Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Drops Location-Tagging, Because Of Course They Did.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Instagram temporarily pulls one of its discovery features and that might spell reduced web visits for you, a big change to Google Ads campaigns, TikTok's latest reprieve comes from an unlikely source, and which digital platform had its first recorded drop in ad revenues last quarter? It's Monday, November 2nd, 2020. Happy Constitution Day, Dominican Republic. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And we start with some breaking news that will definitely affect you if your job includes

Starting point is 00:00:34 posting to Facebook or Instagram. Facebook has apparently removed location search and tagging from its API. That means that your third-party tools like, say, Sprout Social or Agora Pulse will not be able to tag locations for posts to either Facebook or Instagram. Why? Something, something security and safety, but the real reason, of course, is because Facebook continues to be completely out of touch with the needs of the brands which pay to keep it running. TikTok appears to have been saved, or at least gotten a stay of execution.

Starting point is 00:01:13 But don't thank the lawyers or the company executives. Turns out it was the influencers who pulled this off. A group of three TikTok stars, in fact, won an injunction against Trump's ordered ban that was due to take effect November 12th. A court sided with the creators who argued that they make most of their income off the won an injunction against Trump's ordered ban that was due to take effect November 12th. A court sided with the creators who argued that they make most of their income off the app and that in itself is why the app shouldn't be banned. But what was more interesting, I thought, than this ruling were the details about how much brands are paying these creators. One of them creates videos for fashion brands and other companies

Starting point is 00:01:42 and earns between $5,000 and $10,000 per video. Another one promoted the extra gum brand in a TikTok video and made $12,000 doing it. There is still a hearing scheduled for Wednesday where the Trump administration is expected to restate its case for the ban. And they could appeal this lower court decision. But let's not forget the one big event happening between now and Wednesday, an election. And that could change a whole lot of priorities. But for now, TikTok is still around. Google today reminded marketers using target spend with the maximize clicks bid strategy in Google Ads.

Starting point is 00:02:21 We'll need to switch to use daily campaign budgets starting this January. Why? Because they are taking that option away for the maximize clicks objective, not only for new campaigns, but they will convert any existing campaigns that you've got running. This is actually something they announced a year ago, and they said, quote, to help you minimize the impact of this change, the maximum cost per click bid limit may be lowered for strategies that are still using target spend. Strategies that do not have a target spend will not be impacted, unquote. They did say you should update your campaigns today by removing target spend and using budgets instead. Average daily budgets are now the only way to direct spend for MaximizeClicks campaigns.

Starting point is 00:03:10 You may have noticed that Instagram removed part of its app over the weekend, the Recent tab. That's the tab that shows up when you do a hashtag search. Companies saying they are doing it to, quote, reduce the real-time spread of potentially harmful content that could pop up around the election, unquote. So now the only tab that is tappable is top. You actually can still see the recent tab, but it's grayed out. Quoting socialmediatoday.com,

Starting point is 00:03:31 It looks like Instagram's trying to give its fact-checkers a bit of an assist. By stopping the flow of hashtags posted via recent, that will mean users will only be able to see the top listing, which is based on engagement and relevance. The posts are therefore more likely to have been vetted, at least somewhat, as opposed to being a flow of real-time updates, unquote. How does that affect you? Well, if your marketing strategy relies at least partly on the discovery aspects of Instagram, you might see lower traffic from the app. To be clear, this only affects users

Starting point is 00:04:00 in the U.S. They say it's temporary, but have not said when functionality will be restored. The major platforms posted their quarterly results last week. And while this isn't a finance podcast, it is sometimes helpful to see what's trending. Facebook gained users overall, but actually lost users in the U.S. and Canada. This is the first time that the numbers showed people leaving the platform. They tried to blame COVID for it, but in the same breath said, quote, in the fourth quarter of 2020, we expect this trend to continue and that the number of users in the U.S. and Canada will be flat or slightly down compared to the third quarter of 2020, unquote. So I guess not COVID after all.

Starting point is 00:04:42 Oh, and remember that ad boycott in July, the one meant to penalize Facebook for its lack of action around hate speech? That boycott had really no effect on the numbers. Their ad revenue was up. Over on Twitter, they posted a big increase in ad revenue after a drop last quarter. They did add more users, but that growth rate has slowed a bit. They are at 188 million daily active users now. Twitter usage was flat in the U.S., which seems a bit. They are at 188 million daily active users now. Twitter usage was flat in the U.S., which

Starting point is 00:05:07 seems a bit concerning, especially given that this past quarter may have been the single most contentious political period in American history. And Twitter's usage didn't change during that period. That's weird. As for ad revenue, a big improvement, up 14% compared to the same quarter last year. That was $936 million for the quarter. And for Google, they had a stronger Q3 than last year's, up almost 10% when you compare year over year. That's $37 billion in Q3. But, one, that's slower growth than Facebook or Amazon. And two, when measured by consecutive quarters, they actually had an 8% decline in total ad revenue.

Starting point is 00:05:48 It marks the first time ad revenues have dropped in the history of the company. Again, back to a year-over-year measurement, YouTube was up 32% in media spend and search ads were up 6.5%. eMarketer forecasts that YouTube will have more than two-thirds of digital video users worldwide by the end of the year. And a handful of tiny bits to wrap things up.

Starting point is 00:06:13 First, Facebook says it's ready to launch Dark Mode on its mobile app. This has taken months of testing. Also, if you use Google Meet, they will now let you replace your background with an image. So yes, ripping off Zoom's popular virtual backgrounds. And some solid advice from DTC advertiser David Herman on Twitter this morning. Something to keep in mind, Facebook's already

Starting point is 00:06:34 showed it's not stable. See election ad issues last week. If there is a contested election, the system may be in complete chaos. Plan ahead. If you're launching ads for the end of the week, get them in the queue today. Unquote. Good advice there. Finally switched our team off of Asana as a task manager. Yes, it was free, but it was just really

Starting point is 00:07:00 kind of a horrible cluttered UI. There was no way to see what tasks you have on tomorrow, no notifications for time-based tasks. Oh, and then there was the time one of their content leads told me on Twitter that they wouldn't consider my opinions about their mobile app because I was a straight, white, cis male. So, yeah, that was cool. So we switched to Todoist, and so far, so good. Halloween was a big success here.

Starting point is 00:07:25 Way more kids than we expected. As I mentioned last week, I went all out with this COVID theme this year. I built what I hope sounded like a huge candy distribution machine behind some curtains. In fact, behind the curtain was me putting candy down a chute with a big speaker and a smoke machine. I posted a video of the whole setup in our Slack community.

Starting point is 00:07:43 There's a link in this episode's notes if you want to join. But the kids liked it. Bye-bye. Happy Halloween. That's the best one I've seen yet. Well, some of them anyway. Happy Halloween, creepy man. So yeah, that kid's in the spreadsheet now.

Starting point is 00:07:59 No treats for him next year. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Drops Location-Tagging, Because Of Course They Did.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.