Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook’s Worst Idea Yet

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a daily email newsletter! Subscribe at TodayInDigital.com/newsletterFacebook wants to make policy decisions for other social media platforms… Microsoft’s says its new PPC bidding may bump your conversions up… Google business messaging hits the desktop… and Pinterest’s nearly as popular as TikTok now.Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing us!About the Podcast:Join Our Free Slack CommunityGet this as a daily email newsletterReach Marketers: Ads • Classifieds • Brand TakeoversLeave a VoicemailFollow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • TwitchToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital. Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, Facebook wants to make policy decisions for other social media platforms, Microsoft says its new PPC bidding may bump your conversions up, Google Business Messaging hits the desktop, and Pinterest is nearly as popular as TikTok now. It's Friday, February 12th, 2021. Happy Chinese New Year! I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Facebook, the company that randomly locks marketers out of their accounts, suddenly turns on ad campaigns that were paused, and denies ads about baby food because its

algorithm thinks it's suggestive content. Yes, Facebook says it thinks its new oversight board should now make rulings about other platforms too. I promise, this is not satire. The co-chairperson of Facebook's oversight board, who by the way is the former prime minister of Denmark, said this week they want other tech companies to join and, quote, be part of the oversight that we will be able to provide, unquote. Well then, that could only end well, right? I guess the idea is that Twitter would appoint a couple of people to the panel, and then that board could make rulings about content there too? Despite what you've heard about the oversight board, it's not really the Supreme Court level of jurisprudence. For instance, it's currently deciding whether to require

Facebook to reinstate former U.S. President Trump, who Facebook removed from the platform after charges that he incited last month's attack on the U.S. Capitol. So, pretty important case, right? All 20 board members must be thinking about that, right? Nope. Only five of them are. Those five will make a decision and then send it to the broader group for a rubber stamp. I'll snark aside. This kind of thing could have disastrous consequences for our work as digital marketers. Pretty much everyone who runs ads on the platform for a living has run into some weird-ass decision that Facebook refuses to back down on. The Facebook page for this very podcast is banned from advertising for, quote, multiple policy violations, a warning we got out of the blue.

The only ad we ever ran was a video with a 20-second clip of one of the shows. But despite talking to eight Facebook reps, not a single one could tell us what the policy violation was, and, in fact, everyone claimed it wasn't really their department anyway, but they'll pass the feedback along. Honestly, no big deal, because we just took our ad dollars to other platforms. But now, imagine a world where those platforms too take their policy advice and violation decisions from Facebook. And you

thought the consumer version of a monopoly was going to be a miserable world. So if Facebook's not your jam, some new numbers from a competing platform might catch your attention. Pinterest reported this week its monthly active users have increased 37% year over year, reaching almost 100 million. With that number to be believed, that puts them roughly the same size as TikTok, which analysts thought were around 100 million users last August. Women still make up about 60% of Pinterest's overall user base, though it says the number of men grew 50% last year. Gen Z and millennials are the big growth drivers. Gen Z were focused on beauty trends in the last year, while millennials spent more time on home decor and renovation. Yesterday in our coverage of the audio app Clubhouse,

I mentioned that there weren't a lot of B2C marketing opportunities there yet. Remember, it's invite only right now, and it's mostly a big contingent of investors and venture capital people, stuff like that. But I thought I'd highlight one way that one brand is using the platform. The company that owns Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons is hosting a room today called Open Kitchen. It's with their CEO and is basically their quarterly financial report.

But instead of aiming it at analysts, they will be letting anyone in to listen and even ask questions. This is not the release of their quarterlies, mind you. They already did that call. Growth was down 8% because of COVID. Global digital sales hit $6 billion last year. But it is interesting to see how some brands are jumping on to this new platform. Microsoft this week announced that all manual bidding strategies on its platform will be optimized by Enhanced CPC. Enhanced CPC will become the bid strategy for all search, shopping, and dynamic search ad campaigns that have not yet opted into automated bidding. What is Enhanced CPC? Essentially,

it lets you dynamically set bids at auction time based on the targets that you set. E-CPC can work with maximize clicks, maximize conversions, target CPA, or target ROAS strategies. That's ROAS, return on ad spend. Microsoft says during its test, advertisers using eCPC got about 5% to 10% more conversions while maintaining their cost per acquisition. There is an important bit of fine print, though. Starting on February 5th, any new campaigns created will no longer have the option of manual CPC. And by April 30th, any campaigns not yet using eCPC will be automatically migrated. Yes, the inevitable march toward AI-making campaign decisions continues, for better or worse.

In the coming months, Microsoft says it'll launch portfolio support for bid strategies, which will help you optimize bids across multiple campaigns. In today's newsletter, we have an illustrated decision tree to help you figure out which automated bidding strategy is right for you. And that newsletter is free today. Details at the end of the episode. Google this week started to roll out one of the most frequently requested features on its Google My Business platform, the ability to see and reply to incoming messages on the desktop. Until now, people messaging your business from Google Maps or other Google places would only show up to you if you had Google's mobile app for that. Some third-party platforms can onboard your accounts too, but the process is still pretty manual,

which is why putting it on their desktop dashboard is welcome. As I mentioned, it's rolling out now, so you may not have it yet. Google says by early next month, all brands should have it. Like Facebook's business private messages, you can set some automated first reply text, and you'll also be able to export conversations if you want. One big difference, though, between Facebook and Google here is that Facebook rewards brands that reply quickly with a little label on their page saying they're responsive. Google, on the other hand, says if you don't reply within 24 hours, it may just straight up cut your access to desktop messaging off.

And no, that auto-response welcome message does not count. And finally, a bug over at Hootsuite this morning is causing their shortlink system, the one that uses the ao.li domain domain to barf back 404 pages. They are aware of it. They are working on it. Well, Monday is a stat holiday here in most of Canada. I think it might be in the U.S. too. I haven't checked.

But either way, I will be spending my time farming ginseng and rye in Tamriel. Did I mention I'm a level 48 provisioner now? Anyway, no episode Monday. But remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter complete with images, videos, links to dive deeper and newsletter exclusive content. And there's a free tier as well. You will get an abbreviated issue every Friday. The newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops. Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in this episode's notes.

Today in Digital Marketing is produced on beautiful Vancouver Island by EngageQ Digital. Production support and fact-checking by Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I will talk to you on Tuesday.