Today in Digital Marketing - Forget 1st and 3rd Party Data. Meet SECOND-Party Data.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, in the looming battle between first-party data and third-party data, won't somebody think of the middle child? Yelp may label your location a COVID risk, Agorapulse is about to raise its prices, the former head of Facebook ads has a new job, and how one small internet provider's oddball reaction to American politics may be messing up your social advertising reach. It's Tuesday, January 12th, 2021. Happy National Youth Day, India. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:36 You don't have to be in the digital marketing space long before you find a competitor's website that ranks better than your website, even though their website uses spammy techniques to get there. And you may have wanted to ask Google, what gives? They're keyword stuffing and getting ahead of real sites. There is actually a way to ask Google these questions. One of their search engineers, John Mueller, does a weekly live stream where you can jump in and ask any question you like. So someone did with that very question. And John's reply was a little surprising. For the first time, I think, he confirmed that Google knows a site is doing shady things, but rather than derank them, sometimes they just ignore it.

Starting point is 00:01:19 For some things, we can recognize that a website is doing something badly, and we try to ignore that. And I think that ignoring option is really important and really a strong part of our algorithms, because that means that even if you follow bad advice from the internet somewhere, it's not that your website will automatically be discarded and never shown in search, but rather we recognize, oh, you're using keyword

Starting point is 00:01:46 stuffing on your pages, and we can just ignore that keyword stuffing, and we'll focus on the good parts of your pages. So if you get weird advice from friends or from the internet about your website, and you follow that advice, and we can recognize that you're trying to do something sneaky there, then we'll try to ignore that and instead focus on the good parts of your website. This revelation surprised me a little. Until now, we've always thought Google gives a lower score to shady stuff, not ignores it outright. One tip he did offer was a reminder to poll your users every so often. We did a blog post specifically, I think, for the core updates and for the Panda update at a time with lots of questions you can ask yourself

Starting point is 00:02:26 or you can ask users about your website. And that's the kind of thing that I would take and do a user study and maybe find 10, 20 users of your website and go through these questions in an objective way to really get input on where you can improve your website, not purely from a technical level, but also kind of from a user level as well. User polling is important, of course, but don't always take your user's word for it. At our agency, we work with a number of shopping centers doing a bunch of stuff,

Starting point is 00:02:59 engagement and moderation, social ad campaigns, and a big chunk is organic content. We do poll their fan base a couple of times a year with a short survey asking what content they prefer to see on the feed. Almost without exception, the option for deals and sales alerts ranks at the bottom of the survey almost every time. And yet, despite what people say in the survey, posts about sales are among the highest engagement posts. So, as with everything in our strange world, grain of salt. Merkle's customer engagement report is out for the year and the company's forecast suggests the top issue digital marketers will be wrestling with in 2021 is first-party data. That's information you've collected about your own customers on your own properties,

Starting point is 00:03:51 like websites and apps. But our industry has relied on third-party data, collected by organizations without a direct connection to the customer since forever. And with this continued trend toward privacy and anti-tracking, we could expect much less third-party data. But Merkel suggests there's another route, something you'll likely hear more about this year, second-party data. Quoting MarketingDive.com, this includes data shared via non-competitive partnerships, like a Buick tie-up with Amazon that sought to promote both the car brand and Amazon's Alexa. Second-party data is also shared via retail networks, which continue to proliferate among retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, CVS Pharmacy, Kroger, Target, and Walgreens. These networks help marketers tap

Starting point is 00:04:37 the data that retailers collect about consumers when they are close to making a purchase. A previous study by the IAB found that 41% of ad buyers didn't know if their stakeholders understand the ramifications of third-party cookies' demise and the changes to identifiers suggesting the road ahead could be a bumpy one. Heads up if you run marketing for a bricks and mortar location that's on Yelp. The company today announcing it will let users report places that are not complying with local COVID regulations. And if enough people report it, you will end up with a warning label. This from Streetfightmag.com, quote, Compliant businesses will display a green check.

Starting point is 00:05:23 Non-compliant businesses will receive an orange question mark on their profiles. The company says that these indicators extend only to masks and social distancing today because these are the health and safety precautions that can be most easily observed by customers. It's unclear how these indicators will impact business, though the earlier Yelp data suggest compliant businesses will see potentially greater engagement and revenue. Yelp explains that a number of criteria must be met before either the green check or orange question mark will appear. There must be enough responses to show a consensus. Only logged-in users can participate, and only responses received within the past 28 days will be considered.

Starting point is 00:06:03 In franchise cases, each location will be treated separately based on feedback for that location, unquote. Yelp also added some new attributes you can apply to your profile, including staff checked for symptoms and disposable or contactless menu. The social media platform Agora Pulse today warned that its prices are going up next month. Quoting the company, we've been able to add more than 30 features over the past two years without any change in our pricing, unquote. A quick fact check here, that's not entirely true.

Starting point is 00:06:38 One of the features they point to, in fact, probably one of the biggest features they've added in that time, was an enhanced reporting tool. That tool does indeed cost extra. But Agorapulse has been one of the best values in the social media space. It says starting February 2nd, prices will increase for new customers. Current customers will keep their existing pricing for now. We asked what this new pricing would be. They said they have not made that information public yet. If your business relies on targeting people in the North Idaho and Spokane, Washington area,

Starting point is 00:07:17 you may have noticed some strange numbers coming back on your social ad campaigns. That's because a local internet provider is blocking Facebook and Twitter from its Wi-Fi services. Apparently, that's some kind of retaliation against the deplatforming of outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump. The provider, called YourT1WiFi, emailed its customers this week saying, quote, It has come to our attention that Twitter and Facebook are engaged in censorship of our customers and information. Our company does not believe a website or social networking site has, well, censor what their customers see.

Starting point is 00:07:56 Because that'll show them, I guess. Customers do have to request this. It won't happen to all their customers. And some media are reporting the move could actually violate Washington's net neutrality laws. Idaho doesn't have similar legislation. Not all customers are happy, though. Krista Yepp, interviewed by local station KREM, said, I don't want to pay almost $800 to a person or company or whatever that's this unhinged and this kind of down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Also, side note, your T1 Wi-Fi, that's the company name. T1.

Starting point is 00:08:34 T1 speeds were like a big deal a long time ago. But nowadays, this is like trying to convince the market that you are a future looking brand by adding 2000 at the end of your name. Anyway, if you are seeing a little bit brand by adding 2000 at the end of your name. Anyway, if you are seeing a little bit of strangeness in your reach numbers for that geographic area, that could be why, but honestly, this is not going to move the needle that much. Earlier this month, we reported that over the holidays, Rob Leatherne, head of Facebook ads, left the company rather abruptly at the end of December. Now we know why. Today, he announced his next gig. He'll be joining Google's Privacy and Data Protection Office to lead product development there. And finally, Facebook had a bug this

Starting point is 00:09:19 morning that prevented third-party tools from posting reliably to the platform. That appears to have been fixed now. A special episode tomorrow with Apple set to turn on aggressive anti-tracking prompts on its devices. Where does that leave digital marketers? Will we be able to retarget at all? Will our top performing audiences suddenly drop off a cliff? Tomorrow, Andrew Hutchinson from socialmediatoday.com joins me for a deep dive into IDFA, first-party data, and how this forthcoming strange new world will change the way you run your digital marketing programs forever. So that's tomorrow, and I will be back the day after that for the regular roundup of developments in our space.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Until then.

Today in Digital Marketing - Forget 1st and 3rd Party Data. Meet SECOND-Party Data.

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