Today in Digital Marketing - Instagram Has Completely Lost Its Mind

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:52 Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Twitter adds a new campaign objective. Amazon adds some new podcast tech. Instagram adds a function they have elsewhere, but not all functionality, only some parts and only for some formats, not including the pieces that are in that third place because Facebook is a totally coordinated and professionally operated company.

Starting point is 00:01:17 And an entire country is now investigating fake reviews. It's Friday, June 25th, 2021. Happy Independence Day, Mozambique. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageU Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Twitter has added a new campaign objective to its ads platform, the 15-second view. This is an attempt to meet the needs of advertisers who rely heavily on quality of video views and video completion rates. It is, of course, not just 15 seconds. It is 15 seconds or 95% completion, whichever comes first.

Starting point is 00:01:56 And because it's an ads platform objective, it's also an optimization event. Twitter says their prediction models will serve your video ad to the users it thinks have the highest likelihood to watch a video longer. Indeed, they say their first test run of this found an 89% average higher completion rate at a 25% cheaper cost per completed view. One important note, starting today, that 15-second view unit will be the new default bid unit for all campaigns under the Video Views Objective. It is available now to all advertisers globally. The British Competition Authority is investigating whether Amazon and Google

Starting point is 00:02:33 broke consumer laws by not removing fake reviews. The agency said, quote, our worry is that millions of online shoppers could be misled by reading fake reviews and then spending their money based on those recommendations, unquote. For its part, Amazon told media they devote significant resources to preventing fake or incentivized reviews from appearing on its platform. And oddly, took great pains to note, and I'm paraphrasing here, hey, they're only investigating us, guys. We haven't been found guilty yet. It's quite possible Amazon actually knew this was coming and tried to get ahead of it. As we reported last week, the company put out a blog post that both acknowledged the problem

Starting point is 00:03:10 and threw unnamed platforms but totally Facebook under the bus by saying Zuckerberg and crew were not fast enough in removing Facebook groups devoted to gaming Amazon's review system. Which kind of sounds like a driver blaming her speeding on the smoothness of the road surface. Specifically, Amazon said in that blog post last week, quote, while we appreciate that some social media companies have become much faster at responding to address this problem at scale, it is imperative for social media companies to invest adequately in proactive controls to detect and enforce fake reviews ahead of our reporting this issue to them, unquote.

Starting point is 00:03:48 See, guys? Their fault, not Amazon's. For its part, Google says it too tries to take down inappropriate reviews when it finds them. If indeed the UK does find fault here, enforcement actions could range from making them promise to do better, because, you know, that's always effective, to possible court action. Amazon continues to dive into the potentially lucrative podcast space, today announcing they've acquired the podcast distribution and monetization platform Art19. Quoting MarketingDive.com, Art19 inserts premium host-read ads across programs. With the acquisition, Amazon continues to ramp up podcast deal-making as an attempt to close the gap in an area where it's a relative latecomer.

Starting point is 00:04:45 Late last year, the e-commerce giant bought the podcast network Wondery, which is responsible for popular shows such as Dirty John. The deal, reportedly valued at over $300 million, was centered on securing more exclusive premium content after Amazon Music introduced a podcast section in September. 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. Instagram's test of web publishing has opened up to more people. This gives users the ability to publish posts from the desktop version at Instagram.com. That's posts only. You still can't do stories, or IGTV, or Reels.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And look, I'm old now, so I always appreciate when these mobile apps make a desktop version for us marketing veterans. But this one's a little strange, given that you've been able to do this using Facebook's Creator Studio for more than two years now. And you can even post IGTV videos from there. And stories. But not all stories. Only stories on Facebook. For some reason, Creator Studio can't handle Instagram stories. And not all of Instagram's editing tools, only some. There are three big advantages to using the Instagram.com web interface, if you have it. First, any account can use it, not just business accounts like over on Creator Studio. Two, it seems to have most of the editing options that the mobile app has.

Starting point is 00:06:14 And three, you don't have to use Creator Studio, which, according to new research I just made up, is universally hated by all marketers. You'll know if you're in the test group if you have a plus icon in the top nav bar at Instagram.com. Instagram says this new web interface will, quote, enable a more centralized approach for social media managers, unquote. Which, I mean, wasn't that the point of Creator Studio? Or was that Creator Hub? Or was it Business Suite? Oh, God.

Starting point is 00:06:46 I give up. Well, it finally happened. A listener of this podcast found me in an Overwatch match. We were playing Route 66, and I have to say demolishing the other team. Poor guy was on that other team and messaged me on Xbox afterwards. Hey, aren't you Todd Maffin? All I can say is thank God I didn't teabag in that game.

Starting point is 00:07:11 It is going to be a hot, hot weekend here in British Columbia. Apparently 46 degrees Celsius in Las Vegas. That's 115 Fahrenheit. My wife and I made the mistake of going to Vegas a few years back in May. It literally did not have cold water in the taps. At all. You could not take a shower because regardless of which tap you opened, the water ran hot. Like scalding hot. The front desk said the solution

Starting point is 00:07:35 was to run a bath with only the so-called cold water tap on, let it sit overnight, and then bathe first thing in the morning. Again, that was May, not August. So wherever you are, stay cool, and I'll see you on Monday. Don't stop until you've had enough. Life's too short to wait anymore. Don't stop until you've had enough. Come on, you're here, just take a seat. Don't stop until you've had enough.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Life's too short to wait anymore. Don't, don't, don't stop. Don't, don't, don't stop.

Today in Digital Marketing - Instagram Has Completely Lost Its Mind

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