagement data like views and likes and shares and comments for about 24 hours after you publish. And then you can decide whether it is worth sharing to your audience or not. Blue Sky is exploring a paid subscription model with custom app icons, profile badges, higher quality video uploads, and things like that.

The platform does need to generate revenue. Its CEO said last week they haven't ruled out ads yet. By the way, you can follow us on Blue Sky. Our username is at todayindigital.com and mine is at toddmaffin.com. And a few tiny updates. TikTok has added an end of the year feature for templates. Instagram is letting you schedule DMs,

although this is only being tested on some Android phones for now. You can now add a birthday or founding date to your Facebook brand page. And CapCut now lets you hide or show the CapCut watermark on your videos. Turning to search and SEO, Google says it will increase the frequency of its core search updates. At an event this week, representatives said they want to make updates feel more routine

and continuous rather than isolated major events. While, of course, Google hopes this will enhance search result quality, it might challenge businesses that rely on predictable update schedules. And incidentally, this shift may have already started. The December core update followed just weeks after the November core update. It is on its way now, should take about two weeks to complete. As usual, Google has declined to say what the update changes other than improving multiple ranking systems. Google has also rolled out Gemini 2.0. That is its new AI model. It is already powering those little AI overviews in search. Maybe now it'll stop recommending eating rocks. Google also released its top

trending searches from 2024. No surprise, the US election was up top for new searches. Movie trends inside out to led those and Usher was the top US musician. Oh, Google's also added a few new categories for business listings in terms of business hours. This is for Google business profiles. You can now add your hours for brunch, happy hours, the Sabbath, or senior hours. And finally, if you are in Google Search Console and you are looking for the legacy tools and report section, as I was just a few days ago,

yeah, it's gone. It has been pulled from the sidebar. It turns out this probably happened actually about a month ago when Google removed the page experience report from Search Console. All right, a look at what changed in the DTC and e-commerce world this past week.

First, shoppers are expected to return $890 billion in merchandise this year. That makes up about 17% of retailers' total annual sales. Three out of four consumers do say that free returns influence their buying decisions. Two out of three would be deterred by a bad returns experience. We can blame Gen Zs for that. Their bracketing habit is on the rise, with more than half buying multiple items with plans to return some of them. Amazon is testing 15-minute delivery, although only in

India and only for groceries and household items. This move will pit Amazon against some of its rivals. They're like Swiggy, which is valued at $14 billion, and Flipkart, which is actually owned by Walmart. This rapid delivery trend is growing in popularity across India. Despite the U.S. band buzz, TikTok is still thriving. TikTok shop racked up more than $100 million in single-day sales on Black Friday. That is triple last year's numbers. And between Black Friday and Cyber Monday,

shoppers spiked 165% year over year. This may explain why they are starting to really push in-stream shopping. They've got a new rewards program, which is being promoted as a limited time offer. U.S. users can earn credits by inviting friends and shopping themselves, maybe earning hundreds of dollars a day. But shoppers aren't feeling AI in retail. More than half say AI-driven personalization does nothing for their shopping experience. Only 8% say they feel real value in it. Three out of four would rather get recommendations from humans.

And Chinese Amazon sellers are expanding to other platforms like Walmart, TikTok Shop, and Timu. They want to reduce reliance on Amazon, partially to diversify sales and channels, and partially to mitigate risks of account bans. Some companies now generate significant revenue from the more alternative marketplaces. 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. To video and streaming now, linear TV might be losing viewers, but it is still the heavyweight champ for ad time, accounting for 90% of TV ad viewing in Q2. Twitch saw 9.5 million new streamers go live on its platform for the first time in 2024, with an average of 7.3 million individual streamers broadcasting each month throughout the year. I am one of those people, by the way. You can follow me at twitch.tv slash low effort dad. Connected TV ad spending is

growing. Nine streaming services are expected to generate more than a billion dollars in ad revenue by 2026. A bunch of YouTube updates. First of all, a big jump in its monthly price over on YouTube TV. It will be raising their monthly price to $83 in January. By the way, YouTube TV generated almost $9 billion in ad revenues in Q3. That was its second best quarter ever. They're also capitalizing on growing connected TV viewership with some new features. Watch With will let creators offer live commentary during games.

A parent code will give parents control over kids access. And there is a new subscribe button that will be directly added to the connected TV video player on some platforms. YouTube's also adding some management features directly to the channel page in the mobile app. That reduces the need even more for its separate YouTube Studio app. New creators will start with a simplified setup. Plus, you can now view your public subscriber list, all your videos, and data stories insights on your channel page. YouTube is expanding its auto-dubbing feature,

which will let brands and creators share content in multiple languages with audio translations of their content. Keep in mind, of course, this is AI, so those translations won't always be accurate. You may want to upload your own. By the way, consumers now stream $1 billion of YouTube content daily just on TV screens.

And finally, a few other interesting tidbits that didn't fit anywhere else. Cloudflare reported that global internet traffic grew 17% this year with Google dominating web services. The U.S. generated 34% of bot traffic and mobile devices account for 41% of total internet usage. Chrome led browser usage at 65%. Google's Gemini AI will now let users summarize entire Google Drive folders with a single click. So you can ask things like, what's in this folder? Or what's the theme of this folder? It works on text documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations. You have to be on one of their paid plans to use it. Honestly, I just want AI that'll remove the 6,000 Google Doc

documents in my drive that are titled Untitled Document. Their AI can now also help Gmail users summarize emails quickly. Again, those are only through one of the Gemini paid accounts. The tool can condense single emails, email threads, even monthly communications. You can ask specific questions about your inbox content. The question is, though, should you? Any data you send to the cloud for AI processing sends all of it, confidential information and all, to that company, in this case Google. This is why some companies like Apple make a big deal about their on-device processing. A big L for WordPress.

This week, a California judge ruled that Automatic, that is the parent company of WordPress, has to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress resources and interfering with its plugins. You can Google that if you want. It's a bit of a pissing match. Meanwhile, Automattic's CEO and co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, threatened to just leave the whole thing. He said, quote, it's hard to imagine wanting to continue working on WordPress after this, unquote. Is this what tech bros look like when they take their toys and go home? And finally, researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have created a VR lollipop that simulates taste by using food-grade chemicals

in gel packets. When activated by voltage, the device can produce nine different flavors. Imagine the ad campaigns. Imagine the ad campaigns. Imagine the lawsuits. So those were the top digital marketing stories over the past five days. I will be back tomorrow, though, with a special weekend edition. The topic, brand safety and influencer marketing.

How your brand can join the creator economy without opening yourself up to embarrassing risk. And Tuesday on our weekly deep dive episode, Andrew Hutchinson from Social Media Today joins me for our annual look at the future, what 2025 will hold for the social media platforms. We will go through each of them one by one. If your brand does anything on social, this will be a must listen. Once again, Monday is the last day to be entered in our $100 Amazon gift card draw. To get there, just tap the link

at the top of the show notes that says take the survey or go to b.link slash new format. By the way, we've only had like 12 or 13 people submit it. So your odds are pretty good. Again, top of the show notes is the link and or you can just go to b.link slash new format. I'm odds are pretty good. Again, top of the show notes is the link and or you can just go to b.link slash new format. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.