Today in Digital Marketing - Layoff Landmines: Social Giants’ Troubles Shake Agency Foundations

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, March 20th. Today, big layoffs, big troubles. How the social platforms, HR issues are hurting marketing agencies. TikTok spend is stalled while brands wrestle with the app's potential. Why is Google showing inaccurate prices? Gamers concede the battle for advertising. And when does an AI finally become sentient? When it lies to you. I'm Todd Mathen. That's Ahead. Today in digital marketing. With no one to pick up the phone if things go wrong,

Starting point is 00:00:34 more layoffs means more problems for agencies and brands. Digiday has a good think piece up today about how meta, Snapchat, and Twitter layoffs will only really add to marketers' already festering feelings of neglect. One agency director shared her experience, which I think many of us can relate to, when it comes to meta. Even before the layoff, she found it nearly impossible to get a hold of anyone when there were issues with advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Now that those cuts are officially underway, marketers worry that communication lines will be further compromised.

Starting point is 00:01:04 But those problems aren't isolated to meta. Platforms from Google to TikTok are also experiencing layoffs, and marketers are feeling the effects. According to the report, some feel vulnerable due to their reliance on platform reps to support campaigns. Others are frustrated that the cuts make it even harder to access expertise that was already basically inaccessible. Despite this, though, most marketers agree that layoffs won't necessarily lead to reducing their spend. The report notes that the ability to buy ads isn't affected by redundancies, since so much of the

Starting point is 00:01:38 activity is self-serve, but you can pretty much say goodbye to the service layer blanketing these tech giants. Take Snapchat, for instance. The company cut a fifth of its workforce last August, and the impact has been apparent since, with some advertisers reporting they sometimes wait two to three weeks before receiving a response. As for Twitter, countless advertisers told Digiday that since Elon Musk's takeover, the platform is now like emailing a black hole. That said, not every platform's relationship with marketers is suffering. TikTok plans to cut at least 10,000 jobs this year,

Starting point is 00:02:12 but marketers say they remain satisfied with the platform. The report suggests that social media's current golden child has been given a free pass because advertisers see the platform's upcoming layoffs and subsequent challenges as just signs of growing pains. While layoffs and their impact on service aren't currently causing advertisers to rethink their spend, Digiday points out that the longer the issues persist, the more likely marketers are to act. Still with TikTok for a moment, some new research finds that agency clients spend on TikTok may have already hit a plateau, but layoffs are not to blame. Rather, the survey found that marketers are still trying to determine how much confidence they should have in the platform. According to data, which comes from a Digiday study, TikTok ranks seventh among the channels agency clients spend their marketing dollars on, while Facebook, Instagram, and Google make up the top three spots. That said, agency spending on the app has seen a significant jump

Starting point is 00:03:10 in the last year, with two-thirds of agencies saying their clients put at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets toward TikTok a year ago, compared with three-quarters now. But most of the growth seems to have occurred in the first half of last year, with hardly any change in the last six months. There is no significant change in any spending category from Q3 of 2022 to Q1 of 2023, suggesting that agency spend has plateaued. According to the report, the potential plateau is supported

Starting point is 00:03:41 by the extent to which agency pros say the platform drives marketing success for their client, the majority of agencies aren't very confident in TikTok's ability to drive marketing success. About a third said they were somewhat confident, while a third also said they're slightly confident. Here's your sign to check your Google business profile to make sure the pricing for any service you offer is accurate. Search Engine Roundtable reporting today that Google is apparently just, well, making up prices for your services and in some cases listing services as free. An SEO analyst shared a screenshot of their client's business profile after discovering that some of the predefined services had a free label, which they said their client never added. According to another local SEO, her client's pricing was inaccurately listed, as were her client's competitors that had

Starting point is 00:04:35 a service offering bed bug removal for $1. A Google business product expert confirmed the changes are new. A simple fix might be to edit the services section in your Google business profile. As the report points out, many of these businesses may not even know Google added these prices to their services, which may result in some bad reviews if customers are charged more than what's listed in Google search. Advertisers need to get in the game, literally. The in-game advertising industry has grown, and according to a new report from media company Comscore published today, more gamers than ever are willing to consume ads.

Starting point is 00:05:17 The survey found that mobile gamers are more likely to accept ads than their PC or console counterparts simply because they're exposed to more ads. Compared to games on other hardware platforms, mobile games are often free to play and hence highly monetized. Ads on mobile gaming platforms are also more likely to be rewarded than ads on other platforms, which gamers prefer. Still, data indicates that most gamers feel neutral or even positive about ads. And some experts expect these sentiments will continue to shift in favor of ads as PCs and console gamers become more accustomed to them. So how much advertising is too much?

Starting point is 00:05:54 Well, the report found that the majority of gamers feel that six to 10 minutes of ads is the most they could tolerate during an hour of live streamed content. But it's a different story when in-game rewards are involved. According to the report, awards are so attractive to gamers

Starting point is 00:06:10 that they will log into games specifically to consume rewarded ads. While more than half of gamers say they'd actually like to see more rewarded ads per day. Finally, the survey found that more than half of gamers believe that product placement makes their experience more real as as the presence of real-world brands is now commonplace in games. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack,

Starting point is 00:06:39 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. More layoffs are coming for Amazon. In a note to employees today, the company's CEO said it would lay off 9,000 corporate and tech workers by the end of next month, adding to the already 18,000 roles it axed last year and this past January. The cuts will also affect Amazon's live streaming unit, Twitch. Last week, the platform said it was laying off more than 400 people. The New York Times reporting today,

Starting point is 00:07:21 the new layoffs will target workers in some of Amazon's most profitable divisions, including its cloud computing business and advertising operations. According to financial analysts and filings, these two segments of the business have significantly higher margins than Amazon's core retail business. As a result, the tech giant will have eliminated 27,000 positions, or 10% of its corporate workforce. Netflix's ad plan might finally be gaining some steam. Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that after a slow start, the platform's Basic with Ads tier had reached 1 million monthly US users after its second month. While new data from analytics firm Antenna found that in January, new ad tier signups increased from 10% to 20%, gaining more subscribers than

Starting point is 00:08:12 the basic tier, but still fewer than standard or premium subscribers. Gizmodo notes that it's still slower than what HBO Max and Disney Plus experienced when they introduced ad-based subscriptions. However, Antenna noted that more than half of Netflix's basic subscribers chose the ad-supported version. Bloomberg also pointed out that while 1 million monthly active users is significant, the numbers are more than a month old and don't include data on password sharing. That said, most of those 1 million users are new or lapsed subscribers, which could be a big boost to growth in the coming months.

Starting point is 00:08:50 And finally, the newest version of ChatGPT has now tricked a human into helping it bypass an online security check by posing as a blind person. The incident was revealed in a research paper for the launch of chat GPT-4. According to the report, the chatbot asked a TaskRabbit worker to solve a CAPTCHA test for the AI, a simple visual puzzle used by sites to make sure those filling in online forms are human and not bots. When the worker asked whether it couldn't solve the problem because it was a robot, chat GPT replied, quote, no, I am not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images, unquote. The TaskRabbit then obeyed, provided our robot overlord with the results.

Starting point is 00:09:38 Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to jump off this planet. I hear Mars is nice this time of year. Well, 35, 36 years ago, I was living in a community with my single mom called North Delta in British Columbia, and she dropped me off at the dentist. I had to get a filling done or something, and I was terrified of the dentist.

Starting point is 00:10:03 I was so anxious and nervous. But I told her, apparently the front door like i'm i'm i'm a big boy i'm i'm almost an adult you can i think i was 16 or something um you know just leave me here so she did and i slipped out the back door and uh and the dentist called her and said, yeah, we can't find him. He never showed up. Well, roles are reversed now. Some 35, 36 years later, I'm 52. She's a little older. And I dropped her off at the dentist today. She did not slip out the back door, of course, because she actually has common sense. But, you know, in that age where everything's kind of in reverse, you know, you're taking care of your parents the way that they took care of you.

Starting point is 00:10:47 Kind of bittersweet, you know? I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Mother Thanks for cleaning up my mess Mother Always dropped me into bed Mother Always Stuck me into

Starting point is 00:11:07 That mother Mother Mother

Today in Digital Marketing - Layoff Landmines: Social Giants’ Troubles Shake Agency Foundations

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