Today in Digital Marketing - Oops, I Spent It Again: Meta’s Weekend Bugs Cost Advertisers

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, April 24th. Today, dazed and confused, marketers wake up to overspending on their ad accounts as meta-engineers scramble to fix the bug. Also, Shopify's one-stop fintech ambition, unraveling the Pinterest algorithm, YouTube's live shopping's product drops are finally coming, and chatbots in your web analytics. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Well, Meta's ads platform went on a bender over the weekend and advertisers woke up to a hangover of overspending and chaos in their ad accounts. Some people reported seeing the daily budgets of their ad sets exceeded and not by a little. Others saw CPMs jump five or six times

Starting point is 00:00:43 the month average. Meta confirmed the problems after reports serviced and said it was working on a fix. The company also assured ad partners that credits would be given to rectify the situation. Last night, Meta reportedly fixed the issue and systems were back to normal. The company says it will communicate with impacted ad account managers soon. For more detail on what happened, digital ad veteran Andrew Foxwell joins me now. Andrew, do we know how many ad accounts this affected? You know, we don't know. We know that it was mostly, as far as we can tell, concentrated to the United States and to Europe.

Starting point is 00:01:17 But, you know, it doesn't seem that it affected actually Australia and New Zealand. But it did affect, as far as we can tell, conversion-based ad accounts. So those optimizing for purchase and conversion. Lead gen did seem to be affected here and there, but less reports about mostly people that I've been able to hear from are from the direct response world. And certainly our accounts are all direct response, optimizing for purchase. So we don't know how many. It's interesting not in Australia and New Zealand, because that's a very common place that Meta goes to test things. So you'd think it was some, you know, weird bug that they were testing their first.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Yeah. Yeah. We know. Was this a bug? Was this a, is this like, you know, often Meta will kind of release stuff without telling us and then we all think it's a bug and it turns out, no, surprise, that's actually our new feature. Yes. So they are calling it a bug. And they wrote, you know, originally and said, look, it's we're dealing with an ad delivery bug. It's unclear how widespread. And that spent way faster than normal pacing. So most people in the United States woke up and the story is that there was no fix for like six to 10 hours, what recourse you have if this happened to you and how to get alerted to similar bugs in the future. That full interview is on the premium podcast feed today, which you can sign up to by tapping the go premium link

Starting point is 00:03:12 in the show notes. We're going to today in digital.com slash premium. Shopify launched a new e-commerce payment tool today called Shopify BillPay, developed in partnership with the B2B payments platform Melio. The new tool lets U.S. merchants manage their expenses and vendors directly from within Shopify's platform. With this new BillPay system, merchants can pay invoices for various expenses like shipping, inventory, and advertising, both domestically and internationally. The tool also lets merchants choose their preferred payment method and vendor payment option. Although it is free for Shopify merchants, there are minimal fees associated with certain payment methods, like, of course, credit cards. As high inflation rates drive consumers to use their smartphones to find better deals,

Starting point is 00:04:04 it may be time to add a loyalty program to your brand's website or app. A new survey has found that 80% of U.S. and U.K. consumers now regularly use their phones to access coupons and loyalty cards while shopping in physical stores amidst this cost-of-living crisis. Among those ways that consumers use their mobile devices while shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores, the use of retailer apps saw the greatest year-over-year growth globally, with three-quarters of respondents in the survey indicating that they use such apps. While shopping in-store, three-quarters of British shoppers are likely to visit the retailer's site, more than 70% are willing to use the brand's app, and three-pers are likely to visit the retailer's site. More than 70% are willing to use the brand's app. And three quarters are likely to compare prices on Amazon or Google before they make a purchase. The survey also found that half of UK consumers said what motivates them the most to opt in to receive brand communications on their phones is earning immediate discounts or loyalty points and receiving personalized offers based on their browsing behaviors and past purchases.

Starting point is 00:05:08 As a result of the current economic environment, the report notes that consumers are more willing to share information with brands in exchange for targeted, cost-saving offers. The data comes from Airship's survey of more than 11,000 consumers. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:50 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.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Still sleeping on Pinterest? If you're looking to step your game up on the platform, Quick Frame has a great piece up today. It looks at how its algorithm works to improve your content ranking. Similar to a search engine,

Starting point is 00:06:36 Pinterest determines pin rankings based on SEO techniques like keywords. But to display the most relevant content, the algorithm also considers factors like past saved pins, engagement, and searches. The algorithm determines each pin's relevance to each user on the fly, displaying the content users are most likely to engage with. According to the piece, the four main driving factors are domain quality.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Similar to Google's search engine algorithm, Pinterest reviews the quality of the site similar to Google's search engine algorithm. Pinterest reviews the quality of the site linked to a pin. If users consistently click through a pin to your site and explore your content, domain quality will increase. Then there's pin quality. This is determined by engagement metrics like comments, saves, likes, and shares. The more engagement with your pins, the higher they will rank on the platform. There's also pinner quality. This refers to your behavior as an active pinner on the platform. Things like how often you pin content, how consistently you do it, how much interaction your pins get, and how much you engage with your

Starting point is 00:07:35 audience. By engaging with users, saving content to your own profile, and using the platform, you can improve that pin or quality score. Finally, Pinterest decides whether or not a user would be interested in your content using topic relevance. This is determined by analyzing the keywords and hashtags in each pin, including the title, description, and image or video. The full post is definitely worth a read. It's on quickframe.com. Look for the blog post called How Does the Pinterest Algorithm Work in 2023?

Starting point is 00:08:13 YouTube is testing a new feature that lets brands schedule product drops during live streams. Previously, if a brand wanted to showcase a product within a stream, they had to upload the product details before going live. But now they can use YouTube Studio to schedule a specific time for the product to appear. Brands and creators can set up the details like date and time for the product listing to go live in the live control room, and viewers will see a mystery product tagged on the product shelf and list until it's revealed. A timer bar will also be displayed under the drop title and description as the product's availability time nears, and the product can be pinned to the chat at or after the drop time. Snapchatters are revolting against the rise of the machine. The app's new My AI chatbot feature is powered by ChatGPT tech and answers questions when

Starting point is 00:09:00 prompted by users. But TechCrunch reports today that the app has seen a surge in negative reviews and complaints on social media since the chatbot's wider release last week. According to data from SensorTower, Snapchat received an average U.S. App Store rating of 1.7 over the past week, with three-quarters of reviews giving only one star, While Apptopia reports that AI was the top keyword in the platform's app store reviews over the last seven days, appearing nearly 3,000 times. The majority of those, of course, not singing the praises for the new bot. And the backlash comes at a time when AI hype is at its peak.

Starting point is 00:09:39 So why the hate? Well, users have expressed concern about the chatbot's placement at the top of their chat feed, where it can't be unpinned, blocked, or removed. This has caused some to threaten to quit Snapchat entirely, while others have suggested the bot should be opt-in only, or that they should be given the option to remove it. But removing the chatbot from the feed requires, you guessed it, a Snapchat Plus subscription, which has also received pushback from users.

Starting point is 00:10:07 Despite the negative feedback, Snapchat has not committed to removing the tech. Rather, a spokesperson for the company had perhaps one of the worst suggestions they could have ever suggested. And that is, if users don't like the AI feature, quote, they do not have to use it. Unquote. don't like the AI feature, quote, they do not have to use it, unquote. And finally, on this very busy day, Microsoft is planning to report refer data and display clicks and impressions for Bing chat in the coming weeks. That should make it easier for site owners, content creators and marketers to know how much traffic and visibility they get from the search engine's new bot. It's happening tomorrow. That is when we are revealing the secret project that I've been teasing for a while now.

Starting point is 00:11:01 If you are a premium member, you're listening to this. You already know what it is because you got let in on the secret last week. But for the rest of you, the big announcement is tomorrow. We've been working on it for a couple of months now. I think you'll really like it. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Can it feel so long when I need the sensation? She needs all I can give her, but it makes me weak when I got to be stronger.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Thought I'd try, thought I'd die, but show me how to pay.

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Today in Digital Marketing - Oops, I Spent It Again: Meta’s Weekend Bugs Cost Advertisers

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