Today in Digital Marketing - The Cookiepocalypse Has Begun

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, January 5th. Today, it's finally here. Google starts turning cookies off. Also, the secret to reaching Gen Z might be simpler than you think. X's metrics aren't as good as they think they are. And Andrew Foxwell on the future of TikTok's increasingly expensive commerce platform. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead. Today, digital marketing. Every Friday, we check in with our meta ads correspondent, Andrew Foxwell. Andrew has visibility into $300 million in meta ad spend through his Slack community called Foxwell Founders. Hello, Andrew. Happy New Year. Hey, thank you so much. Glad to be here. So we covered this a little while ago. TikTok shops are increasing their fees to marketers up to 8%. Can you walk us through that and what you think the impact of that will be? And let's talk about meta afterwards.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Yeah, I mean, TikTok shops had a decent adoption in Q4 of 23 and Q3 and Q4 of 23. And it was getting a lot of adoption because they weren't charging any fees. So that was a huge part of it that made it helpful for folks to give it a shot. And so of course, Meta hasn't instilled any fees yet to do this right with Meta shops, and I think has continued the adoption and obviously made the default now when you create a campaign that it'll send it to your website or shop depending on what meta chooses the big thing with tiktok is you know i knew that they were going to be stupid about this i just had this really big feeling but they had they announced two people that have shops set up that they're going to have a 2% up to 8% plus 30 cents in order charge. So it's going to be the transition rate is going to be 6% and then it'll be going up

Starting point is 00:01:57 to 8%. So if you're utilizing TikTok shops and you didn't see this, it's important to know. I think that that really does affect a lot of margins for folks. So something to be aware of. You know, I had heard anecdotally that the TikTok shops team was only six people actually working on this in California. So I don't really know if you're building your strategies for 24, what if TikTok shops is a place I would go to, you know, to really build that to feel confident in it, unless you have already been seeing decent results in it. And you can eat those fees. And you feel like, yeah, that's something I want to continue to try to invest in. I think it's a tough place to get started. And is that 8% on top of like Stripe's fees and whatever payment processor you're using? Yeah, it basically just says 8%.

Starting point is 00:02:55 It goes up to 8%. So it would be on top of whatever else you're paying. And I wonder if it's being sent through Google or Apple, if their 30% is also going to be part of that you know or on top of that this is a this is it wouldn't be through that it would just be directly through tiktok that they're going to be charging for any sort of transaction or any sort of revenue that comes through it so um you know you you will if you've seen if you've seen results with it have the margins, I don't think there's any reason to change other than to know that it's going to incur this other cost. Again, if it's brand new and you're thinking about it, I just don't think that you're building that on a solid foundation.

Starting point is 00:03:37 So something to be aware of moving it to 24. What we're talking about, of course, is the direct purchase through the app kind of process that Meta's had for a while. Meta Shops, they have for, I mean, really since they launched it, sort of waived their fee. Is it still 0%? Are they charging now? Where do you see that going this year? Yeah, I think that it's still 0%. It is still 0%.

Starting point is 00:04:02 I don't think they're going to change that at this point in time. The reason I don't think they're going to change this is because the signal that users give to Meta by doing using shops is really important. You know, certainly the signal basically is now my signal. I mean, like the things that it's sending back to Meta to continue to serve more relevant ads. The signal is basically Cappy, which is on your website, and then it shops as a big part of it. So if somebody clicks on it and clicks around, you know, and looks at a product, it will be able to give you that. And I actually saw something the other day.

Starting point is 00:04:41 I was looking at a product and I got a notification that had a little shop thing in it, in my Instagram that actually said like, continue shopping on these particular shirts. Cause I had looked at it. So there's going to be more of that connection. And I think that in 24 meta shops will continue to get better and it's going to be, you know, utilizing product tagging even more effectively. It's probably going to be utilizing obviously AI in some way. So I could see if you're looking at one product, it would automatically potentially show you other things, obviously within the new, with, within your feed or within stories from that, but it could also,

Starting point is 00:05:21 um, you know, allow you to try certain sizes on of different products and show different product, you know, show you different competitors of that particular product because they want to obviously bring about as much choice as possible. So I think, yeah, if you haven't tried shop, I mean, most of you probably tried shops. If you haven't tuned that up and gotten your shop in order, that's going to be definitely a big thing for 24 for meta for sure. And I do think that's a good place to keep testing. Before I let you go for the week,

Starting point is 00:05:49 you know, our agency, we handle engagement moderation for medium to large size brands. So we're monitoring their Facebook messages among a million other channels. And we're getting like dozens a day of these, your page has committed some copyright fraud and you must click this link.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And of course, it's fake. It's hacking. Are you seeing an increase in these messages as well, or are we just unlucky? No, honestly, there's been a ton of increase in hacking. And I think that a lot of it is, you know, there's due to a bunch of different factors. One of them is that there's still too many apps that people have connected through their accounts on Facebook. So, you know, if you're not, and you haven't gone in and checked about what apps are connected, that's one thing. The next thing is that you've got to turn on two factor authentication and especially

Starting point is 00:06:39 in your business through your business manager. If you've added an employee, Jenny Smith that years ago worked on your social media and you've not taken her out, you have to remove these folks because we've had a massive influx, like probably at least 15 folks out of the 550 in our membership in Q4 that either lost an account entirely or it really upset the spending because somebody got hacked and then a person went in and spent 125 grand on pornographic ads or something, right? Like it's really been bad. And I think it's because the hackers know about more vulnerabilities than they used

Starting point is 00:07:20 to. And there's also people do, you know, it is a place that people spend the most money. And I think it's, uh, it's easier to hack than Google, honestly, because there's a lot of these data accounts that are out there that people get into. So, uh, make sure to keep that in, in check and make sure you have, you know, who's like, who's on the account, what they're doing, why they're there. Um, and then make sure that everybody that's on the account, what they're doing, why they're there. And then make sure that everybody that's on your account has two factor authentication set up, you know, or in the case of Todd, you're the one that told me about using, you know, a YubiKey or something that allows a different way to entry enter into the accounts

Starting point is 00:07:59 and keep things secure, the better off you're going to be. So, yeah, it's been a major issue. And that's definitely a focus for for making sure if you're going to spend in 24 that you keep those things up. So yeah, even with all the permissions, you can still get hacking links and you have to kind of teach your staff obviously what to click and what not to click. Definitely. All right, Andrew, thank you. See you next week. Thanks. Andrew Foxwell is our meta ads correspondent. You can learn more about Andrew's digital ads training at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community of senior meta ad buyers at b.link slash founders.

Starting point is 00:08:33 Both of those are affiliate links, and you can find those links in our show notes. We've been telling you about this for months, God, years, but now it's finally here. Third-party cookies in Google's Chrome browser are gone, though only for about 1% of the user base as of now. Still, that's about 30 million people that advertisers will now lose some tracking data on. As marketers, we live in a weird state. The business half of our head realizes that this is going to make our job harder, though you'd have to have had your head in the sand to not see this overall industry trend. But we're also consumers. And for that side, this increased privacy is good news. It's not like advertisers will have no data on people using Chrome. For those one percenters, Google is

Starting point is 00:09:21 dropping them into their new interest grouping system, which has received lukewarm reception from the marketing industry. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, quote, the impact of Google removing tracking cookies will be significant, with cookies traditionally providing key insights that help power the Internet's targeted ad system. Google's replacement will instead see users categorized into topic listings in an anonymized way, so brands will still be able to show their ads to subsets of users, but they won't be able to use granular targeting based on the specifics of what people have engaged with across different websites, which will likely lead to worse-performing campaigns, meaning less money for web publishers and a lesser web experience overall

Starting point is 00:10:06 for users via more generalized ads. At the same time, it'll also increase the costs of ad targeting for many businesses, unquote. Of course, the real marketing Gs know that the solution to all of this is to invest in your own first party data, email lists, SMS marketing, CRMs where you own the relationship directly. Google says by the end of this year, it expects to fully remove third-party cookies for all its users. Almost 60% of people in Gen Z have made a social commerce purchase in the past year. This according to new data from eMarketer, a big portion of those purchases influenced by TikTok and Instagram shopping discovery. eMarketer study also found they're not as afraid of AI as older generations. More than 60 percent have positive attitudes toward AI generated content on social media.

Starting point is 00:11:03 They report it as a tool to simplify their lives, editing essays, checking code, planning travel itineraries, and so on. Not surprisingly, Gen Zers aged 18 to 24 spend more time on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat than any other group. Oh, if you're writing marketing copy for that generation, what do you focus on? According to eMarketer, gaming. Quote, nearly 71% of Gen Zers are digital gamers, and they're likely to spend three to six hours gaming each week. This is one of the few digital arenas where Gen Z beats millennials not only in penetration, but also in size, by nearly a million users according to our forecast. This lead is likely to change, though, as Gen Zers lose free time as they age. Unquote.

Starting point is 00:11:54 I feel ya, kids. High-end B2B sales don't happen through generic AI-generated content. Want to sell a $20 shirt with a random Instagram post? Go for it. But to sell a $20,000 business service, you need a longer on-ramp. Social media is great for connecting and networking, but long-term, evergreen website content is your paved path to high-end B2B sales. Whether your business makes $100,000 a year or $100 million,

Starting point is 00:12:27 the second edition of Pamela Wilson's Master Content Books share her proven frameworks for crafting long-term, evergreen content consistently. Plus, the second editions, which you'll find at mastercontentbooks.com, cover the practical, ethical use of AI tools to help your marketing team create better content faster if you're ready to increase your website content roi in 2024 buy and read pamela's newly updated master content books at master content books.com x the platform formerly known as BrandSafe, may have accidentally revealed user metrics that make them look, well, a little less impressive than they might think.

Starting point is 00:13:12 And by they, I mean Elon Musk. unquote, and then showed a chart of total user seconds, which, if that metric doesn't sound familiar, that's because literally nobody else uses it. But whatever. The table appears to show the platform's growth rate spiking. But Andrew Hutchinson at socialmediatoday.com put those numbers into an advanced processing model known as basic math and figured out that actually it shows the opposite. Quote, in terms of total user seconds, X's average over the last week is 360 billion seconds per day. That's the whole time that users spent in the app, which on the face of it is an incredible amount of time. But breaking that down, 360 billion user seconds equates to 6 billion total minutes per day. X claims to have 253 million daily active users at last check. So if you divide

Starting point is 00:14:15 the total minutes by the total users, that's an average of 24 minutes per day spent per user in the app every day, which is not close to what X reported back in October when it said the users were spending an average of 32 minutes per day in the app, and lower than what the former Twitter team was reportedly seeing at 30 minutes per day per user. So while the top line numbers look impressive at many billions of seconds, the actual time spent per user is seemingly declining, not increasing, as Musk claims, unquote. For some reason, I am an authorized contributor to X's community notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking system. One note there adds, quote, Elon compares the week of December 27th with the week of December 20th. Social media traffic is low on public holidays.

Starting point is 00:15:05 This growth is likely a return to normal after a Christmas drop, unquote. As of the time of our deadline, that correction had not been published to the public site. TikTok this week published its content planning guide for 2024 and has taken a slightly different tack this time around by focusing on specific events that can enhance your ad campaign's impact. They've included chapters for major regions like North America, Europe and the Middle East, but it's more than just a list of dates. It integrates key events with additional tips on using TikTok's various ad tools. There are insights on each date period, suggestions on how to integrate the events with marketing campaigns. An added bonus is the campaign planner template. A link to the guide is in today's newsletter, which is free, and you can sign up to it at todayindigital.com slash newsletter or by tapping the link in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:16:12 Hey, Black Friday is still on here. No, I'm kidding. Boxing Day week? Boxing Day quarter? Anyway, all that to say that for the next seven days and seven days only, our ads are on sale. And if you want to drop an ad into the podcast or into our newsletter, go to todayindigital.com slash ads. You can book it right online or just tap the link in the show notes. It'll take you there as well. That will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island.

Starting point is 00:16:45 Our production coordinator is Sarah Gill. Our theme is by Mark Blevis, music licensing, source audio, ad coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Mappin. Thanks for listening. See you next week. Thank you.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Cookiepocalypse Has Begun

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