Today in Digital Marketing - Huge Google Shopping Bug Hitting Merchants Hard

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, what's causing a 90% drop in shopping impressions? TikTok readies its augmented reality debut and a surprise decision by Facebook you might actually like. It's Tuesday, August 24th, 2021. Happy Independence Day, Ukraine. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 453. And first, an apology. Like most podcasts, we use dynamic ad insertion. We don't bake the ads into the file we upload,

Starting point is 00:00:57 we just indicate where the mid-roll should come in, and each person gets the mid-roll selected for them. Somehow yesterday, some people, I think most people actually, got two back-to-back mid-roll selected for them. Somehow yesterday, some people, I think most people actually, got two back-to-back mid-rolls. Rest assured, this was not our intention. We are in touch with our podcast hosting provider, trying to work out the kinks, and again, my apologies for that. And if it happens again, now on with the show. I'm a little late on this one, but in case you missed it, the U.S. state of California late last week struck down Proposition 22. That was the one voters approved, which gave gig economy companies like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber the ability to treat its workers as independent

Starting point is 00:01:40 contractors. Even though many of those people work for these companies full-time, this meant the companies didn't have to offer them the same privileges offered to full-time employees. Now, that's been reversed. A judge ruling the measure was unconstitutional and unenforceable. The companies must now offer a small number of modest benefits, such as a health care stipend for drivers who work at least 15 hours a week. A consortium of gig economy companies spent more than $200 million to convince voters to pass the initiative, and it did, 59% to 41%. They say they'll appeal, but if they lose their two,

Starting point is 00:02:18 one business analyst says companies' costs could go up by 10 to 20%. Even though the original passing of Prop 22 saved these companies millions, both DoorDash and Instacart increased their service fees after it was initially passed. A couple of big bugs at Google to report on that's frustrating the workdays of a lot of digital marketers this week. First, many people reporting on Twitter that Google Shopping appears to be broken in some

Starting point is 00:02:49 regions, causing traffic from product listings to drop 90%. Judging from these reports, this seems to have started Friday, but it's still happening for a lot of people. One complaint on a support forum reads, my smart shopping has recently experienced a major drop in impressions and spend. Nothing in the campaign has been changed and the product feed looks fine. The drop is from Friday the 20th and continued like that over the weekend, unquote. You may want to check your own Google Ads shopping campaigns.

Starting point is 00:03:18 If it looks like you're affected too, you can report it to support in the top right of your Google Ads account under the question mark, then get help, then contact us. And Google's keyword planning tool also appears to be glitching out. Some people are reporting errors and screens that just say no data. SERoundtable.com says if you really need the data urgently, apparently exporting will still get you the keywords, even if they're not showing up in the browser. Finally, in Google News today, it looks like they've launched a redesign for Google Ads,

Starting point is 00:03:48 specifically the campaign setup wizard. These steps are now along the left-hand side instead of the top. So far, lots of the predictable, put it back, I hate the new look, complaining on Twitter. 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. TikTok is joining the AR club, augmented reality. TechCrunch reports that they are quietly

Starting point is 00:04:34 building out an AR platform, much like Facebook's and Snapchat's. This will let you create effects for the platform, which you can then use in your brand's marketing campaigns. Quoting social media today, which makes perfect sense. By opening up the tools to more creators, you stand a far better which you can then use in your brand's marketing campaigns. Quoting Social Media Today, which makes perfect sense. By opening up the tools to more creators, you stand a far better chance of coming across the next big viral trend, which will bring even more users to the app. Limiting that creative capacity to your internal teams restricts your general development options in this respect.

Starting point is 00:05:01 And as TikTok looks to provide a more inclusive platform for creators so that they can monetize their work and build more reliance on the app, this is another key step in strengthening those connections, unquote. It's not open for general access just quite yet, though there is a beta application up on the web. Last September, Facebook reported that more than 400,000 creators had published more than a million effects on Facebook and Instagram using its Spark platform. Many of those effects had more than a billion views. Remember when Facebook messaging was in the Facebook mobile app? You could send and receive messages without having to switch to some separate Messenger app. Then in 2014, they introduced said Messenger app

Starting point is 00:05:46 and removed that functionality from the main app, forcing us to install that other app, a decision universally hated. What a difference seven years makes. Bloomberg is reporting that Facebook is adding voice and video calling features back into the main Facebook app. Some US users are already in the test group.

Starting point is 00:06:07 The app's product director told Bloomberg, quote, you're going to start to see quite a bit more of this over time, unquote. He also called Messenger the connective tissue for people to communicate. Kind of a creepy metaphor. He said they're doing it because they want to keep their users engaged in the Facebook ecosystem. In completely unrelated news, a reminder that Facebook is currently fighting an antitrust lawsuit and, quoting MacRumors, deep integrations could make it harder for the Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp apps to be split should Facebook lose. Well, that's it for today.

Starting point is 00:06:52 A short show and one that might be missing some breaking news if it happens. We actually wrote and recorded this episode quite early this morning as one of our clients had a big, big deadline. This podcast is only our side gig after all. Rest assured, if anything big happens today, we will cover it tomorrow. 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. The newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops.

Starting point is 00:07:20 Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in this episode's notes. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Huge Google Shopping Bug Hitting Merchants Hard

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