Today in Digital Marketing - The Big Privacy Engine That Couldn't

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, their loss, our gain. A huge new privacy law may be stalled out for good. Also, the video ad market keeps getting softer, ad buyers' confidence in meta gets lower, and Amazon reviews get slower. It's Tuesday, September 6th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Is this a loss for consumers or a win for marketers? The proposed American data privacy bill could be dead in the water. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't support the current draft, which, according to sources, could ultimately kill the bill. It's not that she doesn't want consumer protection.

Starting point is 00:00:37 It seems she thinks the current bill is too weak. Saying it, quote, does not guarantee the same essential consumer protections as California's existing privacy laws, unquote. Despite bipartisan support and being further along than any other recent privacy legislation, lawmakers could face an uphill battle without her backing. But Pelosi's move offers relief to ad tech companies since the federal bill proposes tougher restrictions on targeted advertising. Quoting Adweek.com, the proposal focuses on data minimization, meaning companies would only be allowed to collect and use people's data if it's deemed as necessary under some 17 permitted purposes, like preventing ad fraud or completing transactions. Every other reason for collecting data would be prohibited

Starting point is 00:01:25 under the bill. To that end, it would restrict companies from collecting and using sensitive data, which includes basic demographic and online activity data for typical advertising targeting purposes. People would be granted new rights to access, correct, delete, or opt out of targeted advertising, unquote. As you would expect, the bill could have serious repercussions for the ad tech and marketing industries if it passes. That said, sources say Pelosi's rejection of the existing draft could delay the bill indefinitely in the House. Well, maybe a rough road ahead for Netflix and its upcoming advertising service.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Digiday has an interesting piece up today about how media buyers are expecting a challenging fourth quarter for connected TV. The piece suggests that the current state of video ad pricing is soft for a few reasons. To start, ad buyers report that some clients are canceling holds on some of their upfront orders, meaning they are now giving back time they booked to purchase back to sellers. Another factor is that there is just too much ad inventory available in the marketplace, with even more coming soon, like Netflix's ad-supported tier and Disney Plus's. Meanwhile, buyers say clients are still relying on relatively outdated models that direct them toward linear TV advertising, which has the least amount of inventory.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Quoting one media buyer, We've got all this connected TV and streaming supply, and that's coupled with a loss of linear supply. But clients aren't moving fast enough away from the linear supply as they should. We keep beating on our clients to do that and to follow the consumer, but we continue to spend a disproportionate amount of linear cable than we should because of marketing mix models that say cable works, unquote. The buyer also said streaming services are looking to cut ad volume deals and offer better pricing to secure the volume. Another buyer in the piece noted that hybrid players, which have both linear and streaming

Starting point is 00:03:27 assets in which to sell advertising, are in a better position than digital-only streamers because one platform can be used to offset the other. Quoting Digiday, So this is the market that Netflix, a digital-only player, is entering. And Netflix, whose initial approach to the media buying community has been perceived as disorderly, has made its own challenges even worse by offering a paucity of detail about what content it will make available on the ad-supported tier. Unquote. It appears that some agencies are losing faith with Meta's platforms as effective marketing channels.

Starting point is 00:04:06 When it comes to the top performing platforms, a new survey finds that most agency professionals have gained more confidence in marketing channels overall in the past year. But Facebook and Instagram were the only channels that actually saw a decrease in confidence over the last six months. Here are the numbers. With nearly three quarters of agency pros saying they're confident in Google to drive marketing success for their clients, Google took the top spot again in Q3. Despite its drop, Facebook still ranked second with half of respondents saying that they're confident the platform drives success. YouTube came in behind Facebook in third place, followed by online display ads. Instagram came fifth. In terms of movement, where I think is the more interesting story, YouTube moved from fourth place up to third place with confidence increasing. Online display ads also saw improvement and jumped to fourth place,

Starting point is 00:05:00 and Instagram fell to fifth. The data comes from Digiday's survey of 130 agency professionals. Here's an idea to avoid bad reviews. Don't let consumers write them. Well, or don't let them write them for 72 hours. That's exactly what Amazon is now doing with its new weapon to fight off internet trolls, delays. In the wake of the launch of its new weapon to fight off internet trolls, delays. In the wake of the launch of its remake of A League of Their Own,

Starting point is 00:05:29 which premiered its first season last month, Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a 72-hour delay on all user reviews posted to Prime Video. A representative has now confirmed this to Variety. After that, each critique is evaluated to see if it's authentic or if it's a forgery created by a bot or a troll and so on. The initiative caught attention after the recent premiere of the first two episodes of Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power. Variety reports that the series appears to have been review-bombed. That's when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has a high rating from professional critics,

Starting point is 00:06:09 but a terrible rating from user-submitted reviews. Quoting Variety, Amazon's new initiative to review its reviews, however, is designed to weed out the ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact. In the case of A League of Their own, it appears to have worked. To date, the show has an average 4.3 out of 5 star rating on Prime Video, with 80% of users rating the show with 5 stars and 14% with 1 star, unquote. But will it work for Rings of Power? At the moment, it has a 6.2 rating on IMDb, which I should note is also owned by Amazon, with 25% of reviews being one star. So far, still no reviews on Amazon Prime.

Starting point is 00:06:56 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. Your total market approach may be broken. There's a great think piece up on MediaPost today that covers why your digital marketing Be Zen. your strategy isn't working. First, your ads don't have people who look like the targeted audience. This means your ads won't resonate with them and your target audience will ignore them.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Second, your language may be off. If your agency is using a translation service and doesn't understand the target you want to reach, you'll still fall flat. Also, your data may be wrong because targeting by language isn't enough. The author recommends you research your target more thoroughly and begin to tap into first party data. There are five or six other tips in the piece. It's a great rule of thumb for any language or targeted ads in general. Fernandez-Parker goes into much greater detail. Definitely worth the read. It's on MediaPost.com.

Starting point is 00:08:20 It's called Your Digital Marketing Isn't Reaching Hispanics. Microsoft's ads platform has some new updates. First, marketers can now import Pinterest ads. That is to say, the Pinterest ads you have set up on the Pinterest ad platform, you can now import those into the Microsoft ads platform. The import option will let you customize campaigns, make changes to bids, revise your budgets, and so on. The company noted that audiences, though, will not be imported, so make sure to use your audience network planner to identify the correct audiences to target before launching your campaign. Next, you can now import Google's newish Performance Max campaigns. They come into Microsoft's platform as smart shopping campaigns and local inventory ads.

Starting point is 00:09:05 This tool, though, is a closed beta, so you can sign up for it with your account rep. Microsoft also announced that as of last week, support for managing multimedia ads for search campaigns is in the Microsoft Ad Editor, and it is available now in all markets. Automotive ads were also launched last month, and now both cruise ads and tours and activities ads are available. Finally, subdomains in dynamic search ads are now available in select markets. Don't say I didn't tell you so. Here's some proof that NFTs may have been a bit of a fad all along. Snapchat is killing off its Web 3.0 team in light of recent staff cuts. We reported last week about those layoffs.

Starting point is 00:09:50 Now, the people affected are trickling out and onto Twitter, giving us some insight as to what teams were shuttered. One of the Web 3.0 teams members recently tweeted that it was his last day at the company after nearly four years. In the words of that person, Snapchat's former Web 3.0 division leader, quote, as a result at the company after nearly four years. In the words of that person, Snapchat's former Web3 division leader, quote,

Starting point is 00:10:07 As a result of the company restructure, decisions were made to sunset our Web3 team, the same team that I co-founded last year with other pirates who believed in digital ownership and the role that AR can play to support that, unquote. Social media today also reported on the topic, quote, So, seemingly seemingly AR integrations were the main gist of Snap's Web3 push, but given the crypto crash and declining interest in NFTs, it seems like this is no longer a priority for the app, unquote. Well, I finally found a video game.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Man, I've been in kind of a drought lately. Overwatch, I can't really play that because the voice chat is really glitched. And like a minute into the game, I can't hear my team. They can't hear me, which means we lose, of course. And Assassin's Creed, hell, I tried my best. I couldn't get into it. I kind of got back into Origins. Anyway, the new game, Prison prison architect which is a prison simulator really really detailed actually um i couldn't figure out why this one prisoner who appeared to be i think

Starting point is 00:11:14 was in for video game piracy he was model behavior minimum security no problem but failed his uh parole hearing and i looked back and i tried to figure out what happened. How did he fail that hearing? And it turns out he had been complaining about, just bear with me, he'd been complaining about the environment. And I thought that meant he wanted some pretty pictures in the, you know, in the foyer, in his cell. I gave him some artwork. That didn't fix it. So I took those away. Because it turns out what he was actually complaining about was it was too dirty. So I got some janitors. I had them clean.

Starting point is 00:11:48 But then I took his paintings away. And that happened like a couple of minutes before his parole hearing. So as far as I can tell, I put him in a bad mood. Yes, I put AI, an AI character in a bad mood. Because I took some paintings in a punching bag out of his cell. Kind of pissed me off, to be honest. He was going to be my model prisoner. Anyway, whatever.

Starting point is 00:12:15 Seems to be a great game. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Playing one looking for player two Giving my last quarter to you I hope you like my character, it chose me Got the high score but never played with a trophy Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - The Big Privacy Engine That Couldn't

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