Today in Digital Marketing - Aug 7 — Why Does Facebook Hate Its Advertisers? (Ep 210)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, an easier way to advertise on podcasts. Has Google changed its mind on what makes you rank higher? Some bad news for people in the affiliate marketing space. And it's official. Facebook hates digital marketers like you and me. It's Friday, August 7th, 2020. Happy International Beer Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital.

Starting point is 00:00:23 And here is what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by Podcorn.com. TikTok is coming to television and maybe eventually giving your brand's ad campaigns there an even broader audience. If TikTok survives this whole U.S. banning thing, which of course it will. It's not on network TV, but it is launching its first TV app on the Amazon Fire platform. Those are mostly tablets. But it's not just TikTok the app on another device. This will be a separate experience called More on TikTok, and we'll have curated playlists, interviews with popular TikTok creators, and compilations of some of the most popular TikTok content. Unlike the rest of TikTok, you will not need an account there to watch any of its content.

Starting point is 00:01:09 The app will be free, and at least for now, it doesn't show ads. But of course, we all know that ads eventually end up on places like that. Amazon said it's seen huge numbers for its Fire apps, apps like Facebook Watch, Peloton, Masterclass, and Audible. So it's not TV, it's not a smartphone platform, it's kind of a hybrid, and definitely one to watch for us digital marketers. Google is diving deeper into the audio business, and will soon let brands run ad campaigns across podcasts, digital audio, and streaming music sites.

Starting point is 00:01:46 For one, they are adding dynamic ad insertion for audio into the Google Ad Manager. And it's pretty clever. It will adjust your campaign based on how users are consuming the content. Quoting the company, For example, if a person is interacting with a music streaming app on their phone or computer, Ad Manager can deliver a video ad. Or if the streaming service is running in the background, an audio-only ad can be served, unquote.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Alongside this, they are launching a new tool that will help you make audio ads for your brand. It's called Audio Mixer, and you can upload multiple tracks, including music, sound effects, and voice, and edit it all together. You can also add what they call companion display creative that will be shown with the audio tracks. Side note here, my guess is that if you are a brand that is considering running audio ads, you are probably going to use professional desktop audio software to put your ad together, not some kind of scaled-down web-based tool, but anyway. They say they will soon be adding more analytics tools to this audio thing and

Starting point is 00:02:48 better prediction of listener engagement. Let's talk search engines for a moment. When you do a search for something, whether it's on Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo or whatever, under each listing is a bit of text, a description of what's on the page. For instance, under this podcast pages listing, it says, every weekday, Todd Maffin brings you a fast-paced eight-minute rundown of what you missed in the world of digital marketing and social media. This text is called the meta description. That's the code you use in the HTML of your brand's web pages that tells the search engine what to put there. In the old days, like the old, old, old days, search engines used that text as part of their

Starting point is 00:03:29 ranking, which led scummy marketers to load it up with keywords to game the search engine, and then they all stopped considering the meta description as a ranking factor. And that's the way it works now. Google and the others won't consider that text for ranking, but it's still an important thing to work on since humans will read that text to decide if the page is worth visiting. But is that changing? Google search engineer Martin Split yesterday tweeted something that is quite the talk of the town today among SEO practitioners. He said, quote, the meta description and the title are making up the first impression of what someone sees He said, quote, Someone saw that and asked for clarification, and he replied, saying, quote,

Starting point is 00:04:18 As I said, it helps Google Search better understand what you care about in terms of content for the site, unquote. So wait a minute. Google now takes meta descriptions into account when it considers how high up your site ranks. Not so fast, says Google analyst John Mueller, who quickly jumped into the tweet thread to say, no, meta descriptions are not really ranking factors. But as searchenginejournal.com noted, quote, it's interesting that Mueller did not comment on meta descriptions having a role of providing a high level summary of what a page is about, a role that is similar to the title element. The title element has traditionally been seen as a ranking factor, leaving aside whether that's true today or not, the other role of a

Starting point is 00:05:05 title element is to provide a description of what the web page is about. What Martin Splitt seems to be saying is that the meta description element plays a similar role to the title tag as far as summarizing what a page is about. That's different from what the search marketing community understands So, has something changed? Is it now considering the meta description for ranking? If it has changed, don't look for confirmation from Google, but maybe give a little extra thought to that metadata next time you're putting your brand's webpages together. Still ahead, Facebook upgrades its ads reporting by downgrading its ads reporting.

Starting point is 00:05:49 The affiliate marketing industry just got some really bad news and influencers held their own during the pandemic. That's in a minute when Today in Digital Marketing continues. You may have heard me mention every Friday that we work with podcorn for our ads and wondered how does that work it's actually quite a nifty system if you've got a podcast you browse a list of brands that are looking for a home for their ad then when you've found one you think fits your show you send them a quick note they just have to click approve that's it now you've got a paid sponsor as the podcast producer, you control everything from your ad rates to who you work with. You don't have to sign any exclusivity deals

Starting point is 00:06:31 and never give up any rights to your podcast. And if mid-roll ads aren't your jam, there are other formats available like sponsored review segments, topical discussions, and more. And on the brand side, it couldn't be easier to get your message out. You just add a profile of what kind of show would be a good fit and sit back while podcast producers pitch ways to help you promote what you do. You approve the script, the final audio file, and Podcorn takes care of the money stuff. Whether you're a podcaster or a brand marketer, I can't recommend Podcorn highly enough. Click the link in the show notes to sign up free and start browsing sponsorship opportunities. That's Podcorn.com. Oh, Facebook, you create a really good consumer targeting database, and then you make it harder and harder for brands and agencies to advertise to them. What now? Facebook says coming this October,

Starting point is 00:07:22 it will cap how far back you can pull reports and numbers from your past ad campaigns. The new limit? Three years. Well, 37 months to be precise. After 37 months, your ad campaign data will simply disappear out of Facebook Ads Manager. Why? Who the hell knows? They say it will, quote, improve the comparability of ads performance data, unquote. Which, of course, is like just absolute bullshit. Like, how does removing data improve your ability to compare that data?

Starting point is 00:07:57 Also, Facebook says starting next month, they will be removing your ability to view your campaigns, ad sets, and ads in nested groups. Something that not everyone had. Instead, ad sets, and ads in nested groups, something that not everyone had. Instead, they will all be buried in tabs. Oh, and they are also going to be taking away some of the options in the left nav bar because something, something efficiency, maybe? Who the hell knows? Are there any humans left running Facebook? Or is it just all AI now? Which brings us to the lightning round. If you program with Google Search Console's API, there are some things you should know about. Some of the changes mean you might need to change your API key restrictions, among other things.

Starting point is 00:08:42 Again, this is only if you're programming code using the API, not if you're just a general Search Console user. While you're with me, programming nerds, there is a new CSS property launching in Chromium 85, the Content Visibility property. This will let you define how content loads on the page and could help speed up your site, which translates directly to higher ranking in the search engines.

Starting point is 00:09:04 Bad news for people who make their living doing affiliate marketing. Today, Walmart changed their contract with all their affiliates, slashing the commission rate from 4% to just 1%. The categories affected include furniture, bed and bath, kitchen appliances, vacuums, home decor, arts and crafts, and more. Amazon slashed their commission rates recently, too. Facebook has fixed a glitch that yesterday affected all third-party social media tools. For a few hours yesterday, those tools couldn't pull any Facebook messages or reviews.

Starting point is 00:09:37 And a Forrester study says the number of social influencer campaigns fell by only 3% during the early days of the pandemic. Yes, it was a decline, but it was much smaller than I think anyone expected. Their numbers returned to near-normal levels by April and May. That study also found that most brands expected their influencer campaigns will increase in the future. A handful said they would stay at the levels they're currently at. Nobody polled said they expected their influencer marketing spending to go down. I'm not sure how I'm going to spend this weekend. I haven't played Xbox for two days in a row now,

Starting point is 00:10:12 and it's not really calling me to play this weekend either. I mean, maybe I'll spend some time yelling at my team in Overwatch. I hear there's a whole world outside of our houses, trees and grass and that kind of thing. So I might check that out too. Special thanks to Podcorn.com for sponsoring today's episode. And thanks to Jonathan Steffens, who is the e-commerce manager of the American Outdoor Brands Corporation. Jonathan tweeted about this podcast today. Would you like a free shout out as well? I will plug you and your brand for free, just like I did with Jonathan here. All you need to do is tweet, and I've written the tweet for you. Go to this episode's notes, look for the heading Spread the Word, and then click the link beside Tweet It. You will get to see a preview before it goes out, and of course, you can edit it prior.

Starting point is 00:10:56 As always, full transcripts to each episode are at todayindigital.com. And follow me on social media. All my links are in the notes. Our theme is by Mark Blevis, music licensing by Source Audio, ad management by Podcorn. And this podcast is produced by our agency, EngageQ Digital. Find us at engageq.com. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful and safe weekend, friends. And I will talk to you on Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - Aug 7 — Why Does Facebook Hate Its Advertisers? (Ep 210)

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