Today in Digital Marketing - Is This The Real Ad? Is It Just Fantasy?

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Monday, September 11th. Today, the tug-of-war between where consumers say they want to see you and where you actually are. Google's new appeals process comes with a ticking time limit, Meta goes cross-platform but not voluntarily, and it's the case of X's disappearing ad disclosures. I'm Todd Math, and 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,

Starting point is 00:00:36 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. So you've had your quarterly planning meeting, you know where you're going to run your ads, but are they where your targets want to see your ads? There's often a disconnect between where people say they want to be reached and where we marketers try to reach them. Take YouTube ads as an example. Ask consumers which ad formats they love, and YouTube ads are not going to be at the top of that list, mostly because they're interruptive. They get in the way. Which, of course, is precisely why we filthy digital marketers choose YouTube ads. And new numbers out this week from Kantar's latest Media Reactions report solidifies this. For the second year in a row, consumers said Amazon was their favorite place to see ads

Starting point is 00:01:32 because they found the ads to be relevant and useful. But for marketers, Amazon ads didn't even show up in the top five. Our number one, YouTube, which got a 6% increase in trust among media buyers compared to last year. In case you're curious, here are the top five. For consumers, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Instagram, and Spotify, in that order. And for marketers, YouTube, Google, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify. Quoting Marketing Brew, When it comes to media channels, consumers showed an affinity for ads that reach them via in-person experiences like events or going to the movies,

Starting point is 00:02:12 aka channels that cause the least interruption to their lives, according to Kantar. Marketers leaned toward newer channels. Consumers ranked sponsored events as their most preferred channel, followed by cinema ads, out-of-home campaigns, point-of-sale assets, and digital out-of-home. Marketers, meanwhile, put online video in their number one spot, followed by sponsored events, digital out-of-home, video streaming ads, and online stories, unquote. As for television, it didn't crack the top five for either group. A notable change from last year were marketers placed it firmly as their number three pick. This year, television is down to 12th place, with only 6% of marketers saying they're planning to increase spending in those spaces.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Also down, the ex-formerly known as Twitter, 14% of marketers say they plan to reduce spend there next year. The Kantar study polled 16,000 consumers and 900 senior marketers. Heads up, if you manage your brand's Google business profile, the company will soon be implementing a new workflow for getting a banned profile reinstated, and it comes with a time limit. The old process was convoluted and haphazard.

Starting point is 00:03:36 You'd get a form from a support rep, ask them to review. You'd sometimes get a generic reason for dismissing your appeal. You could ask them to look again, and sometimes even have it escalated a third time. The new process is currently active in Europe. It's a kind of step-by-step wizard which should provide more information about why your account was shut off. But reports say when it asks you for documents to prove your case, you've only got 60 minutes

Starting point is 00:04:00 from that point to upload them. Quoting Ben Fisher from SteadyDemand.com, quote, you have one chance to apply for reinstatement. If you miss this step, you will most likely be denied and have no chance at an appeal, unquote. Back in the day, in the early 2000s, the first app I'd install on any new computer was Trillion. Trillion was an instant messaging app, but it didn't have its own service. Rather, it pulled in chats from all the popular services of the day. ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and a handful of others. It meant you

Starting point is 00:04:38 could chat with your friends on multiple networks without needing to have multiple chat clients open. There is a sort of similar app out there now, one that VCs and other tech reporters recommend, but it's one of those monthly subscription apps. It's not cheap, and when I tried it, it got my WhatsApp account banned. I appealed to Meta saying I barely even use my WhatsApp account, and some auto-enforcement bot denied my appeal, and now, since your WhatsApp account is tied to your phone number, I guess I'm banned from WhatsApp for the rest of my life. Or as long as I'll have my phone number.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Luckily, though, it sounds like European regulators will do what the big platforms refuse to do. Provide real cross-platform messaging. Techies have noticed that there's now code in the Android beta version of WhatsApp for a new section called Third Party Chats. Quoting TechCrunch, quote, There is one notable messenger not on that list, Apple's iMessage. The reason? EU's regulations only kick in when there are more than 45 million users of the service. Apple claims it doesn't have that many. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

Starting point is 00:06:20 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. It's not difficult to see why advertisers are abandoning X. From Elon Musk's recent fights with Jewish advocacy groups to the reinstatement of accounts most marketers would consider not brand safe. Now, X is being accused of hiding ad disclosures.

Starting point is 00:06:55 You might recall a couple of months ago, we reported that X had changed the way it indicated a post was a paid ad with the word ad in light gray text in the top right of a post. Honestly, I had to look for about five seconds of the new design before I even saw it. But last week, people noticed even that disclosure was gone. There was literally nothing visible disclosing that a post had been paid for. The only way you'd know is if you click the more details button, then you'd see those. Why am I seeing this ad options? Also not clear if this was a test of a forthcoming design or a glitch or a deliberate attempt to deceive consumers or just a way to rile people up and generate engagement on the platform.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Some tech policy analysts suggested that the American trade regulator should step in, that the practice was an obvious violation of the FTC's rules. Many media organizations tried to get clarification on the change, but X no longer replies to media inquiries. I look, I know how it looks. I know how it looks. Wednesday and Thursday, I was telling you in this extra about how much I was so excited that Starfield had come out from my favorite game publisher and how I was playing the hell out of it. Then Friday, suddenly there's no newsletter and there's no podcast. Look, I know how it looks. Okay, I did not play hooky. We actually had a pretty big technical glitch that rendered my computer basically a brick for a while. We're switching cloud providers. We used to use Sync.com, but for a variety of reasons, we're leaving them and just moving to a different provider.

Starting point is 00:08:34 But trying to get our one and a half terabytes of data off of the cloud when the hard drive of my computer is only one terabyte. And honestly, like three quarters of it is full anyway. It never occurred to me how logistically you would do that. Here's how Sync seems to do it, is you have to go back and forth with them with support for a couple of weeks it took, basically. And then they just essentially turn on the tap, and all your data tries to land on your computer. And some of it does. And then your computer completely fills up and stops working and just crashes. It was a nightmare.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Now, you would think, you would think, Todd, didn't you just buy your computer recently? You must have your old computer. And I did have my old computer until I sold it at a garage sale not two weeks ago we had a whole bunch of mac laptops you know hand-me-downs basically and i got rid of them so the computer crashed it took me the better part of friday to even get it back up and running i was not playing cookie i promise see you tomorrow. 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.

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Today in Digital Marketing - Is This The Real Ad? Is It Just Fantasy?

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