Today in Digital Marketing - T minus Six Days. (Tick... Tick... Tick...)

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Six days and counting. Apple's change to app tracking is on its way. Are you ready? Also, does Google reduce your rank in search if you don't buy ads? That's what one court case is claiming. Microsoft fires a huge shot across the bow of Facebook Ads. And the love affair between Pinterest and Shopify keeps smouldering.Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at TodayInDigital.com/newsletterSPECIAL OFFER: Seven days free: https://todayindigital.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=c1232accPodcast Perks: Exclusive Deals for ListenersAdvertising: Perks (free!) • Ads • Classifieds • Brand TakeoversJoin the Community: Slack or DiscordEnjoying the show? Please rate and review us!Follow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok (daily digital marketing tips)Get this as a daily email newsletterLeave a VoicemailToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital. Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, six days and counting, Apple's change to app tracking is on its way. Are you ready? Also, does Google reduce your rank in search if you don't buy ads? That's what one court case is claiming. Microsoft fires a huge shot across the bow of Facebook ads. And the love affair between Pinterest and Shopify keeps smoldering. It's Wednesday, April 21st, 2021. Happy Local Self-Government Day, Russia.

I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. We have the day now, and that day is Tuesday. Six days from now, Apple will finally roll out its huge change to IDFA. Yes, the one Mark Zuckerberg is throwing temper tantrums over, the one that will serve pop-up boxes to iOS users asking them if they want to opt into tracking their activity in each mobile app. It'll be bundled into the release of iOS 14.5. Since Apple announced this plan, the platforms have raced to adapt to the forthcoming changes. After all, if we digital marketers don't have insight into the customer path through an app,

we lose some pretty important marketing data. Facebook says costs will probably rise. Some marketers are already seeing CPM increases in the last couple of weeks, though we can't be sure it's related to this. But now, all we can do is wait. Wait to see how many people will actually say, Yeah, it's cool. Track me, I don't care. And that number might be higher than we all think.

As we reported here a couple of weeks ago, one study found that people in the early testing group opted in at a rate of 41%. 41% of people who saw that scary do you want to be tracked message chose, yeah, fine, whatever. And remember, this won't all happen on Tuesday. Sometimes it takes weeks for people to get around to updating their operating system.

David Herman, who does a ton of DTC campaigns on Facebook, tweeted this today. No, iOS 14 will not kill your business. No, CPMs will not stay this high. No, you shouldn't speak in absolutes. Yes, if you can, pull back on spends for a bit. It's a roller coaster ahead, and it's outside all our control what happens on these platforms, unquote. So buckle in and keep close to those analytics reports. So how's Facebook handling this news? Today, they emailed a brief out to a small handful of advertisers.

Not to all their advertisers, because, I mean, you know, why break with tradition? One really concerning part of this memo caught my eye, though. Quote, iOS 14.5 devices will be opted out by default. When a user updates to iOS 14.5 and launches the Facebook or Instagram apps, Wait, what? So even if someone says to Facebook, it's cool, let the marketers track me, Facebook is going to reverse their decision and pull them out of the data pool anyway? Jill David, who runs a Facebook ads agency, was kind enough to talk me down off the ledge on Twitter today.

He said, quote, not quite. Apple's default setting, of which screenshots were floating around a couple of months back, will be users are opted out unless they get the ATT prompt and choose to opt in for each app. So they will probably get sick of those prompts. Unquote. Facebook's changes to reporting are pretty technical, but I am going to read their email verbatim in case you are up to nerd out on all the details. Don't worry, this will only take 30 seconds. Quote, the following reporting changes will go into effect on the day Apple enforces its prompt. One-day click-through opt-out data will be modeled. Seven-day click-through and one-day view-through attribution

settings will no longer include iOS 14.5 opted-out events. Action and demographic breakdowns will be deprecated for off-site events. Attribution setting default will change to 7-day click-through for newly created ad sets and web event campaigns. 28-day click-through, 7-day view-through, and 28-day view-through attribution settings will be fully deprecated, along with the comparing windows feature. Attribution methodology will shift

from impression time to conversion time. And iOS 14.5 Plus mobile app install campaigns will use SCAN for attribution. You hear the conspiracy theories all the time. If you don't buy Google Ads, they'll take your organic search listing and drop it down. It's nonsense, of course. But that memo apparently hasn't gotten to the UK gossip rag The Daily Mail, the owner of which this week filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the search engine punishes publishers in its search results

if they don't buy enough ads. The industry reaction to this is universally, well, bemused, really. Most on Twitter suggesting that maybe the Daily Mail should spend money improving the quality of its content rather than litigating. Specifically, they believe their coverage of Britain's royals were downplayed in Google. For its part, Google said, quote, The Daily Mail's claims are completely inaccurate. The use of our ad tech tools has no bearing on how a publisher's website ranks in Google search. Unquote. and more, we will defend ourselves against these meritless claims, unquote. Others in the space say it's probably the poor design of the website that's keeping them lower in the search rankings.

Lots of Microsoft ad news to go over today. Microsoft Ads platform runs ads on Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and a bunch of other places. Let's start with what I think is the biggest news. You'll soon be able to import your Facebook ads campaigns directly into the Microsoft ad platform. Obviously, there are format differences between the two platforms, so at launch you'll only be able to bring over single image ads, but it's bound to be a pretty strong incentive to try their platform out. All the major settings are carried over, locations, demographics, schedules.

You'll still have to change some things up if you were using Facebook's interest-based or behavioral targeting, of course. This isn't the first shot across a major player's bow. They've had a Google import for a while now. Second, Microsoft has built a special API that will let them serve search results without actually knowing what that search term was. It's done through a private search proxy between the private search site, like DuckDuckGo, and Bing's private search API. This way, Bing can deliver results without ever receiving the search term.

Third, Microsoft's Edge browser has added a way to include your products in a price comparison panel, as long as you're in their shopping ecosystem. This is in beta in the U.S. only, and these placements are currently free. You won't get charged if someone clicks on them. If you're not in this beta, reach out to your account rep or support. Fourth, Microsoft is also beta testing multimedia extensions in ads. Looks like a little thumbnail on the right of a search ad, and when the user clicks it, the video expands and starts

playing on the same page. This format also includes a small CTA button under the video. For now, it's desktop only, but they're bringing it to mobile soon, and it's only in the US, Canada, Germany, and Australia. France and India are next in line. And fifth, they say they plan to expand the auto bidding options. Target impression share is currently in pilot, and portfolio bid strategies are coming soon. There's a bunch of smaller updates too. They're planning to make the platform available in 29 new countries this year, although they didn't specify which ones. They do have an email newsletter, which usually details these changes. So, that's the good news.

All that said, there are some strange things happening on Microsoft's platform. A while back, we reported that Microsoft was planning to automatically apply their recommendations to your ad campaigns. For instance, if it thought that adding a new ad and changing the body copy would help, it would do just that for you. At the time, they said you had to opt into this for them to make these changes, which was great, especially in comparison to Google, which said if you didn't want them monkeying around in your campaigns, you specifically had to opt out. But a report from a listener of this podcast says even though he never opted into this program, Microsoft keeps sending him emails saying, hey, listen, we think you should add another ad here.

And if we don't hear from you by next week, we're just going to do it. Like Microsoft. That's not how opt-in works. Another listener this morning reported that all their shopping products in Microsoft's ads platform are being rejected. This, it turns out, is a huge bug, actually, that Microsoft knows about. They are working on a fix. To Pinterest now, and an announcement today that they've expanded their partnership with Shopify. Basically, it's a direct integration that turns your product catalog, which is hosted

on Shopify, into pins. Also, as part of this announcement, merchants advertising on Pinterest through Shopify will also have access to dynamic retargeting for the first time, so you'll be able to re-engage with pinners who have already expressed interest in products. Pinterest is also launching multi-feed support for catalogs. This lets you upload products in multiple product feeds within the same Pinterest business account. And any retailer with a Pinterest business account can now add up to 20 product feeds to their account, each indicating specific local data such as a currency, language, or product availability. Pinterest says

97% of the top searches are unbranded and consist of two to three word queries. And finally, Instagram will be adding a way for people and brands to shield themselves from harassment message requests. And it's going to give account holders a way to proactively block people, even if they create a new account to try to get around a block. That part goes live globally in the next few weeks. The ability to filter out abusive DMs will start rolling out in the UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in a few weeks' time, with more countries being added in the coming months. 250 digital marketers like you now get our daily email newsletter.

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link in today's notes. All right, talk to you tomorrow. We're getting more dressed up to get on down. Let me see your strut. Let me see your work it. Put your best dress on and show me that you're worth it.