Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook's Change Will Slash Your Organic Reach. (Again.)

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Facebook's new test will take even more of a chunk Be protected. Be Zen. common with North Korea. It's Friday, November 19th, 2021. Happy National Flag Day, Brazil. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, Episode 509. Today's episode brought to you by CMOX. See if you have what it takes to be a high paid, in-demand, fractional chief marketing officer. Go to becomecmo.com. In a move that will surprise nobody who is a regular around here, Meta announced yesterday that they have found a way to cut organic reach on their platform to even lower levels than it is today.

Starting point is 00:01:17 This is in the form of a toggle switch they're giving to some users, which will let them indicate that they want to see fewer posts in their news feeds from brand pages or groups. The test is live now for some users. It adds three menus, friends and family, groups and pages and public figures. Users will be able to change the ratio of what's in their feed by changing these to more, normal or less? Look, I don't think you have to be a psychic to realize that a large number of people will say more family and less brand pages, please. And that will reduce our organic reach, meaning if you want to connect with your existing fan base, you will have to buy ads. The test is with a small group of people now, but Meta says they will be expanding it in the coming weeks. A number of years ago, before web pages were mobile-friendly, Google was pushing a new type of page format, Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP for short. These were duplicate pages of content

Starting point is 00:02:19 on your website that would only be served to people on mobile devices and, even then, only under certain circumstances. You didn't need to manually create the second version. Most content management systems like WordPress offered plugins that would do it for you, slap your branding on it, and put it up on your server. Google liked these because they loaded faster, and they highlighted these pages with a little lightning bolt icon in the search results. Since then, web content has evolved, and now the HTML that underlies web pages accounts for mobile views automatically, and serves a version of the same page that just adapts to the screen size. We call these responsive pages, and pretty much all

Starting point is 00:02:57 websites use responsive themes now. So what's happening with AMP? It looks like it's going away. Twitter this week confirmed it plans to drop support for the format by the end of the year, and when that happens, they'll just stop redirecting people to whatever AMP pages you have on your server. To be clear, people will not get 404 errors. They'll just see your regular web pages now, which hopefully you have made responsive. And Twitter's not alone. Quoting Search Engine Journal, it's getting harder to make a case for publishing pages in the AMP format,

Starting point is 00:03:29 especially after what's happened with it over the past year. Google itself is gradually phasing AMP out of a number of places where it was once prominent. With the launch of the Page Experience update, Google made a number of changes that suggest it's dropping support for AMP, though not completely. Google's first move toward phasing out AMP was removing the lightning bolt icon from search results. That made pages published in the format less obvious, but didn't stop them from ranking in Google.

Starting point is 00:03:56 Later, Google removed AMP as a requirement for appearing in the top stories carousel. The pages were not removed from the carousel, but they'll now appear alongside regular HTML pages. Google's most recent step toward phasing out AMP occurred this past September when the company announced it would show non-AMP content more regularly in Google News, unquote. So what to do if you have an AMP plugin on your brand's website? Nothing, if you don't want. It doesn't hurt anything having the plugin-in churning out copies. Google won't consider them duplicate content or anything. But these days, there may not be much of a point in having them around. One of the people who pops up in my Twitter feed regularly is Gil David. He runs a boutique Facebook ad agency in Ireland called Run DMG. He's always tweeting out really solid advice on ad campaigns on the platform.

Starting point is 00:04:49 You can follow him at GIL underscore Run DMG. This week, I noticed he's put out a pretty comprehensive resource for Black Friday Facebook ad campaigns. And I thought I'd bring him on here for a minute to talk about it. Hi, Gil. Hey, Todd. How are you doing? Well, thanks. So explain this to me.

Starting point is 00:05:04 This is the setup that you're using with your clients? Yeah. So we did kind of an original version last year, which was pretty successful for us. And I released it kind of on a few of my channels and people seem to like it. So that was called a triple header strategy because it involved basically three different CBOs. That was the kind of basis of it. And then this year post iOS 14.5 we've had to adapt that a little bit so now it's only two CBOs in the strategy. So hence it's called the double team strategy for 2021.

Starting point is 00:05:34 And when people download this are they getting a PDF, a spreadsheet, an hour of consultation with you? What's the format? Not too much because I've done it as what you think it's worth so the minimum is is one pound but people have paid as much as a hundred pounds for it which i'm very grateful for um so yeah it's really a pdf which shows the whole setup and as

Starting point is 00:05:54 well as that there's tips on uh what you need to be aware of post ios 14.5 because the kind of the data lags make it very difficult running sales and and especially sort of scaling or knowing what's going on unless you're looking in the back end of the store as well at the same time. So there's a few tips on that as well as some kind of top audiences that we're targeting this year. So there's more than just the actual setup itself. But, yes, it's kind of a PDF that's I think it's about seven pages long. So it's pretty comprehensive.

Starting point is 00:06:27 And hopefully there's a lot of value for people, especially if you're an e-commerce brand or agency running Facebook ads. Well, I think it's very generous of you to be pricing it at whatever people want to pay. Obviously people sometimes pay thousands for this kind of advice. We have created a short link to get to it. It is b.link slash Facebook Black Friday.

Starting point is 00:06:43 This was not paid. We don't get a cut. I just thought it was a pretty solid resource. Gil, thanks. Thanks a lot. Appreciate you having me on. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's obsessive infatuation with the increasing of young people on his platform can be summarized in two words, tick tock.

Starting point is 00:07:02 I guess that's one word. And new numbers from Forrester show exactly why he's panicking. The study was of 4,600 teenagers in the U.S. TikTok's weekly usage was up 13 points year over year. Instagram, down four points. Also, incidentally, Snapchat has closed the gap to just a three-point difference between it and Instagram. So how did TikTok sneak up so fast on the Zuck? One reason?

Starting point is 00:07:28 He lost his super-secret spy tool. Quoting social media today, Meta's usual approach to such challenges has been to first try to buy them out before they get too big, but that process was, at least in part, based on its controversial Onavo VPN monitoring program, which helped it track key app trends as they rose. Meta was forced to shut down the Onavo tracking program in January 2019 due to its intrusive

Starting point is 00:07:53 nature, which saw it essentially gathering data on app usage from many teens and paying them a small fee for providing such access. Upon discovery of the program, Apple banned Onavo from the App Store for violating its policies before Meta closed the program for good in response to a TechCrunch investigation. That reduced Meta's insight into rising trends, which seems to have left the company more vulnerable to competition from TikTok. As a result, Meta then moved to phase two of its competitor mitigation playbook, Replication, with the launch of Instagram Reels, unquote. As for why teens are on TikTok rather than Instagram, Forrester found many consider TikTok to just be more fun and a more positive experience. All that said, neither TikTok nor Instagram are at the top of the U.S. teen chart.

Starting point is 00:08:43 That belongs to YouTube, with 72% of American teens using it weekly. 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. Among the many retail trends happening these days is that of cashierless checkouts, the most famous of which is probably Amazon's experiment with its own tiny grocery stores where cameras watch what you put in your cart, letting you just walk out of the store and get billed for it all later. Now, Amazon has teamed up with Starbucks to try it out on coffee drinkers.

Starting point is 00:09:36 The test store has been given a predictably Frankenstein brand name, Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go. It's in New York. It opened yesterday. It's got a lounge with workspaces and expanded tables with power outlets and USB ports. It's not a pop-up, by the way. This offers the full Starbucks menu and an assortment of food and beverages in that little cooler that Starbucks always has on the right there. Although that cooler has been given its own Frankenstein name, the Amazon Go Market.

Starting point is 00:10:03 Customers will order on the Starbucks app and then just walk in, grab their drink and leave. Starbucks says if it works out, they'll open more next year. A study last year found that more than a third of consumers found cashierless options appealing because of their shorter lines. And another third said they like it because they don't like talking to other people. And finally, an update on the Spotify ad campaign I told you I launched yesterday. Well, tried to launch. Here's how it went, and I'm sure some of this will sound disturbingly familiar. First, after just a couple of hours, my ads were approved.

Starting point is 00:10:41 Hooray! They were both the same ad, but I had two different ad sets. I'm going to play you the ad that I tried to submit now. This will become relevant in a moment. If you're in business and need to stay ahead of the curve, subscribe to the Today in Digital Marketing podcast. Everything you missed each day in social media, online advertising, and digital marketing. And it's short, just eight minutes every weekday.

Starting point is 00:11:05 Subscribe free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or check us out at todayindigital.com, the Today in Digital Marketing podcast. Okay, so harmless ad, right? That was approved. Then, later last night, one of the ads was rejected. Remember, there were two ads in this campaign only because there were two ad sets. The ads themselves were identical, but only one was rejected.

Starting point is 00:11:32 And why? The policy it said I violated was, are prohibited, remove any references to Spotify competitors from your ad, and or click through URL landing page. What Spotify competitors, you ask? Apparently, my use of the phrase, or wherever you get your podcasts, was what got their panties in a twist about. And yes, my landing page does acknowledge the existence of other podcast platforms. Bigger platforms.

Starting point is 00:12:03 Better platforms. But, like the North Korean Information Ministry, Spotify does not want its users to know that better options exist in the world. This doesn't explain, though, why only one of the ads was rejected and the other was approved. Just another day for an online media buyer, I guess.

Starting point is 00:12:20 Between this nonsense and them buying podcasts up only to hide them behind paywalls, one thing is clear. Spotify doesn't want to participate in the podcast community. It wants to own it. And that's not good for anybody. looked at my calendar to see what I had lined up this weekend. At first it looked really busy and I thought, oh good, I have very exciting things to do. And then I realized that all of the little task bookings, little family to do things, are

Starting point is 00:12:49 like the kind of tasks that I remember my dad having to do all the time. I have to get some blood work done. I have to pick up some subscriptions. I've got to replace my reading glasses. Like when did I cross 50 exactly?

Starting point is 00:13:06 It happened. This is my reading glasses. Like, when did I cross 50 exactly? It happened. This is my life now. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Scripting and promotional support by Steph Gunn. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. And our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is that first scoop of coffee out of the bag. Thank you. on Monday. high-quality talent across the globe, forcing your prices to decrease. If you've seen your

Starting point is 00:14:05 marketing rates stagnate or decrease in the last two years, you need to do something new. Here's the truth. When you work, you can focus on solving small problems. As a result, you deserve small rewards. But if you could instead focus on solving bigger problems in those same hours, your income increases with your impact. Hey, I'm Casey Stanton, and I train marketing consultants and agency owners to become fractional chief marketing officers so they can ascend to the top role in a company, find new work for their agencies, and push their clients to record revenue and growth. Our fractional CMOs are paid to do the fun stuff, marketing strategy. If you want a full pipeline of great prospects

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Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook's Change Will Slash Your Organic Reach. (Again.)

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