Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook knows best. I SAID, FACEBOOK KNOWS BEST!!

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

Facebook might be removing your ads’ link descriptions Yes, your Return on Ad Spend metric is down. Everyone’s is. Adobe rolls out a real-time and cross-channel data platform It’s beginning to look a lot like I should be an Instagram influencer The Premium feed, with exclusive deep-dive interviews with social algorithm experts, is at http://patreon.com/todayindigital Today in Digital Marketing is brought to you by engageQ digital. Can we help you with YOUR brand’s digital marketing and social media? Let’s chat. http://www.engageQ.com or call 1-855-863-6233. Find Tod here: Twitter • LinkedIn • Instagram • Facebook • Web Site • Email [e-mail] --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur 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. It is Thursday, November 14th, 2019. I'm Todd Mathen. Be protected. Be Zen. turn on ads bend us down. Adobe rolls out a real-time and cross-channel data platform. And it's beginning to look a lot like I should be an Instagram influencer instead of the job I currently have. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Facebook is handing out some more refunds this time because they say they detected some sketchy traffic on their audience network. Audience network can be a little sketchy at the best of times. That's ads on other websites and apps.

You've probably seen them in mobile apps if you've ever downloaded a free-to-play game on your phone. You've seen a little banner ad at the bottom. That's audience network. Well, that might have been Google's or who knows what other platforms, but that's where the Facebook audience network goes. In some cases, the refunds are pretty substantial, which means the sketchinesss are pretty substantial, which means the sketchiness was also pretty substantial. Nothing you need to do specifically to get the

refund. If your ads are impacted, you will just get it. While we're on Facebook for just a moment, a few reminders here. Now that we are entering the very busy Black Friday and holiday sales season, remember that everything is slower during this time, notably ad review times. So if you have a time-sensitive, important campaign and you make really any change to the ad creative or targeting, you are sending it back into the review queue,

a queue which under normal circumstances might be three or four hours, but these days is at least a day and often longer. You can always chat with a support rep if your ad has been stalled for more than 24 hours, but that doesn't guarantee it'll un-stall it any quicker. So be very sure that you want to make changes. Ask yourself, is this change to my Facebook campaign

worth having my campaign being shut off for one, two, maybe three days? Also, it's worth double checking what your daily spend limit is before Black Friday hits. If you think it might need a bump up for the holidays, you should connect with your Facebook ad rep now. Facebook giveth, Facebook taketh away. Now, they say they won't necessarily show a link description on your link ad, even if you put one in. Sometimes that description can be helpful to add objection-overcoming text like free shipping or easy returns. Well, Facebook now says it might show them your description, and it might not.

From herein, that link description will show dynamically. This means the description will only show in your ad if it's likely to appeal to the person seeing it. This only applies to ads using the single media ad format and which appear in the Facebook news feed. It does not apply to dynamic creative ads. Facebook claims this can help improve your performance, quoting them here. For example, some people are more likely to take an action, such as making a purchase, when they see the price of an item directly in an ad.

Others are more likely to make a purchase when they see the price only after interacting with an ad. We'll decide whether or not to show your description based on what we think will most impact each person and cause them to take a meaningful action, unquote. I mean, sure, okay.

I mean, this is yet another example of daddy Facebook telling us what's good for us and removing our abilities to make the decision ourselves. You really want that link description? Nah, we'll handle that. You want to be able to set ad budgets at the ad set level? Nah, you don't. You want it at the campaign level. Color me not a fan.

So with these Facebook delays and Facebook changes, it might be a frustrating time to be a social media buyer. Apparently, it is a great time to be an Instagram influencer. Marketing firm Ezea has a report out today showing that the average price of a sponsored photo on Instagram is now more than $1,642. U.S. Just five years ago, it was $134.

And in the last year alone, it has gone up 44%. Also up the price of a sponsored blog post. Zia started tracking that in 2006 when the price was just over $7. Today, $1,400. But as for what format costs the most, that will be YouTube videos. Five years ago, a sponsored YouTube video was $420. Today, $6,700. Even Facebook status updates can cost.

They are worth an average of $395 and a tweet is averaging at $422. My friends, you and I are in the wrong business. If you've wanted to check out what the future of augmented reality ads might look like, Starbucks is once again doing some fun stuff with their cups. Here's how to try it yourself. Go to their Instagram profile and tap the new AR effect button. You will find that above the grid. It is the third button from the left. It looks like a happy face with two plus symbols. Just so you know, it'll only work if you have one of their four special holiday cups,

which, of course, is brilliant. Adobe has announced that their new customer data platform is now available. It's called the Adobe Customer Data Platform. Honestly, B2B, a little creativity? Anyway, the platform allows marketers to create cross-channel personalized experiences and review analytics and performance data from a collection of different sources. Most impressively, this cross enterprise data review is apparently in real time. So something for you data nerds for sure.

OK, lightning round. First, a couple of entries yesterday in the don't worry, it wasn't just you category. Snapchat was down for some people yesterday and Hootsuite was having trouble posting Instagram videos. Sprout Social has added the option to add a pin title when composing a Pinterest post. TikTok is testing the ability to add a link in bio, just like Instagram, and social commerce links in videos. And Google confirmed today at their summit that there are some pretty big bugs happening with the local Q&A feature. Specifically, those local Q&As are sometimes just disappearing. And finally, just a reminder, if you are finding that your e-commerce ads are just not working this week,

your ROAS is down or conversions are down, this is absolutely expected this time of the year. Do not panic. Black Friday is two weeks away. So people are thinking, why buy now when it'll be on sale in two weeks? Nothing to panic about. Maybe reconsider what ads you're running now or how much budget you're pumping into them. Also, it sounds like there could be some reporting delays happening on Facebook at least. And that could be a part of it too.

If you'd like to comment on anything that you hear in the podcast, just tweet with the hashtag TIDM for Today in Digital Marketing. You can follow me on social. All my links are at the bottom of todayindigital.com or you'll find them in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin. I will see you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more.

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