Today in Digital Marketing - In the End, Will Direct Mail Save Us All?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Friday, January 26th. Today, Meta wants to have AI redesign your ad. Worst part is, you might not be able to turn that redesign off. Also, in a world of declining digital ad effectiveness, could postal mail be our marketing savior? Google's data reduction is somehow giving marketers more data. And the helpline is back to solve a problem connecting Google Ads to GA4. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:00:28 That's ahead today in 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Before we start, a tiny bit of breaking news, literally breaking, as several parts of Google's marketing platform appear to be broken this hour, specifically Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Search Ads 360. One particular issue, the programmatic buyer dimension, is only returning dash values for some people within the completed Ad Manager historical reports when you run them via the Ad Manager reporting UI or the Ad Manager API. Google says they are working on it, but in the meantime, there is a workaround. This information can still be obtained within the Ad Manager UI by visiting the associated order or proposal.

Starting point is 00:01:36 It does seem like it's all hands on deck over there to get these glitches fixed, but if you are experiencing weirdness today, it's not just you. Every Friday, we check in with our MetaAds correspondent, Andrew Foxwell. Andrew has visibility into $300 million in MetaAds spend through his Slack community called Foxwell Founders. Andrew, this week we reported on Meta's new brand rights protection manager. Can you first walk us through what this is? Yeah, so there's actually three things that they came out with that are new, but we can talk about

Starting point is 00:02:11 the brand rights protection manager first. So the brand rights protection manager allows basically what, this is what Meta says, rights holders to monitor for misuse of their brand and report intellectual property infringement and business impersonation. So essentially, this is in the Meta business suite. So in the business manager and leverages AI and machine learning to basically find areas where people are using your stuff and not telling you.

Starting point is 00:02:44 It's essentially what it comes down to. Right. So you can save searches and things like that. So this is basically what it is. It allows you to monitor this and tell meta and be able to find it more quickly. So is this for products? Like do you upload images of your products presumably

Starting point is 00:03:03 and then it looks for rip offs of it? Or are we also talking about like, brand mentions that are out there that you might hire a media monitoring company for in the past? I think for the most part, this is looking at images, because it talks about the reference library, which is part of this where you upload all this stuff into basically being images. It used to be 50. Now you can have 200. So they're looking for variations of the brand assets. But so I think primarily it's around images, but I do think that it's starting to capture mentions of it. If people are, you know, copying your name or something like that, it probably will be picking up on that

Starting point is 00:03:44 because it has the saved search. So now you don't have to go in and search manually, which you used to have to do. And then it has a cross surface search, which apparently they didn't have before either, which was now looks at ads, commerce accounts and posts. So it kind of looks at everything and then has the same searches there as part of it as well. So it's looking for terms and it's looking for images. But I think mostly right now it's still around the images or like the creative variations. Yeah. Like I wonder if this is of any use for people that don't sell physical products that, you know, frequently get ripped off. I think it's probably of most use to those people. But I also think if you are, you know, somebody that's

Starting point is 00:04:26 posting something like that would be a unique look or something like that, that you, you know, is yours, like, like a logo or something like that. It doesn't have to be, you know, that probably is a good way where people are, you know, would be potentially using your logo. So, you know, I think, I think it's interesting. I mean, certainly the way that this was managed before was really bad and this product wasn't very good. And a lot of people had a real challenge with it because again, you had to go in and search every time. So the fact that this is here,

Starting point is 00:04:56 I think is a really good thing and hopefully will continue to help. Pretty much every week now, it seems Meta is making an announcement that they are rolling out generative AI. They announced it again. Is there anything different here? What's new about their this week's gen AI announcement?

Starting point is 00:05:13 Yeah, so in the generative AI stuff, you know, we've heard about it for a while. We've heard about it being utilized, but we didn't really know where, when, or how. They now have announced we're rolling this out to everyone. And they're rolling out three things. One is image expansion. So if you upload an image, it will expand the size of that image to fit certain areas and different placements. So it will will you know even

Starting point is 00:05:45 if you've cropped it in one placement it could have the potential to use the whole thing background generation is is one so if you upload a product with your product catalog and that has a pink background it will potentially put that image in four different backgrounds like one in a library one against a brick wall one in a factory like yeah like it will do that automatically based on what it knows that person responds to and text variations as well it automatically is going to be utilizing text variations on its own so it's these are available to everyone and they're rolling out all three of these is what we know. And so these will all start to see them. And there's not time, this will not be something that you'll be able to necessarily control. Potentially the background generation piece you'll be able to control and you'll be able to say, yes, I want to have the text variations. But I really think the image expansion one, you definitely won't be able to turn off.

Starting point is 00:06:58 That'll do it on its own and give it the right. But will you be able to ask it to regenerate if it's just like missed the mark? I don't think there'll be an opportunity for that. I think you'll have a lot of if you're very like hardcore on your brand, this is going to become an uncomfortable place for you. And you're going to have to just sort of accept that it will look different, be resized and potentially put on a background image. I think there is places that you can upload like exclusions that I've heard that they may be rolling out. So that probably will be part of this.

Starting point is 00:07:31 But basically nobody had access before. It was in beta. Now they're rolling it out to everyone. It's sort of one of those changes that meta often makes these days where it makes me feel like, have these people ever run a marketing campaign? Like they're talented software engineers,

Starting point is 00:07:48 but have they ever managed a brand before? Because to me, as a brand manager, as an agency owner, it's horrifying that to run an ad on one of the two major platforms, you just have to take what it's going to create for you, even if it creates something that is off brand. Yeah. Yeah. It's obviously not an ideal situation, very strange. And, um, I think it's going to create a lot more messiness to be honest with

Starting point is 00:08:16 you. Um, but I also think they're clearly confident in the results of this. So they're clearly confident in the fact that it has provided more, you know, reliable results for people over time. So, you know, the tests, the beta tests that I've seen of this and the results of them haven't been anything magically different than what we've already had, or what like we've seen on manual, but certainly the sizing is one that I have seen be helpful, because I think sizing is an that I have seen be helpful because I think sizing is an area where there's opportunity to make the ad look a little bit better instead of getting more control of the advertiser. So that one I actually do agree with, but the other two, it's really going to be difficult to see. I don't like the text variation one. I think that meta

Starting point is 00:08:59 would really mix words and make it really strange, but we've already started to see this pop up in our community where people are like, meta saying this is not what i not what we wrote we would never say this um so there's gonna clearly have to be more guardrails there but i think they're gonna roll it out it'll be really messy and make a bunch of people mad and then they'll roll out controls as things go on i'm guessing how this is gonna probably look are those text changes also not up we can't opt out of those. We can't edit those. Or do we have more flexibility over that?

Starting point is 00:09:28 It depends on where you are in the world. In most places now, you can opt out of that. But I'm like, I don't think that's going to be an option in the future necessarily. I don't actually mind the different backgrounds thing. I mean, obviously, it'd be great if we had the ability to say, no, rerun that you made a mistake, or I don't want to use it at all. But even in the event that we can't do that, it is entirely possible, as you mentioned, the metrics on those different backgrounds for us so that we can tell, so that we can get some marketing data back, right? So that we can say, oh, look, when they tested it against a brick wall, it actually potentially show this information but i don't i don't know yet because the reporting that i've seen on this has been meta telling you hey the purple background did the best so that's the only thing that you know you don't know how the anyone you only know the best one so um obviously if that was something that know, released, that would create a lot more

Starting point is 00:10:46 clarity. Yeah, for sure. And even knowing like the worst perform one, if there was one that was just was absolutely dead, you know, okay, you know, we're not going to position our product against bloody knives again, or something. Right. Andrew, thank you. See you next week. Thank you. Andrew Foxwell is our meta ads correspondent. You can learn more about Andrew's digital ads training program at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community, which we are in, of senior meta ad buyers. That's at b.link slash founders. Both of those affiliate links, you can find those at the bottom of our show notes. Digital marketing, once hailed for its precise targeting and cost-effectiveness,

Starting point is 00:11:28 is facing some challenges heading into this year. The decline of Google's third-party cookies, Apple's changes, of course, the replacement of targeting toggles with AI, all of which is making ad targeting more difficult. And ad costs are rising, user tolerance for digital ads decreasing. But an interesting think piece in Digiday today considers the old lady of marketing, direct mail, which is actually gaining traction among B2B, big box retailers and brands in the home fashion, financial services and insurance sectors. And with conversion rates between one

Starting point is 00:12:03 and 5%, direct mail is proving relatively effective, especially when combined with digital elements like QR codes for better tracking. Five marketing executives spoke to Digiday for the story and said first-party data is becoming more valuable and innovations in tracking are enhancing its appeal. Quoting from their piece, quote, As the digital ad market gets more crowded, online users may be less likely to engage with a digital banner or sponsored post.

Starting point is 00:12:48 Direct mail campaigns are a way to break through the noise, unquote. The whole piece is worth a read. You'll find it at Digiday.com. Look for the article called In Rocky Digital Advertising Landscape, Advertisers reconsider direct mail. they exist at all, which is why we have started the Digital Marketing Helpline. Call in with a problem you're having. We will find an expert to suggest some ways to fix your problem. Here is this week's call. I'm having problems setting up conversion correctly for Google Ads to show up on Google Analytics. We do lead form submission conversions, and we get the whole Google Ad code from once we set up the account, we put it on the website, it shows that it's firing. But for some reason, I'm not sure how to make that show up on Google Analytics. So our reporting software that pulls the information

Starting point is 00:13:54 pulls exactly the same information that we're seeing on Google ads. For an answer to this question. I'm joined by Steve Perron, owner and partner of Collective 42. Steve, you've heard the question. What do you think is going on here? So it's not uncommon to see that kind of misconception that you set up conversions from Google Ads, it should show up in GA4. However, that's not the case.

Starting point is 00:14:20 GA4, if you want conversions for Google Ads to show up, you could connect your Google Ads account to GA4, if you want conversions for Google Ads to show up, you could connect your Google Ads account to GA4, but that's still going to show up in a separate section in Google Analytics 4. I believe it's like the advertising section on there. But if you want to have your conversions fired from your paid ads into GA4, you actually need to create them within GA4 and then feed them into Google ads. The best way to do that is to create the conversion event with, let's say, Google Tag Manager. And let's

Starting point is 00:14:55 say it's a form fill. So create a conversion event that's a form fill, be it a unique landing page or an actual form submission, have that event fire in Google Analytics 4, turn that event into a conversion. And then within Google Ads, you can go to the conversion section within Google Ads and you can import your conversions from Google Analytics into Google Ads. So there are separate platforms. So we have some clients that run Google Ads conversion pixels, and they report out of Google Ads. And then we have other clients that then create Google Analytics for conversions and import them into Google Ads. They will show different numbers because there is some different attribution. But if you want to see Google Analytics for conversion show up under, let's say, a

Starting point is 00:15:49 source medium report, you have to create them in Google Analytics for it. So they are separate kind of ecosystems, but there are ways to connect it. How do you prevent duplication of data then if Google ads is sending data over to the advertising side of GA4 and GA4 is set up to log conversions? Are you not, would you not have to de-dupe that, that, uh, that incoming data? So I would say that, uh, in the Google ad side, you would definitely want to, um, de-prioritize one of the conversion metrics. Uh, otherwise you will be counting duplicates if you have GA4 conversions importing and Google Ads. So you can set them up

Starting point is 00:16:26 as secondary conversions or just monitor them to see how close they are. Typically, I would suggest when you're running Google Ads, using Google Ads conversion pixels, they tend to be a bit more accurate because they're in the ecosphere there than rather than importing from Google Ads or Google Analytics 4 into ads. But having both, you can kind of compare. Maybe you got 100 from Google Analytics 4 and then Google Ads says you got 125. There's going to be a little bit of a discrepancy. So it's a nice kind of data redundancy. You mentioned one of the reasons that there's a difference between the numbers,

Starting point is 00:17:04 and this is common across all platforms really is is the attribution windows are slightly different is there a way to set the attribution windows on both platforms to be identical which in theory should give identical numbers or is that just a marketing pipe dream yeah it's not gonna be possible because like google analytics uh four has its own privacy own privacy settings that are within there. And so, yeah, they will never be the same. So I always like to have more data and then kind of deducing it down. What do you report to your clients? The Google Ad side, the Google Analytics numbers, or do you kind of do a blend of the two?

Starting point is 00:17:40 So typically our clients will be running multiple different types of campaigns. Let's say search engine optimization as well as paid ads. Maybe they're running Facebook ads as well. So we tend to set up conversions within Google Analytics 4 and then import them into Google Ads. And we report there because honestly, clients mostly like to look at Google Analytics 4 as the kind of the home-based dashboard of how are things going rather than all the individual platforms. Yeah, we can piece them together in a custom report and report that way. But using GA4 as kind of the home base or baseline for your conversions tends to work out best.

Starting point is 00:18:22 Quickly, tell me about your agency and where people can find you. Yeah, so you can go to collective42.com. We're a website design and development shop, but we have about 15 to 16 years in digital marketing experience. So that's where I can come in and talk about this. Steve Perrone, owner of Collective 42. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:18:39 Yeah, thank you, Todd. If you have an issue with your digital marketing and would like a couple of ideas to try to get it fixed, call into our helpline by going to todayindigital.com slash voicemail. If we use your call on the show, we will give you a free subscription to our premium newsletter. That's todayindigital.com slash voicemail or tap the link at the top of the show notes. In its continued attempt to lure people away from TikTok and Snapchat, Instagram is starting to roll out another feature. This one it calls Flipside and is an alternative profile of sorts. Quoting social media today, Instagram's Flipside option provides an alternative profile space, which is only accessible to you and your chosen connections.

Starting point is 00:19:27 Once you've created a flip side, you can then select it as your post audience, meaning your post will only go to that space. You can then visit and view your flip side as an alternative profile gallery where you can also add a new profile name and picture if you choose. It's another way for Instagram to lean into more private sharing, which has been a key trend of note in social apps of late. Fewer people are now posting to their public feeds while preferring to maintain smaller, closer-knit engagement communities, unquote. And finally, an update on a story we reported on earlier in the week.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Google told marketers it would be reducing the amount of data it shared And finally, an update on a story we reported on earlier in the week. Google told marketers it would be reducing the amount of data it shared in the Driving Directions report inside Google profiles. Instead, though, it seems to have done the opposite. Some marketers and brand managers on social media are reporting a big spike in the numbers starting back from last week. One of these folks asked their Google rep about it, and that rep told them, quote, we are aware of the spike. I have reached out to our team and they have confirmed this is accurate. This is likely from improved detection and reporting from the performance metrics. I have an exciting week of geeking planned because I'm picking up my network attached storage this afternoon. Basically, it's like a cloud server, but you keep it in your home or your office.

Starting point is 00:20:55 I move a lot of video files around. So I finally decided that I would do it that way and excited to set it up. Also excited to tinker with the home automation stuff that I'll be able to do and probably will ruin every regular home automation stuff that we have in our house right now that works perfectly fine. But that's the life of a tinkerer, right? Don't forget the premium version of this podcast. It is just like this one. It comes with no ads, though, better audio quality, story links in the show notes, audio chapters, and access to more than 20 deep dive interviews with marketing scientists.

Starting point is 00:21:29 It comes now with my course on building a small agency and a lot more. Just tap go premium in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium. And that will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing

Starting point is 00:21:43 is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Snunimic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. Wish me luck. Hopefully I won't break everything that I've spent the last couple of years putting together. I'm Todd Mappin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I'll see you on Monday. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - In the End, Will Direct Mail Save Us All?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.