Today in Digital Marketing - 'Sorry Zuck. Reels Aren't Working': Meta Documents

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, in the war against TikTok, Meta gives up some ground. Also, how can you judge ad fatigue before your ads even run? The wild west of podcast advertising days may be over. 2022 is proving to be a rotten year for marketing agencies. And is the next Google Ads named Kroger? It's Monday, September 12th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. If you're new here, by the way,

Starting point is 00:00:28 we put out this short newscast every day. It's usually under 10 minutes. Be sure to follow us in your podcast app if you want to stay ahead of the curve. Meta's TikTokification isn't working. That's not my opinion. That's Meta's own opinion. Despite Mark Zuckerberg riding his company's

Starting point is 00:00:44 short-term future on Reels, new leaked documents reveal how far behind TikTok Instagram actually is. According to internal Meta documents produced this month and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, after two years of pushing Reels, the format isn't even close to competing with TikTok. In fact, only a fifth of Instagram users are creating these short-form videos. Among Instagram users, 17.5 million hours are spent cumulatively watching Reels every day.

Starting point is 00:01:14 That is less than a tenth of the 198 million hours spent on TikTok every day. More surprisingly, the document said that Reels engagement had dropped nearly 14% over the past four weeks and that, quote, most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever, unquote. One big reason is that Instagram has struggled to get users to create original content. The internal document showed that nearly a third of Reels are created on another platform, usually TikTok,

Starting point is 00:01:50 of course. Meta previously said it downranks repurposed content, but it's still happening. Hence the running joke, and even TikTok trend, that Reels users are out of touch. The Wall Street Journal noted that Meta's challenges are significant since the Reels product is central to the company's efforts to reinvent itself. On top of that, the big picture issues for the company are rough. The amount of Instagram users who think the company cares about them dropped from nearly two-thirds in 2019 to one-fifth earlier this summer. Users have also been polled on a separate question related to Meta's current dilemma. The question asked, would you say Meta's best days are ahead of it or behind it? Meta has declined to share the results. An interesting piece in Corey Dobbin's great newsletter today gives some thought to how

Starting point is 00:02:40 Meta's ads AI might be getting things wrong, or at the very least, mislabeling things. You might be familiar with the concept of creative fatigue or ad fatigue. That's when your frequency is high and consumers are either seeing past your ads or worse, getting pissed off by them. Ad fatigue isn't a hard metric, though. It's an inferred metric, something you chalk things up to. It's not surprising that Meta is flagging some ads as being in that trouble zone. What's surprising is they've started doing it now before your ads have even been seen by consumers.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Corey pointed out that the documentation attached to that note in Ads Manager has a section that reads, quote, before campaign is active, if we predict creative fatigue may occur in the first seven days of your campaign, we will warn you before you publish your ad, unquote. Like most of these messages from Meta, it's not clear what formula they're using to decide that an ad campaign is fatigued, especially before it even runs. But might be another thing to file in the grain of salt category for Meta's warning messages. By the way, Corey's newsletter is called the Marketers Playbook. It is definitely worth following.

Starting point is 00:03:53 You can sign up at marketersplaybook.co. The podcast ad market is still apparently for the taking. Podcast ad revenue grew twice as fast as total online ad revenue in the US last year, yet it only accounts for a small portion of ad spend. Some advertisers still see podcasting as the Wild West of marketing, where many podcasters are known for putting their own spin on ad copy. But brand safety tech tools are becoming more accessible throughout the industry. Marketing Brew has a great piece up today taking a look at how these tools work. First, the podcast company Acast partnered with media company Comscore

Starting point is 00:04:30 to tailor podcast episodes to advertisers' preferences using AI. Here's how it works. Podcast transcripts are forwarded to Comscore, which analyzes them for keywords and tags based on risk level in various brand safety content categories. ACAST uses this option primarily for pre-produced ads to ensure they

Starting point is 00:04:51 are inserted to the quote best suited content, unquote. When it comes to host-read campaigns, the company tends to rely more on its staff than technology to familiarize brands with the show they're working with. Meanwhile, iHeartMedia partnered with audio intelligence platform Soundr, announcing plans to leverage its AI and machine learning solution to ensure that advertisers can invest in its shows safely. Although such partnerships are becoming more common, brand safety solutions for podcasts remain nascent. Because of this, advertisers aren't entirely confident their podcast ads will

Starting point is 00:05:25 run in brand-safe environments, this according to the VP of the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Media Center. Quoting that VP, AI solutions that could provide brand safety at scale are available, but there is a lack of uniformly accessible and standardized podcast transcription data, which has hampered widespread rollout of these solutions, unquote. He noted that the IAB is facilitating conversations with industry leaders to resolve the issue. Outside of networks, the podcast media planning platform Magellan AI has developed a tool that lets advertisers and agencies review content based on their own criteria. Here's how that works.

Starting point is 00:06:02 Clients can create keyword buckets and then choose podcasts to search for those words. The tool then produces a report that shows when and where those keywords appear. It is also possible to use the tool for post-buy verification or error checks. Custom keyword lists can also be used by advertisers to trigger alerts if any of their ads run against content that may cause concern. Finally, Oxford Road has been working with Barometer, a tech company using AI to provide ratings for podcast content to advertisers. That tool sorts episodes into categories based on risk, but can also rate tolerance for some topics.

Starting point is 00:06:38 For example, if a host shares an opinion on a sensitive topic, but does it in a way that's respectful, the tool would rate that episode as high tolerance. Marketing Brew's piece is definitely worth a read if this interests you. They've also got some graphics and screenshots showing what some of these tools look like. Go to marketingbrew.com, look for the article called Podcast Brand Safety Tools Are Trying to Demystify the Space for Wary Advertisers. for wary advertisers. data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. A new analysis shows that compared to last year, 2022 has been a difficult year for marketing agencies, especially for creative services.

Starting point is 00:07:39 The report found that new business revenue has decreased by more than 50% for the top 20 creative agencies in the U.S. and by nearly a quarter globally. Meanwhile, new business revenue for media agencies has declined by about 40% in the U.S. and more than a fifth worldwide. As well as recessionary and inflationary concerns, MediaPost.com has an article up today suggesting that the contraction likely represents tough comparisons with high growth rates for the same period in 2021. The data comes from R3's report of the top 20 media and creative services through July. One of America's largest grocery retailers is throwing its hat into the world of streaming, Kroger Precision Marketing,

Starting point is 00:08:30 that's the retail media business of the grocery giant Kroger, is expanding its programmatic marketplace to now include video and connected TV inventory. The expansion will let advertisers access sale data in order to target relevant households with tools to gain audience insights like Magnite, OpenX, Pubmatic, and Zander. As part of the new offering, advertisers will be able to customize CTV and video inventory in a centralized marketplace and view campaign metrics such as attributable retail sales and household penetration. Which brings us to the lightning round. Is your brand ready for the big game? The Super Bowl might be five months away, but Fox recently announced it has sold out 95% of its ad inventory. Spots are going for more than $7 million.

Starting point is 00:09:17 In a new promotional campaign, Pinterest is trying to distance itself from social media competitors by framing the platform as a positive space without the judgment and stress that comes with those other apps. The new campaign is called Don't Don't Yourself and highlights the inner saboteurs that hold us back with Pinterest as the antidote to doubt. Earlier today, Google confirmed it has started the rollout of this month's core algorithm update. Once the rollout is complete, Google said it will update its ranking release history page. And attention SEOs, Google also announced its Search on 2022 event, where the company will outline its latest advancements in search and approaches in ranking. The event takes place Wednesday, September 28th at 10 o'clock Pacific. We are running some ads, so if you are here because of one of those, welcome.

Starting point is 00:10:06 We put this out every single day. It is a marketing newscast. It is just like this. It's usually between 8 and 10 minutes long. That's it. Simple, short, to the point. No rambling interviews. No monologues. Well, not many anyway. So follow or subscribe in your podcast app if this kind of news is valuable to you. So, video game update. I have stopped playing video games. What? What is happening to me?

Starting point is 00:10:29 I tried with Prison Architect. It was okay. It just, you know what's getting my attention now? Damn YouTube. I'm not proud of this. The YouTube rabbit hole I seem to have fallen down are YouTube channels inspired by a channel that was called Jim Canim can't swim i don't think it's around anymore but despite the name it has nothing to do with a guy named jim or swimming it's like a kind of a crime crime it's like it's like if if

Starting point is 00:10:55 um true crime podcasts were to go to youtube it's basically that and most of them it kind of sets up what the crime was but most of it is the interrogation which i find fascinating and i don't know how i ended up down that dark rabbit hole but that's that's where my time is going these days talk to you tomorrow Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - 'Sorry Zuck. Reels Aren't Working': Meta Documents

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