Today in Digital Marketing - Bizarre Love Triangle

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, October 7th. Today, in the uncomfortable threesome of Google brand websites and AI, is relationship harmony possible? Maybe so. Also, Microsoft shuts down part of its ads offering, why TikTok growth is slowing, and the pre-roll ad designed to save you money and drive you crazy. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:00:26 That's ahead today in digital marketing. TikTok is getting older and with age comes slower growth. Big brand accounts are seeing their follower growth rates slow down. This is, of course, happens when platforms mature. The days of huge follower gains end up behind them. And new data from Dash Hudson shows three key trends in brand TikTok account growth. First, smaller accounts are growing faster than the big ones. Accounts with under about 11,000 followers grew nearly 6% in the second quarter. This is compared to less than 3% for large accounts. Second, growth rates overall have

Starting point is 00:01:06 been falling for the past few quarters. In the second quarter of this year, average monthly follower growth for all brand accounts was 3.7%. That's down from 4.4% in the previous quarter and 5.3% in the one previous to that. And third, some accounts still see high growth rates though. Wellness accounts and home brands grew more than 5%, likely due to the popularity of these topics among young people who use TikTok. One of the things website managers worried about when Google started putting AI summaries at the top of search results pages is it would reduce the traffic. People would get the answer they were looking for and just leave. Turns out, at least with news and entertainment websites, sometimes the opposite is true. Adweek reports that Google's AI overview is actually increasing publisher traffic for some

Starting point is 00:02:03 sites thanks to a new feature that adds direct links within the text. The new version of the summary embeds links within the text of the AI overview. For example, a search for the tallest tree in the world now includes a link to the Guinness Book of World Records. Previously, the link was in a footnote. This is now available in all seven countries where AI overviews are available. This is now available in all seven countries where AI overviews are

Starting point is 00:02:25 available. This is, of course, welcome news for brands who are forecasting a significant drop. Some, though, still think a decline in traffic is coming. Quoting Adweek, quote, Raptive, which runs ad sales for titles like Half-Baked Harvest, Mac Rumors, and Stereogum, anticipates at least a 50% reduction in search traffic for publishers by 2025. For example, a publisher earning $75,000 annually could see a $37,500 drop in income due to traffic loss, according to Michael Sanchez, co-founder and CEO. However, for some, the impact has been less severe than expected. During a recent earnings call, Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, noted that when analyzing thousands of queries across its key domains that generate organic search referrals,

Starting point is 00:03:14 AI overviews appeared in only 8% of the search queries, with 92% of search results pages remaining unaffected. We hypothesize, Shaw said during the call, and Google has confirmed that links within AI overviews see higher click-through rates compared to traditional web listing links, unquote. Microsoft is shutting down PromoteIQ, a retail ad platform it acquired in 2019. The company is pushing clients to use Croteo instead. Multiple sources say Microsoft began letting retail media publishers know about the change over the summer. The decision to shut down PromoteIQ was likely due to the low margins of the ad server business. Microsoft was trying to make the business more profitable, but it was probably taking too long. The company also lost some big clients, including Kroger, which brought its

Starting point is 00:04:09 retail media ad tech in-house. So instead, Microsoft is now partnering with Criteo to bring its advertiser demand to that company's network of publishers. The deal is expected to generate big revenues by next year. Criteo will also provide its monetization technology to Microsoft's retailer clients. This is par for the course these days, given how fast retail media is moving. Still, the shutdown of PromoteIQ might be a wake-up call for the sector, highlighting the importance of building resilient, owned architectures to prevent the risk of being deplatformed. A nasty bug on YouTube last week removed thousands of accounts that were wrongly marked as sharing

Starting point is 00:04:54 spam and deceptive content. The issue started Thursday afternoon and affected all sorts of accounts, even those from people who never post content but only use it to browse videos. YouTube says the bug was fixed on Friday afternoon, though it took the weekend to shake things out. And not everything is back in order. It said all channels that were incorrectly removed have now been fully reinstated, but not all videos that were mistakenly removed have been reinstated yet. The bug caused a bit of chaos among users who flooded social media

Starting point is 00:05:24 to complain about lost access to content and deleted videos. Some users also reported that their community posts were removed. YouTube is still working on reinstating those last few videos that were removed. It is unclear if paid subscribers will be reimbursed for lost access to content. YouTube did not respond to a media request for comment. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Meta says it knows threads is full of low-effort engagement bait. These are posts, usually basic questions, crafted to elicit responses and boost visibility. Instagram's head says they're working on a fix. Google has discontinued support for the no archive meta tag, which used to allow websites to prevent their pages from being cached by search engines.

Starting point is 00:06:11 Google removed its cache entirely a couple of weeks ago. It's not clear how this will affect the caching on other search engines. Google is experimenting with verified check marks in its search results. It says this will help users distinguish between official websites and third-party pages, leaving many of us to wonder, why did it take this long? And Meta's had a click-to-WhatsApp

Starting point is 00:06:34 campaign objective for some time. Now, its arch-rival Google even acknowledges WhatsApp's growth. It's adding an ad extension button that will let users send messages directly to businesses via Meta's WhatsApp. And finally, you know that old Meow Mix jingle? It's cute for a few seconds, but could you listen to it for 12 straight hours?

Starting point is 00:07:03 That's what Meow Mix is hoping people will do in exchange for free cat food. The brand has created a 12-hour YouTube video that features the jingle on repeat. To win the free cat food, viewers have to listen to the entire 12-hour ad with the sound on. Why sound on? Because there are 19 unique coupon codes revealed during the video, and those codes are only spoken acoustically. And perhaps the best part of this campaign? The video is actually a pre-roll ad. It's not even something people can find directly with ease. It'll just show up in their feed and, well, you either play their little game or maybe never get the chance again. It is a remastered version of the classic 80s jingle, which has been re-recorded with real voice talent.

Starting point is 00:07:57 Meow Mix is following in the footsteps of brands like McDonald's and Ikea, which have tested the boundaries of pre-roll advertising. The campaign is also drawing on its own history of brand experimentation with long form ads. That is it for today. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Bizarre Love Triangle

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