Today in Digital Marketing - The Annihilation of Interest Targeting Has Begun

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Missing some targeting interests? Yes you are. And more than you think. Plus: Best practices for Local SEO. Amazon gets further into bricks-and-mortar. TikTok is experimenting with Paid Subscriptions. Instagram wants to ban your account even if you don't violate policy.Go Premium! No ads, more stories, and extended deep-dive weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, missing some targeting interests? Yes, you are. Be protected. Be Zen. brand's account, even if you don't violate policy. And on the premium podcast with more stories, no ads and expert deep dive episodes, tap the link in the notes for info. Why your brand needs to stop trying to be funny on Twitter. It's Friday, January 21st, 2021. Happy Alter Gracia Day, Dominican Republic. I'm Todd Matvin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 545. Well, if you opened up your Facebook ads manager this morning to create a new campaign and couldn't find an interest that you usually use, well, as the tech

people would say, functioning as expected. This past Wednesday, Facebook removed a whack of targeting interests in an attempt to salvage what's left of its goodwill with American legislation. Oh, I'm sorry, I read that wrong. In a move to protect consumer privacy and enhance its services to marketers. To their credit, for once, this didn't come without warning. On December 8th, in fact, they warned us about this. We reported it on that day. Quote, starting January 19th, we will be removing some detailed targeting options because they relate to topics people

may perceive as sensitive, such as targeting options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion or sexual orientation. Examples include health causes, like lung cancer awareness, or World Diabetes Day, or chemotherapy, sexual orientation, like same-sex marriage, or LGBT culture,

religious practices in groups, like Catholic Church, and Jewish holidays, plus political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures, unquote. Okay, fair enough.

I mean, not great if you target people in the LGBT space, but whatever. And then there was this line in their announcement, quote, additionally, similar to previous updates, we will also be removing targeting options that have not been widely used because they may be redundant with others or too granular, unquote. Now that January 19th has come and gone, you may have noticed those interests gone and others. Interests that you might think, how on earth is this a privacy violation? I'm seeing reports in various industry slacks about topics related to clothing, fashion accessories, topics related to veganism, and more. So if you're not seeing the list of interest options you're used to seeing on Facebook's Ads Manager, that's probably why. Oh, also, their marketing API went down today.

That copyright infringement phishing scam is back. There's instability in Ads Manager. Personal profiles are still being banned for no reason. Well, at least Meta isn't screwing up Instagram, am I wrong? I've just been handed this. Instagram announced today it will start taking action against posts that do not necessarily violate its community guidelines. The posts in question are those that contain bullying or hate speed or encourage violence, Or, as I think we all know here, posts that the algorithm believes contains those topics, even if your post is actually a product listing for a hat. What action specifically? Reducing reach and showing them

lower in the feed and in stories. But will this make it worse? I mean, if potentially harmful posts are allowed to stay on and just be ranked lower, is that enough incentive for people to stop posting them? Industry experts say there are only two instances in which a post would be removed. One, if it breaks community guidelines, in which case that user would be informed. Or two, if the algorithm decides your post about apple juice is hateful content, that threatens people. As you probably know, there's not just one SEO. There's lots. There's search SEO, video SEO, image SEO. One of the most important, local SEO. That's the part of the

search world focused on your business's listing. Do you show up in web maps, in reviews, and so on? One of the best experts out there is Joy Hawkins. She runs the Sterling Sky Agency in Toronto. I recently had a chance to chat with her and asked her to confirm the fact or bust the myth. Do bad reviews on your Google business profile bring your ranking in Google search down? Well, what I've seen is that reviews of that in and of themselves are not a ranking factor. It's how they influence people clicking on your listing.

So click through rate is a rank factor, ranking factor, like people clicking on you, people finding you, your popularity, that all factors in. So if you are competing and you have five reviews and your competitor has 100, people are not as likely to click on you. So that is going to hurt your click-through rate, which over time would hurt your ranking, if that makes sense. So in a sense, yes. So it's an indirect effect. Yeah. Because like, honestly, the average rating, all that stuff, there have been a huge amount of studies done on it that show that like customers really do put a lot of faith

in those, which is kind of sad, but they do trust them, right? Even though they're written by complete strangers. So your average rating, the number of views you have, all that stuff, that is a really big deciding factor on like if somebody clicks on your call too. My full interview with Joy is about a half an hour long. We cover all sorts of details, including what is the single most important task a business owner should focus on for local SEO, what things should you be doing less of, how to combat local SEO spam, how you can keep your brand's website from being impacted negatively by a core update, and a lot more. That will be coming out tomorrow on the premium podcast feed, which you can subscribe to it today in digital.com slash premium feed, or by tapping the link in the episode notes.

You can find Joy and her agency at sterlingsky.ca. 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. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

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.

Just in case you're not completely sick of Amazon competing with you online, comes word that Amazon plans to compete with clothing and shoe retailers in the bricks and mortar world. The company announcing it is launching its first ever real world retail store in an L.A. mall that will sell clothing and shoes and will open later this year. Here's what you can expect from the bricks and mortar shop. An Amazon shopping app where customers can scan QR codes in the store to see colors, sizes and customer ratings. Shoppers will be able to add items to a fitting room from the app, again, while they're in

store. Algorithms will give consumers clothing recommendations. And these fitting rooms will be equipped with a so-called magic closet, allowing shoppers to view and even try on products with AI without leaving the fitting room or rate items and get new picks in real time by requesting more styles and sizes to be physically delivered to the fitting room. Fashion is clearly not Amazon Style's main draw, but its tech is, and with the new Amazon Shopping app, the biggest online retailer in the world will have a new way to collect consumer data. TikTok is beginning to test paid subscriptions. The news comes 24 hours after Instagram made a similar announcement.

Though the platform has not released anything official, it confirmed to TechCrunch that it is experimenting with the idea of letting creators charge for their content. It's not clear how the paid subscription model would be implemented in the app. Currently, the feature is part of a limited test and not widely available. If it is launched to a wider audience, there could be an opportunity for brands to create paid-only fan clubs, special membership groups, or regular events that people would pay to get access to. A couple of updates on the Google Ads side of things.

First, the company confirmed a bug with discovery and performance campaigns that was affecting a significant subset of users. The team uncovered a technical issue that affected serving on YouTube inventory. Between January 18th and today, that's now been resolved. Advertisers using Discovery and or Performance Max campaigns should take note of those dates because the issue may have affected your ads if you're running them again.

That was January 18th to today. Second, Google has released new placement reports for Performance Max campaigns. These are a new resource for advertisers to see where on Google's channels ads were served and data on associated impressions. 2021 was the year of the great resignation. Could 2022 be the great termination?

A couple of restructuring updates to tell you about. Nick Tran, TikTok's global head of marketing, is no longer at the company. New York Post reporting that the company was unimpressed with his, quote, sideshow marketing campaigns. A few of his stunt marketing strategies, including letting people apply to jobs at places like Target via TikTok. NFT collaborations with celebrities. And TikTok ghost kitchens apparently was the last straw.

And Twitter shook up the top ranks of its security team this week with the termination of its security team this week with the termination of the head of security and the exit of its chief information security officer. Twitter has a new chief executive, and it seems like he has started to shape the platform in his own image. And two small items before I send you off to the weekend. First, Apple has finally added the ability for app marketers to generate custom codes in App Store Connect, each with a unique name that you choose, like Spring Promo. Each code can be redeemed through a direct URL or within your app.

And Google has a new robots tag. This will help you point their crawler to embedded content on your pages. The tag is named index if embedded, which will tell Google you'd still like your content indexed when it's embedded through iframes and similar HTML tags and other pages. Even, and this is kind of clever, even when the content page has the no index tag. All right. Don't forget tomorrow, a deep dive expert weekend edition with Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky Agency, all about local SEO. And if you are a small business owner or a brand manager and you are either confused by or haven't even looked into the Google business profile side of things, this will be a must listen. It's on the premium podcast feed only. You get weekend bonus episodes with experts in the marketing space.

Plus that podcast feed has no ads, more stories and chapters that let you jump to any particular story while you're listening. Tap the link at the top of this episode's notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium feed. 13 people this week signed up. So join the cool folks.

Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Cinematic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Scripting and promotional support by StepGun. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. And a lot of people don't know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, also moonlights as a private dancer. A dancer for money. And, you know, any old music will do.

I'm Todd Mappin. Have a restful weekend, friends. I will talk to you on Monday. My best dream come true if this was my last day that's what i'd want to do last night got me thinking about what really matters to me