Today in Digital Marketing - Did We Say Refunds? We Meant “Ad Credits.”

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Facebook's out-of-control account-banning bots are starting to be noticed by big media. You may be owed some credit back on your latest ad campaign, but you're not going to like how little it is. And want to rank your brand's site higher in Google? Why not just program a bot? It's Friday, November 27th, 2020. We're here, folks. Happy Black Friday. May all your email campaigns get high open rates. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Still a slow week owing to American Thanksgiving yesterday, but there are three items of note. First, Bloomberg has now done a large

Starting point is 00:00:35 feature story on Facebook's constant accidental banning of ad accounts. It profiles a woman who sells honey products in tourist stores. Facebook shut her account down weeks ago for, you know how this story ends, violating its policies. Again, she sells honey in tourist stores. So, of course, there's no policy violation. The story's hook was Black Friday because that's obviously a huge day in any B2C retail calendar. Plus, for this particular woman, COVID-19 has all but stopped tourism, so she's especially reliant on Facebook ads to drive sales. Remember, if this happens to you,

Starting point is 00:01:13 and even if you do get your account back, you'll still be down. Quoting the Bloomberg piece, even if an ad account gets restored, businesses lose crucial momentum. Facebook's ad algorithm takes a couple of weeks to figure out which users may be interested in an ad to refine the targeting. An agency executive said when her clients get hit, the hardest part is telling them their

Starting point is 00:01:35 campaigns will have to start over and their money won't go as far, unquote. This executive told Bloomberg a whole bunch of their clients were shut down, but let's be fair to Facebook. They were obviously dangerous brands like a pizza vending machine company, a reusable water bottle company, a coffee delivery service, a business coach, and a hair weave company. Facebook did respond to the piece with, you know, the usual PR nonsense. We know it's frustrating. We're always trying to improve, blah, blah, blah. It's a lot of talk and almost never any action. These problems have been going on for well over a year with no sign of stopping. In fact, in its third quarter report, Facebook admitted, quote, Due to a temporary reduction in our review capacity as a result of COVID-19, we could not always offer our users the option to appeal, unquote.

Starting point is 00:02:23 The examples would be funny if they weren't so devastating to small businesses. A business selling bracelets to benefit refugees was blocked for political advertising. A seed company that posted a photo of onions was blocked because their image was overtly sexual. One company that sells solar panels for roofs was banned because the acronyms they use in their business were similar to those used in the cryptocurrency space. After they got through that, they got banned again because phrases like, see if your roof qualifies, made the Facebook bots think they sold financial products. It's ridiculous. And it still seems like the only way to get any actual help is either to spend so much money that you get a Facebook rep.

Starting point is 00:03:04 And even then, a lot of the times the reps aren't really helpful at all or if you happen to know somebody who works there and reach out to them on a back channel. That's what the lady who sold honey products did. She tweeted at someone who works there, actually the Facebook's director of ad products, and within a few hours her account was back. They said they just turned it off in error she said. They didn't give me any feedback. They just reset the whole thing as if it never happened. Still with Facebook for a moment here, the company saying today it will distribute millions of dollars in refunds to advertisers after discovering a reporting glitch. And by refunds, I mean ad credits.

Starting point is 00:03:46 The glitch was with their conversion lift tool. Apparently, it got a little drunk on the gin and started overestimating campaign results for a whole year. When you have bad numbers, of course, you make bad decisions. Quoting the Wall Street Journal, it isn't the first problem Facebook has discovered in its systems to measure advertisers' campaigns, and it is not likely to dent Facebook's ad revenue. But some ad buyers said the latest gaffe has hurt confidence in the company's metrics at a time when many businesses

Starting point is 00:04:15 are navigating the pandemic by trying to cut costs and make sure their ad spending performs. The issue is particularly acute for certain categories, such as retail, where marketers are spending as much as 5-10% more on Facebook and other performance-centric advertising channels to recover business loss during the early stages of the pandemic, said the chief executive of one digital agency that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising on Facebook every year. So do you qualify for the ad credits? Maybe. Facebook says it'll be offered to some advertisers that used the tool from August of 2019 through to this past August. And how much will you get back?

Starting point is 00:04:56 If what one large agency got back was any guide, you can expect about half of 1% of the spend on that tool during that time window. Interesting post on Reddit the other day, someone asked what would stop someone from building a bot that would search their company name on Google, click that link, and spend a minute or two pretending to browse around the site like a human would,

Starting point is 00:05:23 then change IP addresses, wait a few minutes and do it again. In other words, simulate engaged users for the purposes of gaining SEO juice. John Mueller from Google responded to that Reddit post saying, it makes no sense, but knock yourself out. I guess implying that their software detects that. But SEO consultant Barry Schwartz writing in seroundtable.com today said, I mean, a ton of SEOs do not believe Google on this. So as always, your mileage may vary. Still having fun live streaming. There's a camera inside the voicing booth. There's a camera in the mixing studio, otherwise known as my office.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And our Slack community, super busy, lots of smart people. This weekend, why don't you take a moment to go join it? Right now in your podcast app, just swipe over till you find the episode notes. You'll find a link to the Slack channel right there, a direct invite link, or you can go to todayindigital.com slash Slack.

Starting point is 00:06:25 And that is it for another week. Our production assistant is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. This podcast is produced by our agency, EngageQ Digital. Find us at engageq.com. Full transcripts to every episode are on our website, todayindigital.com.

Starting point is 00:06:44 I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful and safe weekend, friends. I will talk to you on Monday. Suffer hard in tragic times. Carry on with loss of lives. Save the world, save the world, save the world. From all it leaves a time of need

Starting point is 00:07:08 keep the peace your disease

Today in Digital Marketing - Did We Say Refunds? We Meant “Ad Credits.”

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