Today in Digital Marketing - How "Audience Networks" are Gaming the Podcast Ad World

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

A big day at Google with dozens of announcements — we have all the details for you. Also: How crappy mobile games are helping podcast networks game their numbers... Meta adds new Call Ads... Instagram decides it wants to be Twitter now... and the best days and times to run a sales webinar.  ✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨   ✓ Ad-free episodes  ✓ Story links in show notes  ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions  ✓ Better audio quality  ✓ Live event replays  ✓ Audio chapters  ✓ Earlier release time  ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts  ✓ and more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed ✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📰 Get the Newsletter: Get It (daily or weekly)📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad • Classifieds🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review 🎤 Follow: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page/Group👨🏻‍💼 Follow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok ------------------------------------🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses 👍 TOOLS WE RECOMMEND• Social media mgmt: Sprout Social and Agorapulse• Marketing tools: Appsumo• Podcast recording: Riverside.FM💡 MARKETING SPOTLIGHTNeed more leads for your business or agency?Malthus helps you connect with new prospects and leads for your business or agency needs to help drive sales and growth. Check it out! ------------------------------------ Today 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. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source AudioSome 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's Wednesday, September 28th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, a big day at Google with dozens of announcements. We have all the details for you. Also, how crappy mobile games are helping podcast networks gain their numbers. Meta adds new callbacks. Instagram decides it wants to be Twitter now. And the best days and times to run a sales webinar. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

So Google held its Search On event today, and a few things to bring you up to speed on there. First, something we digital marketers always like, they are making it easier for consumers to buy things. Starting today in the US, you'll be able to type shop, and then whatever you want to buy, and that will open up a visual feed of products

and nearby inventory related to that product. There are also some filter chips at the top to narrow things down. The example they showed also notably included vertical format stories showing some products. This is basically a move from the shopping menu into the main search results. For now, it's only on mobile.

They say it's coming to desktop soon. As part of that, they'll also service accessories that go with the product you're looking for, something they're calling Shop the Look. So if you're looking at shirts, it might suggest a necklace that would pair well. Another new feature being added is trending products that will show you what products are popular at that moment within a category. This, again, will be only in the U.S. for the time being, and it will be coming this fall. And one big announcement is that they are moving their automated 3D tech out of the lab and putting it into search pages. You might recall we reported on this a couple of months back. They were taking static images from your product catalog, those that showed multiple angles of a product like, say, a sneaker.

And it would make a 3D model of it that would product like, say, a sneaker. And it would make a 3D model of it that would spin slowly. Honestly, it looks great, like you'd shot it spinning around. To be fair, eBay has had this for a while now. This too will be coming in the coming months, and only for sneakers for some reason for the time being. Other changes they announced today, any parameter changes that you've filtered on, like size or color preference, will become sticky and not reset when the user comes back to Google. Some buying guides, which are essentially repurposed knowledge panels. In the Google mobile app, when people are on a product page, a panel at the bottom can fly up providing more details, like the product's ratings. That'll also be in the US in the coming months, along with a way to

use that panel to subscribe to price drop alerts. They also announced a bunch of non-shopping changes, updates to their main search engine, a more immersive view inside buildings and maps, and a way to search for a restaurant by typing in a specific dish. That covers most of it, but you can read their details on their blog, which is at blog.google. Industry reaction today seemed mostly positive and noted that this just really solidifies the trend toward exploration rather than searching for a specific answer. Quoting The Verge, underlying the announcements, there is a big shift happening inside of Google search engine. The rules of the game have always relied on the idea that there is a single right

answer out there somewhere. And all you had to do to get it was ask Google the exact right question. But increasingly, Google is embracing the idea that search isn't a question and answer system. It's a system for exploration, for discovery, for trying to learn things about which there are no obvious answers. And that changes both what users want from Google and the responsibility Google bears in what it decides to give to them. So this is kind of scummy.

Some podcast networks are being accused of using audience network placements to artificially juice their download numbers. The more downloads they claim, of course, the more money they can charge for ads. But let's back up a minute. Audience networks. Different ad platforms have different names for this,

but the placement is usually either a banner at the bottom of free mobile apps, or it's an interstitial that forces an app user to sit through in order to use more of the app. You see this a lot in those shitty mobile games where you can get more gems or whatever, but you have to sit through a 10 second ad. The placement is generally considered low impact, low quality, and as a result, usually pretty cheap too. Enter the podcast networks. Researchers have found that some networks are buying these interstitials to play the first

10 seconds of a podcast, essentially buying millions of listeners. Not real listeners, of course, but enough that the podcast can claim the gamer as a new listener and add another download to its stats. The ethics of those impressions, of course, is being questioned. It also raises the question of who is a legitimate podcast listener. As a Bloomberg article pointed out today, ad sales for podcasts are typically based on downloads. Because episodes ads are inserted

at the moment of download, even if a consumer listens to only 10 seconds of a 30-minute show, the mid-roll ad at the 15-minute mark is often ready to be heard and counted by the sales team. Bloomberg says last month it found multiple publishers using the game Subway Surfers to drive podcast downloads. Big names, names you wouldn't expect would need the help, like the New York Post and iHeartMedia. One independent podcaster quoted in the piece admitted he does this, says he spends nominal money on in-game ads and initially used them to boost interest in the show. This might be bigger than you think. Sources told Bloomberg that iHeartMedia has allegedly bought around 6 million unique downloads per month since 2018. Quoting Bloomberg, during the last week of August,

iHeart podcast represented more than half of the top 10 trending shows, even though one of the listed podcasts hadn't published new episodes in months and another hadn't published any new programming in over a year, unquote. iHeart Radio also holds the number one spot on PodTrack, a monthly podcast ranker that measures unique audiences and downloads. According to that data, the network reached more than 35 million unique listeners during August.

That's more than 11 million more than its closest competitor, Wondery, which is now owned by Amazon. Both iHeartMedia and the New York Post declined to comment. which lets brands connect with customers via a call now button in their ads. You can find this under the sales conversions objective. Meta's new update lets customers request a callback if their call is not answered. This is only in testing for the time being. Other updates include for lead gen and traffic objectives, a 60-second call optimization has been added, letting businesses target people who are most likely to engage in longer conversations

with their ads. A pre-call business feature lets businesses provide additional context in their ads, like website links, in order to give customers more information before they contact them. Finally, Meta is testing an on-platform calling tool so that those calls can happen directly through their apps. I know. I know what you're thinking. But Meta says no call content will be captured. You can decide if that's because they're already listening. 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. Which brings us to, no, not the lightning round. It's another episode of Who's Copying Who? And yes, of course, it's Instagram again amidst the ever changing confusion around what Instagram wants to be when it grows up comes word that now they want to be Twitter. Yes, Instagram is testing a new feature that lets you post a text note to your followers in the messages section of the app below the search bar. This will let you share updates without notifying your followers with an actual notification.

It's similar to stories. Followers can see these notes for 24 hours and reply with a message. I'm really I have no idea what advantage this will be for brands rather than, you know, posting a text story other than maybe another spot to give you a tiny bit of brand visibility. I suppose you could use it for marketing messages like business updates, sales, promotions, events and things like that. But yeah. Yeah. up copied its most popular format, stories, and that worked out quite well. That's partly why many people were watching their Reels format closely, which was a direct rip-off of the TikTok vertical videos. It's been some time now since they introduced the format, and now some research is trickling out, showing whether or not that bet worked too. The early numbers suggest, yeah, it might be working. A study by Amplify has found that

it's starting to catch on. In Q2, almost half of brands on Instagram published at least one Reel compared to a third a year ago. That said, the format still only makes up a minority of all brand content published on the platform. On average, Reels represented just 7% of a brand's content on the app. Old habits die hard. The majority found the vast majority of the content brands published on Instagram were still single image and video posts. Carousel posts, in case you're wondering, made up a fifth of brand posts. Many brands still rely on static images, which most analysts suggest is a missed opportunity considering carousels and reels are more engaging.

Reels ranked the highest in terms of engagement, while images ranked the lowest. So should your brand hop on the bandwagon and go full throttle to reels? No, at least not yet. The study indicated that engagement is highest among brands that incorporate a variety of post types into their content strategy. Over to you B2B marketers.

As you know, when done right, webinars can be a great tool for your brand or business. A new benchmark report from the communications company Notified offers a few takeaways for optimizing your next virtual event. First, according to data, the average promotion time for webinars has increased to 44 days in advance from 39 days back in 2019. A third of registrations are generated only a week prior to the webinar live date. Pre-webinar engagement leads to higher attendance rate, which the analysis suggests can be achieved by doing things like asking questions, surveying attendees, encouraging chat participation, things I assume you're already doing. And when it comes to what day is the best to host a webinar,

the report found Wednesdays and Thursdays were the most popular, with over 40% of webinars being between 11am and 1pm local 1 p.m. local time. Finally, the report noted that when audience members register for your webinar but don't attend the live session, this means they are interested in the topic but might prefer another format. So you should find ways to repurpose your content, things like turning into a blog perhaps, social media posts, or an FAQ. For those of you whose fall campaigns include a nod to Halloween, Microsoft Advertising released some search trends today.

Tip number one, target parents, not goblins. Most Halloween-related searches were made by adults aged 35 to 49 last year. If you're late to the Halloween campaign game, don't be afraid. Microsoft suggests starting to increase your search ad spending in September, but focusing most of your budget on October. Halloween searches last year started slowly building actually in early September and continued increasing until the holiday. The week with the highest number of searches around Halloween-related products came last year around October 23rd. Finally, they suggest you activate ads on their audience network earlier than search ads to move users down the funnel. Last year, audience ads for Halloween started to ramp up in early summer around June or July.

While clicks for costumes and candy peaked at different times, costume clicks spiked about two months before candy. And why? Well, product goods generally have a shorter lifespan than apparel categories. All right, now that brings us to the lightning round. YouTube announced yesterday you can finally add voiceover narration to shorts. With the update, accounts can now narrate and add commentary to already recorded videos, just like on TikTok and Reels. We'll be right back. Just over a third of B2B salespeople say the difficulty of their role has stayed the same. TikTok is making sure the world knows it takes content moderation seriously. The company published a new report today that claims from April to June this year, it removed more than 33 million fake accounts, an increase of over 60% from the previous quarter. With that news, will Elon Musk try to buy TikTok?

Facebook Pay is dead. The company announcing today it is officially being renamed MetaPay. The tech giant noted that MetaPay is merely a name change and that existing product features and user experience will remain unchanged. God, I've got to get a better bell. No, forget it. Sweden has a new tourism initiative inviting you to follow a forest nymph. Travelers are invited to discover the Swedish forests filled with folklore through a 30-minute audio story podcast kind of thing.

But there's a catch. You have to be in Sweden. The audio is geo-restricted. And in fact, not only just in Sweden, you can only listen to it in certain Swedish national parks and forests. Well, my wife and I got our booster bivalent vaccine today. I don't know what trauma I experienced as a child, but I always thought that vaccine injections were like really violent. Like they would take the needle and hold it in their hand like they're going to jab it really quite so and then just like boom like really jam it into you maybe that's the way vaccines were administered back

when i was like eight or something and it's stuck in my head but you know i don't feel them at all i don't know what i was afraid of all these years i've like literally avoided flu vaccines because of this anyway folks you don feel it. It's painless going in anyway with my MSR arm for a couple of days. All right, talk to you tomorrow. If you only got one shot, take it. If you only got one shot, take it. If you only got one shot, take it.