Today in Digital Marketing - "But Think of the Exposure!..."

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, June 27th. Today, TikTok gives up on its copycat while asking creators to make ads on spec. Google gets ready to roll out the Topics API, but will anyone use it? A big bug at LinkedIn may have ignored posts you'd scheduled. And on the ad-free premium podcast, which you can get by tapping Go Premium in the show notes, Andrew Foxwell on Meta's new Engaged View attribution, what its new Extreme Budget Warning is all about, and the surprising removal of domain verification. I'm Todd Mathen.

Starting point is 00:00:34 That's ahead today in digital marketing. And some housekeeping before we get started. We are still looking for a lineup producer to join our production team. It is a remote position, only one hour each weekday, and there might be an opportunity to expand that role to cover Steph's maternity leave. If you're interested to know someone who is, please go to b.link slash lineup or tap the link in the show notes. All right, on with the show.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Specwork has come to the creator economy. Spec work, that's speculative work, is any kind of creative work executed before the client agrees to buy. It's based on the idea that the client or brand will like the speculative work and choose to purchase it. It's a practice seen all too often in the ad agency world, where brands will ask several agencies to come up with the campaign, then only pay the one they select. Now, the controversial practice is making its way to influencers. TikTok today introduced a way for creators to make ads for brands, but those creators will only get paid if a brand chooses to use their content. The new feature is called Creative Challenge, and it lets brands pick from a selection of video ads created and submitted by creators.

Starting point is 00:01:45 These influencers can browse through the list of challenges, read the brief, which displays the reward pool, the details, the rules and requirements, and then they can submit their video ad. If selected, creators will earn money based on performance, like views, clicks and conversions. The program gives these influencers full creative control over their ads, but there's no guarantee of returns. Payouts depend on video performance and competition from other submissions to that specific ad campaign. To participate, creators have to be 18 years old. They have to be in the US. They have to have a minimum of 50,000 followers. Once a creator submits content to a challenge,

Starting point is 00:02:25 they'll be notified if a brand wants revisions, which they won't be paid for, but which they can accept or appeal. If a video submission is approved, it won't be displayed on the creator's profile. Instead, it will run as an ad on TikTok's For You feed. Creative Challenge is currently in testing with selected brands.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Meanwhile, TikTok is jumping off the bandwagon and killing its Be Real clone called TikTok Now. Be Real, that's the app that let users take a front and back camera photo at a random time every day. It exploded in popularity last spring. In response to the trend, several apps, including Snapchat, TikTok, and let's face it, who could have guessed, Instagram, copied the Be Real features to their platforms. TikTok heavily promoted its Now feature, which was prominently placed as one of the five buttons on the app's bottom bar, but the platform has started notifying users that it is dropping the feature. Users can still view their previous now posts, but can't create new posts. The notification doesn't give a specific reason for why it's being phased out, but TechCrunch suggests the decision may reflect

Starting point is 00:03:37 a decline in interest in be real style app experiences. The social media management platform Sprout Social today reports that from April to June 15th, posts scheduled from third party apps like Sprout going to LinkedIn may not have actually been published. Quoting Sprout, LinkedIn's API marked posts as successful, but the posts were not actually published to LinkedIn users. This affected some customers' posts. LinkedIn accidentally published these posts yesterday and today, which resulted in outdated or duplicate content appearing on some pages. We're working with our partners at LinkedIn on preventing this issue from happening again, unquote. So, might be worth checking in on your LinkedIn page

Starting point is 00:04:25 to make sure the content you want there is there and the stuff you don't is not. Niantic, the mobile developer behind games like Pokemon Go, recently introduced a new ad format called Rewarded AR Ads, which let gamers earn in-app rewards by interacting with ads in augmented reality. Using smartphone cameras, advertisers can now engage players with branded content in the real world through Niantic's games. Convenience retailer Circle K piloted Niantic's

Starting point is 00:04:58 rewarded AR ads in Pokemon Go. During that pilot, players could tap an in-game balloon and place a branded coffee cup in front of them in augmented reality. Players were then encouraged to visit a nearby Circle K store in the flesh to get a physical cup of coffee. According to Niantic, the campaign resulted in an average engagement rate of 75% and a completion rate of 95% for the experience. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:49 Be protected. Be Zen. Google is making an effort to safeguard its upcoming advertising API, asking websites nicely, please don't break it. Google is preparing to launch its Topics API next month. That's its product designed to replace third-party cookies, which lets advertisers target users with personalized ads based on their interests while still maintaining some level of privacy. To address potential privacy concerns,

Starting point is 00:06:15 Google is asking advertisers to promise not to exploit the ad targeting system. This comes after a discussion was opened on GitHub last year describing a potential fingerprinting attack on the Topics API that could be used to identify people online. On a developer forum, a Google employee weighed in, quote, since this discussion, we've added a requirement on Chrome that developers enroll to use the API and to attest that they won't abuse the API. That's not a technical solution, but I do believe it goes a long way

Starting point is 00:06:47 to addressing this problem, unquote. Although Google's pushing forward with its API, some browser developers remain wary. Both Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, and Apple, the maker of Safari, have expressed their opposition to the topic's proposal and said they would not use Google's new API. The next battleground for social media apps could be coming very soon.

Starting point is 00:07:15 The Verge reporting that Meta is targeting mid-July for the launch of its Twitter rival. The upcoming text-based app, known internally as Project 92 and potentially called Threads, will be heavily promoted on Instagram, giving it a massive source of distribution from day one. The app will eventually hook into Mastodon and ActivityPub, according to the report, but not at first. The report also notes that Meta aims to reach tens of millions of users within the first few months of launch. As Social Media Today points out, this could threaten Twitter if Instagram, which reportedly has more than 1.3 billion active users, can push just 100 million of its users to this new app that could give it critical growth momentum and could challenge Twitter's dominance in real-time news discussions.

Starting point is 00:08:11 And finally, YouTube is changing its data analytics display following user feedback that the upfront comparison in the Studio app wasn't helpful. The data element provides insights into comparative video performance like views, impressions, click-through rate, average view duration, and so on. Some users found this information helpful for tracking progress, but others reported finding it discouraging when their latest videos didn't resonate as expected. So now you can collapse that field if desired. Once collapsed, the info card will remain hidden for subsequent logins, even if switching to a different channel.

Starting point is 00:08:42 The new analytics recaps will offer a more generic view of key stats, like how many people tuned into your channel, what people watched, and how people found you. I've been trying to watch my calories lately. I have one of those apps, Lose It, which actually is a really good app. It tracks calories. You can point it at food you've eaten, and it tries to figure out through AI what that food is and

Starting point is 00:09:08 apply calories to it. And I've been walking about three and a half kilometers every day. But now I'm taking the next step. I'm going to be getting rid of coffee. Well, it's not the coffee is not the problem. The problem is the cream that I put in is like the Starbucks super sugary. It's really good. It's the only one that doesn't taste absolutely disgusting. I have tried the sugar-free, low-calorie creamers, and they're just awful. They just taste like chemical.

Starting point is 00:09:36 So tomorrow, I'm going to be trying sugar-free, low-calorie energy drinks. I predict failure because I'm just so conditioned for coffee. But anyway, if I sound a little low tomorrow, that might be why. I'm Todd Mappin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Hopefully. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - "But Think of the Exposure!..."

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