Today in Digital Marketing - Everything In Moderation

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Meta's plans to merge two of its most important teams will probably affect your ad campaigns. Microsoft starts selling its most visual web space. Zuckerberg's latest copy target appears to be Discord. A signal resiliency guide for campaigns in today's privacy-focused world. And the forecast for the holiday season is lukewarm. It's Tuesday, September 13th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So think Meta has a problem with ad moderation now? New leaked internal documents suggest it might get worse before it gets better. According to

Starting point is 00:00:39 documents obtained by Axios, Meta plans to merge the content moderation teams it uses for ads with the team it uses for organic user posts. Sources say Meta is hoping the merger of the two departments will drive efficiencies at a time when Meta is looking to cut costs. The company will also combine customer support teams. The affected teams will be merged into one single unit, and they're all going to report to the company's chief security officer. Sources say no positions will be formally eliminated, but positions of those who resign after the reorganization are unlikely to be filled. The newly combined team will include about 3,000 employees. He met a spokesperson confirmed Axios' reporting. These moderation

Starting point is 00:01:26 teams were built separately years ago when there wasn't much of an overlap between them. Axios noted that since so many users have become creators or run small businesses through Meta's platforms, there is less of a divide between the two groups. Quoting their coverage today, bringing together the two teams will mean that eventually Meta will use the same tools, practices, and systems to moderate all the content on its platform, whether ads or organic posts from everyday users. It also means that Meta will be held to the same standards for content moderation across both types of content.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Unquote. What could possibly go wrong? A new ad format has been announced today by Microsoft that the company says disrupts the web search experience for consumers, but in a good way. Microsoft currently shows a collage of image and video content at the top of the results page for some organic results. On the right, the search result is expanded and opens into a larger window so the consumer does not have to click off the page. The new multimedia ad formats are inspired by these and will appear in Bing Search, Windows 11, Microsoft Start, and some more places. Microsoft says this responsive ad format uses machine learning to combine images, headlines and descriptions to create the high impact visual ads.

Starting point is 00:02:51 The company also stated that there will only be one multimedia ad per page to ensure that your brand stands out and gets noticed, which could also mean it's going to be popular and that popularity might make it a pricey ad placement. Yeah, I'm not even sure what to make of this. On his personal profile today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will begin testing Messenger community chats with Facebook chats to follow shortly. These aren't Facebook groups. They're not Messenger group chats. They're not watch parties. They're not that live audio thing announced earlier. In fact, it's a little hard to understand what the purpose of these are.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Anyway, here's the official description of how Meta describes them. Community chats let users connect with communities and organizes those chats into categories so members of a group can locate topics of interest on both Facebook and Messenger through text, audio, and video. So I guess maybe like Discord? Admins will be able to start a conversation about a topic and receive real-time responses instead of waiting for people to see posts and comment on them. So I guess sort of a hybrid maybe? Options being tested that could prove useful to your brand, or at least MetaClaims. Event chats for planning an outing or a meetup. View-only broadcasts that let admins announce a group-wide update which could be used to market, I don't know, upcoming sales or member exclusives.

Starting point is 00:04:27 Admin-only chats for admins and moderators. Audio channels can also be created by admins for group members to share live commentary or receive real-time support. This, by the way, is very Discord-like. Admins, of course, will also have access to tools to manage the chat and audio experiences with moderation capabilities like blocking, muting, suspending group members, removing members or messages, and so on. And finally, brands and businesses will be able to use an admin assist tool, which will automatically suspend users, remove reported messages, and stop messages from ineligible authors or containing violent content from being sent. And no, I don't know what problem this solves. I'm not sure who would use it, who wouldn't already use one of Meta's existing multitude of group communications tools. But hey, whatever. There it is, in case you care. By the way, the top comment on Zuckerberg's post today read, Awesome! A new platform for people to argue with each other.

Starting point is 00:05:31 It is a little fun to poke at Meta. They're the big player. They've always been a little scattered in their approach. But to be fair, it's not always been their fault. Take the industry's recent shift to privacy-first ad tech, like Apple's removal of a whole whack of signals that we marketers and Meta's AI relied on. Well, to that end, Meta has published a new guide that looks at ways brands can mitigate data loss caused by those privacy changes. The Signal Resiliency Report gives advertisers a basic guide on how to deal with tracking restrictions. First, the guide outlines how signal loss affects the flow of digital ad targeting. It also looks at an overview of the elements that could be impacted in the future, pushing you to find alternative tracking options as various factors will complicate data tracking

Starting point is 00:06:14 processes and, of course, in turn, restrict your ability to reach the right audiences. You'll also find steps that can be taken to mitigate data loss and the effects that it'll have on your campaigns in the guide as well. According to Meta, the four strategies necessary to combat signal loss are having the right workflow in place, having a steering committee, hiring in-house, and wait for it, identifying synergies. Fair words. Social media today notes that some of these are, of course, not an option for all brands. Quoting their coverage, you may not need a steering committee as such, but the concept is that you'll need to understand the impacts from all angles in order to then come up with alternative need to have a defined strategy in place to combat potential data loss, or at least to understand where you're losing out and how you can best manage your own data collection processes, unquote. And look, every app and network is developing systems to counter it all, and Meta's guide is worth the read if you want to help improve your ad targeting in this strange new world. A link to the full report is in today's premium newsletter,

Starting point is 00:07:29 or you can search for 2022 Meta Signal Resiliency Guide. And that brings us to the lightning round. Holiday sales will only grow between 4% and 6% this season as a result of the economic downturn that compares to an increase of 15% last year. This according to Deloitte's annual retail forecast. Fraudulent online phone and mail order purchases will exceed $10 billion by 2024, according to Insider Intelligence, with total losses climbing over 8% this year. Snapchat wants your brand to invest in augmented reality. A new report from the company says that by 2025, three out of five people in the U.S. will be frequent AR users. Furthermore, the company claims its data shows 85% of consumers are interested in using AR to interact with the

Starting point is 00:08:15 product before purchasing. And that was a terrible ding. Hang on. No. What's wrong with my dinger? That's better. Google has announced new small and medium-sized business support initiatives in Europe, such as free online training and a contest to win dedicated assistance from the company. Kind of weird that we're hearing that at a contest. Oh, well. The tech giant is also offering new support programs for select businesses, which include three months of Google Workspace for free, two months of Shopify for free,

Starting point is 00:08:42 and 40% off a Google domain. So regular listeners will know that we used to do the lightning round quite a bit. I think I'm bringing it back, but I'd love to know what you think. I'm also testing a new really easy way to vote one way or the other. It's just in the show notes. It's just a link. So do you like the lightning round? That's those little punchy segment at the end that you just heard. Just go to the show notes right now. You don't have to open anything up. It's right in your podcast app. Go to the show notes, look for the text that says vote here, and you can click yes or no to whether or not you like the lightning rounds. If you're new here, we put this short newscast out every

Starting point is 00:09:21 day. It's usually under 10 minutes. It's not usually as short as today, but today was just a, for whatever reason, a really slow news day. So be sure to follow us in your podcast app if you want to stay ahead of the curve. And if you have news you think our listeners

Starting point is 00:09:34 should know about, something your company's launched or whatever, let us know on our tips page. That's todayindigital.com slash tips. Or look for Pitch Us a Story in the show notes. I'm Todd Maffital.com slash tips. Or look for Pitch Us a Story in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:09:46 I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow. The poison in your blood The toxic emotion you call love I keep your heart still I can't challenge all your will I am the bullet in the chamber of a random man I can't challenge all your will.

Today in Digital Marketing - Everything In Moderation

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