Today in Digital Marketing - Schooner Tuna: The Tuna With a Heart. 🍣

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Microsoft adds some fairly customizable ad extensions, LinkedIn’s new company engagement report is out, the clever new way hackers are compromising your brand’s web site, Facebook removes the ability to see breakdowns.➡ Join our free Slack community! TodayInDigital.com/slackHELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST: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 Source links and full transcripts: 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 produced by engageQ.com Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, Microsoft adds some fairly customizable ad extensions, LinkedIn's new company engagement report is out, the clever new way hackers are compromising your brand's website, and Facebook. Oh, Facebook. Now, they have removed the ability to see breakdowns. It's Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020. Happy Independence Day, Ecuador. And I understand the U.S. is doing some sort of civic

exercise as well today. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. All joking aside, lots of people are focused on the U.S. election today, but something you may not know, as a digital marketer, this election may have much deeper ramifications for you, regardless of where you operate. As Americans take the checkboxes on their ballots today, aren't there machines? Like I saw on the news, there are machines that punch ballot cards. Anyway, whatever. As Americans vote today, those in California have an extra vote to cast. It's for Proposition 24, known as the California Privacy Rights Act.

And I know you're thinking, but wait a minute. I thought we already have the California Consumeracy Rights Act. And I know you're thinking, but wait a minute, I thought we already have the California Consumer Privacy Act. And didn't that screw up all my retargeting efforts in the state? Yes and yes. And Proposition 24 will add another layer on top of that if it passes.

Remember, California is the state where, because of well-meaning but misguided legislation, there are thousands of buildings with signs warning you that you might get cancer simply by stepping inside. So what is the CPRA? Essentially, it's a kind of bolt-on, even more stringent version of the CCPA, the existing California Consumer Privacy Act. Quoting StreetfightMag.com, originally designed to clarify the consumer rights and privacy protections for Californians outlined in the CCPA, the CPRA

actually has more in common with the European Union's GDPR. I'm really sorry about the acronyms here. Like the GDPR, the proposed CPRA would create a new regulatory agency to implement and enforce California's privacy regulations. It would also expand the definition of sensitive personal information beyond what was originally outlined in the CCPA. That change in particular has businesses worried they could be vulnerable to lawsuits if they don't change how they collect user data, unquote. So, yeah, it's basically tightening things up. For instance, the current CCPA law talks about the selling of personal information. Some brands found a loophole when they realized they didn't actually sell it per se, but, you know, we're not selling it, we're trading it. We're transferring it in an acquisition.

So, if voted in, this CPRA uses the term data sharing instead of selling to close that loophole and stuff like that. Not all businesses will fall under this jurisdiction. If you report annual gross revenues under $25 million in the preceding calendar year, my reading of reports is that you won't need to comply. Obviously, consult a lawyer. But even if you are in that category, if you share the personal data of 100,000 or more consumers or households each year, or generate at least half of your annual revenue from selling or sharing personal information, well, you would be in the new bucket too. And remember, this applies not if you're a California company, but rather if you're

targeting California residents, regardless of where your brand is located. So, while you are doom-watching the American elections tonight like the rest of us, keep an eye on California's Proposition 24, because it could change a lot of your digital programs. Microsoft is catching up to some Google Ads tricks. They announced today they're launching promotion extensions. These are extensions just like on Google, little tags that are under your main paid listing. The promotions can be tied to a holiday or event like Black Friday or Chinese New Year or back to school. You can specify the offer or the discount, like 20% off selected items. And you can even add

requirements like on orders over $5 or a promotional code. Also, and this is a nice touch, you can have start and end dates of those extensions that are different than the campaign listing it's attached to. So far, these new promotions are only available in the U.S. Listen up if your role includes the administration of your brand's website. You probably know that most CMS systems, like WordPress and Drupal, have plugins that can extend the functionality

of the main software. WordPress doesn't ship with e-commerce functions built in, but you can add the plugin WooCommerce, that sort of thing. And you probably also know

that one piece of advice that all the blog posts tell you to do is to keep your plugins updated. Security vulnerabilities happen. The plugin developer updates it, but it's up to you to make sure that you're running the latest version of that plugin. Well, not so fast.

Turns out there is a potential security hole with you doing exactly that, diligently keeping your plugins updated. There's a piece on searchenginejournal.com this morning. It's one of those standard how to protect your website from hackers pieces, but near the bottom of it, it had this, quote, a final warning about abandoned plugins. Some plugins can continue to work years after they've been abandoned by their developer. What can happen is that these old plugins may contain a vulnerability,

but because they're abandoned, it will never get fixed, unquote. Okay, that we all knew, right? If your plugins haven't been updated in the last couple of years, it's time to find a replacement. But this, I didn't know. Again, quoting searchenginejournal.com's piece, another issue is that hackers sometimes buy the old plugins and update them with malware and viruses, unquote. Wow. I mean, kudos to the hackers, you know.

That's actually really clever. They get the plugin code from the original developer, and then the next time you do what you're supposed to do, update to the latest version, that version might contain malware. LinkedIn has added a new company engagement report, which is aimed at B2B marketers to determine if they're reaching the right audiences. Among the metrics in there, total engagement level. This is calculated from post engagement on organic and paid and website visits divided by the number of users targeted.

There are also benchmarks of other companies in your space, and you can get more granular about ad engagement, including numbers on likes, comments, clicks, shares, video views, that kind of thing. By the way, LinkedIn considers a video view a view when someone has watched at least a quarter of the video. Full disclosure, LinkedIn will be running a paid promotion here in the coming days or weeks. They did not pay for this mention. And in the what has Facebook taken away today section of the show, today apparently it's campaign breakdowns. You know when you're looking at your campaign performance,

you can do a breakdown by things like age, gender, region, time of day, and so on? Yeah, so according to a whole whack of people on Twitter who started noticing this yesterday, apparently Facebook is in the process of taking that away. To be clear, though, they seem to be removing it from the account overview page, not the main campaigns screen in Ads Manager. But still, come on. And right before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like what the hell, Facebook? By the way, twice a year, Facebook polls its 49,000 employees for something it calls the Pulse Survey. One of the questions on that survey, is Facebook having a positive impact on

the world? The most recent results, which were reported today by BuzzFeed, only 51% of employees agreed with that. Just last May, that number was 75%. And finally, in the art imitates life department. In 1983, the movie Mr. Mom was released. It's about an unemployed Detroit automotive engineer becoming a stay-at-home dad, while his wife returns to a career in the advertising business. It's set in the recession, and one of the campaigns she comes up with is this TV ad. My fellow Americans, I am Howard Humphrey, president of Schooner Tuna. All of us here at Schooner Tuna sympathize with those of you hit so hard by these trying economic times. In order to help you, we are reducing the price of Schooner Tuna by 50 cents a can.

When this crisis is over, we will go back to our regular prices. Until then, remember, we're all in this together. Schooner Tuna. The tuna with the heart. This fictional spot has always stayed with me for some reason. It's almost prescient, right? How many ads in the last six months have had that kind of a in-these-trying-times theme?

I got thinking about this ad yesterday when I read about Burger King's latest campaign, if you can call a tweet a campaign. The tweet is of an image with a huge headline. Under their Burger King logo the headline says Order from McDonald's underneath it reads in part We never thought we'd be asking you to do this but restaurants employing thousands of staff

really need your support at the moment so if you want to help keep treating yourself to tasty meals getting a Whopper is always best but ordering a Big Mac is also not such a bad thing. Unquote. In these trying times.

Also, my thanks to the people on Twitter who helped me find that clip. I could have sworn it was from Tootsie, so I rented Tootsie. I watched the whole thing last night. It wasn't there, so I tweeted for help, and it turns out it was Mr. Mom. Okay, good luck tonight, America. See you tomorrow. I don't need to fear

Even in darkest days the light burns clear My brothers, my sisters are to war with me We're all bridges on the same tree We're family We are family