Today in Digital Marketing - The Fear of Getting "Woke" Wrong

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, how consumers respond to woke advertising and how your brand can get it right. Check your campaigns. A nasty Google bug is inflating costs per click. LinkedIn data shows how to increase your message response rate. And new data tells us what the perfect podcast ad length is. It's Wednesday, May 25th. I'm Todd Mathen. Here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:26 I scream, you scream, everyone screamed at Walmart for its new flavor of ice cream. Walmart's latest product didn't go over as expected in response to widespread social media backlash. The retail giant has pulled an ice cream flavor from its shelves that was meant to celebrate Juneteenth. The red velvet ice cream was part of Walmart's special edition commemorating June 19th, which recognizes the official end of slavery in the U.S. and the celebration of black culture. Despite the Juneteenth flag being red, white, and blue, images shared on social media showed the ice cream container displaying pan-African colors. The container also featured an image of black hands doing a high-five

Starting point is 00:01:08 and a label that said, Share and Celebrate African American Culture, Emancipation and Enduring Hope. The response to the rollout of the ice cream showed that many thought Walmart trivialized Juneteenth by commercializing it, while others accused the retailer of cultural appropriation. As a result, Walmart issued an apology and said it will remove items as appropriate. One person tweeted, this is why it's important to hire diverse perspectives, unquote. It's a delicate balancing act for sure, and for many brands, a tough one to manage.

Starting point is 00:01:40 A recent study found that while seven out of 10 brands plan to highlight greater diversity in their campaigns over the next year, many blame a lack of experience, knowledge, and talent for holding them back. According to the report, 2 out of 3 marketers claim that the fear of getting it wrong keeps them from creating content that better reflects real society. While nearly half of marketers said a lack of experience in portraying diverse communities was the next biggest obstacle, followed by a lack of diverse talent in agency or brand teams. The study was conducted by the Unstereotype Alliance, a UN organization that seeks to eradicate harmful stereotypes in advertising content. Just yesterday, the organization launched a five-part YouTube series called Conversations for Change to help your brand dismantle these barriers. Each episode contains a variety of topics, including cultural nuance, lived experiences, and authentic representation in ads. If you want to see it, go to YouTube and look for the phrase Unstereotype Alliance. A Google Ads bug is inflating some campaigns' cost-per-click prices.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Last night, the tech giant posted about the issue, saying it's aware that a subset of non-U.S. campaigns are affected by a technical issue causing cost-per-click to be incorrectly inflated, and that it is working to resolve the issue. Although Google said there were only non-U.S. campaigns affected, some users are complaining about U.S. campaigns as well, according to Search Engine Roundtable. Advertisers are reporting inflation numbers over 400%. At our deadline today, that issue was still not fixed. Google posted an update early this morning and said that it would provide an update tonight with more information about the problem. Google had a similar bug last November and ended up refunding advertisers for the overages. Hence, you may want to review your accounts in the next day or two and take note of any changes.

Starting point is 00:03:40 While podcast production companies, publishers, and creative studios are pitching custom, longer form podcast ads, it turns out Digiday says that buyers prefer shorter ads. Last week at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Podcast Upfront, several podcast companies championed the benefits of longer segments with custom branding. In one network's experience, these ad formats generated higher engagements, conversions, and brand lift than shorter podcast ads. But when they spoke with ad buyers, Digiday said that only advertisers with big budgets can afford to spend on custom integrated long-form segments. Typically, ad buyers prefer to buy podcast ads that are under a minute long and are sticking with the traditional 30 or 60 second spots, which are less expensive, require less commitment without compromising reach or listeners' attention. A study published by the IAB last week backed up these findings. The majority of podcast ad inventory spots are 16 to 30 seconds long.

Starting point is 00:04:40 That's up 40% from 2019. Ads that are 31 to 60 seconds long tick up about a fourth of podcast inventory. That is down 44% from 2019. And ads over a minute long made up just 3% of podcast ads. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover

Starting point is 00:05:04 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. New data from LinkedIn has revealed what type of in-mail gets the best results. An in-mail is a private message

Starting point is 00:05:31 to or from a LinkedIn member who is not your connection. The professional network analyzed data on in-platform mail sent by corporate recruiters to determine how to improve your response rate. According to the report, shorter messages get above average response rates. Messages under 400 characters, not words, characters, performed over 20% better than

Starting point is 00:05:53 average, with numbers dropping as the messages got longer. Also, messages sent Friday and Saturday got the lowest response rate. Personalized messages, of course, get more responses. The study found that sending individual in-mails outperformed sending bulk in-mails by nearly 15%. And finally, messages sent to recommended candidates and open-to-work profiles are the most likely to get a response. LinkedIn's recommended candidates were found to be 35% more likely to respond to recruiters' messages than those from searches. The marketing platform GetResponse is upgrading its e-commerce offerings with a new automated tool.

Starting point is 00:06:34 The company says the tool provides one-click integrations with leading e-commerce platforms, advanced segmentation, the ability to send automated transactional emails, so we're talking coupons and offers and so on, the ability to sync promo codes from e-commerce platforms to drag and drop them into emails, and a product recommendations engine tool that learns customer preferences and potential needs based on purchases and behavior. They went with the very catchy name e-commerce marketing automation tool. And it also comes with a handful of pre-built templates, as well as some hooks to use web push notifications and SMS for messages. Yesterday, we reported about the stock price crash of Snapchat's parent company called Snap.

Starting point is 00:07:20 They are up a little over 10% right now, by the way. You might also recall a couple of weeks ago, we told you about Pixie, which is its drone, just intended for Snapchat. So tiny little thing that flies around. And it turns out it was really, really popular, maybe more so than it meant to be. Pixie customers are being told that shipping times can now take up to four months.

Starting point is 00:07:41 Snapchat's CEO told The Verge, quote, in hindsight, we probably should have made more. Once or twice a year, Google updates its search algorithm in something that they call a core update. They announced today they are doing it again, starting today. It is a broad core algorithm update for Google search, and that's pretty much all we know about it. Google used to be a little bit more transparent with what was in the update, what it's meant to fix or improve, but those days are gone now. Google no longer tells us what's in the algorithm changes. So if you're using a tool like Moz or SEMrush to track your rankings, give it a couple of weeks and see if the algorithm update has changed your average position.

Starting point is 00:08:30 It is truly the end of an era. New York City's last payphone has finally been removed. The vintage telephone from the streets of Manhattan was removed earlier this week, a victim of the ubiquity of free Wi-Fi and, of course, cell phones in recent years. And the artifact, as it's now being called, has been moved to a museum. Don't you feel old? Apparently, it will be replaced by a digital kiosk that provides free Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and a tablet for access to city services, maps, and directions. So Google's big day is over.

Starting point is 00:09:12 What does it mean for you? What does it mean for your ad campaigns? What kind of new products can you take advantage of? Jill Saskengales and I will be covering all of that tomorrow in a live stream. Premium members, you have exclusive access to this. So check your show notes, premium members, and you will find the URL. It's going to be tomorrow, live, tomorrow being May 26th, Thursday, at 9 a.m. Pacific time.

Starting point is 00:09:32 That is noon Eastern. So premium members, I will see you live tomorrow morning, and everyone else, I will see you later in the day with the regular show. Snap back to reality, oh, there goes gravity, oh, there goes gravity, chump, he's so mad that he won't give up, daddies, he know, he won't have any ghosts, he's so fast that he's gross, he's so mad that he's gross, it's now moving to music, the moment you want it, you better get out of here, oh, oh, oh.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Fear of Getting "Woke" Wrong

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