Today in Digital Marketing - I’ve Got 99 Problems and ROI is All of Them

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Zero-party data: Our last resistance against the cookiepocalypse?Which social platform has the most effective chatbots?Influencer CPMs are heating up Pinterest in court over who started itMeta may have to sell GiphyPayPal closes a popular merchant loopholeYelp closes three officesAmazon's Prime Day to be repeated in OctoberGo Premium! No ads, weekend editions, story links, audio chapters, better audio quality, earlier release time, and more.Get each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links).HELPFUL LINKS:ADS: Reach thousands of marketers with our ad options.CLASSIFIED ADS: Only $20 — more infoMORE CONTENT: Email newsletter, expert interviews, and blog posts.HANG OUT: Join our Slack communityEnjoying the Show? Tweet about us • Rate and review • Send a voicemailFOLLOW US:The Show: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page • FB GroupTod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • TwitchDEALS:Jyll Saskin Gales — Inside Google Ads Andrew Foxwell — Foxwell Founders Membership • Scaling After iOS14 • All CoursesOthers — AppSumo lifetime marketing deals • Riverside.FM podcast recording siteCREDITS:Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Ad coordination by RedCircle. Production coordination by Sarah Guild. Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.(If the links in the show notes do not work in your podcast app, visit https://todayindigital.com )Some links in these show notes may provide us with a commission.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today is zero party data, the marketing industry's last resistance against the cookie apocalypse. Influencer CPMs are getting out of control. A lawsuit striking at the core of Pinterest. Bad news for merchants who rely on PayPal. And Amazon has decided it wants to make the life of DTC sellers miserable two times a year now. It's Monday, June 27th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. If your campaigns haven't been delivering results lately, it's not just you. Nine out of 10 marketers have seen a decline in the effectiveness of digital channels,

according to some new research. The study found that marketers are seeing the greatest decline in social marketing. Other top digital channels in decline include email newsletters, SMS, and display advertising. Six out of ten respondents said data privacy regulations are making their marketing tactics less effective. As a result, about 40% said collecting zero-party data has never been more important. I know, I know. Third-party cookies, first-party data, now zero-party. For most people, this defines first-party data that consumers give you voluntarily and intentionally. Take Netflix as an example. You give Netflix an email address to sign up because you have to. That's first-party data because Netflix is collecting it on Netflix-owned sites and using it for their own purposes.

But when you rate a show with thumbs up or thumbs down, something you do not have to do to use the service but is a voluntary action, you're giving them data about yourself and your preferences, that's what most people call zero-party data. Tell Yelp your phone number when you sign up? First party. Tell it you prefer sushi over pizza? Zero party. The study was done by Spectrum, which provides a conversational marketing platform, something most of us call chatbots. So naturally, a lot of their report was about said bots. Almost three quarters of respondents said the tactic has been quite effective for them. According to their data, Instagram is the most effective channel for conversational marketing, followed by, in order, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger,

and Google's Business Messages. Spectrum's study included 400 marketers in the sample group. One of the tactics seeing a decline in effectiveness, according to that study, was influencer marketing. And if that's true, it's peculiar that some new data shows that YouTube influencer CPMs are on the rise and not slowing down. YouTube saw an increase in demand for creators across every vertical last year, and the trend continued this year. For example, the median CPM for beauty influencers in 2021 was almost $77. Now, in the first half of 2022, it's $87 CPM. According to the research, two factors are attributed to the rise in CPMs, an increased interest in influencer marketing, and, of course, Apple's privacy

changes. The report noted that the industry will likely continue to see an upward climb the data comes from the outloud group's analysis of more than 2800 youtube channels i should note that outbound is an influencer marketing agency so you know it's not like they don't have a dog in this race a link to their study is also in today's premium newsletter which you can learn more about at todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Pinterest is being sued by a digital marketing strategist who claims she helped create it. Last week, a judge denied the company's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, but eliminated one of its co-founders as a defendant because he left Pinterest a decade ago. Bloomberg is one of the agencies-founders as a defendant because he left Pinterest a decade ago.

Bloomberg is one of the agencies reporting on this. The plaintiff initially filed the lawsuit in September, saying she contributed to some of the platform's most integral features, including pinboards, but was never compensated. She says she was friends with the platform's co-founder, who asked her to, quote, salvage a failed shopping app, unquote, which later became Pinterest. She never had any employment or contract with Pinterest, but says based on her discussions with co-founders, she thought she would be compensated.

Pinterest tried to dismiss the case in December, saying the claims were too old and therefore barred by the statute of limitations. But the judge says the complainant sufficiently alleges that both parties agreed on deferred compensation. The judge also ruled that Pinterest's 2019 IPO was a transformative event and the company should have an obligation to pay the plaintiff. Pinterest has not yet responded to requests for comment. You may recall a couple of years ago, Meta, then known just as Facebook, acquired the animated GIF platform Jiffy for about $400 million. Since then, it's been pretty rough sailing.

Late last year, the UK's competition watchdog, known as the CMA, told Meta it had to sell Jiffy, saying the acquisition could harm social media users and British advertisers. Meta appealed, and this week, the slow gears of bureaucracy cranked out a development. Meta had appealed the decision to another body, the Competition Appeal Tribunal, on six grounds, five of which have now been unanimously rejected by the tribunal. According to that tribunal, the CMA's original finding, that the acquisition significantly reduced dynamic competition was lawful. But the tribunal did rule that the CMA withheld information from Meta about Snapchat's acquisition of JiffyCat for nearly a year after it became aware of the ruling, undermining the company's defense. Until all that bureaucracy is finally unwound, Jiffy continues to operate per normal,

though it is starting to look like the site might be back up for sale soon. I'll pitch in 20 bucks. Anyone else? 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.

PayPal recently announced it will be rolling out two changes to its peer-to-peer pricing structure in the U.S. First, the company will be changing its goods and services pricing structure. This is the fee that it charges to merchants or sellers. Accepting payments through its system will be changed to 2.99% with no fixed fee. The current fee is 2.89% plus a flat fee of 49 cents USD. Second, PayPal has closed a loophole that allowed those peer-to-peer payments to include business accounts. So now, well, at least in the weeks ahead, U.S. customers will only be able to send friends and family peer-to-peer payments to other consumer PayPal accounts and no longer merchant accounts for goods and services. While Twitter's remote workers live in fear that they will face the same fate as Tesla's employees that are required to spend at least 40 hours per week in the office,

the future of work is remote, according to Yelp. The review platform announced it will close three of its most consistently underused offices by the end of July. According to Yelp's CEO, 1% of the company's employees opted to return to the office every day since reopening with a remote-first approach. And the three offices that are closing are seeing less than 2% use of available workspaces every week. What about companies adopting a hybrid model? That's apparently no good either. According to the CEO of Yelp, it requires employees to live near an office, potentially driving up their housing costs, and to endure unpaid time spent commuting.

It also means hiring is artificially constrained by geography, translating to a smaller and less diverse pool of talent. And finally, not that DTC merchants needed the competition, but Amazon is apparently planning a second Prime Day shopping event for its Amazon Prime subscribers this year. CNBC reports that its sources say the e-commerce giant recently notified select third-party merchants of a Prime Fall Deal event through Seller Central. According to the notice, quote, the Prime Fall Deal event is a Prime exclusive shopping event coming in Q4, unquote. Hmm.

Does that sound like deals or desperation to you? And it's starting to get hot out here. I think we have another record-breaking summer coming. Not looking forward to it. See you tomorrow. Outro Music