Today in Digital Marketing - Fear and Surprise and Ruthless Counterfeiting Efficiency

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

The kettle sues the pot. YouTube's new partnership takes on TikTok. Why Amazon's ads business has been surging lately. And the final ruling: Do hashtags even matter any more?Links to today's stories 📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us🌟 Rate and Review UsGO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • CancelMORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital📞 Need marketing advice? Leave us a voicemail and we’ll get an expert to help you free!🤝 Our SlackUPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and CoursesToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Tuesday, August 20th. Today, the kettle sues the pot, YouTube's new partnership takes on TikTok, why Amazon's ads business has been surging lately, and the final ruling, do hashtags even matter anymore? I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify, giving creators access to thousands of new brands to tag in their shopping videos. This marks a big increase from the few hundred brands that they currently have access to. All eligible Shopify Plus and advanced merchants in the US

can now sign up for the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program. This expanded partnership is really a shot over the bow at TikTok, which is trying to grow its TikTok shop business in the US to $17.5 billion. That platform expects to have half a million US merchants on its shop by the end of this year. YouTube is also launching a new Chrome extension that will let US creators in the affiliate program save products while browsing a brand or retailer site. This should make it easier to tag them in videos later. This expansion of the affiliate program comes as YouTube has increased its e-commerce efforts in recent years

to bring in more revenue amid a slowdown in digital advertising. In 2023, people watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, with a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop. Google says it's mostly fixed the widespread bug in search ranking that started late last week. Friday morning, Google reported on its status page that the issue was affecting a large number of search results. SE Roundtable reports today that it's not completely fixed on the backend,

but the front-facing errors have been patched. So the visible effect, at least, isn't there anymore. Yesterday, Google search analyst John Mueller posted on LinkedIn saying, quote, unfortunately, the team isn't quite happy with calling it complete just yet. He's talking about the bug there. John Mueller posted on LinkedIn saying, quote, Unfortunately, the team isn't quite happy with calling it complete just yet. He's talking about the bug there. I don't think there's any visible effect anymore, though. So we said we'll update again in two days, unquote. The bug apparently

came from the August core update, which rolled out the day prior to all this happening. Google used to give marketers a lot more detail about what these core updates updated. This time we got a fairly vague description from Mueller, quote, this update aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made so we can continue to service the best of the web. This includes small or independent sites that are creating useful original content on relevant searches, unquote. It wasn't clear exactly how the bug impacted listings, but it's worth going and checking to see where your brand sits in a day or two. And while we're here, an update on that baffling bug

we reported on a couple of weeks back that saw advertisers running ads for other brands from Merchant Center, sometimes competitors of theirs. Some affected marketers are posting screenshots of emails they've received from Google, but those who had their ads dropped into other accounts, Google says it's asked the managers of those accounts really, really nicely to, you know,

please delete all that stuff and the creative and the data, which, I mean, I'm sure they did, right? year's growth rate. Amazon's vast user and strong customer intent data allow it to offer highly targeted advertising. eMarketer has a great breakdown of this space today, quoting one of their analysts, Jerry Goldman, quote, that's something you can charge quite a bit for. These are highly motivated, targeted customers, so you're not interrupting them, unquote. Closed loop measurement and real time feedback about what is and isn't working is also driving advertiser demand, said Goldman. Quote, that's something advertisers have told me is a major portion of why they keep coming back to Amazon and why they're willing to spend a lot

more on a per-click basis, unquote. Plus, Amazon's been continually expanding ad placements, like new spots on Prime Video. That has significant potential, and it feeds its own data ecosystem. Information from engagement on Prime Video ads gets added to customer records. This, of course, helps the retail media side of the business. And Amazon continues to invest heavily in content rights, like its $1.8 billion annual NBA deal starting next year. In another sign that the social world is going vertical, Instagram is testing a new vertical grid display on user profiles. Currently, profiles have both a traditional square-shaped thumbnail image for feed posts

and a separate tab for Reels thumbnails. This new thing is sort of a hybrid, where thumbnails are taller, though not quite 16 by 9, and they're all in a single tab. The new format, of course, better aligning with Reels. In formatting, it essentially translates the Reels grid to the main feed. Instagram's head Adam Masari explained in a recent Q&A that this update, or a variation of it, is likely coming to all users and soon. He said the vast majority of content uploaded to Instagram today is vertical, either 4x3 photos or 9x16 videos. Cropping these to squares is pretty brutal, he said.

This could change your brand's content strategy if you're one of those which meticulously plans the layout of that Instagram profile grid, this is something that isn't as popular to do as it once was. But several third-party tools like Sprout Social and Buffer both have profile grid preview tools for those who still really want to do this. Here's another reason to consider dropping hashtags from your brand's organic social media posts. LinkedIn has introduced semantic matching to its search system, letting it understand content beyond just keyword hashtags. This, LinkedIn says, will let it provide more relevant search results,

even if the posts don't contain all the query keywords. LinkedIn measures the success of its search engine on both topic matching and dwell time. In other words, how much time people spend reading content that surfaces from a search. The platform says this new system has led to a significant boost in overall discovery with on-topic rate and long dwells increasing by more than 10%. This is part of an industry-wide trend. Platforms from LinkedIn to Facebook to Instagram have relied less on hashtags for discovery and more on understanding the content using machine learning. That's probably a good thing for most users, but hashtags certainly have a place for helping

link less obscure content together. Think of a conference hashtag or those which link content with only videos. There is, of course, a rebound effect. Some networks, like Mastodon and Blue Sky, both still use hashtags extensively, as neither has a single algorithm making the decision on what content surfaces. So what should marketers do? Well, if you're running out of space in the post on a major platform, it's probably fine to drop the hashtags.

No platforms say they penalize posts for having them, so if you want to include one or two, that's probably just fine. Just try to use hashtags that don't repeat words in the main post. Elon Musk's ex continues to see a drop in users. While the company, which is now private, no longer shares the volume of data it did when it was public, it still has some reporting requirements in some regions, notably the EU.

X's latest report, provided to comply with the EU Digital Services Act, shows a 5% decline in European users in the first half of 2024. Despite this, X has actually seen a 10% increase in logged-in users versus non-logged-in guests since last year. Some people believe this is likely due to X restricting the number of posts that non-users can see. The EU data reflects similar trends seen in other reports, suggesting X is experiencing a slow decline in interest rather than a massive shift. Similar web data shows UK X usage also steadily declining over time,

while usage on threads that's met as a new competitor to X is slowly rising. The overall trends could indicate that Musk's free speech approach isn't resonating with most users or perhaps that his own political commentary is turning people off from the app. The platform has not added any daily active users since November of 2022.

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Some of those brands included GlaxoSmithKline, the British Medical Association, and even the International Olympics Committee. According to the group, five key UK accounts pushing lies and hate amassed 260 million views in the week following the Southport attack on July 29th. X presented ads for well-known brands near their content. The CCDH also notes that many of the more incendiary profiles posting about the riots are part of X's creator ad revenue share program, meaning X is effectively paying these users to post controversial remarks. Elon Musk himself is amplifying comments from controversial spokespeople, including a post just yesterday by Tommy Robinson, whose anti-Islamic sentiments are believed to have played a significant role in sparking the recent riots.

This new report likely won't help boost X's standing with advertisers, many of whom are already scaling back or halting their X spend due to concerns over their ads appearing next to harmful content. And finally, pot meet kettle. In a civil complaint filed this morning in the U.S., the Chinese fast fashion giant Sheen has accused its rival Timu of copying its products and selling counterfeits. Sheen claims Timu masquerades as a legitimate marketplace while controlling every aspect of its seller's activity. The lawsuit alleges that Timu reproduces virtually identical copyrighted images of Sheen products and uses them as promotional images on its website and mobile app. Sheen also says Timu

is impersonating their company on social media. Sheen itself, of course, has long faced accusations of design theft from major fashion brands and independent artists. The two retailers have a long history of legal battles. Last year, Timu sued Sheen, alleging mafia-style intimidation of manufacturers. Sheen has also accused Timu of contracting influencers to make false statements about it. Sheen is requesting a trial by jury in this case. And we have a classified ad to wrap up. a trial by jury in this case. Fetica gives you insights you can't get anywhere else. Get free cross-platform scheduling at Fetica.com.

That's F-E-D-I-C-A dot com. That's it for today. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Two weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency. Three weapons are fear and surprise and roof misoficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

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