Today in Digital Marketing - Elon Musk Thinks He Invented Ad Targeting Now
Episode Date: October 27, 2022It's D-Day at Twitter, and Elon Musk has a special message for digital marketers. Also: The disappointing numbers we expected from Meta are here. Amazon forges ahead with video ads. Reddit is buil...ding a marketing API. And Snapchat builds in some very TikTok-like tools. ✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨ ✓ Ad-free episodes ✓ Story links in show notes ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions ✓ Better audio quality ✓ Live event replays ✓ Audio chapters ✓ Earlier release time ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts ✓ and more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed 📰 The TiDM Newsletter: Get It (daily or weekly)✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review 🎤 Follow: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page/Group👨🏻💼 Follow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok ------------------------------------🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses 👍 TOOLS WE RECOMMEND• Social media mgmt: Sprout Social and Agorapulse• Marketing tools: Appsumo• Podcast recording: Riverside.FM💡 MARKETING SPOTLIGHTIf you like Today in Digital Marketing, you’ll LOVE Stacked Marketer: the free daily newsletter that gives marketers an edge on the competition in just 7 minutes a day.Covering breaking news, tips and tricks, and insights for all major marketing channels like Google, Facebook, TikTok, native ads, SEO and more.Join 32k+ marketers who read it daily. Sign up free now! ------------------------------------ Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source AudioSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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It's Thursday, October 27th.
Today, it is D-Day at Twitter, and Elon Musk has a special message for digital marketers.
Also, the disappointing numbers we expected from Meta are here.
Amazon forges ahead with video ads.
Reddit is building a marketing API.
And Snapchat builds in some very TikTok-like tools.
I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.
Elon Musk has a message for those of you that advertise on Twitter.
Please don't go. He attempted to reassure marketers that the platform will stay a safe
place for brands in a tweet posted early this morning and addressed specifically to Twitter's
advertisers. He said he was buying the company to create a platform, quote,
where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, unquote,
and to stem polarization between the left and right.
He also claimed he's buying it to, quote, help humanity, unquote.
He also said, quote, I very much believe that advertising, when done right,
can delight, entertain, and inform you.
It can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed but is right for you.
For this to be true,
it is essential to show Twitter users advertising
that is as relevant as possible to their needs.
Low relevancy ads are spam,
but highly relevant ads are actually content.
It's sort of a strange thing to say,
like the most basic marketing 101 strategy.
Does he suddenly think we digital marketers will come to our senses and think,
oh my God, he's right.
I've been doing this wrong all along.
I need to make my ads relevant to my audience.
What Musk seems to have missed is that the path of the digital ad ecosystem
has been moving toward less targeting, thanks to the cookiepocalypse and Apple
and European laws,
and heavy marketing of consumer VPNs, and just about everything else. I don't know, maybe he's
got some secret targeting tech he hasn't shared with any of us. Or, more likely, he doesn't know
what he's talking about. It was only a couple of years ago when he tweeted, I hate advertising.
Advertising is, of course, critical to Twitter's business, and his note suggests he wants to prevent advertisers from fleeing the platform after his acquisition.
The purchase is expected to close tomorrow.
Wometa announced its third quarter earnings results yesterday,
with revenue declining for the second time in a row.
The company also indicated the decline would not end anytime soon. In terms of usage, Facebook is now up to 2 billion daily
active users, up 3% actually year over year, while monthly actives were up 4%. Meta's family
of apps reflected similar usage numbers. All right, let's talk money. Meta reported that
revenue fell 4% in the third quarter.
Net income was $4.4 billion, and that is down 50% from a year earlier.
Spending soared by 20%. The company is still burning cash through the metaverse,
with Reality Labs' revenue getting slashed in half in the third quarter compared to a year ago.
Its loss widened more than a billion dollars year over year to $3.5 billion.
So far this year, the company's metaverseverse division has lost nearly nine and a half billion. Doesn't look like it's going to get better. Meta says it anticipates that operating
losses for that division will grow significantly year over year. The company is also forecasting
a third straight drop in the fourth quarter, saying it would be making, quote, significant
changes across the board to operate more efficiently.
Amazon announced some new video ad features yesterday ahead of its Q3 results, which is
set to report after the market closed today.
First, the company is bringing video to its self-service sponsored display program, which
will let advertisers create video campaigns that run both on Amazon and other platforms with a focus on opening up options for small and medium-sized businesses.
With the update, brands can create a variety of video ads like tutorials, demos, unboxings, testimonials, and so on.
And with Sponsored Display Metrics, advertisers will be able to measure campaign performance. Amazon ads is also expanding a public beta program for its video builder,
which lets brands produce videos for their sponsored brands and sponsored display campaigns with customizable templates.
Beyond video, the company said it would expand sponsored display capabilities in other ways.
Soon, select brands will be able to add a shopping credit to their ads through a rewarded sponsored display option.
The format will reward customers who click the ad and purchase the featured product.
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Be protected. Be Zen. Over to a site that I spend way too much time on, Reddit, which is building a new ads API.
And it announced its four partners for that API today.
It said its partners will integrate into the API and help build the platform's campaign optimization solution.
Those four alpha partners are VidMob, Sprinkler, AdMixed, and PMG.
They did say, though, that the ads API will benefit both enterprise clients and self-serve advertisers.
It is still in development. There's currently no release date.
Reddit said they are looking to, quote, bring more strategic developers on board in the coming months.
The TikTokification of apps continues, but this time it's not Instagram or Facebook.
Starting today, brands using Snapchat will have access to more advanced video editing tools with something they call Director Mode.
Director Mode includes a handful of video editing features, most of which are already on other platforms.
Things like green screen, dual camera, camera speed options, and quick edit, which will let you trim and splice
multiple videos together. As The Verge points out, the emphasis on the new editing tools comes as
Snap tries to make a case for Spotlight, its short-form video competitor. Meaning, you know
all the brand videos you used to create for TikTok and Reels? Well, now you can create them on Snapchat too. tools. First, the platform is adding a new spotlight element for internal candidates
in LinkedIn Recruiter. Employees will also be able to find open roles that align with their
skills through the LinkedIn Learning Hub. Now, when employees use LinkedIn Learning,
it will highlight potential internal opportunities related to their interests.
There will be a new role guides element in its learning platform, which will provide insights
into the types of skills needed for internal advancement.
The company also provided more insight into the new commitments section for company pages.
This feature lets companies highlight the specific commitments they've made in six areas.
Diversity, equity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, social impact, career growth and learning, and work-life balance.
And finally, LinkedIn recently published its latest report on global talent trends,
which examines changes in the market like hiring trends, workplace confidence,
what candidates are seeking in job listings, and so on.
A link to that report is in today's premium newsletter,
or just search for LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report.
And that'll bring us to the lightning round. Shopify reported a 22% increase in revenue to nearly $1.5 billion in its third quarter today, surpassing analysts' expectations of $1.3 billion.
For the holiday quarter, the Canadian e-commerce company expects gross merchandise volume to outperform the broader U.S. retail market.
Meta launched Advantage Plus shopping campaigns yesterday, which rely on, you guessed it, automation instead of manual targeting to find the right audience for your ads.
According to Meta, the system will create up to 150 combinations based on your existing assets and then decide which variations will perform best across all placements, putting all your trust in Meta's AI for your targeting.
A follow-up on yesterday's story about Apple's gambling ad problem, the company confirming in a statement today that it has, quote, paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on app store product pages, unquote, after several
developers criticized the types of ads showing up in the app store.
I'm not going to do a lot of talking here.
I just got back from the dentist, so it kind of hurts to talk.
Brush your teeth, kids.
Floss.
They weren't kidding when they said that.
I'm Todd Maffin.
See you tomorrow.