Today in Digital Marketing - Marketing Emails Going to Spam? Easy Fix: Just Sue Gmail!

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, October 24th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, are your marketing emails going to Gmail spam? Here's the solution. Sue Google. Also, the miserable job of being a TikTok moderator, the new app for high schoolers that's burning up the chart, Facebook threatens to cut Canada off from its own news content, and it's going to be a bad week for pretty much all the ad platforms. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:30 It is the app that all the kids use and marketers are scrambling to figure it out. No, not talking about TikTok. No, not even Be Real. I'm talking about Gas. Despite only being launched back in August, the social media app has already hit number one in US app downloads. It's a platform for high school kids that lets them send compliments anonymously to their friends through polls. This isn't freeform text, though, and only a handful of pre-written positive comments are available, like, this person is the best DJ at a party, or this person is likely to be a millionaire. Users can then vote. Gas is the brainchild of a former meta software engineer and bears a

Starting point is 00:01:11 resemblance to another app he launched in 2017 called TBH, that's short for To Be Honest, which Facebook bought and then shut down. And of course, when you get that level of attention, not all of it is good. There's an unfounded rumor on TikTok and Snapchat that gas aids human trafficking because it uses location data to confirm the user is physically at a high school. The developer says it doesn't save any location data, doesn't sell it, also doesn't have any messaging features. If you're in the U.S. and you've been looking for it while I've been talking and can't find it, that's because for now it's only available in Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but it will go nationwide soon. It's only on iPhones for the time being. For now, though, it is said to be adding close to 100,000 users per day. When TikTok first came on the scene, digital agencies treated it sort of like a secondary platform. They'd post stuff there, sure, but it was stuff they'd repurpose from Instagram or

Starting point is 00:02:12 YouTube. Well, that's changing. And an interesting piece up on Digiday.com this morning details this gradual but steady shift. Quoting the article, digital marketing agency RankSecure is a case in point. Three months ago, it made the switch to creating TikTok-first content. While this hasn't required any big technical changes to the agency, it has changed the way content is planned and produced. TikTok videos are typically a maximum of three minutes long. However, the app increased this tiny limit to 10 minutes back in February, which has pushed the agency to be more creative with concepts for campaigns, unquote. It also noted that TikTok users consume content differently. Videos are watched with sound on, and they're also known for having lower production values than the image-perfect Instagram culture.

Starting point is 00:03:02 RankSecure's CEO told Digiday they use humor and satire on TikTok messages, as opposed to more straightforward messaging they might use on YouTube. Quote, our company used YouTube before switching to TikTok, and we see that as a somewhat dwindling platform. We still use it because of different, longer content that suits more of a slightly older demographic, unquote. Another agency reports that 75% of its clients now come directly from organic posts they make on their own TikTok account. That 75% increase in client base

Starting point is 00:03:35 represents a 3X revenue increase. In case you're not keeping score, Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users, YouTube, 2.2 billion, Instagram 2 billion, and TikTok a little over 1 billion monthly active users. If you are in the agency world and struggling to figure TikTok out still, Digiday's piece is well worth a read. Look for the blog post called Agencies Move Away From creating content for Instagram and YouTube. The financial world is bracing for a bad week as social media and digital ad platforms report their earnings.

Starting point is 00:04:19 By all measures, digital ad revenue has been down, down so much. The words being used are things like plunged and crashed. We'll have to wait to see the actual numbers, but as we reported last week, Snap got their numbers out early and their stock price dropped 28% on the news. In fact, it shook up the whole space, sending Pinterest shares down more than 6% on Friday. Twitter was down almost 5%. Meta dropped as well. This during a period when the tech-heavy Nasdaq index was actually up. This week, we get numbers from the big players in the ad revenue world. Meta, Alphabet, that's Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Meta shares are already down more than 60% this year, and everyone's expecting they'll report a second straight drop in revenue. Alphabet is forecast to show a small growth in sales, but so small it might be one of the weakest periods for Google's parent since 2013. One silver lining might be found at Amazon. Last quarter, while everyone was hurting, they were up 18% in revenue. Watch this space. So your marketing emails are going straight to Gmail's spam folder. Watch this space. deliverability? Well, if all else fails, apparently here's an option. Sue Google. That's what the Republican National Committee is doing in the U.S., suing Google because it says millions of

Starting point is 00:05:52 its campaign emails are landing in spam. At issue is a pilot program of a relatively new filter system that Google introduced that was designed to keep political campaign emails out of spam. The lawsuit says, and we're going to need some suspicious music for this, for most of each month, nearly all of the RNC's emails make it into users' inboxes. But at approximately the same time, at the end of each month, Google sends to spam nearly all of the RNC's emails, critically and suspiciously. This end-of-the-month period is historically when the RNC's fundraising is most successful. For its part, Google said, quote, As we have repeatedly said, we simply don't filter emails based on political affiliation.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Gmail's spam filters reflect users' actions, unquote. In other words, the people you're emailing are marking your messages as spam. So, you know, we're treating them as spam. Also, Axios says an internal source told them the Republicans aren't even in this new pilot program. 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. A shocking report is detailing the work of subcontracted TikTok moderators, and it is a worse job than you might think. The report is from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Starting point is 00:07:43 They interviewed nine TikTok moderators from Colombia who were told they had to keep their web cameras on all night. They were only allowed to drink from transparent cups on their desk and earned $10 a day. That's not a typo. $10 a day. As is common among this sector, the moderators are not employed directly by the platform. Instead, they're subcontracted out, in this case, through a French company called Teleperformance. The company has more than 42,000 workers in Colombia, and for the record did not respond to media inquiries about this report. As for the content these people have to endure,

Starting point is 00:08:19 one worker told the bureau he regularly sees, quote, murder, suicide, pedophilia, pornographic content, accidents and cannibalism, unquote. The report says one woman who had to watch successive videos of people eating live animals asked the company for some mental health support. She waited two months, only to be told they weren't able to help. Quoting from the report, if the workers did not get through a huge number of videos or were late back from a break, they could lose out on a monthly bonus worth up to a quarter of their salary. One current TikTok moderator has a target

Starting point is 00:08:56 of 900 videos per day with about 15 seconds to view each video. He works from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. A single slip-up can be enough. He once received a disciplinary notice, known internally as an action form, for only managing to watch 700 videos in a shift, which was considered work avoidance, unquote. For its part, TikTok responded to a media outlet's questions about the report, saying,

Starting point is 00:09:23 quote, We strive to promote a caring working environment for our employees and contractors. Meta also spends a lot of time talking up that they care for their employees and users. They say they're aware of the responsibility they have when it comes to keeping people informed with accurate information. Except, of course, when it comes to keeping people informed with accurate information. Except, of course, when it might affect them financially. You might recall when Australian lawmakers passed a law requiring platforms that use the country's news content, content Meta monetizes for itself, to pay for that content. Meta responded by deleting virtually all news content from the feeds of Australians. And, for good measure, they also took down the

Starting point is 00:10:05 pages of local hospitals, medical information pages, and ambulance services, all, I might add, happening during the height of the pandemic. Meta claimed that was a bug. Eventually, Australia blinked first. They renegotiated to a deal that Meta preferred and that content was unblocked. Well, it's happening again, this time in Canada. The proposed Bill C-18 would require platforms like Facebook to negotiate revenue sharing partnerships with local news organizations. In a blog post published late Friday, Meta said it wanted to be, quote, transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to consider whether we continue to allow the sharing of news content in Canada, unquote. The company also said, quote, we have always approached our engagement with Canadian public authorities on this legislation in the spirit of honest and fair debate, unquote. Which is a weird claim, given that both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg

Starting point is 00:11:05 just straight-up ignored subpoenas from the Parliament's Ethics Committee in 2019. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said, quote, All we're asking the tech giants like Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work. And finally today, YouTube is rolling out some design changes that had been in beta for a while. The new pinch to zoom feature lets you zoom in on videos. You do this the same way you'd zoom into a photo on a smartphone. It's also getting more precise seeking, which should help you move the playhead to a more exact location. Basically, as you start scrolling through a video, it'll pop the frames under your finger

Starting point is 00:11:46 so you can stop more precisely where you want. They're also introducing a new ambient mode that will make the app background closer to the predominant color in the video that you're watching. And dark mode is getting even darker. Well, if you have news you think our listeners should know about, something your company has launched or whatever,

Starting point is 00:12:17 please let us know on our tips page today in digital.com slash tips. Or look for pitch us a story in the show notes. And if you've got a marketing position you're trying to fill, or maybe you're looking for that next great gig, consider a classified ad right here. It's just 20 bucks. You can book it online. Link in the show notes. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Thanks for listening. See you all. And when the sun come out, we gon' party on until the fun run out, fun run out.

Today in Digital Marketing - Marketing Emails Going to Spam? Easy Fix: Just Sue Gmail!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.