Today in Digital Marketing - How Do You Solve a Problem Like Tucker?

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Snapchat's latest acquisition will let it read your mind... Twitter trends your business could be taking advantage of... Are you underpaying your PPC staff? The state of the global small business economy. Brand safety has never made a more appropriate home.Go Premium! No ads, more stories, audio chapters, and extended weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumGet each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links) — b.link/pod-newsletterADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin- Twitch: https://twitch.tv/todmaffin  Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, Snapchat's latest acquisition will let it read your mind. Are you underpaying your PPC staff? Twitter trends your business could be taking advantage of? The state of the global small business economy? And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and deep dive weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. What Google's latest algorithm change means for your e-commerce site. It's Thursday, March 24th. Thank you. You ever been at book a demo and learn more. You ever been at a live show and some jackass has got his phone out recording the performance instead of enjoying it?

Here's some new technology that said jackass might appreciate an augmented reality version of a show without ever needing to leave your house. This comes from Snapchat and Cirque du Soleil, which teamed up to build an AR version of their hit Las Vegas show called O. The show was built by Snap's Arcadia AR agency and used motion capture to recreate O in the app. Not all of O, of course, but it does have the original score, some of the show's characters, the water theme, and so on. Honestly, it looks a little cartoonish. The characters are animated, like in a video game. It's not video capture of the actual acrobats. And there's a catch. Only people who use Verizon 5G phones will be able to watch it, ostensibly because you need the fast speeds to load the data.

That's a bit of a stretch, because in all, it only lasts about three minutes. So this is more of an ad than a show. But for us digital marketers, it certainly offers a glimpse into what can be done with augmented reality that's more than adding freckles to a face filter. You might call that Cirque AR thing immersive, but it's not nearly as immersive as the technology Snapchat announced this week that it's buying the ability to literally read your mind. The company has acquired the brain-computer interface startup NextMind, which can sense electrical activity in a headset wearer's visual cortex and translate it into the movement of an image.

Snapchat apparently interested in the technology to offer AR glasses that can be used hands-free. It says it'll start by integrating the tech into future versions of its Spectacles glasses, which superimpose AR graphics on real-life surroundings. One interesting thing I thought in their news release was the demotion that it gave spectacles. What once they called the future of immersive worlds, now they're calling, quote, an evolving iterative research and development project, unquote. Other companies have their own versions of this working their way through R&D, Apple,

Google, Microsoft, and more. Elon Musk, of course, is all over this with his company's Neuralink chip implant, which, yes, is a literal microchip the size of a penny embedded in your skull. Meta acquired a startup a couple of years ago that could measure electrical brain activity and translate it into computer signals. I, for one, welcome the days when we'll be able to select not only interests on Meta's ad platform, I'm sorry, advantage interests, but also thoughts. And people think websites are the world's biggest privacy problem.

Twitter has released its annual report of the major conversation trends happening on its platform and has identified three key areas you may want to keep in mind as you plan your marketing campaigns. Jennifer Barris-Hofer is the head of marketing for Twitter Canada. I spoke with her earlier. We looked at two years worth of tweets, so billions and billions of tweets, to try to parse out what are the key conversations from a volume perspective that are trending. But even beyond that, because we see trending conversations every day, but beyond that, what are conversations that are actually growing and where there's the potential to actually see that they will continue to grow? So it's less about what happened, more about this is what's happening now

and it's very predictive. So thinking about what are the conversations that actually have the potential to influence things like culture, like business, like industry. And we didn't just do this on our own. Obviously we did this through our own internal research team, but then we also, once we sort of figured out

what these trends were, brought in experts in all of those key areas to layer in additional nuance so we could understand what this meant. Before we get into the sort of the main findings, can you tell me what is a business supposed to do with this information? How do they use this in their marketing plans? Yeah, it's a good question because when we looked at the key trends, we wanted to make sure and understand that this is not just something that is very specific to one industry. So it does cut across industries.

And I think depending on the trend, there are different takeaways for different businesses. So there definitely are takeaways and ways that they can lean in. But it does slightly vary depending on the trend. And are these things that we could use to inform product decisions? Or is this just sort of more broad, sort of how the culture is reacting to various new topics? It could be both. So for example, one of our trends, the Great Restoration talks about putting sort of the onus of cleaning up the environment and planetary health back onto corporations, and not so much on the individual. And so there's a lot of conversation around keeping corporations accountable. So we see all these instances of greenwashing, this idea of greenwashing increasing, where people are calling out corporations who may have marketing campaigns

where they sort of talk about sustainability, but how they actually develop their products may not be sustainable or their supply chains may not be sustainable. And so there's definitely a call for more transparency around how corporations are acting, how they're talking. And then even within our other one of our other trends, fan built worlds, this idea of giving sort of fans and customers more ownership of the brand, right? So whether it's potentially launching a product virtually, so that people feel like there's a bit of ownership there, then following up in the real world. So it does impact various stages of marketing and product development.

Okay, so that's the great restoration, I think you called it. And what are the other two? So great restoration, fan built worlds and finance go social. social oh i'm worried when you said fan-built worlds because i'm worried now you're going to say this is going to be metaverse is it metaverse no okay good no no no not no i think it's broader than that it's much broader than that i think it's it's more this idea of sort of tearing down this wall between fans and their idols, for example, or fans and who they sort of follow. So it's much more around participation and people who follow a brand or follow an artist wanting more of this sort of two-way conversation and also collaboration. So people are, for example, we see a lot around shows like or accounts like the no context accounts, like no

context Schitt's Creek or no context succession, where it's this idea of people who are in the know understand what the conversation is about. And it's really this idea of belonging. So that's one area. I mean, yes, the metaverse does play a part in some of this, but it's much broader. So when we think about even games like Axie, which is, you know, this game where people participate in these virtual worlds, and they earn tokens, and they can earn money, but it could also be around teams like hockey Twitter, for example. Hockey teams in particular are really leaning into this, you've got the Montreal Canadiens, and you've got the Winnipeg Jets, where they're trying to encourage more fan participation by launching things like NFTs and tokens for their fans.

Okay. And so that's Fan Belt Worlds. And what was the third? Finance goes social. So this one is a really interesting one. What we've seen is, in the past, finance Twitter used to be very sort of exclusive, very technical. People who were already in the finance world were sort of participating in this conversation. And we've seen this become much broader and more fun, which is really, really interesting. And, you know, if we think about in the past how people used to build wealth for a lot of Canadians, older generations, it was around real estate and buying property and buying homes. And now you've got all these younger Canadians who maybe can't do that anymore. And so

they're investing in things like NFTs or virtual sneakers or, you know, things like that. And you're seeing that tweets around finance among non-professionals up 173% year over year. So you're seeing a lot of this again, like again, tearing down this idea of expert versus non-expert and people just in general being really involved in conversations around finance and investing in particular. How would you, if you were a business owner or a marketer, how would you use that trend? This one's a trickier one. I think the one thing, too, is to be authentic. I wouldn't say that a brand should just jump into this NFT world, for example, just because they think it's what they should be doing. I think they have to think about, are there collaborations, for example, that make sense? So, for example, I know Adidas was one of the brands

where we saw where they partnered actually with, you know, a different sort of crypto sort of brand and they partnered together and leveraged the artwork from Board Yacht Ape Club to sort of partner together because it was something that their sort of followers were interested in and their customers were interested in. And it was a way to make things fun and to drop a new product fun. I think that's one thing. I think another thing you can do is sort of think about decentralizing your launch. If you think about in the past, when marketers would go out, we would launch a new product or brand. It was very specific. It's like, okay, we're going to launch it on this platform. We're going to launch it on this platform. And, you know, they're only going to have access on these days, but maybe thinking

about redistributing the power and sort of actually giving your customers some ownership early on in terms of maybe how you launch or the types of products you launch and giving them a bit of that say when you think about your launch going forward. While I have you, I want to get your take just sort of broader industry-wise. Yesterday, I'm sure you saw Instagram added globally, well, returned, I suppose, rather than added chronological feeds. And Twitter's had that forever, right, in the latest tweets version. Is this the start of a trend? Do you think we'll start to see less reliance on content algorithms?

I think it sort of goes back to this idea of people wanting more control, right? And again, it goes back when you think about all of the issues that have come up around privacy and, you know, how people use data and also, you know, what you're choosing to look at, right? When you think about this idea, this sort of going back to this trend of fan-built worlds, it's very much about that. And this idea of, I want to be talking about this type of topic with these people when I want to do it. And so we're seeing a lot of that. So I think it is sort of part of a broader trend when you think about control and the idea of, I don't want to be fed information. I want to choose the information that I choose to engage

with. Speaking of letting people have control, Jennifer, an edit button, maybe soon, please? Kinda? I've been asking for a while now. I'll pass that along. I'll pass along the message. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Jennifer Barris Hofer is the head of marketing for Twitter Canada.

You can download their report titled The Conversation Twitter Trends 2022 at marketing.twitter.com. There comes a time in every established digital agency owner's business journey when growth hits a slump. You have a reputation, clients, a team, you're successful, people trust you, and you want to leverage that trust to expand your operations and boost your bottom line. To find and leverage that growth catalyst, more and more agencies are turning to Vendasta, the end-to-end digital platform trusted by over 60,000 local experts. With Vendasta's marketplace of over 250 products, your agency

can develop custom packages of complimentary digital solutions to target local businesses in your niche, such as SMS marketing, reputation management, and e-commerce products. Plus, Vendasta offers powerful reporting tools to measure your client's digital performance, as well as white-labeled marketing services to help your agency keep costs down. Learn more by booking a demo at vendasta.com slash superhero today. vendasta.com slash superhero. If you work in the digital media buying space, either doing it for an agency or client side,

you may have wondered how your salary compares to your peers. Well, a new study is out with some comparative data. In the US, the median salary of agency buyers ranged from $47,500, that's for people with less than one year experience, to $139,000 for people with 15 and more years of experience. The money was a little less volatile for in-house people. That range went from $50,000 at the low end to $120,000. They also looked at company size and discovered that your best chances to get a six-figure salary in the online media buying space will be for companies that have 200 or more employees. Sadly, as you can probably guess, there is a disparity between genders. Quoting SearchEngineLand.com, the most extreme gap is among entry-level female PPC specialists and those with 15 or more years of experience.

Both groups earn 20% less than males. But as careers progress, women are typically paid about 10% less than men at a similar level of experience. At 1-2 years, the median salary was equal for males and females. Females with 10-15 years of experience actually earned more than their male counterparts, though not by much, just 4%. This study was done by Take Some Risk, a performance marketing agency in Canada. It is very comprehensive with full breakdowns by country.

A link to the full report is in today's premium newsletter. Meta has released its latest State of Small Business report, their sample size being 24,000 business leaders across 30 countries. I'll be referring to small and medium-sized businesses here as SMBs. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, on closure rates, Meta says that despite vaccine take-up increasing and lockdowns and closures reducing, 20% of SMBs reported that they were not operational

or engaging in any revenue-generating activities in January. That's up 18% from last July. Of those that have remained open, 30% reported that sales in January 2020 were higher than the same period a year ago, while 36% of US SMBs reported a rise in sales. That means the majority of businesses are still seeing average or below average results,

despite more people being able to get out of the house and go shopping. 50% of SMBs globally reported that they have been using digital tools to communicate directly with customers, the most prevalent use of digital tools, while 38% of SMBs in North America indicated that the majority of their sales were made digitally. The data also shows that female and minority-led businesses continue to see bigger impact, with 44% of minority-led businesses reporting a reduction in sales compared to 30% of other SMBs, while closure rates for female-led SMBs were 8 percentage point higher than that of male-led businesses. Meta's full report is 71 pages long, and we have a link to that in the premium newsletter today as well.

Tap the link in the show notes for more information on that. So you've decided to branch out a little and spend some of your ad dollars on television. Your product's used by older people in the U.S., maybe conservative-leaning. So yes, you'll be considering Fox News in that buy. But Fox News isn't always considered to be a completely objective view of American politics and the global landscape. So how do you run ads there but keep your brand away from the more controversial topics?

That's where the growing industry of brand safety tools come into play, and this week, Fox itself announced that it has created a tool for brands that want to buy ads, but are a bit wary about the content those spots will be running close to. The tool is called Atlas. The official PR spin on this is that it's, quote, a video intelligence platform that enables enhanced contextual targeting and gives advertisers greater transparency and brand suitability in their spots, unquote. When you dive a little deeper, you find that Atlas is actually two tools. First, something they call Fox Shield, which does what you think. Keeps your brand away from Fox hosts reporting on the Bill Gates 5G nanomite chip implants masquerading as vaccines.

And then there's Fox Navigator. This one does the exact opposite. If your brand is in the food delivery business, it will try to position your ads near some editorial food content. I've been in journalism for three decades now, and I still don't know what I should think of the latter. On one hand, I'm not thrilled, journalistically speaking, that ad placement and editorial

content are being considered by the same AI. My first job in journalism was in the newspaper business. The ad guy and our editor never spoke. It's not that they hated each other. They got along just fine. It's just they didn't want any editorial coverage potentially tainted by dollars. On the other hand, isn't that basically what the auto section of a newspaper is? Or the food section or sports? A place for your brand's messaging to live somewhat away from the hard and often nasty news of the day. And finally, Google yesterday released a new directory of agencies and marketers in its Partners program. This is a marketplace for companies looking to hire Google Ads experts.

However, as SearchEngineJournal.com noted, quote, For search marketers, the announcement meant a bit more. A recommitment to a program that previously lost a lot of good faith with marketers. What happened? In February 2020, Google said it planned to change the requirements for participating partners, which included doubling of the 90-day spending threshold. They also said an optimization score bar that would have disqualified half of the existing participants if they didn't implement Google's recommendations on behalf of their clients.

The PPC community pushed back. Google never made those changes and ended up delaying the release of the revamped program for two years until its relaunch this past February. What are the new requirements? Google settled on the following requirements to participate. Achieve an optimization score of 70%. Spend $10,000 across all of a partner's managed accounts within a 90-day period, have at least 50% of designated account strategists certified in Google Ads with at least one certification in each product area, so that's search, display, video, etc., with a campaign spend of $500 or more in 90 days. And they gave partners the ability to dismiss AI-generated recommendations without them counting against your optimization score. Remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter, too.

Complete with images, related videos, links to dive deeper, and even newsletter exclusive content. And there's a free tier as well. You'll get an issue every Friday on that one. The newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops. Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in the episode notes.

Talk to you tomorrow.