Today in Digital Marketing - "I Said, Buy the Salsa!!!"

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, January 8th. Today, a new ad format that lets you follow people around a store. TikTok pulls an important trend analytics tool. Amazon's new tech might shake up online clothing sales. And yeah, Threads has seen the thirst traps too. They're working on it. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead. Today, 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.

Starting point is 00:00:33 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. Your grocery cart might soon start recommending products personally selected for you. Buy some chips and a small screen in the push bar might suggest a salsa. Ad screens in shopping carts aren't widely used, but they have existed for a while. Until now, they've been sort of dumb. Everyone in the store gets the same ads, which is good for large-scale brand awareness campaigns,

Starting point is 00:01:10 the kind Coca-Cola might run, or a big CBG company like Procter & Gamble, but not great for goals closer to the bottom of the funnel. Instacart's Keeper Carts, which it markets to grocery stores, will soon have smarter ads. That's because the cart can detect what's placed in it. One example offered by the company, if a consumer puts ice cream cones in their cart, and Dreyer's Ice Cream Brand has bought this new dynamic ad format, they can pop up a promotional message suggesting the shopper picks up their vanilla ice cream. You might wonder, what's in it for the supermarket? After all, it's not likely to increase sales per se. Someone who buys cones is probably going to buy ice cream even without a

Starting point is 00:01:52 fancy touchscreen. The answer? RevShare. Retailers who use the carts and opt into this new ad format will get a share of that ad revenue from Instacart. These new ads will start piloting in some Bristol Farms stores in Southern California. Instacart says by the end of the year, it hopes to have thousands of their upgraded carts in stores. TikTok has limited a key trend monitoring tool used by many marketers. Until this week, the Creative Center allowed brand managers and advertisers to track hashtag use. But now TikTok has restricted that data to top industry hashtags like in travel and pets. The move likely a response to criticism of TikTok's content moderation

Starting point is 00:02:37 and perceived influence from Beijing. The platform faced scrutiny, particularly since the Israel-Hamas war began. Critics used the tool to dispute TikTok's neutrality claims and point out biases. So, recently the search function was disabled and links to certain political hashtags stopped working. TikTok said these changes are intended to prevent misuse and, quote, incorrect conclusions, unquote, about its content. The change coincides with concerns over TikTok's impact on young people and the potential influence of the Chinese government. It has drawn legislative attention, with some in Washington suggesting a ban or a forced sale to a U.S. company. Marketers who sell clothing don't need to be reminded of this,

Starting point is 00:03:24 but the average return rate for clothing ordered online is nearly 25%. That's about eight points higher than the overall return rate. And it's growing, thanks to an increasing number of buyers who buy multiple colors and sizes just to return the ones that don't work out. To that end, Amazon has rolled out a new project aimed at reducing those high return rates of clothing. The new system uses AI to combine a bunch of data points to try to simplify the process of finding well-fitting clothes. Amazon's approach includes personalized size recommendations, a fit insights tool for sellers, and revamped size charts.

Starting point is 00:04:02 The key tech, which they call fit review highlights, extracts information about clothing fit from customer reviews. So, for instance, reviews that note the shirt feels smaller than its stated large size might influence whether a customer who buys large shirts sees it in search. But more than just stated sizes, it will pluck out recurring themes about size accuracy and even fabric stretch, making it easier for shoppers to gauge an item's suitability without reading numerous reviews. Amazon is also going to try to standardize sizes across products

Starting point is 00:04:37 using a kind of sliding scale of sizing, and the company says it will have a new data dashboard for sellers to see sizing decisions made by the AI. If you've been spending any time recently on Meta's Threads app, you may have noticed some questionable content. Not porn or anything, but thirst traps, increasingly sensationalistic stuff and the likes. The head of Threads, Adam Massuri, says his team's noticed it too and they're starting to work on fixing it. We've actually had some issues over the last few weeks with low quality recommendations.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Things that don't quite violate our community guidelines, which is when we take content down entirely, but kind of go right up to that line. So we're working on improving it. A lot of it should be fixed at this point. Let me know if you're not seeing that, but there's a lot more work to do and expect it to get much better over the next few weeks. It's probably to be expected for the platform, which is only six months old. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg five years

Starting point is 00:05:33 ago explained how controversial content always seems to grow on social platforms. Quote, when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist and provocative content. This is not a new phenomenon. It is widespread on cable news today and has been a staple of tabloids for more than a century. At scale, it can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead to polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the quality of our services, unquote. Posting on social media gives immediate feedback and a dopamine hit. But Pamela Wilson, author of the master content books, wants to remind you your website content will last for years. Your social media content, not so much. That's because social media posts disappear from follower feeds after a few hours or a few days. Your website content is just the opposite.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Website content is read by highly motivated people searching for solutions, and it's readily available for years to come. Remember, search engines and your business have aligned goals to provide people with a dependable archive of in-depth answers to their burning questions. If you're ready to increase your website content's ROI in 2024, buy and read Pamela's newly updated Master Content Books at mastercontentbooks.com. That's mastercontentbooks.com. X, the former Twitter has added a new advertising option targeting only those who pay for its premium services. It's not entirely clear how this would benefit advertisers, though. Fewer than 1% of X's users pay for its premium service. And given the relatively small price, it'd be hard to argue that this cohort has significantly

Starting point is 00:07:24 increased spending power. If anything, it might help your brand align with people for whom free speech as a political statement is important. X's own numbers show that its user base is shrinking, as is time spent in the app. Each day across this podcast and our newsletter, we reach more than 4,000 marketing decision makers. This is our last week of the New Year ad sales. So if you'd like to reach some of those people, go to todayindigital.com slash ads or tap the link in the show notes. I'm Todd Mappin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - "I Said, Buy the Salsa!!!"

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