Today in Digital Marketing - “Lindsey, Come Here and Listen to This!”

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, Apple wants your ad dollars. Google's new cost per lead bid option changes the local services game. Traditional radio and TV are not doing well. And why is a 20-second clip of Meghan Trainor singing the future of digital collaboration? It's Thursday, August 27, 2020. Happy Independence Day, Moldova. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Well, that didn't last long. The CEO of TikTok is out, not even three months after he joined. Kevin Mayer was a Disney executive. Yesterday, he wrote employees of TikTok to say he was leaving. He wrote, in part, in recent weeks, the political structure has sharply changed. I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require and what it means for the global role I signed up for against this backdrop. And as we expect to reach a resolution very soon,

Starting point is 00:00:58 it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company, unquote. Translation, this ain't the job I signed up for. Can't blame him, really. He wanted to be a global CEO, not CEO of one of the two or three or four different regional TikToks that we'll probably all end up with after this is all over. The Trump administration, of course,

Starting point is 00:01:19 forcing the company to sell off its U.S. business in what most analysts consider a massive, possibly illegal overreach off its U.S. business in what most analysts consider a massive, possibly illegal, overreach of its powers. Meanwhile, the apparent frontrunner in the bid to buy those assets, that'd be Microsoft, has teamed up now with Walmart for the deal. And in a development somewhat unusual to negotiations like these, Walmart actually confirmed that. They told Bloomberg News they were in it to grow their third-party online marketplace. In other words, they want to go head-to-head with Amazon, and they see TikTok as the door in. Also in the running, the cloud computing giant Oracle.

Starting point is 00:01:57 A deal with someone is expected in the coming days. For its part, TikTok moved up their GM to interim CEO and released some merch, including hoodies with the TikTok logo and the words, not going anywhere. Bloomberg is reporting that Apple plans to add augmented reality content to its Apple TV Plus streaming video service. And while the coverage talks a lot about how they'd use it to enhance a show, we filthy digital marketers know the real reason this is being developed, of course. Here's how it's being described so far, quoting Bloomberg, elements of a TV show, like characters or objects, would be displayed on a viewer's phone

Starting point is 00:02:40 or tablet and integrated into the surrounding environment. For example, someone watching a moonwalking scene in the Apple show For All Mankind might be able to see a virtual lunar rover on their device's display, seemingly perched atop their living room coffee table. The option would serve as bonus content, akin to the director commentary or a trailer that accompanies a movie download. Unquote. So, sure, virtual spaceships on coffee tables, cool. But can you imagine the marketing possibilities here? AR is already well in use in other formats.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Think of the holiday time Starbucks paper cups that dance and display AR characters when you point your smartphone camera at them. But being able to put AR assets into people's homes while they're watching your ad, as Borat might say, is nice. Back in the day, Facebook had a bidding option called cost per conversion that let you set a maximum bid for a sale or a subscription or whatever your conversion event was. And that was super helpful in planning your ad campaign because you could just set it to whatever your literal break-even was or what your average customer lifetime value was and that way ensure that you were profitable. Yes, I'm skipping some subtleties and technicalities, but in a general sense, you could do that. Then Facebook took it away because, well, that's what Facebook

Starting point is 00:04:03 does. Enter Google. Some people this morning on Twitter reporting they are seeing a new bidding mode that lets you set a maximum cost per lead. This appears to only be in local services ads and even then only to some business categories. Some lawyers are seeing it so far. The option says choose this option to let Google set your bid and get you the most leads for your budget. It's nice.

Starting point is 00:04:28 Okay, that's enough of Borat. If you manage your brand's digital presences, you probably also keep tab on its reviews. And there are lots of places to check. Facebook reviews,

Starting point is 00:04:43 Google My Business reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and dozens more. Well, get ready to add one more to the list. Apple. The latest testing version of the forthcoming iPhone operating system appears to no longer rely on third-party review sites like it did in the past, and now will let users put them directly into a new Apple Reviews section. It will show up in the Map app.

Starting point is 00:05:06 Users tap a location. They can offer a thumbs up or thumbs down rating. They also appear to be adding a way to let people add photos to locations, just like they can do right now in Google Maps. This is sometimes problematic, as people can upload images that you might not want on your business profile. In the case of Google, it's not always easy to remove those images. Google considers them sort of like visual reviews. Of course,

Starting point is 00:05:32 no guarantee this will make it to the final version of the new operating system, but it does look pretty polished. So keep an eye out for it when iOS 14 releases in the fall. Another potential big change with Apple, and I've got to say I did not see this one coming. It looks like Apple might be making its own search engine, one that competes with Google and Bing and the others. Some backstory, since forever, Google has been paying Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine on its platform. Well, Apple's got billions in the bank, no debt, and its position as the world's most valuable company gives it some leverage, leverage they appear to now want to use. They haven't said anything publicly, of course, but people have been noticing job

Starting point is 00:06:20 postings for search engineers, and webmasters have noticed a new content crawler called Applebot sniffing around their sites. For us digital marketers, luckily this probably won't have an immediate effect on rollout if it happens, but given how widespread Apple devices are, this could very well make them an attractive placement for our ads. With everything seemingly going digital, you might be wondering how radio stations and TV stations are doing. And the answer, not great. An industry group in Canada says as many as 40 local TV stations and 200 radio stations in the country could be forced to close in the next three years. They say reduced ad spending because of COVID-19 is the main issue here.

Starting point is 00:07:13 The warning sign comes from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, CAB, who say that AM radio stations in particular are in dangerous financial territory. Of course, CAB is the industry lobby group, and they do have a habit of somewhat routinely putting out releases about dire consequences, all to try to drum up grants and help from the federal government. This time, though, they say the problem is so bad that, as I mentioned earlier,

Starting point is 00:07:33 about 40 TV stations are in danger of closing soon. To put that in perspective, Canada only has 94 private TV broadcasters. That would be 42% of the country's private TV stations going dark. Which brings us to the lightning round. Spotify is said to be working on a new virtual concerts feature.

Starting point is 00:07:58 This would let musicians live stream concerts directly from within the app. Google has added some new structured data to help people discover activities they can do from home, like upcoming video live stream or online event. Thank you. ads for this very podcast on Quora, and I'm getting clicks for under 30 cents. No, I am not tracking the quality of those clicks in terms of conversions, i.e. podcast subscribers, because it's complicated, okay? The official AMP format group has released a big new upgrade for its WordPress plugin. This brings better automation and optimized serving. One nice touch is if you are editing an AMP page in the new Gutenberg editor, if a block which includes invalid AMP elements is added, the plugin detects it and will tell you. And finally, a big bug over at Hootsuite seems to be resolved now. Yesterday afternoon,

Starting point is 00:08:56 they were seeing issues where users' scheduled posts were failing to send, as well as some issues accessing their main dashboard. And a brief warning about this final story today. It contains profanity. And so, finally, I have this private YouTube playlist of videos that are just fun to watch. They bring me a little bit of joy. I show them off to friends. And there's one that I rewatch at least a couple of times a year.

Starting point is 00:09:22 A few years back, the Canadian EDM musician known as Deadmau5 made a few bars of music, you're listening to it right now, and uploaded it to his SoundCloud account, inviting his followers to come up with lyrics for it. He gets demos all the time, but one day, while he was live streaming, he gets a tweet from some random guy named Chris James.

Starting point is 00:09:44 Attached to the tweet, his take on the song lyrics. Some guy on Twitter says he did vocals for this track already. Should I check him out or no? Well, dude, I'm totally going to critique this, so just so you know. No, I'm not. Happy life with the machines, sky around the room. watching him listen you can you can see his eyes begin to grow wider he leans back in his chair the smile creeps across his face he throws his hands up in the sky mother fucker lindsey come here listen to this holy shit i'm fucking impressed right here

Starting point is 00:10:28 this guy did vocals for this track like from my soundcloud thing tell me what you think of this okay I gotta get a hold of this fucking dude right fucking now. Dude! He DMs the guy back and cuts a deal right on the spot. Dude, can I please? Dude, let's do it. Dude, I'll give you writing, I'll give you the pub on your vocal. Dude, let's do it.

Starting point is 00:11:03 The song ended up being called The Veldt featuring Chris James. Fast forward a decade and TikTok, of course, is now a thing. One of the things that helped propel TikTok into the mainstream is a feature it has called the duet. Originally, people used it for reaction videos. You shoot yourself watching and listening to another video, and you react to it. People who see your video can hear and see both your reaction and the original video. And lately, musicians have been using it to collaborate with perfect strangers on the Internet. Take Meghan Trainor.

Starting point is 00:11:42 On Monday, she posted this video. Now, the only thing to see here is her just sort of smiling and Monday, she posted this video. Now, the only thing to see here is her just sort of smiling and snapping her fingers to this track. It's a track she made, and in the captions, she wrote, OK, songwriters, please write a dope Backstreet Boys song to this acapella thing I just made. And so far as of today, nearly 1 nearly 1400 people have sent a duet back. Again, their videos are them singing along to her video with lyrics that they have written. And oh my god, the talent. Here is just a small sampling of them. So Meghan Trainor made this little song and wanted people to write some lyrics to it. So I did it, and I don't do this,

Starting point is 00:12:28 so don't make fun of me. Saw you in the daytime Craved you in the nighttime Tried my best to find my way back to you Just the way you're walking Listen to you talking I wanna be the one you come home to Alright, this is dope

Starting point is 00:12:56 I know you say you're looking for a Backstreet Boys type of vibe But this is what I did with it Hey, you make a bad day better. Give me all your pain and your pleasure. You know I'll be taking that forever. You be taking all my sweaters. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine.

Starting point is 00:13:12 I've been looking for a sign. And you looking so divine. The world's so cold. Baby, you my summertime. When I'm just trying to unwind. You my strawberry wine. A lot of things I never say. That be sitting on my mind.

Starting point is 00:13:22 I be happy every day. If you sitting by my side Hey Megan, I love your songs But yeah, I just saw this post this morning and I wrote a chorus real quick So I hope you like it, here we go Won't you bring my heart, stop me from loving you Kiss my scars, goodbye like I want you to It gets hard when I try to do it all myself

Starting point is 00:13:45 Won't you bring my heart into good terms Bring out the mess in me I need more of a guarantee I'm stuck with the thought of you So won't you please just bring my heart into One thing that's particularly unique here is you can kind of craft your own song listening experience by just letting each short video play. It's like a new person comes in, does a verse, and then is replaced by the algorithm with someone else.

Starting point is 00:14:14 Someone it thinks you might like. Maybe singing, maybe rapping, maybe doing that in another language. Maybe it's someone who adds interpretive dance if the algorithm thinks that you like interpretive dance. It's all pretty amazing. I'm telling you, TikTok, it will suck all your time away. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

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Today in Digital Marketing - “Lindsey, Come Here and Listen to This!”

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