Today in Digital Marketing - Pack It Up, Pack It In, Let Shein Begin

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Thursday, May 2nd. Today, physical stores are closing and it's all your fault. The music is back on TikTok, people are watching less ad-supported content, and the prices of podcast ads continue to drop. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. 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. A new report from the Wealth Management Fund UBS says up to 45,000 brick and mortar stores in the U.S. will close in the next four years.

Starting point is 00:00:55 And it's all because of online shopping. That would put the online share at 26% overall for retail. It's currently about 21%. The surge in e-commerce, driven by platforms like Timu and Sheen, is pressuring traditional retailers to cut their physical presence, particularly in sectors like apparel, home furnishings, and consumer electronics.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Some notable retailers like Foot Locker, David's Tea, and Bed Bath & Beyond have already either closed most stores or shifted entirely online. Department stores, in particular, are expected to keep losing market share, mainly to off-price retailers. To be fair, it's not just the internet to blame here. Other factors like banks' tighter lending policies and a consumer shift towards spending on services can be blamed as well. Despite this trend toward closures, UBS says physical stores will still play a crucial role

Starting point is 00:01:52 in the retail ecosystem, not as places to buy things, but more as hubs for fulfillment and distribution. Retailers that invest in omni-channel experiences, kind of like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot have been doing lately are likely to thrive according to the report But smaller chains and independent shops without the capital to invest in these adaptations

Starting point is 00:02:15 could have a rough couple of years ahead The music is back TikTok and Universal Music Group have signed a new licensing deal resolving a three-month deadlock and restoring access to music from some of the biggest names in pop music. The deal was announced this morning and not only reintroduces Universal's roster to the platform, but also gives more money to the artists and addresses the label's concerns about AI-generated content. This dispute had removed key artists from TikTok,

Starting point is 00:02:47 like Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Drake, and U2. It had also removed Taylor Swift from TikTok, but her people somehow signed a side deal to get her music back during the promotional period for her new albums. This new deal includes some vague statements about e-commerce in the future, possibly event ticketing, and TikTok has promised to invest more in better analytics. The financial terms weren't disclosed, but TikTok says they expect to bring the affected songs back to the platform within a couple of weeks.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Still with TikTok, for a moment, the company also today announced some new ad products and controls. For one, they're expanding their Pulse Premier placement with more content partners. Paramount, the NHL, and a few others joined publishers like BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, and Vox. Paramount by itself brings in brands like MTV, CBS Sports, The Daily Show, and Entertainment Tonight. This placement costs more than regular ads, but it's as close to a guarantee of being near brand-safe, high-quality content as they can offer. You can pick from categories like lifestyle, sports, and entertainment, and ads appear on the For You feed. This placement was designed with TV media buyers in mind.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Pulse Premier is one of three offerings within their Pulse category, which guarantees placement near the top 4% of trending videos and premium content. The company says that group increases ad recall by almost 10%. TikTok also today announced a new partnership with both NielsenOne and iSpot.tv to offer better measurement tools, specifically those which can line up your results alongside any TV campaigns you're running. Quoting TechCrunch, quote, the company also touted its ability to reach users who may not have seen TV ads, saying that 58% of all TikTok campaign impressions

Starting point is 00:04:39 reached a unique audience unexposed to the TV portion of the campaign. Plus, it said advertisers who added TikTok to their TV campaigns reached an additional 22% of their audience. Unquote. Snapchat today announced some updates for its ad offerings. You can now make branded augmented reality ads using, you guessed it, generative AI. You can get some text of what you want your lens to do, that's Snapchat's word for what other apps

Starting point is 00:05:10 call a filter, and it will try to make a lens out of that. So this should make it easier to create simple things like changing the face and so on. They also announced something called AR extensions, which will let you integrate AR lenses into any of its ad products. That includes dynamic product ads and collection ads and spotlight ads. Snapchat says more than 300 million people use or see AR experiences every day on its platform. The company reported a 21% increase in Q1 revenue year over year. That got it to just over 1.1 billion. It said a lot of that increase came from improvements it made to its ads manager and the number of small and medium-sized advertisers

Starting point is 00:05:48 increased 85% year over year. Finally, they're launching a new sports channel in the app. Don't go looking for big NFL deals here though. These sports will be things like dog surfing, extreme ironing, and competitive water bottle flipping. Media buyers are always tracking how much consumers engage with the platforms they're buying. And while engagement with media overall is growing, an interesting data point from the latest PQ Media forecast shows that ad-supported platforms in particular are actually seeing a bit of a drop

Starting point is 00:06:25 in the U.S. Total weekly time spent with media declined about half a percentage point to just under 77 hours a week. When you look at the rest of the world, that number ticked up, but not even by a third of 1%. But the report says this should correct itself this year with elections in Mexico, Japan, the U the US, India, and South Africa. There's also the Summer Olympics in Paris. Quoting Media Post, quote, in terms of ad-supported media's share of time spent, the US reached the tipping point in 2015 when consumer-supported media became the dominant sources for American consumers. For the global consumer media marketplace, ad-supported media will

Starting point is 00:07:06 continue to have the dominant share through 2028, but it is also on a trajectory to tip sometime shortly after that. 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. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Google has wrapped up its defense arguments in the antitrust lawsuit filed by the American government. The company says its business practices, which have come under scrutiny for potential anti-competitive behavior, ultimately benefits consumers. Now, we all wait for a ruling. CPM rates for podcast ads dropped slightly last month to $21.75 for a 60-second ad spot.

Starting point is 00:08:09 That is 19 cents lower than March, just over a dollar lower than April of last year. Technology, education, and comedy podcasts were the most expensive categories. Google Meet now lets you transfer between devices while on a call without hanging up and rejoining. There's a new switch here option when joining a meeting on your laptop. That'll switch the call from your mobile devices. The rollout of this has started and might take a couple of weeks to get to everyone. And Instagram is testing a new clear mode for Reels. This removes the UI clutter from videos.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Like TikTok's version of this, this clutter will come back when you swipe to the next video. This is in testing with a small group. No word on when it might roll out more widely. I thought that given what I have to tell you here, I would use my custom AI voice. Does this voice make you want to upgrade to the premium podcast? No.

Starting point is 00:09:04 How about if I use the AI clone voice of our associate producer, Steph Gunn? How about this guy? Or her? Would a British AI work? Turns out, the way an AI voice sounds has a direct influence on purchase intent. Tomorrow, a special deep dive interview with the marketing scientist who's cracked the code. I'll be chatting with him about how perceived gender of the AI voice can affect your CPMs, and even whether adding a slight tremble to that voice will get more donations for charities. That's tomorrow on the show.

Starting point is 00:09:33 I'm Todd Maffin's AI. Thanks for listening. See you then.

Today in Digital Marketing - Pack It Up, Pack It In, Let Shein Begin

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