Today in Digital Marketing - If You Can't Beat Them, Temu Them

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, June 26th. Today, Amazon's response to the discount Chinese e-commerce sites to become them. Also, why social media platforms would rather you forget about that whole social media thing. Google Analytics 4 will import other platforms' data and a nice update for people who track ROAS. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead on this somewhat short episode of Today in Digital Marketing. Reuters is reporting today that Amazon will soon offer a Timu clone on its website. It will be a new discount section featuring cheap items that ship directly to overseas consumers from warehouses in China. The move, of course, is the e-commerce giant's most aggressive response

Starting point is 00:00:47 to the growth of bargain sites like Timu and Sheen. The new marketplace will offer unbranded fashion, home goods, and daily necessities, with products delivered between 9 and 11 days to customers. Amazon plans to start signing up merchants this summer and begin accepting inventory in the fall. According to the report, sourced from a closed-door meeting with major merchants, sellers joining the bargain site will be able to determine their product selection and pricing and can produce in small batches to test demand for new products.

Starting point is 00:01:19 What's still unclear, though, is if these shipments will use a U.S. trade provision that exempts individual packages worth less than $800 from U.S. customs duties. Both Timu and Sheehan depend on that expedited clearance process, which is available for direct-to-consumer shipments only. A sea change in how social media platforms think of themselves is underway, but advertisers aren't moved. An interesting think piece today at Digiday looks at why social media sites would rather you not think of them as social media sites. Quoting from the piece, quote, Social media has evolved over the years as advertisers jumped at the chance to better target audiences at a low cost with measurement tools that those who dabbled in linear TV could only dream of having. Marketers moved their budgets accordingly. Now the channels are fragmented, making reach less defined. Misinformation has also entered the chat, and some of these social media channels have had to reckon with how their feeds foster bad behavior. Some social media channels seem to be distancing from their identity from social media

Starting point is 00:02:30 networks to play up the positive aspects of their channels for users and ad spend, unquote. The piece notes that Pinterest refers to itself as the antidote to traditional social media. Snapchat's been using the tagline, less social media, more Snapchat. Even Reddit tried to spin its way out of the category using these muscle straining gymnastics. This is a quote from Jim Squires, an executive there, quote, we don't think of Reddit as a social network because on social networks, you're typically connecting with an individual or an influencer or a celebrity. On Reddit, you don't connect to individuals. You connect to communities, unquote, which is ridiculous. Of course, you don't talk to communities. You talk to people in communities. And the majority of people who are still using Facebook aren't spending their

Starting point is 00:03:23 time following Cardi B. They're hanging out in their local what's happening in the South End groups, yelling about whose kids are using dirt bikes on the hiking trails. That's Facebook today. In fact, that's a lot of social media, legacy and new.

Starting point is 00:03:39 So little wonder those platforms are trying to reposition themselves. Again, the Digiday piece, quote, advertisers, however, aren't moved by this messaging so far, and it's yet to be determined if these platforms repositioning will translate into ad dollars. Social networks can call themselves whatever they want, said Sammy Rubin, vice president of integrated media at digital marketing agency Wpromote. Brands are still going to want to be there in order to reach those audiences, unquote.

Starting point is 00:04:05 The whole piece is definitely worth a read. It goes into some good detail about the impact of brand safety missteps at some platforms. You can find the article at digiday.com. It's called Don't Call Them Social Media Networking Sites. And we have a link to it in today's email newsletter, which did I mention you can sign up to for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes. A big update coming to Google Analytics 4. Users will be able to import third-party ad data from Pinterest, Reddit, and Snapchat into GA4. The other site's data will be dropped into the cross-channel performance report and mapped to dimensions like ads cost, ads clicks, and ads impressions. Notably, neither Meta nor TikTok is on that list. Some other updates announced today from GA4,

Starting point is 00:04:51 they are releasing cross-channel budgeting, but the release is in beta. It includes a projections report to track media pacing and projected performance against a target objective like revenue. GA4 will also start importing aggregated impressions from linked campaign manager 360 accounts. And finally, what marketers have been clamoring for, more AI. Google says its system will use the power of machine learning to find reporting patterns

Starting point is 00:05:18 and to report them as recommendations. So basically what it's been doing for years, only now it's powered with some magical pixie dust or something you may soon be able to get better insights into your google ads performance max and shopping campaigns a new target roas insight box is popping up for some people showing if your actual roAS is within the expected range. PPC Pro Thomas Excel spotted it in his account and posted on social media, quote, the graph shows weekly ROAS averages, including projected conversions. Google calculates the typical variation based on your campaign's historical data. You're on track to meet your

Starting point is 00:06:01 goals when your target is within this typical variation, unquote. Yes, like other platforms, Google will average this out. A little note on that on the screen reads, quote, Some conversion values may cost more than your target and some may cost less than your target. But overall, Google ads will aim to keep your conversion value per cost equal to the target ROAS that you set, unquote. So the people on the free feed are listening to an ad right now. cost equal to the target ROAS that you set, unquote. So the people on the free feed are listening to an ad right now. I am here with you premium folks to remind you about our monthly hangout that we do.

Starting point is 00:06:33 It's kind of an informal time to just get together. Meet me if you want to put a face to the voice. Sometimes people use it to get advice from each other. Sometimes we just chat. Sometimes there have been as many as like 15 or 16 people. Sometimes there's just been one or two people. So who knows? It's tomorrow, June 27th at 12 o'clock Pacific time. That is 3 p.m. Eastern, I think eight o'clock in London. You just need a web browser to show up. It's a Google Meet. And here is the address b.link slash member show. That is the short link that will take you to it. So tomorrow, June 27th

Starting point is 00:07:06 at 12 o'clock Pacific. Hope to see you then. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - If You Can't Beat Them, Temu Them

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