Today in Digital Marketing - Creative... at the Speed of Ryan Reynolds

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

How will 'fastvertising' change the agency business... Facebook's user numbers are troubling... Is the end of consent banners coming?... Instagram doubles down on Reels... Twitter discovers blogging... and more.Go Premium! No ads, more stories, and extended deep-dive weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia(TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, how will fast advertising change the ad business? Facebook's user numbers are troubling. Is the end of consent banners coming? Instagram doubles down on reels. Twitter discovers blogging. And what makes the perfect Instagram image? Science has the answer. It's Thursday, February 3rd. I'm Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Well, Meta certainly continues to rake in big bucks per the release of its Q4 2021 and full year performance results. However, its report

suggests that Facebook could face a tough couple of years ahead. From Q3 to Q4, the social network gained just 2 million monthly active users, and that was the slowest growth in its history. But the bigger concern is Facebook's decline in daily actives, where it lost a million daily active users. Some gains were seen in the Asia-Pacific and Europe region, but overall, a million people decided that they didn't need to check Facebook every day. Analysts were especially surprised, considering that the decline occurred during the holidays, when people are usually online more. There has been a decline in Facebook usage in North America for some time, which most credit to market saturation.

Almost everyone who will use Facebook is already on it, so there aren't many new people to add. But now Facebook's growth is being threatened in other markets, which could be a big problem for the company. So because of this, Metis decided to focus on a different metric, something they call Family Monthly Active People, which combines the total unique users across its four platforms, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. When you measure on that statistic, they gained

a million new users. Of course, there's no breakdown of individual app usage stats, but the growth of Instagram and WhatsApp likely contributed to that much nicer number. As for revenue, Meta brought in $33 billion in revenue for the quarter and generated $117 billion for the whole year, the majority of which comes from ad revenue. And also, the company has provided full revenue split data between its apps and Reality Labs. Those are its augmented reality and virtual reality projects. It's done this for the first time. time, its family of apps revenue brought in $32 billion in Q4, and VR sales increased still under $1,877,000,000, which is only a small fraction of the company's revenue. But as Meta expands into the metaverse, you can expect the company to focus even more

on it as sales continue to rise. Back in 2018, the European Union created the GDPR, a blanket regulation covering privacy and data protection. You might not remember it the month it went into effect, but I guarantee you remember the fallout from it. Those stupid little cookie consent banners at the top of practically every website you go to now. They're really only there for European users, and arguably a small handful of American states, but most websites don't bother to geofence them. It's just simpler to dump the banners on everyone. Those banners were part of a framework created by the IAB Europe as a way of complying with the law. They called it the Transparency and Consent Framework, or

TCF. But this week, European regulators ruled that the TCF is actually a violation of the GDPR. So much so, in fact, that a Belgium regulator fined IAB Europe more than 250,000 euros. That Belgium decision was immediately approved by regulators in most of the other European nations. Plus, and here's where it gets a little meta, regulators say the data that those TCF banners collect about the session becomes a targetable placement for the digital ad industry's real-time bidding system. Part of this ruling includes the requirement for any data collected for that auction system to now be deleted. Quoting Digiday, The ramifications of this ruling are monumental. Take retargeting, for example.

Large swaths of it could be illegal if ads run on site where TCF is employed. The level of precise engineering and quality assurance needed to fix issues like this would be unprecedented, not least because data gained from TCF is ubiquitous, to the point where it's woven into the very fabric of the online ad market. Any revamp of TCF means industry-wide overhauls to the way advertising works across the European Union corner of the web. The truth is, no one really knows what this means right now. It's not even clear if the regulators will a plan to rework the entire thing, and six months to implement it. They say they're also considering a legal challenge, by the way.

But the regulators say after that six-month deadline, every day that passes without a consent framework replacement will cost the IAB 5,000 euros. Watch this space. Yesterday, Canadian comedian Dave Foley, you might know him from Kids in the Hall or News Radio, tweeted this to actor Ryan Reynolds. If I switch to Mint Mobile, can I be in one of your ads? I really enjoy them. Now, besides being a fellow Canadian, Reynolds owns the cellular company. He also owns an ad agency called Maximum Effort. The firm's Twitter bio reads, We make movies, TV series, content, and cocktails for the personal amusement of Ryan Reynolds.

We occasionally release them to the general public. As I said, Dave Foley tweeted that yesterday afternoon. Six hours later, Foley was in front of a camera recording the spot. And today it was released not even 24 hours after his original tweet. Hi, I'm part-time comedian and full-time Canadian Dave Foley. And, you know, earlier today I tweeted at Ryan Reynolds, you know, asking if I switched to Mint, if I could be in one of his Mint Mobile commercials. I've only been a customer for a few hours, but I got to say that the service is amazing. And the one call I made was, oh, it was clear.

This super fast delivery is a bit of a stunt that Reynolds Agency has been known for. Its most infamous was an overnight ad for Peloton featuring Chris Knopf after his character in the Sex and the City series reboot was killed off. That ad was pulled just as fast after allegations of sexual assault arose against him. Incidentally, Adweek today has an interview with the president of Maximum Effort in which he defends the superfast turnarounds against industry criticism that it's pushing rushed creative. A link to that piece is in today's premium newsletter. Instagram is testing a new feature that will allow users to convert a Stories highlight into a TikTok. Did I say TikTok? I meant a Reel, because of course they're completely different. The feature will make it easier to create Reels content from existing content. Here's how it'll work. Open up your highlight and tap on the Reel icon.

This will lead to a Super Sync tab, which will allow you to sync the highlight to music, similar to TikTok's Sound Sync feature. The social media platform is also experimenting with longer Reels clips lasting up to 90 seconds. You know, just how TikTok did three minutes. Yeah. 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. Twitter seems to have discovered blogging. The platform is testing a new articles option which

could potentially allow for longer posts. Of course, one of the most frustrating features of the app is the 280 character limit. That's led to some tweets which are just screenshots of longer messages typed into a phone's notes app and then tweeted, or a link to a site, like TwitLonger. The articles feature in testing appears to allow users to create more long-form content in the form of a blog post, which could then be shared through a tweet. As the company has not confirmed the feature, it's a little unclear how it'll actually work. But if it is rolled out, there is the potential for brands to be able to publish articles, blogs, and more on the platform.

Google is giving advertisers more control over their connected TV campaigns. This morning, the company announced that it is launching new management solutions in Display and Video 360 that lets marketers control the number of times their ads appear across YouTube and other CTV apps. As a result, Google says you'll be able to get a broader exposure at a lower cost while avoiding the, quote, brand backlash of overexposure, unquote. Quoting the announcement, let's say you set a frequency goal of five ads per week for your CTV campaign. Instead of showing up to five CTV ads on YouTube and five ads on other CTV apps, Display and Video 360 will now aim to show your ad no more than five times total, unquote. The

update uses Google data on YouTube and the IAB standard identifier for advertising to determine the number of times a CTV ad has been shown. The tweet was jarring. It read, quote, Why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention? I'll tell you why. They're isolated from real communities, working service jobs

they hate while barely making ends meet, and are living with unchecked personal and mental health problems, unquote. It was actually a thread that went longer, and it wouldn't have been so jarring if it had come from a regular user or a politician. But no, this tweet came from a company, a food brand, Steak Um. It was one of the first times a brand's Twitter account had leaned so heavily into a social issue.

Turned out that tweet and the following campaign came from the company's agency, Alibak Communications. Today, the agency's creative director announced it is no longer with the brand. There's little information about why the brand is parting ways. Online, both parties had nothing but nice things to say about the partnership. Their work repositioned the brand to start commenting on topics ranging from mental health to fake news to student loan debt. The new Google Partner Program details have been announced by the company.

It says over the past two years, it's evolved the program based on industry changes and partner feedback. As a result, it has aligned its benefits to meet needs in three key areas, education and insights, access and support, and recognition and rewards. In addition, the company has introduced a new premier partner status for its top 3% of partners, which offer high-value benefits to them, including beta access to the latest products, access to 24-hour advanced ad support, a new 2022 Premier Partner badge, and some other incentives. The company adds that Google Partners and Premier Partners will now be able to access Think with Google's monthly insights briefing, and later this month will be listed in the brand new Google Partners directory.

The Canadian Marketing Association is developing a diversity mentorship program for marketers, and it is seeking volunteers to serve as mentors to junior and mid-level marketers from BIPOC and newcomer communities. CMA Marketing Mentors is an eight-month program expected to launch in the spring. Mentors will meet monthly with mentees to discuss things like psychological safety, navigating career paths, branding, and leadership skills. If you are interested in mentoring, you can email mentorship at thecma.ca. Another warm welcome to those of you joining us from the Tech Meme Ride Home.

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