Today in Digital Marketing - Google's 'Get' Got Glitched

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, November 9th. Today, Google's ad enforcement bots may be a little drunk, TikTok at risk of losing its most important asset, YouTube extends ad frequency controls, the anti-Photoshop just got a big upgrade, and Twitter launches the new Verified program, and an hour later, cancels it. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. We start with a strange bug that appeared to be plaguing Google's ad platform yesterday. Several marketers reporting on social media that ads and extensions with the word get in them were all getting denied. The director of search strategy at Jumpfly said it was happening across at least

Starting point is 00:00:42 30 of their ad accounts, possibly more. In their case, Google was flagging it for violating its unapproved substances policy. One person on social said, I've ingested my fair share of unapproved substances in my youth, but get was not one of them. And unlike other ad platforms, I'm looking at you meta, Google's notifications will actually tell you what exactly triggered the denial. And right in that email, quote, text contains get. Dozens of others posted screenshots of their own ad denials, all for the same reason, and all triggering on the same word. Someone found an ad from Google itself, though, with the word get in it. It does seem like it was a temporary bug. However, if you run Google ads and aren't on top of your emails,

Starting point is 00:01:31 it might be worth going in to see if you got got. There is a fight brewing over at TikTok, and it may soon affect your brand's posts there, specifically the music you use. Music is part of TikTok's ethos and comes with a generous catalog of music licensed from the major record labels. Labels which have seen how popular TikTok has become and now want more money. This time, in addition to the flat license fees they charge now, labels also want a cut of the ad revenue. Universal, Sony, and Warner Music are all asking TikTok for this, in addition to an increase in the regular royalties it pays them for music rights. One label executive who spoke to Bloomberg off the record said, based on deals they have with other platforms,

Starting point is 00:02:16 they thought TikTok should be paying them at least double what they're paying now, and maybe as much as 10 times more than now. Negotiations have been going on all year, and apparently there's some concern that a deal won't happen before the current contracts expire in the next few months. Some deals have already expired,

Starting point is 00:02:34 like that with Merlin, which represents independent labels. Their contract with TikTok ran out at the start of this year, and the two have been propping it up with short-term extensions while talks keep going. Don't think the labels won't pull their music.

Starting point is 00:02:46 TikTok's parent company already has a music streaming service called Rezo in Indonesia, Brazil, and India. After contract renewal talks fell apart there, Sony pulled all its music off. Still, it's a bit of an odd play for the labels, considering TikTok has probably become the world's most powerful marketing tool for musicians and recruiting tools for labels. TikTok drives people to Spotify and other music streaming sites where labels are paid per play. Indeed, TikTok has been working on a kind of end run around the labels, quoting Bloomberg. In March, the company launched Sound

Starting point is 00:03:22 On, a service that allows artists to upload their music directly to TikTok and earn royalties when that music is played. By Dance has also been looking to hire executives who can discover new performers and sign them to contracts, much like a record label would. Spotify allowed artists to upload music directly a few years ago. It shuttered the program after less than one year, unquote. One thing is clear, there's gold in those mountains, and the labels know it. Last year, TikTok earned $4 billion in revenue and is on track this year to triple that. So while TikTok is set to capture an increase in media spend, a new insider intelligence forecast says Twitter will take the hardest hit in global ad spending growth this year.

Starting point is 00:04:08 The analysts, they're slashing their outlook for Twitter's ad business through 2024 by almost 40 percent. The other companies it looked at, Amazon, Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok, are also forecast to drop, but nothing like Twitter. Quoting insider's lead analyst. Before the takeover, Twitter's ad business was already taking a beating from the economic uncertainty. Tack on Elon Musk's erratic behavior, his lack of a clear plan for Twitter's ad business, as well as fears about misinformation and a user exodus, and many advertisers are suspending their advertising on a platform that already isn't essential to many companies' media plans, unquote. Twitter's senior vice president of finance says she resigned yesterday.

Starting point is 00:04:50 She had been the most senior executive under the CFO, who had already been fired. Overall, Insider Intelligence says this year it expects only 8.6% growth in global ad spending. That is way down from its forecast earlier this year of almost 16% growth. What's causing it? Well, you've heard it before. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Apple's privacy changes, supply chain issues, inflation, and so on. Insider's forecast for Meta shows digital ad revenue there will probably be down about 2% year over year. Google might weather it a bit better since search is such a strong performer. And Amazon, too, especially its fast-growing retail network, expected to be more resilient than the pack.

Starting point is 00:05:34 One of the more common metrics marketers tend to look at in their ad managers is frequency. The average number of times a single person has seen your ad. There's no magic number to hit, other than you probably want more than one, and fewer than would piss someone off. A recent Nielsen study found, on average, TV advertisers' return on investment decreased by 41% when frequency exceeded six weekly impressions, and that number is almost half of all TV impressions served. And it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. Traditional TV viewership in the US has dropped from 100 million households to a forecast 44 million by 2025. As reach declines, the number of times an audience

Starting point is 00:06:17 sees an ad on TV increases. So no surprise then that frequency management has been in YouTube's high priority folder for some time. Earlier this year, they then that frequency management has been in YouTube's high priority folder for some time. Earlier this year, they launched a frequency management solution on display and video 360 that let you set the number of times people see your ads across YouTube and third party networks. This morning, the company announced an expansion of that with the launch of target frequency now available globally for YouTube campaigns. Target Frequency will let you set a frequency goal of up to four per week, and Google's systems will optimize toward maximum unique reach at that desired frequency. The company said in their testing, 95% of Target Frequency campaigns on YouTube successfully achieved their frequency goals when set up following recommended best practices. financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Do you remember that email you got from

Starting point is 00:07:32 Adobe a few years back? You know, the one that read, hey, glad you like Photoshop. So this is awkward, but instead of buying a copy and using it as long as you like, we're going to charge you every month for it. Nobody liked it. And at the time, software subscriptions were still a new thing. But it's now the norm in the design and marketing industry. A few software developers, though, have bucked that trend and offer tools nearly at par with Photoshop, in some cases even offering a better user experience with no monthly fee. I bought Pixelmator Pro for the Mac four years ago for 30 bucks or something and still use it. It's basically Photoshop. You can import those files, use layers, has very advanced tools,

Starting point is 00:08:10 and so on. Another tool that's even more popular than Pixelmator is the Affinity Creative Suite, which contains their photo editing, publishing, and illustration tools. Today, the company launched a huge update for that suite. Version 2 brings new features, including non-destructive raw development, which allows designers to change develop settings even after adjusting a file, compound masking, live mesh warping, and the ability to save different visibility states of your layer stack. It's also a really cool x-ray view now that shows the makeup of your work and can be used to select a specific curve or object.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Affinity Designer, their vector illustration software, now has vector warping, DWG and DXF file imports and other things. And Affinity Publisher can handle much larger documents and now lets you combine separate publisher documents as chapters to create one long publication. There's also now an iPad version, which means the entire Affinity suite is now available on Mac, PC, and iPad. It's on sale now for 99 bucks for the full set. Pay once, use it forever. You can also buy the standalone applications individually for 40 bucks.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Meta today announced it was laying off more than 11,000 employees. That's about 13% of the company's total staff. Reports say the entire agency and partner relations team in Canada was let go. Prior to the layoffs, Meta had about 1,800 people in Canada. It was only eight months ago when Meta said it would hire up to 2,500 people in the country over the next five years as part of a new Canadian engineering hub. In a regulatory filing, the company said it expected its much hyped VR division, Reality Labs, would lose money again next year and those operating losses, will grow significantly year over year. So far, since the division's launch in 2019,

Starting point is 00:10:02 Meta has spent $36 billion on the long bet, its operating loss more than $30 billion. In a memo to employees today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he took responsibility for the fast growth and confirmed the company was making cuts in every division, including its main apps. This year, Meta lost its position as one of the world's 20 most valuable companies. Insider noted in a piece today that, quote, Meta is now worth about $250 billion less than Home Depot, a seller of wrenches and flower pots, unquote. Oof. Why you gotta do them like that? And finally, Elon Musk and a couple of his executives held a kind of meandering Twitter space this morning,

Starting point is 00:10:48 mostly repeating the same talking points he said before. He said the future of advertising is making ads relevant to the audience. Genius, I tell you. One thing he didn't address, the confused rollout and then apparent cancellation of its new double verified system. This morning, many previously verified accounts were given a secondary badge labeled official. This new gray checkmark was touted as the way Twitter would address concerns over brand impersonation. Lots of people and organizations noticed it on their accounts.

Starting point is 00:11:21 And then a couple of hours later, that second badge was suddenly gone. Lots of people tweeted their confusion, and Elon Musk clarified everything by replying to one of them saying, I just killed it. You can't make this up. The new gray badge was announced by the product manager in charge of the feature only last night. This morning, after Musk's tweet, she hastily tweeted, I'm paraphrasing her here, no, no, everything's fine. Don't worry about it, guys. We're just rolling it out differently now. Apparently, they're starting with organizations and politicians first now, but honestly, nobody's really sure. I think my favorite reaction was from author John Green, who posted, I feel so bad for the people

Starting point is 00:12:03 who are coding Twitter today. Like, it's already been a stressful week. But then in comes the boss every five minutes to announce, I am re-uncancelling my uncancelled cancellation of official status. The media outlet TechCrunch, one of those accounts that had the new official badge for a couple of hours before it went poof, actually put out a statement saying, quote, We at TechCrunch were thrilled to be recognized as official by Twitter.

Starting point is 00:12:25 We will always look back on our time as official with fond recollection and a sense of immense pride. Special thanks to our community for sticking with us through this trying time, unquote. All of which makes the bio on Twitter's own Twitter account eerily prescient. It reads, What's happening? I never knew it'd be like this. Got me crying, tears in my face, I'm frustrated. Next week will be a special week here at the podcast,

Starting point is 00:12:57 a major programming announcement coming tomorrow. I'm Todd Maffin. See you then. This is wild. Nobody warned me about this. Wild. Feels like I'm living Maffin. See you then.

Today in Digital Marketing - Google's 'Get' Got Glitched

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