Today in Digital Marketing - Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, August 13th. Today, with elections looming, are brands right to be worried about the secret political leanings of their paid influencers? Also, TikTok is literally giving products away, Meta plays a confusing reverse Uno card, and Instagram copies a Snapchat feature. I know, who'd have guessed, right? I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Brands love social media influencers until they start talking politics. And with an American election looming in a few months, keeping ads and politics separate is becoming more complicated. To help brands navigate this, some marketing firms have developed tools that grade influencers on their brand safety.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Captivate, for instance, uses AI to analyze mentions of influencers in the media and assigns them a letter grade. An A means the influencer is considered brand safe, while a C signals caution. This grade reflects the likelihood of discussing sensitive topics like elections or social issues. Another firm, Viral Nation, offers a tool that creates risk

Starting point is 00:01:10 profiles for influencers by analyzing years and years of their previous posts and videos. It can even detect subtle signs of political content, like protest signs in the background of a video. These tools are in demand as brands fear the backlash from a politically charged post. The New York Times published a piece on this yesterday and quoted an Edelman executive saying what we all know, brands don't like surprises, like discovering an influencer's controversial past after hiring them. As the economy is expected to nearly double by 2027, brands are increasingly cautious, using tools like these to ensure they avoid any unwanted political associations.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Marketers do have good reason to be cautious about who they use for their influencer marketing program. A new meta-analysis of 39 studies has found that social media influencers can be as effective as celebrities in promoting brands, but their influence varies, sometimes wildly, based on follower count and perceived credibility. The studies involved nearly 14,000 influencers in total, and the meta-analysis found that influencers

Starting point is 00:02:25 are generally more persuasive than brand-only ads and can match celebrity endorsers in impact. But there are differences. The review found, quote, higher follower count is likely associated with influencer cultural capital and perceived expertise, whereas small-scale influencers are thought to be more accessible and authentic, unquote. And when it comes to credibility, influencers are seen as more trustworthy than celebrities. These findings highlight a sweet spot for influencer marketing, where influencers with sizable but not too large followings can offer brands the best of both worlds, extensive reach and high credibility.

Starting point is 00:03:06 For marketers, this means focusing on influencers who haven't yet lost their authentic appeal because of commercial interests. The study is called Do Influencers Influence? A meta-analysis comparison of celebrities and social media influencers' effects. It was published yesterday in the Society and Social Media Journal. We have a link to the full study in today's email newsletter, which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. TikTok has partnered with Amazon to let users make purchases directly within the TikTok app.

Starting point is 00:03:48 To use the feature, TikTok users must link their Amazon account to their TikTok profile. They only have to do this once. Once those accounts are linked, users will see real-time Amazon pricing, prime eligibility, and delivery estimates within TikTok videos. This is similar to partnerships that Amazon has established with Meta and Snapchat. But the real question is whether users will feel this is too much connection. Quoting social media today, quote, with TikTok still under a cloud in the U.S. due to its perceived links to the Chinese

Starting point is 00:04:18 government, at least some U.S. shoppers will be hesitant to establish a direct connection between their Amazon profile and their TikTok presence for fear of exposing more of their data to the company, unquote. While social commerce is still growing at a rate of around 18% per year in Western markets, it still lags behind in-person commerce. TikTok is now offering some U.S. users extremely steep discounts on goods as a reward for inviting their friends to join the app. Some discounts are nearly 100% off, with products like digital cameras and hairstyling tools marked down to just a penny, plus shipping. This builds on referral schemes that TikTok has been running in other countries, offering users coupons and cash rewards for inviting friends.

Starting point is 00:05:09 This U.S. effort follows a setback in Europe where TikTok withdrew rewards from its TikTok Lite app after regulators raised concerns. Scrutiny from European regulators, citing the recently enacted Digital Services Act, quickly derailed TikTok's reward-focused expansion in the EU. The rewards effort is apparently an attempt to reinvigorate TikTok's user growth, which slowed sharply from its pandemic peak, according to estimates from Censor Tower. This promotion runs until September 27th. Meta will soon let people who manage their brand's presence switch between multiple profiles easier.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Many marketers, especially those who work in agencies, use multiple profile accounts to administer their various pages and ads. But Meta itself has never really been consistent about this. Years ago, they were banning so-called gray accounts that existed only to manage content. Then they encouraged users to create multiple sub profiles to express themselves. This new system will let you save up to 10 profiles at a time and switch between them to access the business profiles and assets that they're connected to. This means that you won't have to log out and back in each time you want to switch to another profile. Quoting social media today, quote,

Starting point is 00:06:27 To be clear, there is a difference between pages and profiles in this context. You've always been able to add multiple business pages under a single business portfolio and business suite, but this relates to adding other profiles that you may have or have access to, and which then have their own access privileges for other pages. So for example, if you help run several Facebook and Instagram pages under alternative user profiles, you'll now be able to add them. So you can manage certain businesses attached to one profile, then a whole other set that may be attached to another, unquote. Of course, the fact that Meta felt the need to add

Starting point is 00:07:05 this suggests that there are a lot of people managing several profiles in the app, which would also point to a lot of people having multiple profiles, which could be inflating Meta's user numbers. 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.

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Starting point is 00:08:14 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Snapchat has updated its ads manager to try to simplify the campaign creation process. It's reduced the number of available campaign objectives from 11 to just 5 by merging similar options. So now that list is awareness and engagement, traffic, leads, app promotion, and sales. Snapchat has been working to improve its ad offerings, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. In its Q1 2024 performance update, the company reported an 85% year-over-year increase in SMB advertisers, attributing this growth to its simplified ad creation process.

Starting point is 00:09:05 The new ad objectives will be rolled out to all advertisers over the next few months. Existing campaigns using the old objectives will continue to operate as normal until the new elements are phased in, at which point they will automatically switch to the new objectives. Instagram is testing a new feature that closely resembles Snapchat's in-app map, letting users post text and video updates to a map based on their location. This map is then shared with friends whose updates can appear alongside each other. It's currently available as a small test. In just a few markets, it is opt-in and includes some controls over location sharing. Users have to pick a specific list of people who can see their location, like close friends or only followers they follow back. A spokesperson did not answer questions if map sharing would be extended to public viewing or how long those posts would stay up.

Starting point is 00:09:52 This isn't the first map Instagram's had. Back in 2012, it had a private photo mapping feature that displayed all of a user's images on a map, but it was shut down four years later, the company said, due to low usage. If widely released, this Maps feature would join a large list of Meta's habit of copying ideas from competitors, such as stories from Snapchat, reels from TikTok, and threads from Twitter. We have about 9,000 daily listeners and readers now, and our ad rates do not reflect this. Some of our ad slots are just $10. They are going up in the fall, though, and a little bit significantly as well.

Starting point is 00:10:35 So now is your chance. If you are trying to reach marketing decision makers, this is your time to consider an ad on this podcast or our email newsletter. Again, some of those slots are just $10. This will end soon, though. Tap the link at the top of the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash ads. All right, that's it for today. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:10:54 See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat

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