Today in Digital Marketing - fRiEnDSHIp endeD WItH gErMANY. Now FrANce IS my BesT frieND.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, March 6th. Today, why do Germans hate social media? Will a government threat finally convince Meta to better support hacking victims? YouTube Shorts gets easier to measure. And Facebook abandoned it, but LinkedIn picks it up. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a 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.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Attorneys general from 41 American states have sent a letter to Meta saying they're putting the company on notice over a surge in stolen Facebook and Instagram accounts. Hackers commonly use phishing to take over accounts, then use the ad account's credit card on file to run spammy crypto ads, or get access to the victim's DMs and start sending even more phishing attempts to their contacts. Many marketers say when it's happened to them,

Starting point is 00:01:10 getting a human being at Meta to even review the issue is nearly impossible. Some just give up, cancel their credit card and start over with a new account, basically having to rebuild their brand presence from scratch. That letter in part reads, quote, we've received a number of complaints of threat actors fraudulently charging thousands of dollars to stored credit cards. We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company. Proper investment in responsive mitigation is mandatory, unquote. For its part, Meta says they try to combat fraud

Starting point is 00:01:44 through specialized detection tools and cooperation with law enforcement. Statistics from New York reveal a tenfold increase in complaints from 2019 to 2023, with a significant rise in complaints in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Vermont. This uptick coincided with Meta's layoffs of about 11,000 employees in 2022, although a direct connection to the increase in account theft complaints remains uncertain. For now, this letter is just a letter. It doesn't have any legislative or enforcement teeth, but at least it's on some radars.

Starting point is 00:02:21 If you've ever run an ad campaign and targeted all countries, or perhaps you're in Europe and you targeted Germany specifically, you may have wondered why that country's metrics looked a little off. It turns out that while Germans are online, a new study from the Pew Research Center says, comparatively speaking, they're not really on social media. Germans stand out globally for their low engagement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Despite 93% of German adults having internet access, only 51% dive into social media, marking the largest gap seen in past Pew Research surveys. Compared to neighboring Western European countries where two-thirds of the population are social media users,

Starting point is 00:03:03 Germany's numbers are notably lower. Even in regions with less internet usage, like South Africa, a higher percentage of the population embraces social media than in Germany. Interestingly, this trend holds true across all age groups in Germany, with young adults under 40 showing a surprisingly low social media usage rate of 79%, despite universal internet access among them. This is a stark contrast to countries like France, where 90% of young adults are active on social media. The reasons behind Germany's unique stance on social media remains unclear.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Access to the internet isn't an issue, and Germans don't have a significantly more negative perception of social media's impact on society. In fact, a majority believe it's been beneficial for democracy. and Germans don't have a significantly more negative perception of social media's impact on society. In fact, a majority believe it's been beneficial for democracy, a sentiment more widely held in Germany than in many other surveyed countries. Reddit is ramping up its efforts to attract more ad dollars as its much-anticipated public offering looms on the horizon, the social platform, which relies almost entirely on ads for its revenue, has posted 32 job openings for its ad sales team to prepare for its stock market debut.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And in a bid to woo advertisers, Reddit has been hosting agency days, similar to practices by other platforms trying to convince marketers to try it out. But there might be a problem. Reddit has always emphasized contextual advertising as its cornerstone. If you want to reach gardeners, you run ads in the gardening community. This is how platforms like Facebook started, by targeting what people indicated were their interest, though it soon outgrew that fairly basic approach, and now almost no metamarketers use interests targeting as their primary method. The online ad industry has grown up a lot since those early days,

Starting point is 00:04:53 so it'll be interesting to see if Reddit can catch up and offer more contemporary targeting options. Comscore is expanding its YouTube measurement tools to include YouTube Shorts and viewership across YouTube's connected TV service, desktop, and mobile. And if you're still not convinced how important Shorts are these days, consider this. YouTube Shorts now see more than 70 billion views per day. And the number of channels uploading Shorts has grown by 50% year over year. Of course, the format's only three years old, so you might expect numbers like that. Quoting social media today, the new update will enable Comscore customers to measure the performance of YouTube

Starting point is 00:05:36 shorts and in-feed inventory, in addition to YouTube's standard video placement. Comscore's campaign ratings will also be extended to YouTube's masthead ads in the coming months. Essentially, brands will now have additional third-party verification of their YouTube performance metrics, which will provide more assurance and more options to accurately measure response to their YouTube campaigns. Unquote. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free.

Starting point is 00:06:14 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. Amazon recently ventured into new AI territory with Rufus, a chatbot designed to help shoppers find and compare products in its mobile app. Launched last month and rolled out to early testers, Rufus promised to ease the shopping experience. Users can engage with it by swiping

Starting point is 00:06:45 up or tapping the search bar. So how's it been doing so far? The pretty deep dive published this week on TechCrunch found it's pretty good at navigating questions about product attributes and recommendations, even linking to relevant items with brief explanations. But like most AI, it occasionally misses the mark, providing irrelevant suggestions. Interestingly, Rufus doesn't exclusively promote Amazon's own products, which might be more about antitrust lawsuit fears than genuine good faith, but whatever, we'll take it. And since it is a chatbot, you can also ask questions outside of shopping, like who won specific sports events or questions about political history. There is a whole lot it can't do. It can't manage orders, process returns, or create wish lists, at least not yet. Amazon has not said when it plans to roll the tech out more fully.

Starting point is 00:07:40 LinkedIn is switching its focus from individual creators to partnering with more than 400 news publishers. This aims to tap into the platform's recent surge in engagement, with a 22% increase in main feed updates views and a 25% rise in public conversations over the last year. It's certainly an interesting move, especially given Meta's recent abandonment of news on its platforms, deprioritizing it in threads and on Facebook, and straight up blocking it in Canada. Yes, that pissing match is still at a stalemate. LinkedIn is also expanding its podcast network and testing new video sponsorship programs with some news sites. This obviously trying to get into the lucrative video ads business. And their focus on newsletters has seen a significant uptick, with the platform reporting a 150%

Starting point is 00:08:25 increase in publications by journalists and news publishers in the past year. The premium version of this podcast is just like this one, but with no ads, better sound quality, audio chapters, and comes with access to my course on building a small agency and a bunch more. Tap Go Premium in the show notes if you want to sign up or get more information. I am still sick. I took a COVID test yesterday.

Starting point is 00:08:51 It came up negative. So I guess it's just a cold. I am going to bed after I put this out. With any luck, see you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - fRiEnDSHIp endeD WItH gErMANY. Now FrANce IS my BesT frieND.

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