Today in Digital Marketing - “I’m Sorry… CPMs are What Now?!” 💸

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, untested and unmeasurable, but that doesn't stop eye-watering CPMs on one of the newest ad platforms. Also, Shopify picks a fight with Amazon and marketers are collateral damage. Tweet editing rolls out with a catch. Are we close to a Facebook Plus premium subscription model? Scheduling finally comes to LinkedIn and Meta's back with its bizarre plans to read your mind. It's Thursday, September 1st. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So what CPM would you pay for a mass market ad campaign? One where the targeting is pretty basic, the ad platform itself is brand new, there's no third-party measurement, and the placements have never been tested. How does a CPM of $65 strike you? Yeah, I'm not a fan either, but that's what appears brands will have to pay for ad placement on Netflix.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Yesterday, we reported that the streaming giant snagged two Snapchat sales executives to lead its upcoming ad-supported tier. Perhaps that's why more details are trickling out today. First, Netflix is looking to charge advertisers a CPM of $65. That's the price for every 1,000 ad impressions, and with no third-party measurement to start. That's according to ad buyers that met with company executives recently. Here's what else we know. A cap of $20 million is also being considered that will ensure spots won't be over-advertised. Executives are hopeful the company will have half a million subscribers for its ad tier at launch, and it plans to debut on November 1st. But the biggest shock to buyers was the CPM of $65 for untested inventory.

Starting point is 00:01:42 By comparison, ads in the Super Bowl were cheaper at a CPM of $56. No third-party measurement partner at the outset was also not received well among ad buyers. So at $65, will your brand be advertising on Netflix? Did Shopify just start a war with the biggest e-commerce company in the world? Shopify is warning its merchants not to use Amazon's checkout service, Buy with Prime, saying that it's a security risk and violates the company's terms of service. This according to the research firm Marketplace Pulse. The one-click checkout service lets merchants add the Prime logo and offer Amazon delivery options to their stores. The report notes that Shopify sellers

Starting point is 00:02:30 have been testing Buy with Prime since June. Once they've signed up for the checkout service, Amazon generates an HTML button code that merchants need to add to the product template. Shopify, however, recently began alerting its merchants trying to add the service to their sites with a message that says, quote, you have a code snippet on your storefront that violates Shopify's terms of service. This script removes Shopify's ability to protect your store against fraudulent orders, could steal customer data, and may cause customers to be charged the wrong amount, unquote. In fact, the warning message itself isn't even that clear in the sense that it doesn't name Amazon specifically. It just indicates what line and column the

Starting point is 00:03:11 offending code appears in. Shopify's terms of service state that the checkout must happen on Shopify. Merchants, however, can still proceed to add the prime checkout option, but must acknowledge that they understand Shopify will not be responsible. It has been 150 days since Elon Musk chose chaos, tweeting, do you want an edit button? And only about 15 years since people started asking for the feature. As of today, Twitter is finally giving brands and social media managers what they've been asking for.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Well, some users. Today, the company announced that Edit Tweet is being tested internally and will begin testing with Twitter Blue subscribers this month. Here's how it works. Eligible users will be able to edit tweets a few times in the 30 minutes following publication. We asked what a few times meant. There's no specific number yet, so perhaps that's one of the things they're testing. Edited tweets will appear with an icon, a timestamp, and a label so it's clear to readers that the original tweet has been modified. Tapping that label will take viewers to the tweet's edit history, which includes past versions of the tweet. This is similar to how

Starting point is 00:04:19 other platforms like Facebook do it. The company says the feature is to give people a short period of time to fix things like typos, add missing hashtags, and so on. I think most people would agree this is both underwhelming and about what we expected to see. Twitter has long held out that an edit button, if one showed up at all, wouldn't be nearly as strong as, say, Facebook's, which lets you edit any post regardless of how old it is. Also, no word on whether the full rollout would still only be available to paying subscribers and if there'll be any API implementation so that third-party social media tools can edit tweets. Also, fellow Canadians, a spokesperson for Twitter told us today that Canadian Twitter blue subscribers may start seeing the edit tweet feature as early as late September. A tiny pause on the news for a moment. We sometimes get

Starting point is 00:05:09 emails from people who listen to the podcast or subscribe to our newsletter asking if we will cover news from their company. And the answer is yes, please. We are always on the hunt for news stories and developments in the industry. If you would like to pitch a story, here is the URL todayindigital.com slash pitch, and then fill in the brief form. That form will put your information directly in our story meeting agenda for the next day. And we regularly cover stories and companies when people submit there. So again, todayindigital.com slash pitch, if you've got a hankering to hear your company on the show. More AI is coming to Reddit, the company announcing today it has acquired the contextual advertising firm SpikeTrap to boost its ad sales.

Starting point is 00:06:12 SpikeTrap uses artificial intelligence to deliver insights into audience metrics using contextual analysis of audience conversations happening, Reddit says its tools will help the company improve ad performance through better targeting, improving ad quality scoring, and boosting prediction models for automated bids. Quoting Reddit's VP of ad monetization, quote, We believe targeting relevant audiences based on interests and with the context of the conversations they are engaging in helps ensure advertisers are reaching the right people in the most efficient ways, unquote. With its competitors like Twitter and Snapchat adding a premium add-on subscription package, Meta is now working on a paid model as well. According to an internal memo sent last week, the company is setting up a new division to develop products and possible paid features for its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The new group is called the New Monetization Experiences Group and is likely the result of Meta finding new revenue streams after Apple kneecapped its ad business. Currently, there appears to be no plan

Starting point is 00:06:59 for an ad-free version of Meta. The company's VP of monetization, who oversees the group, told The Verge the company is committed to growing its ad business and has no plans to charge people to turn off ads. Rather, he said the company sees opportunities to develop, quote, new types of products, features, and experiences that people would be willing to pay for

Starting point is 00:07:19 and be excited to pay for, unquote. He declined to elaborate on paid features that are being considered. LinkedIn looks like it's getting close to finally adding a scheduling option to the platform. The professional network confirmed yesterday it is, quote, working to bring native post scheduling to members and pages soon, unquote. According to an app researcher, the scheduling option being tested is built into the post composer flow with a clock icon at the bottom right. While most third-party social media platforms let you schedule LinkedIn posts, native scheduling might be a bit more reliable as it doesn't rely on a second site or an API. You remember how Meta announced a couple of years back its plans to implant computer chips into our skulls to read our brains? I'm not kidding about that, by the way. You can Google it. Thankfully, it abandoned those plans last year.

Starting point is 00:08:18 So that's good. Oh, hey, guess what? Looks like they've got plans again. Yesterday, researchers there outlined a new way of reading people's minds using non-invasive brain signals and then translate signals into words. And apparently, it's actually working. Quoting Mehta, From three seconds of brain activity, our results show that our model can decode the corresponding speech segments with up to 73% top-10 accuracy from a vocabulary of 793 words, i.e. a large portion of the words we typically use on a day-to-day basis, unquote. So, Meta wants to know what you're thinking about.

Starting point is 00:09:14 On the plus side, and I know you're thinking this too, can you imagine the accuracy of targeted ads? You just have to let Zuck into your subconscious. What could possibly go wrong? And nothing to add here, so I will see you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - “I’m Sorry… CPMs are What Now?!” 💸

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