Today in Digital Marketing - Is the "Vertical Video" Trend Cooling Down?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, October 25th. Today, are things looking up for marketers? Sunny skies forecast for Black Friday and the holiday buying season. Also, Amazon tries to make TV buying easier. YouTube offers more protection against trolls. Is the vertical video trend cooling off? And on the ad-free premium podcast, which you can learn more about by tapping Go Premium in the show notes,

Starting point is 00:00:25 our Google Ads correspondent, Jill Saskin-Gales, helps us understand the latest changes to YouTube ad buys. I'm Todd Maffin. 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. Some potential good news for marketers as we head into Black Friday and

Starting point is 00:01:04 the holidays. It's looking like consumer spending will be getting a big lift this year. Deloitte does a study every year on the holiday retail season and polls 4,000 American consumers. This year, 95% said they were planning to shop for the holidays this year. It was 92% last year. It was 88% the year prior. As for how much they'll spend, the average is about $1,650. That is past pre-COVID levels for the first time and 14% more than last year. You might be wondering, as I did, how that's possible given the high inflation. It turns out that's exactly why the average spend is what it is. Consumers were factoring in the higher prices in their estimates. Also good news, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are back after lower than average performance in previous years. In

Starting point is 00:01:56 2021, 47% said they'd be buying during that period. Last year, it was only 2% higher. This year, 54% said they'll take part. And copywriters take note, three quarters said they might even buy a gift for themselves. Our newsletter today has the details on the study, including a link to the full PDF report, the impact of sustainable gift shoppers, how AI plays into it all, and a generational breakdown.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Our daily newsletter is free. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Amazon today announced a new self-service ad product that will let any brand that sells on its commerce platform advertise on streaming TV. They call it sponsored TV and there's no minimum campaign spend and no

Starting point is 00:02:47 upfront advertising commitments. If you have existing TV quality assets, you can use that in your sponsored TV campaigns, and they'll even help you develop creative if you don't have those ready to go assets. Last week, the company added frequency groups to their ads platform, which will let you limit the number of times a unique user is exposed to your ads across multiple orders. YouTube is testing a nice feature that will let you pause comments on specific videos for a period of time. Being able to deactivate comments on videos isn't new. That's been around for years. But the current method is a bit of a blunt hammer. Either you let comments in or the whole comment section is gone,

Starting point is 00:03:32 even if previous comments existed. This new version, if it launches widely, and there's no reason to suggest it wouldn't, would let you keep the comments you've already received, but prevent more from being added. When you turn this on, viewers will see a message that says comments are paused. A nice little touch in case your brand comes under attack and you want the internet to take a little breather.

Starting point is 00:03:53 The feature is currently in testing with a small group of channels. No word on when it will be released more widely. 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.

Starting point is 00:04:25 Be protected. Be Zen. Are we starting to see the slowdown of the vertical video trend? Some analysts are wondering if things have started to cool a little after reviewing the quarterly results of both Google and Snapchat released this week. Quoting from the news site theinformation.com, quote, At Snap, the company didn't break out the monthly active users of its short-form video feature Spotlight,

Starting point is 00:04:48 unlike in the second quarter, when Snap said the feature had more than 400 million monthly active users. Snap did say time spent watching Spotlight clips in the September quarter rose 200% year over year, but the absence of monthly active users suggests there wasn't much user growth to crow about. Meanwhile, YouTube Shorts hasn't picked up any new users. Parent company Alphabet said Shorts was watched by more than 2 billion logged in users every month, but that was the

Starting point is 00:05:18 same as the second quarter. Daily views of Shorts reached 70 billion, up from 50 billion announced in February 2023, unquote. On their financials, Snap's revenue is up 5% to just over $1.1 billion compared to last year's Q3. Daily active users up 12%, and the company said three times as many stories were posted in the U.S. during the period. Over at YouTube, a 12% jump in revenue hitting almost $8 billion. Apparently, the recent deal to live stream Sunday games of the National Football League helped there. Meta's results released today. We will have coverage of that tomorrow. As for Google overall, it said Q3 sales were up 11% year over year to $76 billion. Its profit margin? 42%. I mentioned this in our newsletter earlier. One of the things we do in it each day are a couple of polls based on the day's news. Today, for instance, we're asking if you think vertical

Starting point is 00:06:18 videos are cooling off. They are not by any means scientific, but I do want to mention yesterday's poll. We asked if your attribution windows have been changed by Meta without your knowledge. Of the 12 votes recorded, nine said Meta had changed their campaign attribution settings. I know 12 is not a lot of votes, but it's still an interesting number, I thought. The Daily Newsletter, again, it's free. It contains everything you hear in the podcast, plus a lot more. You can sign up by tapping the link in the show notes

Starting point is 00:06:48 or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. DJ drop the beat. It is Wednesday. Got to run off for my amateur radio license classes. See you tomorrow. DJ drop the beat. Yo, let's get this party started. This right here ain't for the weak hearted. The house on fire. Licensed classes, see you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. This is a house party. 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

Today in Digital Marketing - Is the "Vertical Video" Trend Cooling Down?

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