Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook: "We Can't See 15% of Your Conversions"

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, 15%. That's how many conversions you are not seeing in Facebook's Ads Manager. Google releases some tips on improving your campaigns, how to put your product catalog on television in two clicks, and the real story behind the van that went viral over the weekend. It's Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021. Happy Independence Day, Bulgaria. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Oh my gosh. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 473. I am a tiny bit under the weather, as you

Starting point is 00:00:59 can probably hear. So if my voice cracks, I promise it's not puberty. Nobody knew how Apple's big change to tracking would affect digital ad campaigns. Now we have some numbers direct from Facebook itself. A bit of background if you're new to this. A couple of months ago, Apple started requiring app developers to ask their users for their permission to track their behavior, like buying things, looking at certain products, and so on. Naturally, a majority of users, when asked, said, no, buck off, I don't want to be tracked. Fewer said that than I think any of us thought, but still, it was most of them.

Starting point is 00:01:38 Not being able to see user behavior in an app means not knowing what path they took to make a purchase, or how many times they've used the app before, or even if they've made a purchase at all. Naturally, none of this is good news for the ad platforms either. Without that data, they wouldn't be able to report things like conversions, and that would not make them look good. That's part of why Facebook launched a massive campaign warning against it,

Starting point is 00:02:03 and in the end, it didn't change Apple's mind. So the new Apple thing has been in place long enough to shake some numbers out, and today, Facebook released some of those numbers. Quoting the company, We expected increased headwinds from platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. We know many of you are experiencing this greater impact as we are.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Our estimate is that in aggregate, we are under-reporting iOS web conversions by approximately 15%. However, there is a broad range for individual advertisers. We believe that real-world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers. Unquote. So what to do now? Here are some of Facebook's recommendations. Consider waiting a minimum of 72 hours or the full length of the optimization window selected before evaluating performance for conversion-optimized campaigns. Second, when possible, analyze reporting at the campaign level. While ad set and ad level assessment is possible, some estimated conversions are aggregated and reported with a delay. Third, set up the conversions API, a connection between your marketing data, such as website

Starting point is 00:03:30 events and offline conversions, and Facebook. And also, follow the steps they'd offered before, like making sure you've configured web events using aggregated event management. That's what you can do. As for what Facebook's doing, they say they are continuing to improve their conversion modeling, essentially educated guesses on what conversions are hidden in the missing data. Most of the industry, I think it's fair to say, considers Facebook conversion modeling to be passable with large budgets and downright fantasy when used in smaller campaigns. They say they'll also soon have a way for advertisers to track web conversions

Starting point is 00:04:07 even when they don't own the top-level domain, as in marketplaces where multiple small businesses sell goods under the same web domain. Today we learned about a change to how Google will be displaying your ads in the future, a change that will let people see the most recent ads you've been running. This is an expansion of their About This Ad menu. Now people will be able to see which ads you've run over the past 30 days. For example, says Google, quote, imagine you're seeing an ad for a coat you're interested in, but you don't recognize the brand.

Starting point is 00:04:43 With Advertiser Pages, you can learn more about that advertiser before visiting their site or making a purchase. Last spring, we also introduced an Advertiser Identity Verification Program that requires Google advertisers to verify information about their businesses, where they operate from, and what they're selling or promoting. This transparency helps users learn more about the company behind a specific ad. It also helps differentiate credible advertisers in the ecosystem while limiting the ability of bad actors to misrepresent themselves, unquote. They are also making it easier for users to report ads

Starting point is 00:05:18 that they think violate a Google policy. This expansion will show up in the coming months in the U.S. and will roll out in phases to more countries in the next year. Today, Google also published a 30-page guide with some creative guidance and best practices for their ads platform. Inside, they detail what they say are the four pillars to making compelling creative. Those are lead with a clear call to action. Personalized descriptions perform up to two times better for their campaign goal versus non-personalized

Starting point is 00:05:51 descriptions. This means businesses need to help consumers immediately see what they have to offer by including words like you to draw attention and adding their product or brand name in headlines and descriptions. Second, connect more authentically with a wide variety of assets. Audiences take action faster if they can relate to your message. 64% of consumers said they took some sort of action after seeing an ad they considered to be diverse or inclusive. And images that feature people perform more than 30% better for their campaign goal versus images that don't.

Starting point is 00:06:25 Third, build for smaller screens. Images with no overlaid text or overlaid text with under 20 characters perform up to 1.2 times better for their campaign goal versus images with longer overlaid text. With people spending more time on a broad range of small devices, businesses should consider how and where consumers are seeing their ads and provide visual assets that clearly communicate their call to action. And fourth, give your creatives time to test. We've seen that waiting two to three weeks between changes to ad creative

Starting point is 00:06:57 minimizes performance fluctuations, allowing the Google Ads system time to learn and adapt to your most effective assets. Review ad strength and asset reporting to better understand allowing the Google Ads system time to learn and adapt to your most effective assets. Review ad strength and asset reporting to better understand which assets resonate best and help you make the call on which to remove or replace, unquote. I might be wrong here, but I think this is the first time that Google has come out and given a specific time frame where your ads need to sit and marinate before you make changes to a campaign? Today's premium newsletter has a direct link to the 30-page guide in PDF form.

Starting point is 00:07:38 So you've wanted to try a little video advertising for your brand, but YouTube's too expensive? Other sites don't connect to your Shopify catalog? Well, a new addition to the Shopify app store might do the trick. Roku, the American television platform, will become the first streaming TV app available on Shopify's platform. Quoting Marketing Dive, small and medium-sized businesses on the e-commerce platform will be able to download the Roku app and set parameters around their target audience, budget, and intended campaign duration, as well as upload creative assets. Campaigns can then be launched within minutes to Roku's audience of 55 million active accounts. The integration, timed to roll out ahead of the busy holiday period, is being beta tested

Starting point is 00:08:18 by partners like loungewear brand Jamby's. Jamby's co-founder Andrew Goebel said the company experienced a 63% increase in purchase consideration among viewers exposed to ads using Roku's technology. A recent study by the Harris Poll found almost half of consumers reported pausing their TV and shopping for a product online after seeing an ad on their TV streaming device. That number was up from last year. Shopify's revenue last quarter was up 57% year-over-year to $1.1 billion. 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,

Starting point is 00:09:11 data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. An important milestone in the podcast world, Spotify is now forecast to surpass Apple Podcasts as the top platform for listenership in the U.S. The forecast comes from eMarketer, though PodNews today said they could not find any information of what sources eMarketer was using to make this forecast. That said, some podcast platforms are reporting that crossover already happened. Buzzsprout says in August, Spotify had 32% of the share, Apple 27%. Strangely, competing platform Libsyn has very different numbers,

Starting point is 00:09:56 Apple at 59%, Spotify at only 15%. That wide platform discrepancy can happen and might be more about the audience demographics and their likelihood to own an iPhone. Our own numbers for this podcast last month had Apple's podcast app accounting for 58% of our downloads. The Overcast app was second at only 11%, and Spotify was next with a 7% share of our downloads last month. In terms of devices, 75% of our users use iOS, and only 14% use Android. Heads up if you run the WordPress site for your brand. A big update to the platform, version 1.5 has some welcome new upgrades, including a new widget group block that fixes and improves editing these.

Starting point is 00:10:47 WordPress's widgets are little boxes usually found in the sidebars and footers of a web page. You can put copyright text there, links to blog posts, other text search bars, and so on. SearchEngineJournal.com has a very detailed piece up about the changes today, if that matters to you. Also today, the very popular Ninja Forms plugin announced that they had uncovered a very serious security hole that would let any registered user of your website export every form that had ever been submitted to the website, including any confidential information someone may have submitted. Turns out the Ninja Forms software would check to see if a user was registered, but the programmers failed to have the software checked to see if they had the right permission

Starting point is 00:11:29 levels to request a bulk export of all forms. Another hole could let an attacker send emails from your website to any other website, potentially reducing your own deliverability score or worse, creating a convincing phishing scheme. If you use the Ninja Forums plugin on your WordPress site, you should stop listening to me immediately and go update to their latest version. Last week, we reported on the Wall Street Journal's big Facebook expose, part of which uncovered a program which essentially let celebrities and high-profile politicians

Starting point is 00:12:03 bypass the usual moderation. Now now Facebook might be in trouble with a group it created. The Oversight Board, an arm's-length kind of Supreme Court that Facebook created to get some semi-independent rulings on its practices, now wants to have a closer look at that bypass. The board says it expects to hear back from Facebook in the coming days and plans to release more details about that program in their first transparency report due out in about a month. In case this is new to you, here is how The Verge described the program. Quote, Crosscheck is supposed to add an extra level of scrutiny

Starting point is 00:12:39 to high-profile moderation calls that could cause controversy for Facebook. But the journal claims it uncovered a huge swath of 5.8 million people in 2020, and only 10% of the posts sent to the program got reviewed by Facebook's second layer of specialized moderators. According to the report, users in the program include Senator Elizabeth Warren, conservative commentator Candace Owens, and former U.S. President Donald Trump. Well, it was all over TikTok yesterday. Video of a company van driving around Charlotte, North Carolina on the weekend. In big letters on the side, the words, don't get vaccinated.

Starting point is 00:13:26 But wait, this isn't the work of some crazy conspiracy nut. The van was from a funeral home. Underneath, don't get vaccinated, the logo of the Wilmore Funeral Home and their webpage address. But wait, this isn't the work of some clever funeral home. Turns out it was actually a stunt from a local marketing agency. The 22-person Boone Oakley agency put it together, even set up a fake funeral home website, which was basically a landing page that said, get vaccinated now. If not, see you soon, with a link to a local vaccine registration site.

Starting point is 00:14:02 All it took was driving it around a football stadium a couple of times during a big game over the weekend to go viral on social media. And finally, you may have noticed in your digital marketing campaigns this week that your CPMs are spiking. This is your friendly quarterly reminder that we are at the end of Q3. Quarter ends mean panicked spends. In October, CPM should be a little more reasonable in the first week or two. Then it is God only knows territory as we get closer to Black Friday and Christmas. Fasten your seatbelts. Tyler works at a digital marketing agency in New Zealand.

Starting point is 00:14:44 Jamie is head of marketing for an e-commerce furniture brand. Diego is an e-commerce director in the UK. Carol runs a fashion marketing agency in France. Seth leads the marketing team at a religious university in the States. These people and more joined our Slack community in the last 24 hours alone. Yesterday, you may have heard me mention that fairly soon, probably early next year, we plan to make the Slack community a paid membership. So you're grandfathered in if you get in soon. The easy way to get there is today in digital.com slash Slack, or just tap the link in this episode's notes.

Starting point is 00:15:16 By the way, and my wife will kill me if she knows I'm doing this, but she is seven followers away from a thousand on TikTok. She really wants to be able to go live. And one thousand is the mark, apparently, where you have to get to before you're allowed to go live. So if you are at all interested in crafting, what else does she talk about? Sewing, knitting, disability issues or miniature schnauzers. That's basically her her ballpark uh her tiktok account is jocelyn hacks j-o-c-e-l-y-n-h-a-c-k-s i swear to god if any of you go into the comments and tell her that we've had this conversation i will spite you i will do it

Starting point is 00:16:01 sometimes i kind of feel like i'm doing too much I will do it.

Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook: "We Can't See 15% of Your Conversions"

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