Today in Digital Marketing - The Case of the $2,628 CPM

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Millions of dollars still going wasted on the web's worst ad placements. Pinterest's new filter could skyrocket engagement. Why is Google showing your competitors on your ads? And YouTube thumbnail advice from the world's most successful video producer.📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact usLinks to all of today’s stories hereListen to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast app. “Future You” will thank you. GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Already Premium? Update Credit Card • CancelMORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital📞 Need marketing advice? Leave us a voicemail and we’ll get an expert to help you free!🤝 Our Slack⭐ Review usUPGRADE YOUR SKILLSInside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin GalesGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and CoursesSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Monday, March 11th. Today, millions of dollars still going wasted on the web's worst ad placements. Pinterest's new filter could skyrocket engagement. Why is Google showing your competitors on your ads? And YouTube thumbnail advice from the world's most successful video producer. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. 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. Advertisers are still funneling millions of dollars into clickbait sites, defying industry efforts to cut back on that kind of spending. This from a new report by Analytics, which found that inventory on so-called made-for-advertising websites continues to infiltrate the ad market. The investigation was prompted by a Fortune 500 company's request, and it uncovered that it had inadvertently spent at least $10 million on MFA websites in the latter half of 2023, despite their efforts to avoid those. They also found that H&R Block delivered more than 2,100 ads to a single user on an MFA site within just one hour. And Comcast paid an astonishing $2,628 CPM to reach a single consumer on another MFA site. Analytics findings highlight what major media buyers know is a widespread problem implicating major ad companies and brands in the purchasing of MFA inventory, whether they mean to or not. The report follows the Association of National Advertisers' discovery last year

that 15% of programmatic ad dollars end up on MFA websites, totaling around $10 billion. Efforts to address the issue have seen some ad tech vendors pledging to remove MFA inventory from their offerings. But recent analysis found that brands including Molson Coors and State Farm kept placing ads on those sites early this year. State Farm said that they do not endorse advertising on MFA, saying it doesn't align with their brand guidelines. Some vendors like OpenX and Pubmatic have taken steps to limit MFA transactions, with OpenX offering clients the option to just exclude that inventory entirely. Pinterest's search tool to filter by different body types and shapes has now rolled out in

the US. This is a great feature, especially for brands that provide clothes for a variety of body types, though for now it's only available for women's clothes and wedding planning. The company says they'll add men's clothes later in the year. It can also remember preference. If someone filters their search results by a specific type, it will remember that for future searches. Pinterest says people who used the filters showed a 66% higher engagement rate per session. They have a patent on the tech, which can identify various body types across the 3.5 billion images on their platform.

Pinterest has leaned hard into serving diverse people. Their filters include the ability to search by skin tone and hairstyles. SE Roundtable has uncovered a slightly frustrating apparent addition to your Google business profile. In some cases, your profile will now also show ads for your competitors. This was spotted by a user named Anthony Higman, who posted a screenshot on social media, quoting him, quote, Google is now running local services ads for all of your competitors in your own Google business profile. This is active in all Google business profiles for lawyers. This legit is just a really, really awful thing to do to businesses, unquote.

As the roundtable notes, this has been seen before with Google local listings and branded knowledge panels and LSA messaging. So far, no response from Google. Google has launched a new open-source marketing mix modeling tool called Meridian. Marketing mix modeling helps media buyers more accurately track how their ad campaigns perform across multiple channels. At best, it's an estimate, but the good models are at least reasonable at giving you enough feedback to show what direction to send your campaigns in. Quoting social media today, quote, through Meridian, Google will provide access to various data points, including YouTube reach and frequency and indexed Google query volume data. While it will also provide educational resources and technical facts for troubleshooting.

Google also notes that the Meridian methodology will be completely transparent. Quote, Meridian is designed to give the user control as any modeler is fully empowered to change the code and model parameters to meet their unique business needs. Think of Meridian as modeling clay, a starting point that allows users to iterate and develop further, unquote. He could provide you with more options for measuring campaign performance based on a more complex methodology that factors in a broader range of marketing data points. And given the shifts in data tracking, including the gradual phasing out of tracking cookies, there is a need for improved measurement options to ensure optimal performance ROI, unquote.

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. Ask any YouTuber what the most important part of their whole setup is, and chances are they'll tell you it's the thumbnail image. Some creators, like the wildly popular Mr. Beast, spend an enormous amount of energy on those,

up to $10,000 on a design, and sometimes testing up to 20 variations of thumbnails for each video. Last week, YouTube's creator channel did an interview with Chucky Appleby, the guy behind MrBeast's thumbnail designs. The full interview is about 45 minutes long. We have it linked in today's email newsletter, but here are the four key points. The first is about audience trust. If you consistently use clickbaity thumbnails that

don't accurately represent the content, over time, people will learn that it's not worth the click. And it's not just delivering the promised content. You have to do it fast. Applebee says the design of your thumbnail should focus on what you'll deliver in the video's introduction rather than what most people do and visually promise a big ending. Second, and I know most of us know this, consistency. If you look at Mr. Beast's thumbnails, they always have one element in them, him looking directly into the camera with some kind of emotional expression on his face, usually happiness, but sometimes fear or boredom. Third, visual clarity. Your thumbnail has to communicate as much of the video's main point as possible, but without a ton of clutter.

Quoting Appleby, quote, When you design your thumbnail in Photoshop, for example, it's very big, and it's the whole screen of your computer. But when it's actually on YouTube, it's much, much smaller. So you have to think about what does it look like when it's smaller? And how is someone going to perceive this? And how is someone going to read this thumbnail? Because all the small details you pay attention to in a large screen doesn't really help you as much when it's a smaller image, unquote. And finally, something hopefully none of us need reminding about, testing. Well, not all of us will have 10 grand to throw at testing thumbnails,

you should try at least a couple variations. Mr. Beast's team often tests 50 combinations of title and image, switching everything up from changing his shirt color to adding a logo to his shirt, moving where his face appears on the image, and so on. And finally, for the nerds out there, Google will be changing one of the metrics in its core web vitals tomorrow. Core web vitals are a set of web measurements that Google wants people who run websites to improve. Things like how fast a page loads, how soon a user can interact with it, and so on. So first input delay is going out and it will be replaced with interaction to next paint.

That new metric will observe the latency of all click, tap, and keyboard interactions to the page and will report the longest duration, ignoring outliers. A low INP will mean the page is consistently able to respond to the vast majority of user interactions fairly quickly. So it's quite similar, in fact, to first input delay, but just takes a few more interactions into account. Google has already added INP to its reporting and search console. Most experts say it should have no effect on your actual Google search ranking. If you're looking for an ad-free version of this podcast, we have it. It's the

premium version. It also comes with better sound quality and audio chapters, access to more than 20 deep dive interviews with marketing scientists, includes my course on building a small agency and growing one, and a bunch more. Tap Go Premium in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about it and to sign up. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. 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.

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