Today in Digital Marketing - Are Podcasts the New TV?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, April 3rd. Today, we know what will kill TV in the end, and it turns out you're listening to one. Gmail is blocking some Outlook emails, Walmart keeps chipping away at Amazon's ad business, X suffers a 30% drop in usage, and some new conversion tracking from Microsoft's ad platform. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:27 It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy.

Starting point is 00:00:45 And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Well, if you were having trouble getting into your Meta ads account today, you were not alone. Many of Meta's services were reported down this afternoon. It started around 2 o'clock Eastern when WhatsApp users started reporting that the app was just stuck on a message saying connecting, and it wasn't actually connecting.

Starting point is 00:01:19 The outage seemed to be worldwide. Then reports started coming in saying Facebook, Instagram, and threads were also having problems both in seeing content and in trying to create posts. Some marketers reported their ads manager was also down. This comes just weeks after another big meta outage where users were kicked from Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and threads. Engineers fixed the issue after a couple of hours, and WhatsApp wasn't affected for that one. Heads up if you use an Outlook email address for work.

Starting point is 00:01:53 A bug or some kind of glitch might be preventing your emails from reaching people who use Gmail. Microsoft has acknowledged the issue, where senders receive a blunt notification from Google that their email has been blocked, citing a, quote, very low reputation of the sending domain, unquote. This appears to only happen when you're using country-specific domains like Outlook.ca or Outlook.co.uk. As a makeshift fix, Microsoft suggests you create an Outlook.com alias specifically for emailing Gmail contacts. The workaround isn't perfect, but should be enough to bypass Google's spam detection. Google has tightened its email guidelines recently, becoming stricter last month. Google's criteria for blocking include spammy content or a history of unsolicited messages from the sender's IP.

Starting point is 00:02:47 This isn't Microsoft's first email delivery problem. Just last month, Exchange Online users faced similar problems with AOL and Yahoo, attributed to anti-spam measures. Other than the workaround, Microsoft remains tight-lipped about the root cause of the current problem and when it might be resolved. Walmart keeps beefing up its retail ad business, this week opening up to brands that don't usually sell products in its stores, like cars or financial services. The company's ad platform, which it calls Walmart Connect, has a number of placements from in-store screens to email to sponsored products on its own website. Also part of their updates, they'll now let advertisers use brand terms in search ads. And yes, that includes your competitors' brand names. There is expanded measurement of in-store

Starting point is 00:03:39 sales from online ads. They're letting more brands participate in their shoppable ad pilots with Roku and TikTok, and they've introduced some self-service support tools for overseas suppliers. Last year, Walmart's ad division saw revenue spike 28% year over year. It now sits at $3.4 billion annually, not enough to seriously threaten Amazon, but almost assuredly enough to get on their radar. Edison Research says it no longer considers podcasts to be a niche media. In its most recent Infinite Dial study, it found that among people aged 18 to 34, as

Starting point is 00:04:20 many people listen to podcasts as watch TV. That is a huge jump. Podcasting, Edison says, deserves a larger role in media plans as opposed to test and learn experimental buys. 47% of Americans above the age of 12 listen to a podcast once per month or more. And when you carve out the more marketing-friendly 18 to 54 demographic, monthly reach is in the low 60% range. This is Edison's 26th Infinite Dial report.

Starting point is 00:04:50 Their first, back in 1998, found only a tiny number of people had ever tried audio streaming over a dial-up connection. In particular, this year's report noted that the female audience growth of podcast listenership has been explosive. Monthly podcast reach in women had the biggest surge since 2020, and monthly reach is up by more than 15% since last year alone. This means the female group is only 3% smaller than the male listening group. More than 70% of women listen at least weekly. For the first time, the number of Americans who have ever listened to a podcast grew past two-thirds of the entire population. We have all sorts of charts and tables on this topic in today's email newsletter, which you can get for free by tapping the link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Edison's report polled more than a thousand people in the U.S. aged 12 and over.

Starting point is 00:05:50 While that Edison study might have brought good news to podcasts, it brought bad news to Elon Musk. The Invitadow report found that the number of people using X, formerly Twitter, has dropped like a rock in the last year. Edison says its survey estimated 77 million people used Twitter last year. When this year closes out, they expect that number to be just 55 million, a 30% drop. This aligns with other third-party reports. Quoting Social Media Today, quote, Apptopia reported in October last year that X has seen a 13% decline in daily active users since Musk took over the app. SimilarWeb reported that X has seen a 14% decline in mobile and web visits since September of 2022. Last month, SensorTower reported that

Starting point is 00:06:38 X usage has declined 18% year over year. X refuted this, but offered no data to clarify, unquote. Microsoft has a bunch of updates to its ads manager this week. First, maximize conversion value, which was previously only available for smart shopping campaigns, is now available for all search and shopping search campaigns as well. If you have specific ROI goals, you can add a target ROAS. They're also adding some new URL tracking in the form of what they call the Microsoft Click ID. This ID is added to landing page URLs that help advertisers track conversions from their site. An important note here on that, auto-tagging is enabled by default for new accounts and where the Microsoft cookie can't be returned due to browser settings, like third-party cookie blocking.

Starting point is 00:07:32 In those cases, if you don't have this Microsoft Click ID auto-tagging enabled, your conversions won't be tracked. They're also putting smarter image cropping for audience ads and image extensions. This is similar to other platforms that try to automatically crop your uploaded images to focus on what they think is the most important part of the image. As always, approach this with caution. Very often these systems get it wrong. You can still manually crop if you don't like what it does. And they've added five more languages to their ad platform. The new languages are Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Filipino, and Hindi.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Finally, next week, they'll stop letting you create sub-accounts in Hotel Center, and the only way to manage and showcase your lodging will be through their new special lodging campaigns. After April 8th, your sub-accounts in Hotel Center will no longer run, but you'll still be able to use Hotel Center to manage your feeds, like uploading and editing your property feed or verifying your transaction messages. Nothing to say here.

Starting point is 00:08:32 I'll see you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Are Podcasts the New TV?

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