Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Threatens to Leave Europe

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, will Facebook and Instagram be blocked in Europe? Be protected. Be Zen. Thank you. You might be surprised. It's Tuesday, February 8th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. In a regulatory filing, Facebook's parent company, Meta, has said it would likely be unable to offer its products, like Facebook and Instagram, in Europe without changes to data transfer regulations. Specifically, they're bummed that Europe wants them to stop shuttling the user data of Europeans back to the U.S. This is actually a bigger deal than most Americans probably realize. Here in Canada, government organizations and anything to do with health care is forbidden from using any online service which stores its data in the U.S. That means Dropbox, MailChimp, Google, all the big ones. Why? Because the American Patriot Act gives the country's law enforcement the right to look at pretty much any data they want

Starting point is 00:01:53 for any reason. Europe doesn't like this and has told Meta to knock it off and keep their users' data in Europe. Here's how Facebook responded in its annual report last week. Quote, If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to rely on other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the US, we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial conditions, and results of operations, unquote. Naturally, the media started reporting this week that Meta threatened to pull its services out of Europe because, well, that's what they said. Apparently, the Zuck didn't like those headlines

Starting point is 00:02:40 and Meta late this afternoon put out a news release basically saying we are absolutely not threatening to leave Europe. No, really, the title of the news release was Meta is absolutely not threatening to leave Europe. This is nothing new. Ireland's Protection Commission preliminarily ordered the company to stop transferring user data from the EU back to the US back in August 2020.

Starting point is 00:03:02 The Data Protection Commission is expected to issue a final decision in the first half of this year. Without standard contractual clauses, Meta would have to silo off most of the data that it collects on European users. If the social media giant fails to comply, it could be fined up to 4% of its annual revenue, which is $2.8 billion. Also, let's not forget that Meta does have a habit of throwing

Starting point is 00:03:27 a tantrum and taking its toys away. Just ask Australia. In a move surely being watched nervously by the payment processor Stripe, Apple has announced its plans to introduce Tap to Pay on iPhone for U.S. merchants. Using Tap-to-Pay, merchants will be able to accept Apple Pay, plus contactless credit cards and debit cards and other digital wallets directly through the merchant's iPhone, letting retailers and small businesses accept payment virtually anywhere. This is, of course, the value prop for Stripe.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Here's how it'll work once it's available. Merchants will be able to unlock contactless payment acceptance through a supporting iOS app on an iPhone XS or later device. At checkout, the merchant will prompt the customer to hold their iPhone near the merchant's iPhone, and the payment will be completed by NFC. And you'd be right to think that Stripe is concerned here. Right now, small businesses use a dongle or a card reader provided by Stripe, which sometimes they provide for free as a loss leader to get the percentage cut of sales. This change means merchants won't need the dongle, and they may not need Stripe.

Starting point is 00:04:40 No word yet on Apple's proposed cut of sales. The idea seems sound. You've got a website. It's selling stuff. Let's get our products in other places too. So you also set up a storefront on Amazon or eBay. But will selling on a third-party marketplace cannibalize your sales? Dr. Eric Meyer is a professor of marketing and retail at the Lipsig

Starting point is 00:05:05 Graduate School of Management. He and his colleagues recently studied this and published their findings in an academic journal. Overall, we find that selling on a marketplace is rather complementary than cannibalizing your own sales. That is, selling on the marketplace will get you more visitors and sales on your own website than vice versa. What are the exceptions to that? Well, essentially, it depends on what type of products and at which price you're selling. When we're discussing complementarity versus cannibalization, it depends a lot on whether you're likely to repurchase.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Essentially, you can only buy the same shirt twice, you could say. That is, if you repurchase, the question is whether there is something to repurchase and whether you have the financial resources to do that. Our full interview covers the impact of having a bricks-and-mortar store also in the mix, whether high- or low-priced items are affected more,

Starting point is 00:06:03 and much more. It is up on the premium podcast feed right now. You can sign up at todayindigital.com slash premium feed and also enjoy ad free and longer episodes. A new study from the UK has found that marketers from ethnically diverse backgrounds earn 24% less at every level of seniority than their white peers. Here's a look at the mean salaries by ethnicity. White marketers earn on average $76,600.

Starting point is 00:06:35 Mixed race and multiple ethnic groups earn as a group $60,800. Black marketers make even less, $60,400. And people with Asian backgrounds, $54,000 The study was actually done in pounds, we've converted to US dollars here Also, non-white marketers earn less than their white peers no matter what stage they're at in their careers The ethnicity pay gap between white marketing executives and their non-peers is almost 44% A 35% pay gap for senior executives, 18% gap for junior managers, 14%

Starting point is 00:07:10 between senior or department managers. The smallest ethnic pay gap in marketing is found at the highest level of seniority, where there is a pay gap of 3% between white marketing directors and vice presidents and non-white executives. The data comes from the 2022 Marketing Week Career and Salary Survey. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

Starting point is 00:07:59 Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Google's Search Ads 360 is getting some upgrades. The company announced the update that includes new features like enhanced support for other search engines, workflow improvements, and more. Here's what you can expect. Search Ads 360 has been redesigned and rebuilt using the same tech that powers Google Ads, which means support for Performance Max and Discovery campaigns. You can manage your ads across multiple channels,

Starting point is 00:08:21 including other search engines, centralize your day-to-day tasks like campaign management, automated rules, and more across multiple advertisers at the same time. And they've also redesigned the user interface. The updates will be rolled out over the next few months. What do you do with your brand's SEO when you've chosen to change the page titles on your website every day? And why would you do that? Think about an investment company that wants to put a daily updated stock price in the page title. Will changing your page titles every day hurt your SEO or help it?

Starting point is 00:08:59 During an SEO office hours hangout, Google search advocate John Mueller said that while he doesn't advise for or against changing page titles every day, there are no SEO benefits. So it really is up to you whether you think it adds value to your searchers. However, changing your page titles every day does not mean that Google will update them in search results every day. Google may only update them every week or every month. If Google only crawls your website once a week, your page titles could quickly become outdated if they contain time-sensitive information. Mueller also mentioned that changing your page titles every day

Starting point is 00:09:36 does not prompt Google to crawl your site more frequently. Keep in mind, last week, remember, we told you that 61% of page titles are rewritten by Google. This means it's still not a guarantee that Google will display the page title you've provided, even if you update your titles every day, or if Google recrawls your pages every day. One of the saving graces in a social media content manager's life are the third-party tools that let us line up posts across different platforms. And most platforms, like Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, and so on, have an API that lets those tools get that content online. API functionality generally comes later than the front-end website.

Starting point is 00:10:21 Such is the case with TikTok. Currently, there is no public API that lets a third-party tool schedule and post content automatically. So in the interim, these tools have used mobile reminders as a stopgap. For the longest time, you couldn't use them to post an Instagram story.

Starting point is 00:10:39 Instead, you could schedule it, and when time came to post, the tool's mobile app would pop up a reminder, then you'd switch to the Instagram app on your phone and manually post. We are starting to now see these third-party tools support posting to TikTok in this roundabout way. Buffer Today announced it has a similar setup. Schedule the TikTok video, and when it comes time to post, you will get a notification to post it directly on the TikTok app. In their blog post announcing the workaround, they actually posted a pretty funny screenshot of one of their devs in Slack posting a version of their app that could do this.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Apparently, it only took them an hour and 20 minutes. That prompted someone named Julia to reply, shut up, Andy. Anyway, that functionality is now in Buffer's mobile app. And to be truthful, I'm a little surprised it's taking the other platforms so long to get around this, considering they already built this out for Stories. Yelp has announced several new features that will be added to its ads platform, including keyword boosting, custom location targeting, and more. Here's a look at the updates.

Starting point is 00:11:45 First, keyword boosting. This allows advertisers to direct their budget to selected keywords to reach high-intent audiences more effectively. When used with keyword blocking, businesses can target their ads more specifically to audiences who are searching for products and services they offer. And custom location targeting. This will be rolled out to all new and existing customers. Also, tailored post templates have been added to the platform

Starting point is 00:12:11 to help businesses create content that is customizable to their brand to reflect special offers and things like that. And finally, enhanced budget recommendations. The platform now includes rating, category, listing age, region, and more data to help businesses make more informed budget recommendations but don't forget if you've got a marketing position you're trying to fill or maybe you're looking for that next great gig consider a classified ad right here it's just 20 bucks20. You can book it online. Tap

Starting point is 00:12:45 the advertising link in the show notes. And our Slack community has more than 800 digital marketers in it now. You can get advice there, troubleshoot technical issues, post jobs, learn about gigs that are open. The link to join is also in the show notes, or just go to todayindigital.com slash

Starting point is 00:13:01 Slack. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Threatens to Leave Europe

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