Today in Digital Marketing - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Thriftmas

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Wednesday, October 5th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, Meta adds more advantage to custom audiences. Google updates Tag Manager. The second-hand holiday buying season ahead. Britain's version of the GDRP is on hold. And brands find BeReal a surprisingly inhospitable space. Here's what you missed today, Digital Marketing. Yesterday, Meta started testing some new Facebook and Instagram ad placements that we reported on.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Today, it announced it's developing new ad tools in line with data privacy standards. And you guessed it, with its new ad measures comes more AI-driven automation. First up, the company is rolling out Advantage Custom Audiences to advertisers, a new product in its Advantage Ad Suite, which incorporates Meta's various automation and machine learning-based tools. Quoting the company, this is similar to lookalike audiences

Starting point is 00:00:52 that find people who are likely to be interested in your business, except that Advantage Custom Audience goes beyond the 1, 5, or 10% similarity ranges that you're used to, while also prioritizing delivery of ads to people in your custom audience, unquote. Social media today suggests that the matching depth for custom audiences could be big with Meta's AI tools,

Starting point is 00:01:14 guiding the process to optimize campaign performance, meaning less manual effort for you, that is, if it's accurate. Also, the ad giant is updating its click-to-messenger ads. According to the company, its click-to-messenger ads. According to the company, its click-to-messenger ads can now be optimized to target new customers or those most likely to make a purchase in a thread. Also, the company noted it has made improvements to its privacy solutions, including its private lift measurement product. Along with private lift, Meta also begins testing a new private computational tool called private attribution.

Starting point is 00:01:46 And finally, as part of yesterday's surprise announcement, the company is launching a free training course called What is the Metaverse? Google announced a few new tag features today. Back in August, the tech giant released a new tag solution that required less coding and new features. Now the company has three updates. First, tag coverage summary. This will let businesses determine whether or not their tag has been correctly implemented on all of their website pages. It will also suggest pages that may have not been properly tagged. You can see where your tags are implemented in suggested pages. If these suggestions don't include all of your website pages, you can add the URLs manually by entering them or uploading a CSV file.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Second, Google Ads and Analytics integrations. Soon, Google will be integrating the tag into the account setup and conversion setup flows in both Google Ads and Analytics. These features aim to make it easier to set up a conversion measurement. Adding additional code to your site is not required. And third, for customers using popular content management systems or website builders, you will be able to install a new Google Tag across your site without making manual changes to the site code. You can also, if you want, reuse the existing gtag.js implementation or create a new Google tag to deploy without making major changes to your website code.

Starting point is 00:03:09 This can be done directly in your CMS within the ads and analytics account setup flows. Finally, Google also took the opportunity to jog your memory that it is time to upgrade to GA4 if you haven't done so already. Hate clicking? So does a new ad platform. Earlier today, Triton Digital, a subsidiary of iHeart Media, launched Tap. This is a new version of its ad platform, which is trying to make managing ads a little less laborious for publishers in the streaming audio, broadcast, and podcast industries. In an internal focus group they conducted, they found that publishers were seeking some more efficient ways to manage ads without pesky clicks and bulk changes to campaigns.

Starting point is 00:03:53 The old system, which was also called TAP, required you to work in specific workflows to create a campaign, link it to an advertiser, then build out your order, your flights, day parts, and ads. This new system will simplify things by streamlining some of those components, letting you choose the workflow. Part of the update includes expanding ad and campaign targeting, like advanced geo-targeting and grouping publisher content into a single campaign.

Starting point is 00:04:16 Tag's new creative management features let users add multiple creatives to a single flight and apply different ad targeting rules to different creatives. It's beginning to look a lot like a thrifty Christmas. More than half of consumers plan to change their holiday shopping plans this year in response to inflation. A recent survey found that 85% of shoppers said inflation has affected their spending, up 10% from Q2, while more than half of consumers said their household income is unstable. That is up over 10% from Q2. While more than half of consumers said their household income is unstable. That is up over a third from Q2. So how will this affect what you sell? Well, maybe get into the used business. One out of four shoppers say they plan to purchase pre-owned items as gifts to reduce their holiday spending. Other ways consumers say that they will

Starting point is 00:05:01 be spending less include just spending less per person on gifts, buying things when they're on sale, buying gifts for fewer people, spending less on holiday decorations, and cutting back on holiday travel. According to the people who entered the survey, the people who are most likely to get skipped when shopping include themselves, friends, extended family, and don't expect any gifts from your colleagues this year either. But they are less likely to skip gifts for children, grandchildren, partners and pets. The data comes from Jungle Scout Consumer Trends Survey of a thousand U.S. shoppers. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:59 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. 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. Get customized coverage today starting

Starting point is 00:06:36 at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. The UK government has confirmed that the recently introduced data reform bill is on hold. The PAWS bill contains a package of changes to the UK's data protection rules, which are still based on the European Union's framework. Much of it could seriously impact the work that digital marketers do. The legislation tweaks rules governing data processing in specific areas like scientific inquiry, consent for online tracking and data sharing in the private and public sectors. But that reform is now on pause under the new Prime Minister Liz Truss as the government rethinks. Earlier this week, Michelle

Starting point is 00:07:15 Donilon, the newly appointed Secretary of State for Digital, turned heads when she announced that the UK would be replacing the GDPR, a law that the UK had essentially inherited from the European Union. In its place, she said, the government will implement its own business and consumer-friendly British data protection regime. They say it will remove bureaucratic EU red tape, which she claims is to blame for current rules being far too demanding for small firms due to the GDPR's one-size-fits-all approach. She also said that simplifying the UK's data protection legislation would help economic growth by increasing businesses' profits. But exactly how the government plans to simplify those rules under the new post-Brexit data

Starting point is 00:07:55 reform is unclear. Well, it was only a matter of time. Brands are coming for BeReal, the new social media app on the block. It has big brands like Chipotle and e.l.f. Cosmetics racing to understand its appeal to Gen Z. As the platform's user base grows, so does the interest from brands and advertisers looking for the next shiny thing. With BeReal raking in more client inquiries, Digiday has an interesting piece up today looking at why brands and agencies are reluctant to invest in the platform. First and foremost, Be Real isn't delivering its plans. According to the director of a Gen Z marketing agency called Carson and Doyle,

Starting point is 00:08:37 quote, there's so much ambiguity around whether the platform is going to adapt to involve brands. It seems like they've been very adamant against it, the way it's been built and the philosophy That director added that at least three clients have asked about BeReal over the last three weeks, but unfortunately the conversation dies out because BeReal hasn't provided any answers about advertising or brand presence. In fact, currently, the app's terms and conditions prohibit users from using BeReal for advertising or commercial purposes. But how the platform would enforce these restrictions is still not yet clear. The piece also noted that BeReal is not currently designed for brand discovery. Users don't expect brands to be there, and consumers who follow brands on BeReal get little value. But, the piece noted, that doesn't mean there's no hope for brands on BeReal.

Starting point is 00:09:26 For now, there's always discount codes, limited secret promotions, and behind-the-scenes looks. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Reddit has acquired a developer of AI-based content moderation tools. The company says the tech will detect harmful content across languages, as well as help provide advanced safety tools to moderators. The company says the tech will detect harmful content across languages, as well as help provide advanced safety tools to moderators. The company is also testing live chat in chat tabs. In that tab, users in the test group will see three filter options, live, messages, and requests. Bloggers say it takes more than four hours on average to write a blog post. For the best results, however, bloggers who spend at least six hours on a post are 50% more likely to report above par results. This data coming from Orbit Media that says the average length of a blog post is now 1400 words. Facebook says it will be testing letting users

Starting point is 00:10:16 customize how much content they see in their feed from friends, families, groups and pages. Users will be able to choose which types of pages to see more and less of. Any guesses as to what they're going to do with company and brand pages? How do you subtract from zero again? The camping retailer REI will close its doors on Black Friday for the seventh year in a row,

Starting point is 00:10:42 but this time it's making it forever. The company says, quote, for this Black Friday and every Black Friday in the future, the co-op will forego profits and sales at all locations and instead pay its more than 16,000 employees to enjoy time outside. And Amazon has suspended more than 50 workers who refused to work after a fire broke out in their warehouse. The suspended employees were part of about 100 workers who participated in a work stoppage after the fire broke out in a cardboard trash compactor. Union leaders said the warehouse smelled of smoke, they had trouble breathing, and one

Starting point is 00:11:19 worker went to the hospital. So yesterday I got out of here really quick because Overwatch 2 launched. went to the hospital. back-to-back DDoS attacks. The wait time was hours and hours, and then by the time people got to the front of the queue to play the game, it would just put them back at the end of the line again. So luckily, though, I have... Goddamn. Disney Dreamlike Valley,

Starting point is 00:11:56 which is also shockingly compulsive, I guess, better than addictive. Still growing my canola, which is making me a ton of money. Thanks for asking. But I'm going to head upstairs now and see if we can finally get in with the game on Overwatch 2. Wish me luck. See you tomorrow. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Thriftmas

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