Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Removes the Like Button. (Wait, What?!)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Facebook bids goodbye to the like button on Facebook brand pages. This digital marketing tactic killed it this holiday season, and you'll never guess which one it was. Sorry, I'm a little under-caffeinated today. Which old-school digital marketing tactic killed it this holiday season? And the first salvos fired in the newest battle between privacy advocates and digital advertisers. This time, it's the podcast industry under fire. It's Wednesday, January 6th, 2021. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. It doesn't happen often, but it happened today. Social media managers at brands and

Starting point is 00:00:39 agencies had to decide if they would pause all content. This because of the dramatic developments in the U.S. rioting on Capitol Hill. One brand's tweet, this from the social media platform Buffer, quote, We are sad and troubled by the events unfolding at the U.S. Capitol right now. In light of this situation, we're pausing our scheduled social posts, unquote. Here at my agency, we have a workflow just for this. When events like this happen,

Starting point is 00:01:04 does it rise to the level of pausing our client's content? And those decisions, of course, are made client by client. Even if your brand decided you didn't need to pause content today, it's still worth checking with your third-party social media tool to see how to do this if you need to. Many, like Buffer and Sprout Social, have a kind of kill switch that stops everything in its tracks. Other platforms, you might need to delete scheduled content instead of just pausing it. But it's worth learning how that works and hope you'll never need it. Venture capitalist Chris Saka blamed social media for the political chaos,

Starting point is 00:01:37 tweeting this afternoon, You've got blood on your hands, Jack and Zuck. Those are the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook. For four years, you've rationalized this terror. Inciting violent treason is not a free speech exercise. If you work at those companies, it's on you too. Shut it down. On to other news.

Starting point is 00:02:00 Facebook, ever the corporate paragon of excellent design choices, has changed the layout of some brands' Facebook pages, or, can't believe I'm going to read this, as they are now calling them, Facebook page experiences. My god. Anyway, first, this change applies to a few categories of brands, and only a few, mostly public figures, content creators, that sort of thing. So what is new? A redesigned layout that Facebook says should make it easier to engage with fans. There's better navigation between personal profiles and pages. There's a new Q&A format, some updated task-based admin controls. But what's most interesting, I thought, was this

Starting point is 00:02:40 from the company, quote, we are removing likes and focusing on followers to simplify the way people connect with their favorite pages. Unlike likes, followers of a page represent the people who can receive updates from pages, which helps give public figures a stronger indication of their fan base, unquote. And look, I shit on Facebook a lot because A, they have it coming and B, I'm immature and it's a lot of fun. But on this point, I actually think they're right. Here at my agency, we've used followers as the primary community metric for more than a year now, since it's a much more accurate count of who could potentially see your organic content. Another welcome change, in this new page form, you'll be able to grant varying levels of access to manage specific tasks, including insights, ads, content, community activity and messages.

Starting point is 00:03:30 So this expands on the current roles list. Let's just hope they've made those changes on the business manager side of things, too. page and you comment as your page on another page's post, your comment may appear higher in the comment section and have a better chance of surfacing in the newsfeed. And Facebook ads at the end, somewhat ominously, this is just the beginning. One thing we digital marketers tend to fall for are the shiny new things. Remember Messenger bots? Zuckerberg was all like, all commerce will be done by bots in the future, and we jumped all over it. We signed up for the bot platforms.

Starting point is 00:04:15 We tried it out. Most of us are underwhelmed. I bet most of us have left it behind. If it's not bots, it's Facebook Lives or IGTV. And sure, sometimes in the early days, these tools offered ridiculously cheap CPMs. I mean, I remember when Facebook was the new kid on the block and you could get clicks for like 10 cents each. So while we're always chasing the latest cool thing, some new numbers are reminding us that the old school marketing methods are still quietly killing it. Take email marketing.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Ain't nothing sexy about that these days, but new research from LiveIntent shows that Black Friday email campaigns done on their platform did well this year. Like, really well. Quoting Marketing Dive, Retailers experienced a 32% jump in conversions from their email ads on Black Friday as homebound shoppers responded to digital promotions. Advertisers in the style and fashion categories experienced the highest conversions on LiveIn's platform, while click-through rates were double the average.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Shopping newsletters boosted impressions by 10 times above the average, unquote. Marketing Dive, of course, did note there was a 22% increase in digital ad spend. So while that certainly increased the number of impressions, it wouldn't necessarily change the ratio metrics, right? Am I crazy here? Like, it wouldn't significantly shift conversion rate on its own just by having more money thrown at it. It wouldn't necessarily improve the click-through rate, maybe a little. Anyway, digital ad spending excluding political ads was forecast to rise 5.4% to $110 billion last year and comprise more than half of total ad spending for the first time. The programmatic ad industry has been through a lot in the past few years, and the

Starting point is 00:06:04 technology's adaptation to podcast marketing has been interesting to watch. Podcasts like this one use programmatic ads, and the implementation is pretty clever. Your app asks a server for an mp3 file, and the server checks some things about you, and then packages up the show and adds some ads that are targeted to you, and sends you what is essentially a one-off, a custom MP3 of the podcast episode designed just for you. Well, just for your targetable information. But now that very targeting technology is under fire and some internet block lists have added one big podcast hosting provider to their lists,

Starting point is 00:06:41 that provider, Megaphone. Let's back up a little. There are block lists available for all sorts of things. For instance, you can download one of many of these to drop into your Facebook ad account, and then Facebook will make sure that your brand's ads don't appear on the websites on that list, like through Audience Network. Block lists have gotten smarter over time as well. When they were before just a CSV file that you'd have to update every so often, nowadays they're self-updating with their own APIs and tiered subscription levels.

Starting point is 00:07:13 So what's happening with Megaphone? Well, some of these block list providers think Megaphone's ad insertion system is just too aggressive. And while people have a way on their website to opt out of targeting, it's not clear if that opting out carries over to podcast players, too. Also, their privacy policy admits that they'll be sharing listener data with ad tech companies like Nielsen, and of course they have to if they want to be able to target this way. So whether it was that or the fact that it's now a Spotify company, a number of major block list providers are blocking downloads from Megaphone. It seems this is the first such blocking of an entire podcast hosting platform. This is not just affecting a small handful of shows. Thousands of podcasts are there.

Starting point is 00:07:53 Some of the big ones, all of Slate's shows, all of the shows on the Gimlet network, all unplayable now if you use a browser or a plugin that uses a blocklist. The implicit threat, back down on the targeting, or we'll make sure you lose a browser or a plugin that uses a block list. The implicit threat, back down on the targeting or we'll make sure you lose a ton of listeners. One blogger asked Megaphone if they'll be changing their ad insertion technology and the answer, nope. That blogger at Limelink asked rhetorically, what if you get on all block lists? Will you consider it then? What if podcast players decide to add these block lists? What if certain countries start using all block lists? Will you consider it then? What if podcast players decide to add these block lists? What if certain countries start using these block lists at their borders?

Starting point is 00:08:29 At what point do you consider that your dynamic ad targeting system isn't good for listeners or podcasters and reformat how it works? So I guess a standoff and no indication that these block list providers will stop at Megaphone. There are lots of other hosting providers that use similar systems. Who's got the bigger gun here? And finally, Snapchat has switched up its partner program used to either be an ad partner or a creative partner. It looks like they've removed the creative tier and just rolled them into the base tier. There's also a certified partner level. Anyway, lots to check up with if your brand or agency is a Snapchat marketing partner. So I ran across this great video on Twitter today. It was titled something like every podcast saying nothing for 20 minutes. And it was a perfect send up of why I usually don't like long-form interview shows.

Starting point is 00:09:25 So that's what I think. Yeah, that's so true. You know, I'm really glad you brought that up. I think this is really important. And if I can just speak about this for a minute, because I've really been thinking about this quite a lot. And here's the thing, right? Here's when it all comes down to it and we, like, really begin to understand. Of course it goes on and on.

Starting point is 00:09:45 It's pretty funny. So that's it for today. You may have noticed I have stopped the pre-roll and mid-roll ads. I hate ads as much as you do in podcasts, so I will leave a slot at post-roll, but I set a pretty high CPM, so you may not even hear much in there. If you support this decision of fewer ads in the podcast, and you like that I don't do rambling long-form interviews that say nothing, you can pay it back to me with a five star review.

Starting point is 00:10:09 I will make this so easy for you. Just swipe over to the episode notes and you will see a one tap link that will take you directly to the review page of your podcast app. It literally will take you about three seconds. Or you can go to ratethispodcast.com slash today. And thanks for considering it. Okay, see you tomorrow. So my friend works at the New York Times, right?

Starting point is 00:10:36 Oh, nice. Yeah. And so this is what I think. There's a lot of conversation and there's a lot of dialogue around the subject without really dissecting and understanding the subject and i think what we really need and i've said this before i've said this on my podcast if people want to check that out check that out as well but we'll put the link in i think what's really important is that we generate more conversation around i mean what we're doing right now yeah you know yeah this kind of like it's so

Starting point is 00:11:06 important no for sure it's so important it's so important it really is like we really is yeah

Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Removes the Like Button. (Wait, What?!)

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