Today in Digital Marketing - For Whom the Dell Tolls 🔔

Starting point is 00:00:01 Today, more detail on where marketing budgets are going. Will your commerce platform make the same overpricing mistake Dell did? WordPress unveils an AI writing assistant. And on the Premium Podcast, our Google Ads correspondent Jill Saskengales gives us all the details behind the platform's two new campaign types, Video Views and Demand Gen. It's Wednesday, June 7th. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, Today in Digital Marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Starting this week, we are adding two regular columnists to the show. I'm thrilled that they've signed on. They are among the world's top experts on their platforms, both of which you've heard here from time to time. Andrew Foxwill on the Meta Ads platform and Jill Saskengales on the Google Ads platform. They will be joining us every week now with the latest changes to the platforms, insights and more. Today, Jill joins me to talk about the details of Google's two new campaign types, video views and demand gen. We also talked about an important report setup issue with GA4. In the coming weeks, we will be adding an SEO columnist and even a TikTok ad platform columnist.

Starting point is 00:01:06 These weekly columns will be exclusive for premium members. So if you have not made the plunge yet, now is the time because the premium podcast is 25% off for this week only. You can sign up by tapping the Go Premium link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash premium. Rest assured, we will continue to cover both platforms in the regular podcast. These columns are just for people who need that extra level of detail. So again, tap go premium in the show notes or head to todayindigital.com slash premium because the 25% off sale ends at the end of the week. Be careful how you promote your product online because one computer manufacturer is paying the price for what the Australian federal court said this week

Starting point is 00:01:54 was a deceptive practice. According to a government declaration, Dell misled online shoppers by implying adding a monitor to their purchase would get them a discount on the display. Problem is, actually, some customers ended up paying more for that monitor than if they'd bought it by itself. Quoting Ars Technica, the website would display the add-on price alongside a higher price that had a strikethrough line, suggesting that the monitor was typically sold

Starting point is 00:02:22 at the price with the line going through it, but the customers would get a discount if they added it to their cart at purchase. However, the strikethrough prices weren't actually representative of what Dell was charging for the monitors most of the time before the purported discount. The Australian federal court also found that Dell's Australian website used deceptive language, including includes X percent off total savings plus a dollar amount and discounted price and a dollar amount, unquote. The Australian court ordered Dell's regional division to refund affected customers and hire an independence compliance consultant. For its part, Dell acknowledged the issue. Again, Arts Technica reporter Sharon Harding,

Starting point is 00:03:07 quote, it's no secret that online marketplaces with third-party sellers use dodgy practices. For example, I've seen various vendors on Amazon claim that a year's old price is the typical price of a product. The surefire way to ensure you're getting a good price is to compare rivals. Just because a Dell monitor, for example, is technically discounted from its recent MSRP,

Starting point is 00:03:30 it doesn't mean it's the best value among monitors with similar specs. For marketers, this is a cautionary tale to not only inspect what you've put into your commerce listings, but also to double-check the commerce platform's own adjustments. In this new world of AI automatically changing things on the fly, with the promise of adapting offers to each individual buyer, that AI bot might just adapt your product into a fine. To combine your accounts or not to combine your accounts. Until now, it's not been a choice you could have made on Meta's platform. Your activity will be combined across its services whether you wanted it to or not.

Starting point is 00:04:15 But now, that's a choice that users might be able to make soon. The German federal cartel officer announced it has forced Meta to create a new account center, which will give users more choice about whether they consent to Meta combining their data across its services. In its coverage today, TechCrunch said, quote, this will be the first time Meta has provided such a degree of choice over its cross-site tracking and profiling of users. However, it's notable the competition authority is not entirely impressed with what Meta has cooked up. Quote, using the services in combined form would allow them to use additional functionalities such as cross-posting, where a post is simultaneously published across

Starting point is 00:04:55 several social media outlets, but then Meta could use the combined data for advertising purposes, unquote. Still with TechCrunch, so if you want to cross-post, you have to agree to be profiled across its services. Hence, presumably, the FCO's qualification that the choice it's offering users is not entirely free. This may sound like splitting hairs, but it's an important legal distinction, since European Union and German data protection law demands that if you're relying on consent to process people's information, an individual's decision to grant consent must be informed, purpose-specific, i.e. not bundled, and freely given, unquote. This is really just the opening salvo in a fight

Starting point is 00:05:36 that will still be going on over the next few weeks. The German order actually came in 2019, but Meta appealed, and now the Europeans' top court is expected to rule on it in about a month. Industry speculation is that this revised account center is Meta's way of hedging in case that decision doesn't go its way. More interesting, though, I thought, was news that Meta plans to switch to this new account center globally, not just for users in Germany. It should start to roll out later this month do you have business insurance if not how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack fire damage

Starting point is 00:06:15 theft or a lawsuit no business or profession is risk-free without insurance your assets are at risk from major financial losses data bre breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Determining where to allocate marketing budgets can be a complex task, particularly in the realm of social channels. New Digiday research published yesterday found marketers have diverse approaches to budgeting and content for each platform. Today, we look at the second half of that research, specifically their recommendations on where advertisers should open their wallets. Instagram and Facebook received the majority of budget allocations in 2022 and 2023 so far.

Starting point is 00:06:58 But as we reported yesterday, TikTok outpaced YouTube last year, indicating its rapid rise in popularity among marketers despite being a relatively new platform. But not everyone in the industry is optimistic about TikTok's potential as a marketing platform. The report indicated that brand respondents expressed less confidence in TikTok compared to Instagram. The report suggests that challenges with the platform as a marketing tool, unpredictability in viral content, and the possibility of a U.S. ban have eroded marketers' trust in TikTok's stability for brands. In contrast, Instagram saw a boost in marketer confidence during the same period. Despite some marketers considering a shift away from Meta's platforms, this indicates many still have faith in Meta's performance. On the other hand, Twitter, Reddit, and Snapchat received lower budget allocations.

Starting point is 00:07:54 While marketing budgets are lower on these platforms, Digiday points out, it doesn't necessarily mean a lower presence. Instead, brands are better off using them to listen to consumer sentiment and engage organically rather than investing their ad dollars as performance marketing is not the primary focus of those platforms. A potential new opportunity for revenue from TikTok as the app expands its series subscription option, which lets brands and creators paywall certain content. As Social Media Today explains, quote, series creators are able to include up to 80 videos in each series set, up to 20 minutes long each, essentially facilitating long form content subscriptions

Starting point is 00:08:38 within the app. Creators can charge anywhere between $1 to $190 for their series subscriptions. Initially, series was only available to select creators, but now TikTok has set more broad parameters of who can sign up, with all creators over the age of 18 who have over 10,000 followers able to activate the program, pending regional availability, of course. Monetization for creators is a high priority for TikTok, as other competitors like YouTube and Instagram keep trying to swoop up their biggest content machines. Again, socialmediatoday.com, quote,

Starting point is 00:09:16 Right now, each app is working to sweeten its respective monetization model, and TikTok, in particular, still needs to establish better review share options to keep creators happy. Series could be a big step on this front by enabling creators to share and reshare long form content in the app. That'll give creators more ways to maximize audience reach and more options to make money from their content, unquote. You can learn more about TikTok series at newsroom.tiktok.com. Look for the blog post titled, Introducing a New Way for Creators to Share Premium Content with Series.

Starting point is 00:10:00 And finally, Automatic, the company behind the wildly popular web platform WordPress, has launched, yes, you guessed it, an AI bot. It's to be baked into their Jetpack plugin, which does a bunch of side things like simpler analytics and email lists, some of which for an extra fee. The AI bot shows up as a new block type when you're writing a post or a page. That block is called AI Assistant. You can type in natural language and the bot will start writing copy for you. It can also create lists or tables. More relevant to the type of content on blogs or webpages, their new bot can even change the tone of content to make it less formal, more chummy, or even skeptical or empathetic. Like many similar

Starting point is 00:10:38 bots these days, it can create a summary for the post and suggest titles for it. The new AI supports 12 languages including Spanish, French, Korean, Chinese, and Hindi, and can do translation between languages. The company says its spelling and grammar suggestions are better than the current WordPress tools, but it won't be free. It'll cost $10 a month after you use up your first 20 free samples. All right, people over 40, I know your ears just perked up if you are under 40 or maybe didn't watch a lot of TV. That is the closing theme song to WKRP in Cincinnati. I have kind of a weird contest for you that's going to run the next few days.

Starting point is 00:11:22 What were the lyrics to this song? I'm going to play it in a moment. And by the way, ChatGPT has the answer, so if you really want to have fun, don't go and ask it. So, listen carefully. Here we go. Remember the premium podcast on sale this week only. Tap Go Premium in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:12:01 See you tomorrow. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - For Whom the Dell Tolls 🔔

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