Today in Digital Marketing - The End of the Retweet?

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Is Twitter getting rid of retweets?… Facebook says about the removal of the 28-day attribution window: “Naw, bro, we were just kidding!”... Microsoft’s new platform will let you manage pretty much everything — including your brand’s Facebook and Google campaigns… and vertical Stories are heading to a most unlikely home.Join our Slack community! TodayInDigital.com/slackNot subscribed yet? Subscribe links at TodayInDigital.com HELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST:Produced by: engageQ.com Advertising: RedCircle.com/brands and TodayInDigital.com/adsClassified Ads: TodayInDigital.com/classifieds Transcripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio)TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA:Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffinTod’s agency: engageQ.comTikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffiTwitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin (game livestreaming)Source links and full transcripts at TodayInDigital.com Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, is Twitter getting rid of retweets? Facebook says about the removal of the 28-day attribution window. Nah, bro, we were just kidding. Microsoft's new platform will let you manage pretty much everything, including your brand's Facebook and Google campaigns. And vertical stories are heading to the most unlikely of places. It's Thursday, October 8th, 2020. Happy Northeastern Day, Brazil. I'm Todd Maffin

from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Mark Zuckerberg has been throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at Instagram, trying desperately to capture the hearts and minds of teens. And a new study from Piper Sandler says that might not be working. The company asked nearly 10,000 teens in the U.S. which platform was their favorite and Snapchat actually won. 34% said that was their number one. TikTok came in second at 29%. Instagram was at 25%. Snapchat really is quite the story. While TikTok makes headlines and Instagram tries desperately to jam as many features into its app as possible, Snapchat is still out there, quietly plowing along, releasing new features, more on that in a moment,

and for whatever reason, maintaining its edge, all with a significantly smaller overall user base. But can we trust this data? After all, the research asked teens what their favorite platform was. That's not the same as measuring actual usage of these apps. When you do that, Instagram actually comes out on top. 84% of teens use that platform, Snapchat at 80%, and TikTok at only 69%. Which, quoting social media today, is likely enough to placate Facebook. People can say whatever

they want, but if they're opening its apps more often, then the reality is all that matters, unquote. So that's favorite, that's usage. How about time spent per day? For that, we don't know. Because Instagram stopped reporting that number in 2016.

Analysts believe the time spent in the app per day has been decreasing since then. Speaking of Snapchat, the company has a new ad unit available for you and I called First Commercial. This is an unskippable six-second ad that shows up when people watch any of Snap's premium shows in Discover. They say they'll make sure any ads you place there will only go beside curated and brand safe content. In testing earlier this year, Snapchat said advertisers saw a two times higher result on brand awareness. It rolls out to U.S. advertisers later this month, and you'll find the new placement inside their ads manager. Are retweets on the way out? A software engineer has found that Twitter is testing essentially removing the retweet option. Right now, when you click or tap

the retweet button, you get a choice. Do you want to retweet this or add your own comment alongside the original tweet? Something they started calling a quote tweet. In this test though, that choice isn't there anymore. When you click the retweet button, it sends you into the quote tweet dialogue. If you don't type anything there, it'll still post as a regular retweet, mind you, but this extra step might get more people to add their own take on it. In this way, it's very similar to sharing a Facebook post. Quoting social media today, Twitter has been pushing for people to take more time in considering their responses to tweets in order to prompt more informed, contextualized discussion, and leading straight into a quote tweet prompt could be an easy way to boost personal sharing and engagement

as opposed to binary re-amplification, unquote. Twitter declined to comment on the apparent test. Oh, Facebook. Facebook has a bad habit of making huge changes to the ad platform with almost no notice and then just backing off or postponing the change. Think about the mandatory switch to campaign-based optimization that was supposed to happen. We all prepared for it, took courses on CBO, all for Facebook to announce days before it was due to happen that, nah, it's okay, we're not going to do that after all. And it seems they've done it again. For the last couple of weeks, I've been keeping you updated on the planned removal of the 28-day conversion window. Now, Facebook ads consultant Andrew Foxwell says they've changed their mind.

Quoting Andrew, Facebook has reported that it is no longer proceeding with the test for any advertiser in Q4 2020. As a result, advertisers will continue to be defaulted to and have access to the 28 day click through attribution window in Ads Manager and Ads Reporting through the end of the year. Facebook says next year they expect upcoming web browser changes may impact tracking for events across websites. As such, they say they still anticipate to have a shift to a seven-day default attribution window and no longer be able to provide a 28-day attribution window in the coming months, as early as January 2021. Basically, they punted and said, it's coming anyway, so we'll delay as long as we can. The world is going vertical and everyone is adding stories to their platforms.

But here's one I didn't expect. Slack. Yes, Slack, the team chat system, says it will introduce stories by the end of the year. They don't expect people will be sharing photos of their cat, although, fair warning, attention fellow team members here at the agency, I plan to share many photos of our cat. But no, Slack says they're thinking maybe remote workers can check in and provide status updates, might even replace stand-up meetings. Also coming, push to talk audio. You might not like this one. It'll let people just click your head and start talking to you. No need to start a call, wait for you to answer it, and so on.

Slack's CEO says they want to recreate the experience of having people leaning over or shouting out to someone a couple of desks away with a question. Thanks. Sounds awful. Both features are still being tested internally, but they should be out in some form by the end of the year. Google Ads says it plans to upgrade its platform

with some automation features and new campaign types. First, a new insights page that brings in data from rising retail categories as well as Google Trends, which is kind of neat. An example they showed had a fictional outdoor gear retailer being able to see that the word tent is a trending term, that competitors in the auction are gaining impression share, and that skiing is predicted to trend in November. That'll be available in the US and the UK in beta

in the coming months. And a new campaign option, automated performance max campaigns. By automated, they mean what Facebook calls dynamic. You give it a bunch of text and image assets and it'll mix and match to find the best performing combination. Unlike the other automated options, though, these will run on Google's full network, display, YouTube, Gmail, discover, and search. The idea is to complement your existing search campaigns, not replace them. So maybe more a down funnel strategy.

These are in testing right now, and they will be opening the beta to more brands next year. A big bug in a popular WordPress builder has security experts concerned. It's a vulnerability in the WP Bakery tool that lets a hacker drop malicious code onto your site. It relies on the hacker having contributor or author level posting credentials, but once they have that, they can drop scripts onto any page of your site. This was actually discovered in late July. They issued a patch, but some people are disappointed at how they handled it. First, that patch came a month after they first discovered the

flaw, and it didn't fix it all, so a second patch came out in early September. That too didn't fix it all, so about two weeks ago they pushed out a third patch they said fixes everything. But worse, the changelog did not reflect the urgency of the update because nowhere did it actually say they were fixing a security hole or a bug or a vulnerability. Nothing like that. They just referred to the changes as improvements. An early version of Microsoft's new Digital Marketing Center is now available in the U.S. This is not their ads platform. Rather, it's a multi-platform management tool.

And I'll be honest, I did not even know this existed. But apparently it does, and you can manage your brand presence across Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and of course, Microsoft. It's a free platform, for now at least, and they've been testing it in closed beta for a while. It is now being opened up a bit more widely. This new version contains on-site analytics, including conversion tracking and search term control to let you see which search terms will trigger ads on both Microsoft and Google. And finally, if you are just about done with 2020, and God, who could blame you?

You just want to live under a rock for a while. Well, a new digital marketing campaign promises to let you do exactly that. It's from Hotels.com. They are renting a suite in New Mexico, which is carved under a giant rock. And it will only cost $5 a night. Why so cheap? Because it's literally living under a rock.

There's no Wi-Fi, there's no internet, there's no cable TV, no cellular signal. Also, it's only available for one week in November, so first come, first served. That week happens to coincide with the U.S. elections. If you've got a marketing position that you are trying to fill, or maybe you're looking for the next great gig, consider a classified ad right here. It's just 20 bucks, and you can book it online. Link in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow. You got a problem here, you got a problem there

You try to conform but the people stare We're built the same but some are just unkind Life could be good if there was no fear You could open your heart and there'd be no tears And I'd be there waiting by your side