Today in Digital Marketing - Melinda Really Wants You to Click That Link

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Instagram fires a shot across TikTok’s bow… Why is Facebook sending you dozens of receipts for the same ad campaign… You could go to prison for a mistake your intern makes… and the terrifying email scam currently targeting marketing agencies.➡ Join our free Slack community! TodayInDigital.com/slack➡ Watch me produce this live at twitch.tv/todmaffin (about 12-3 PT weekdays)HELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST:Source links and full transcripts: TodayInDigital.com Advertising: RedCircle.com/brands and TodayInDigital.com/adsClassified Ads: TodayInDigital.com/classifieds Leave a voicemail at TodayInDigital.com/voicemailTranscripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio)TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA:Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffinTod’s agency: engageQ.comTikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffinTwitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin (game livestreaming)Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://TodMaffin.com) and produced by engageQ digital (https://engageQ.com). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. 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. Today, Instagram fires a shot across TikTok's bow. Why is Facebook sending you dozens of receipts for the same ad campaign? You might soon go to prison for a mistake your intern makes. And the terrifying email scam currently targeting marketing agencies. It's Thursday, December 10th, 2020. Happy National Aviation Day, Venezuela.

I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So I'm taking a break from the Xbox. I had a really bad game in Overwatch last Friday and it kind of scarred me. So instead, in the evening, I'm spending a lot more time on TikTok. And last night, I ran into this video. And so we start with a quiz. And this quiz is What the hell is this?

That's the quiz. What is going on in this clip? I will explain everything at the end of today's episode. Refrain. Refree. Refree. Refrain. Ref, refree. Re, refree-gen. Refree-gen.

Refree-gen. A big upgrade for Instagram's rip-off of TikTok, which they call Reels. They are rolling out shopping tags to the platform.

These will let video producers add product listings to their clips. Viewers can then tap the view product button at the bottom and purchase right there. Probably don't have to tell you this has the potential to be huge. Already the Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin makes most of its revenue from the cuts it takes on e-commerce listings like this.

Actually, this Instagram version is a little ahead of TikTok, which is still working on integrating e-commerce into videos on their platform. They made a big jump last month with a partnership with Spotify, but it's still early days for all these places. And things are a bit up in the air since Walmart is still part of the group trying to buy TikTok or part of TikTok. So if that goes through, of course, there'll be a bunch of Walmart hooks in there, Probably? Maybe? But are very short videos like this even the right place for e-commerce at all? Quoting socialmediatoday.com, ads don't really work when the content itself can only be seconds long. Twitter found the same challenges with Vine. Without being able to run effective ads within Vine clips,

Twitter struggled to make Vine a revenue-generating platform, which then made it difficult for Vine to keep its top stars around as it couldn't offer better revenue share deals, unquote. Either way, it's certainly a shot across the bow, one that is most definitely leading to some uncomfortable meetings over at TikTok. Okay, buckle in, because I'm about to say something I never thought I'd say. Facebook may be making Creator Studio actually useful? Creator Studio, of course, is the drunken stumblings of Facebook's internal UI team

attempting to make a kind of analytics platform, or maybe it's supposed to be a video center or a permissions... Nobody's really sure what the point of Creative Studio is. It's a bit of a dog's breakfast. They use a font size so large, for instance, that you can actually see the site from the moon. But it looks like they're testing a content calendar now. It sort of resembles a month calendar with entries for past and future content. For whatever reason, it's only Instagram content in there.

But this might actually be helpful. Well, helpful for small businesses anyway. Most agencies and brands of any decent size use third-party tools like Sprout Social or Agorapulse or Buffer or Sprinkler, all of which have their own content planning calendar. To be clear, you've always been able to schedule your posts both to Instagram's feed and to IGTV up to six months ahead, but this is a new way of looking at that content, and it's certainly helpful, especially if you're working with others. One limitation of this test,

other than it's just Instagram, of course, is there's still no way to schedule an Instagram story. It'll show up on the calendar for the ones you've already published, but you can't line them up ahead of time. A new version of WordPress is out, 5.6, and while the reaction has been generally positive, security experts warn of a potential new issue. This version allows developers to build apps that can integrate with your site and extend the functionality.

This is generally good, but does open the door to bad actors. For instance, quoting WordPress security plugin publisher WordFence, an attacker could trick a site owner into clicking a link requesting an application password, For instance, quoting WordPress security plugin publisher WordFence, But that potential issue aside, there are lots of new features, the main one being a better user experience with and more options for block patterns. These are pre-made blocks that you can drag and drop onto a page. Plus, you can select several blocks and then convert them to columns. That said, these new blocks aren't the prettiest things. They're very basic looking. So you may want something like Elementor or Divi. But still, probably a good idea to back up and then upgrade.

Still ahead, why you're suddenly getting dozens of Facebook ad receipts a day. A nasty phishing operation is targeting marketing agencies. Did your intern get that photo from Google Images? You might go to prison for it. And you'll find out what the hell this is the foodie the foodie that's still ahead when today in digital marketing continues 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 racketing. 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. 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. Well, it wouldn't be a day without a bunch of weird shit happening with Facebook ads to talk about.

First, I've been hearing some reports in the last week of some weirdness around Facebook ad billing thresholds. Some people are seeing their spend thresholds dropping essentially to zero and then creeping up painfully slowly. Here's what someone said in one of the agency slide groups I'm in, quote, we have a client that we spend $1,000 a month with and their threshold for billing was dropped to $3. When the $3 charge went through, it went to $5 and now $7. The client's bank thought they were fraud charges on his credit card. It's causing all kinds of issues. I was able to chat with Facebook and open up a ticket, but no word yet. We have three to four clients this is happening to and one more that I just saw this morning, unquote. Yeah, we've seen this too here at our agency, although with only one

client. Ironically, that client is a big international bank. We were getting receipts like five or six receipts a day for like $4 each. So no idea what's happening. Maybe control yourself with the fact that it's just not you. Or control yourself with the fact that you are not one of those poor bastards who are still trying to create Facebook ads with the messenger destination. It's been nearly a week since that's been bugged out. Yesterday, Facebook's developer site said most of the affected accounts should be working now, but there are a few edge cases left, their words. Apparently, those are a lot of edge cases because the platform's status page still shows this as active with the words major outage at the top of the page.

This is less a bug and more of a reminder, but I was reminded yesterday that Facebook's API does not support collecting comments on all ad types. Sure, if you run a link ad or a video ad and you're using a third party tool to manage engagement on that ad, you'll see the comments. But a rep at Sprout Social reminded me yesterday that if you use dynamic creative ads, you will not see comments on those ads in your third-party tool, as that format, for some reason, is not in the API. That's not to be confused with traditional dynamic ads,

which are supported. And yes, it's confusing and stupid as hell. Why can we only see comments on some ad formats and not others? Who knows? Finally, in our Facebook roundup, speaking of Facebook outages, we have added a new feature to our Slack community, a channel called Outages, which reports issues with the Facebook ad platform the second they happen. So when it

goes down or comes up, you will know about it first. What's that you say? You're not in our Slack community yet? More than 250 digital marketers from 18 time zones are. Just tap the link in this episode's notes or go to todayindigital.com slash slack. A warning for people who work at digital agencies, there's a phishing scam going around which accuses you of using copyrighted images on your brand's website and tells you to click on a link to see which images are in violation. So far, the sender name is pretty consistent and there's always some kind of variation on Melinda, like Mel, Melina, Melly, or Melisha. Some of it reads, this is Melly and I'm a professional photographer and illustrator. I was baffled to put it nicely when I came across my images at your website. If you use a copyrighted image without my approval, you must be aware that you could be sued by the copyright owner.

This is my favorite part. It's not legal to use stolen images and it's so nasty. Take a look at this document with the links to my images you used and my earlier publications to get evidence of my legal copyrights. And then, of course, there is a link. Beware, spread the word and do not click that link. Speaking of agencies briefly, Coca-Cola announced this week it will be conducting a global review of its media planning and buying practices, including reviewing all of its agency commitments. Coca-Cola, one of the world's largest ad spenders, has spent more than $4 billion on ads last year. Get those RFP pencils sharpened. All strangeness with phishing scams aside, take for a moment the very real issue of copyright infringement.

It is embarrassing for an agency when it happens. Maybe they let an intern use Google Images as their source of photos and you get a real one of these emails. And maybe they sue you and win and your agency has to pay out some cash. At least you can't be thrown in jail for that. Well, not so fast. The U.S. Trump administration is trying to pass a bill that would make unauthorized use of copyrighted material a felony, punishable by prison time. So far, this seems to be mostly about streaming content, but that includes YouTube. So if you didn't get the rights cleared for that song,

you know, you'd be in there. It would even cover an unlicensed song in an Instagram story. Apparently, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees have agreed to package this proposal with other controversial changes to copyright and trademark issues. Side note, and I'm sure this is just coincidence, the lawmaker that's pushing this legislation,

in the last couple of years, media are reporting his campaign has received more than $100,000 in donations from groups tied to the Motion Picture Associations, Sony Pictures, Universal Music Group, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Warner Music. Pure coincidence, I tell you. And a few small items in the lightning round to wrap up. Twitter announced that you can now embed tweets in a Snapchat story. This will essentially make a sticker.

Looks like a regular tweet embed. It's live right now in the iOS app. Apparently, it'll be coming to Instagram stories too. Ooh, that's a terrible ring. Hang on a second. That's better. Facebook has added eligible public groups in its brand collabs manager tool. So that's an easy way to find what are essentially pre-screened groups where you could do some sort of collaboration. Buffer yesterday had a bug where images weren't able to be added to the queue. It was a weird one.

You could upload your images into the compose post window, but when you clicked add to queue, it just barfed back in error. That's fixed now. You've heard me talk glowingly about Pixelmator Pro. Honestly, it's better than Photoshop. The UI is cleaner. It handles common photo tasks like erasing elements or smartly scaling up resolution way better than Photoshop. And you only have to pay for it once. No monthly fees. Just buy it and use it forever.

They just launched version 2.0, which was free to anyone who owned the previous version. Why am I telling you this? Because right now it is 50% off. So that's $20 in the U.S. for what is better than Photoshop. This is not an ad. They did not pay for this. I just really love both their app and sticking it to Adobe. The satire site The Onion had a story so good,

I literally shot coffee out my nose this morning. The headline? Facebook announces plan to break up U.S. government before it becomes too powerful. Oh, and the answer to today's quiz question, which was, what the hell is this? The foodie, the foodie. This was from a TikTok video I saw yesterday.

These are Japanese people trying to pronounce the word refrigerator. Refrigerator. Refrigerator. TikTok. Refrigerator. I'm telling you. So funny story. TikTok. I'm telling you. So funny story. Yesterday, I talked about the new programmatic ad insertions being used on my podcast platform.

Immediately before that story is where the ad insertion point was. They dropped in an ad and yes, it was really loud. At least the one I got that was dropped into my file. I master these podcasts to minus 16 LUFS, which is the global standard for podcasts. I measured their ad at around minus 12. That's quite a bit louder. I did ask them about it. They said that volume normalization is on their task list.

So hopefully it'll be fixed soon. I guess I could master this podcast louder to match the ads in the meantime. But then when you play another podcast, it'll be really quiet. So, you know, that's an arms race that I do not want to get into. So apologies if you got served an ad and it was unusually loud. They say that should be fixed soon. All right. Talk to you tomorrow. di gelata di gelata