Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook: "We're Totally Not Doing Brain Implants. No, Really."

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Get customized coverage today,

Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a big change to Facebook ad campaigns, Be protected. Be Zen. For free! It's Thursday, July 15th, 2021. Happy National Secretary Day, Mexico! I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing. I'm seeing some reports that Facebook will soon change the number of events required to exit the learning phase. Right now, as you might know, you need 50 events in 7 days to exit. The learning phase is that first stretch of time when the ads algorithm tries to figure out who best to show your ads to based on your optimization event. So if you want to get more conversions, you've got to have 50 conversions in seven days to exit

Starting point is 00:01:17 learning and start distributing more widely. From what I'm hearing, Facebook will be reducing that number to just 20. I guess they feel their machine learning has become strong enough to support decisions based on a smaller sample size. This is just industry chatter, mind you, but from reputable sources. Nothing publicly official from Facebook, though people are reporting their Facebook reps are sharing this news with selected advertisers. Apparently this is rolling out in the coming days and weeks. Can't say I saw this one coming.

Starting point is 00:01:49 In the race to capture the hearts and minds of smartphone consumers, pretty much every social platform has embraced the Stories format, made popular by Snapchat. Everyone had a version. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Even Twitter had a version. Yes, had a version. Because yesterday, in an announcement I don't think anyone saw coming, Twitter announced it would be killing off the format, which they named Fleets,

Starting point is 00:02:13 less than a year after they launched it. They'll still be around for two more weeks, then that prime real estate at the top, presumably will get handed to Spaces, its live audio product. Twitter never really seemed fully on board with the whole stories thing. They only started testing ads in that placement last month. We never got any real numbers on usage. Now we know why. Nobody really used the format.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Twitter themselves acknowledged yesterday that fleets were mostly used by people to just amplify their existing feed posts. Some things from the format will stick around, though, the updated camera options, full-screen ad formats, and so on. Social Media Today noted in its coverage yesterday that, quote, it's interesting to also note that over the past couple of weeks, Twitter has experimented with showing users fleets from users that they don't follow and highlighting related fleets when you expand certain tweets. In its coverage yesterday, Social Media Today reported that, quote, it's interesting to also note that over the past couple of weeks,

Starting point is 00:03:10 Twitter has experimented with showing users fleets from users they don't follow and highlighting related fleets when you expand certain tweets. As it turns out, these may have been last-ditch efforts to either save fleets or to get more usage data for future projects, unquote. Either way, Twitter's take on stories sunsets on August 3rd, as their own tweet announcing it read, We're sorry, or you're welcome. One thing Twitter does seem to be sticking to, business profiles.

Starting point is 00:03:44 They've been a little late to this party too. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, they all have separate account types for businesses. Twitter's new business profiles seem to be getting closer to launch based on what reverse engineers have found in the code. And like most other platforms' implementation of this, it looks like you'll be able to pick between business and creator, each of which will presumably have its own set of tools. They've said the rollout will start with a small group of businesses in the US. Once you convert your account, you'll get an additional call to action button to put on your profile. And earlier, Twitter hinted at some better analytics.

Starting point is 00:04:19 Now that Instagram Reels is a placement for our Facebook platform campaigns, how are they performing? Facebook ads consultant Andrew Foxwell says it's a mixed bag. Quoting Andrew's blog post, which you can read at foxwelldigital.com slash blog, quote, Are they the digital marketing savior we've been looking for? No. Are they a solid option for scaling and investing for in the future? Yes. We've now been testing Reels ads for just over a month in some accounts and have some early learnings to share.

Starting point is 00:04:47 CPMs? Super low. Click-through rates? Not great yet. Keep in mind that while Reels ads are new to advertisers, seeing ads in feed is also new to users. It will take time for users to adopt to ads and to see them as a real method for shopping like they do with an additional mid-funnel retargeting set. He notes that because Instagram is still rolling the ad format out to users, your audience sizes might be smaller than you're used to. Also, you'll need to select it as a manual placement because Reels ads are not part of Facebook's automatic placements pool. By the way, Andrew's new course is called The Art of Influencer Performance Advertising, and you'll find it at our affiliate link at b.link slash Facebook courses. The business review site Yelp has launched Yelp Audiences to connect marketers with consumers based on their on-platform search activity. Quoting Martech.org, this creates the opportunity to target high-intent Yelp users outside the Yelp platform and at any stage in the purchase cycle.

Starting point is 00:05:56 By working directly with advertisers, Yelp reduces the need for them to purchase consumer data from third parties. Ads are delivered across channels, including websites, mobile apps, and video streaming through CTV. Yelp is yet another company that happily finds itself sitting on an awful lot of logged-in first-party data, not unlike, say, Facebook. Interrupting the show briefly to remind you

Starting point is 00:06:22 that we are doing a special listener Zoom tomorrow, Friday. The Zoom link is b.link slash listener Zoom. Of course, that'll only work when the meeting is active. And that will happen tomorrow, Friday, at 3 p.m. Pacific. That's 6 p.m. Eastern, 11 p.m. London time, and 8 in the morning on Saturday in Sydney, Australia. Premium newsletter subscribers will get a link to the replay if you missed it. By the way, if you've ever wanted to sample the premium newsletter, a daily detailed email of all the stories that we cover here, along with images, videos,

Starting point is 00:06:52 related links, and exclusive content, for the first time, we have turned on a one-week free trial. Check it out at todayindigital.com slash newsletter, or tap the link in today's episode notes. The Zoom meeting link again for tomorrow at 3 p.m. Pacific, b.link slash listenerzoom. Back to the show. 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. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. TikTok reached an important milestone yesterday,

Starting point is 00:07:43 becoming one of the few mobile apps to get more than 3 billion total installs. This is the first app that is not made by Facebook to reach this achievement. Sensor Tower reports, quote, TikTok was the most downloaded and highest grossing non-game app globally in the first half of 2021, although new downloads of the app were down 38% year over year from nearly 619 million in Q1 2020, a decline partially attributable to its removal from India's app stores, consumer spending in TikTok was up 73% from 530 million in the year-ago period, unquote. TikTok has proven itself to be a threat to Facebook. Just look at the panic at Zuckerberg Corp around cloning Reels, launching their splashy new creator fund. Quoting social

Starting point is 00:08:31 media today, it's amazing to consider the growth of the app, particularly when you take into account that it also lost its second biggest user market in the middle of last year in India. But TikTok keeps on going and keeps on building momentum, which has Facebook and YouTube spooked and likely whispering in the ears of people in Washington about the threat posed by Chinese-owned apps. And given the charts, it's easy to see why. TikTok, particularly with its hold on young audiences, now has the potential to become the key app, much like Facebook rolled over MySpace in the early 2000s. Unquote. Apparently also on the spooked list, Triller, the mobile app that was, I mean, pretty much a direct copy of TikTok,

Starting point is 00:09:12 they tried their hand at a creator fund, at replicating features, at building up a music library. How'd that work out? Just today, the company announced plans to pivot away from TikTok-like short clips to long-form videos that focus more on influencer marketing campaigns and shoppable live streams. The company's CEO has only been in place for three months now. If you run an e-commerce store, you have no shortage of payment processors. PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, Venmo. Add one more to the list, Facebook Pay.

Starting point is 00:09:45 The company yesterday announcing that starting this August, businesses in the U.S. who use participating platforms will be able to add Facebook Pay as a payment option. The participating platforms list amounts to exactly one, Shopify, though they say that will expand over time. For its part, Apple recently launched its new Pay By Installments program. Also, let's not forget what Facebook gets here, and probably what they really want, even more than the processing fee.

Starting point is 00:10:12 Data, baby! Direct transaction data that they could use to stopgap some of what's missing from opted-out Apple users. Now, if you're a Shopify merchant who wants in, check out pay.facebook.com. Google today launched some free tools for travel marketers. They call them Travel Insights and include Destination Insights, which lets you input an original country, a destination country, and date range, and see travel demand for that location.

Starting point is 00:10:41 Also, Focusing Facts, which shows some quick insights like Country with the most inbound interest and top city in demand. This is based on the previous 84 days of data. And the Demand Sizing Tool, which lets you compare inbound and outbound interest between one primary country and up to 10 comparison countries. And finally, I'm about to read you a line from a white paper that Facebook put out yesterday. Yes, I double-checked the source. Yes, this is real. You sitting down?

Starting point is 00:11:15 Quote, To be clear, Facebook has no interest in developing products that require implanted electrodes. Unquote. See? I knew they were up to something. Turns out they've been working on an academic collaboration that would develop some kind of system to translate brain activities into words. And look, like you, I am a filthy digital marketer who wants more and better targeting tech for my ad campaigns. But can we all agree that this one crosses the line? They claimed it would be used to help people with speech impairments,

Starting point is 00:11:48 but come on, quoting The Verge. Facebook is backing off the idea of a commercial head-mounted brain reading device and building out wrist-worn interfaces instead. The new research has no clear applicability for a mass market tech product, unquote. Actually, all snark aside, the research partnership was kind of cool. It was designed for people who lost their speech abilities because of a stroke or some similar thing. One of their test subjects was able to train the system to recognize brain patterns that

Starting point is 00:12:19 represented 50 words. Speaking of chip implants, I got my 5G nanoparticle vaccine tracking and government compliance chip surgically embedded yesterday by way of my second shot. So far, so good. Just a sore arm like last time. Effort shot number two is worse with side effects.

Starting point is 00:12:45 I'm sure those will be timed for me right on the weekend. Audio nerds out there may have picked up on some changes to the podcast all this week. I bought an XLR condenser mic and a preamp box. It was picking up more of the echoey room than I like. I tried out a plug-in that de-reverbs audio recorded in an echoey room, but it wasn't perfect. So I've switched to a dynamic mic, the venerable Shure MV7, which gives me more low-end,

Starting point is 00:13:13 which I like, helps to cancel out the nasally whine of my natural voice. I'm going to master the episode today without the de-reverb on to see what it sounds like. So if this sounds echoey, I'll probably be able to go back to the plugin tomorrow to fix it. All that to say, sorry for the audio inconsistency, but I'll get it right.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook: "We're Totally Not Doing Brain Implants. No, Really."

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