Today in Digital Marketing - The Fruit Basket That Nearly Up-Ended the PPC Industry

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

The court ruling is in in a long running case that threatened Google's entire keyword-based ad system. Plus: Five trends for metaverse marketers... Is a kid's video game the next big marketing platform? LinkedIn cozies up to freelancers...Go Premium! No ads, more stories, audio chapters, and extended weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin- Twitch: https://twitch.tv/todmaffin  Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Today, the court ruling is in, Be protected. Be Zen. to freelancers. And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and extended weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. For the first time, Instagram reveals the algorithm behind Reels. It's Friday, February 18th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. An attempt by a company called Edible Arrangements to sue Google for selling its name via search ads has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Georgia in the U.S. A company called Edible IP owns the trademarks and intellectual property of the Fruit Basket Company. It filed a $209 million lawsuit against the search giant back in 2018, claiming that Google selling the keywords edible arrangements to competition violated Georgia law. The company said Google began auctioning that keyword in around 2011. The lawsuit actually called it theft, since they

say Google didn't ask Edible IP for permission to use its name. If they'd have won, the decision could have called into question the entire system of selling keywords. But the court ruled that selling keywords is not theft. According to the court, quote, trade names are only protected from use by others to the extent that such use is deceptive or there is a likelihood of confusion by the public, unquote. And Edible IP failed to prove that Google's use of the name caused confusion or that the company intended to deceive the public. And here we all thought the cookiepocalypse was going to be our industry's downfall.

Turns out, it was almost a literal basket of fruit. There's an interesting piece in Adweek today sharing what they think are the five trends to watch out for in the metaverse when it comes to marketing. First, experiences that simulate real life. It says immersing consumers in everyday experiences in this digital space will attract a larger audience. It recommends you should strive to create immersive brand content that shows your operations from behind the scenes. Number two, authentic brand integrations. There are a variety of genres that can offer brands opportunities to engage their existing fan base as well as reach new audiences. Number three, capitalize in particular on the growing interest from users age 17 and up. Four, the significance of self-expression through digital identity.

Adweek says there will especially be a big opportunity for fashion and beauty brands here. And five, taking advantage of the growing creator talent pool that is beginning to make its way over to the metaverse. The full article goes into more detail and is definitely worth a read if you're interested in the space. Look for the article on Adweek called

As Interest in the Metaverse Grows, Here Are 5 Trends to Watch in 2022. And if you're looking to dip your marketing toes into the metaverse world, you don't need to buy a fancy headset. You may want to start by looking at Roblox, the wildly popular kids' video game. Actually, to call Roblox a game isn't quite accurate. It's more a creation platform or a sandbox where people, mostly kids at first, build mini games and small worlds to fool around in with their friends. A lot of friends. According to the company's earning report, it has 45.5 million daily users, an increase of 40% year over year. That is a lot

of tweens on a platform, and a number of brands are already targeting them, including Gucci, Nike, and Forever 21. Retail Dive reports that one opportunity for your brand could be selling virtual items that can be worn or used by an avatar. And those virtual items can translate into real-world money. Last year, Gucci offered a limited-time digital version of a bag. That digital bag originally sold for around $6, but when people started flipping it, the prices went up. One user paid more than $4,000 for a digital purse. The real-life version of that purse, by the way,

sells for $600 less. So with third-party data on its way out, many marketers are casting a glance toward the second-party data space. Those are platforms that sell their first-party data to other organizations. Confused yet? Some of the biggest players in this second-party space

are actually American drugstore chains like CVS, Walgreens, and so on. And think about it. They've got a ton of customer data, their own ads platforms, and more placements than you might think, from in-store TV displays to ads on the back of paper receipts.

One such platform is Walmart's. They call it Walmart Connect. Today we saw their financials and it's kind of crazy. For the first time, the company broke advertising revenue out into its own line item. And for the fiscal year, Walmart Connect's ads business generated $2.1 billion. Active advertisers increased by more than 130%. In Q4, more than half of the ad sales came from automated channels. According to the retail giant's earnings call,

executives expect Walmart Connect to be a top 10 ad platform within the next few years. Yes, in the same list as Meta and Google and Amazon. Walmart's e-commerce sales in the U.S. only grew by 1% in 2021, and that may not seem impressive, but keep in mind that's 2021 data there. The e-commerce sales for the year prior, 2020, were extraordinarily high due to store closings everywhere. When we actually look at a two-year timeline, Walmart's e-commerce is up 70%. Some good news if you still rely on Google's standard shopping ad campaigns. The company has confirmed that the campaign type,

quote, will be supported for the foreseeable future, unquote. Shopping campaigns offer a set of manual controls that many advertisers still rely on, which might be reassuring for some advertisers, as Google Ads continues to release more automated products. This means advertisers will still have this shopping campaign type, even after smart shopping campaigns are transitioned into performance max campaigns sometime between July and September. In 2015, Facebook launched Profile Image Frames, a way to slap your logo or a statement over top of your profile photo.

These started as a way to show your support for your favorite sports team, but evolved to include non-profit support, brand campaigns, and pretty much anyone could make a frame and upload it for people to use. And I think we know by now, whenever we give the general public access to things, some Yahoo finds a way to ruin it for the rest of us. Well, that's happening now with ProfileFrames meta-announcing

today it will drop the feature entirely for all but a small handful of government organizations. This because anti-vaxxers were using it to get around the ban on misinformation about COVID. And in a development I don't think will surprise anyone, Meta itself didn't proactively decide to do this. They only decided to ban this use after the media picked up on it, and then at the time

only on a per-frame basis. In time, it started to shut down categories of businesses and profiles that were able to create this, eventually turning off its frame studio tool for regular people. Well, today the company announced it will restrict frames even further. Quote, on March 21st, only profile frames from certain government organizations or services and those providing authoritative information on COVID-19 will be available. Unquote. So what are those certain government services? and those providing authoritative information on COVID-19 will be available, unquote. So what are those certain government services?

Apparently, municipal, state, and local agencies. Yes, this includes election regulators, emergency response agencies, public health agencies, and local law enforcement. On the COVID side, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Centers for Disease Control, and national government agencies or ministries of health. And that's it. Quoting socialmediatoday.com. So basically, profile frames will now be cause-aligned specifically, and there'll be no more fun decorative frames outside of some generic ones provided by Meta, which is a bit of a shame. It's not a major functional change, and it won't have a big impact on how people use Facebook.

But still, it is a little sad that we lose an entire creative option because of a level of misuse which, due to complexities in detection, Meta can't simply weed out and police at scale. 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. Meta this week released a new cultural trends report which analyzed billions of online comments and posts across its platforms to identify evolving conversation trend shifts. The report focuses on four main global themes and trends that relate to them. I'll be quoting somewhat liberally from that report from herein. First, diversifying identities. Discussions around gender roles, gender symbols, and gender-neutral language are on the rise, creating the likelihood of gender-neutral products and marketing. Research also found that people are going through historical reckoning,

trying to come to terms with and reconcile historical injustices. Brands can respond by leading with meaningful action and making statements. And awareness and understanding of people with disabilities also continues to rise. Brands need to engage in more inclusive marketing and practices and make people with disabilities more visible in advertising. Number two, relationships renegotiated. There is a growing awareness of the importance of balancing screen time with real-life activities. Three, greater expectations arise in digital marketing. Small and mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs used digital tools to fight the pandemic, and e-commerce was critical for survival.

People are looking for hybrid work, re-evaluating traditional education and pursuing new careers. Millennials still place a high value on higher education, while Gen Z-ers are more likely to consider other options. And finally, number four, expanding values. Consumers are valuing next-level sustainability, shopping local, wellness activities and plants. Almost 60% of respondents worldwide make an effort to shop locally now. When it comes to e-commerce and social commerce, the report notes that as the line between online and offline blurs, when consumers see a product, they expect to be able to buy it via a mobile app, social media post, or live shopping broadcast.

A nice update for those of you who freelance your services out to businesses. LinkedIn has added a couple of enhancements to its services marketplace as the platform is set up to compete with Fiverr, Upwork, and the likes. They're letting you link service pages to personal profiles. These are similar to the pages attached to an organization's page. This means if you have a company page for your freelance business, you can now link that page and your personal services page. This is meant, by the way, for one-person businesses only, so you won't find this if you have more than one admin for your company page. You can also add some media to those pages, like a sample of your design work or links to news stories that you were covered

in. And three small items to wrap up. First, Google says it will be removing the ability for people to follow business listings on search or maps. Also going, welcome offers. The follow feature was launched in 2018, letting users get updates from businesses in their For You tab. The year after, they let companies set up offers to people who followed their profile. Both of those will be going sometime soon. Story number two, some new research from Edison has found that super listeners of podcasts, those are people who listen to more than five hours of podcasts each week, those people are listening even more now.

The average is now 11.2 hours each week, those people are listening even more now. The average is now 11.2 hours each week. That's up from 10.5 the year before and 9.8 the year before that. On the marketing side of things, 51% of podcast super listeners now report they pay more attention to ads on podcasts than on any other media. That's up from 48% last year. Today's premium newsletter has a link to the full study. And finally, four days after we reported on it, Meta this afternoon admitted there was a bug with their conversions API, which prevented their system from deduplicating incoming event data. Quote, while our investigation is ongoing, we believe this may have resulted in over-reporting some of your web conversions between February 9th and February 15th.

We do not anticipate being able to update ads reporting for the affected time frame retroactively. Alright, a couple of programming notes before I leave you. Monday is a stat holiday for most of Canada, the US, and a lot of other countries. So no episode Monday. Honestly, big news doesn't really break on stat holidays anyway. The rest of next week, my wife and I are doing a little staycation in Victoria. So associate producer Steph Gunn will be in the hosting chair.

I'll be back the week after next. Tomorrow, a special weekend edition for everyone. I'll be back with Casey Stanton from becomecmo.com. We'll be chatting about how to build out a marketing team if you've been tasked with that,

what to look for in your hires, how to handle the shift to remote work, and a whole bunch more. Yes, I'm going to try my hand at Apex finally. I've watched all the YouTube videos. I've watched some streamers. I'm going to be a Watson main, I think.

If you want to watch me fail, because I'm really bad at shooting, follow me on Twitch. I'll be streaming it tonight. My account there is twitch.tv slash Todd Maffin. There is a link in the show notes under Follow Todd. And don't forget, if you ever hear something on the show you want to comment on, just tweet your thoughts with the hashtag TIDM and I'll read it out on the show.

Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn, podcast music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. And you know, theme composer Mark Levis actually lives in Ottawa, which has been under siege the last few weeks. And all Mark wants to do is finally feel the sunlight on his face, see the dust cloud disappear without a trace.

He wants to take shelter from the poison rain, where the streets have no name. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow for the weekend edition. Steph will be with you from Tuesday onward next week. And I will a, I'm a baby. I'm a movie. I'm a baby. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na. 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.

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