Today in Digital Marketing - The Google Ad Error Message Nobody Wanted to See
Episode Date: January 8, 2022A terrifying error message on Google Ads' platform is causing nightmares for marketers... will machine learning eventually control everything about our Facebook ads? Andrew Foxwell weighs in... A ...Wordpress vulnerability so bad the platform is telling its users to upgrade immediately... Instagram video ads finally can be longer.Get 20% off now at Oribi — a 100% codeless analytics platform that helps you understand your visitors and turn their behavior into more conversions.Andrew Foxwell's Facebook Ad Courses: https://b.link/facebookcourses Go Premium! No ads, more stories, and extended deep-dive 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, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, and more) 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 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
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Today, a terrifying error message on Google Ads platform at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Thank you. Friday, January 7th, 2022. Happy Tricolor Festival, Italy. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageHue Digital,
and here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 535.
Well, a lot changed in the digital marketing landscape
last year, but I think most of us would agree
that in the top three of biggest changes
that upended our work was the continued march
toward machine learning in our ad campaigns.
It used to be we would control everything to a micro-control level.
We would segment everything out into like 20 ad sets, each with its own niche audience.
And inside each ad set, 20 ads, each with slight variations on copy or format or creative.
These days, though, it seems the pendulum has swung the other way.
Now platforms want us to upload everything we have
in one big chunk and let them sort it out.
So what does Facebook ad campaign optimization
look like in 2022?
To figure that out,
I'm joined by veteran Facebook advertiser, Andrew Foxwell.
Andrew, hello.
Hello.
So I feel like the going wisdom these days
is to write like 20 headlines,
20 body copies, make 20 videos and just dump everything into a single ad ad set and let
Facebook's machine learning sort it out. Am I wrong there? No, I don't think that you're wrong.
And I think that that's certainly one approach. I think what's important to bring up in that
in that sense of how you how you think about utilizing the AI from Facebook, I think what's important to bring up in that sense of how you think about utilizing the AI from Facebook, I think that there are camps that it's one whole, you know, the camp is completely on one side of that where everything is automated.
You put it all in a campaign budget optimization campaign.
You're remarketing your mid funnel, your top funnel, and you put in dynamic creative testing and you put in all your elements and copy and you just say, let it run for a month and see what happens. And I think that there can be instances where that's
effective. And I don't think you want to be in the other way either, which is, you know, when I
started teaching, after well, when I was running Facebook ads, like I still am, but when I really
was actively running, let's say, hundreds of 1000s of dollars a day, in some cases of Facebook ads,
when I was really learning the fundamentals of that, breaking things out was a big part of it.
I think that now we live somewhere in the middle. I think that you have to utilize the AI in the
proper way. So dynamic creative testing is a great way to think about that. But putting in 20 variants
with a budget of $5 a day or $50 a day or even $100 a day, it's just not enough.
And you're going to have Facebook choose things very quickly. And it may give you a result. But
is it a statistically significant result? Or is it one that Facebook is just choosing at that time?
And then that's what they're running. And like, that's what you're stuck with. So I think that
you have to balance that I think that you can bring that same conversation to audiences and the way that you start to
stack out audiences.
I think that you think about a broad audience of, you know, 25 to 45 year old men.
And that might be a big part of what you're running in your funnel.
But from an incrementality standpoint, you also need to be running niche interests or niche interest clusters,
you know, lookalikes aren't as effective as they were, but running those with ad copy that matches
that niche with landing pages that match those niches. And that's really how you're going to
grow because having multiple pitches to multiple hooks to multiple people, you know, it's not as
broken out as it once was, but it's still relevant.
And it can run in parallel to this thinking
of let Facebook decide.
And I think that's really where you find wins
moving forward.
And I think that can help add that extra 10 to 20%
to your campaigns.
And it's certainly, you know,
when I redid the scaling course that we have this year,
like 50 advertisers,
which I always do now with my courses
because it's such a diverse set of opinions
in this and buying industry of like,
what actually worked though in terms of growing?
And that was really the answer to be honest
was it's not all or nothing.
It's not one way entirely.
It's that you have to sort of build these things
and they can kind of live in parallel to one another
to make sure that you're not just depending on Facebook to decide, oh,
this ad's shown to, you know, women that are 35 to 55 and that's it. That's who we're going to
show it to. And this is where your creative lives. It's that your product probably has other niches
and has a good product market fit in other places outside of where Facebook determines within the
first 30 days of running ads or in the first 30 days of scaling that it wants to show those ads.
So I think it's sort of both, which is complicated, but that's really how you're
going to continue to grow into 2022, in my opinion. Andrew Foxwell, he leads Foxwell Digital,
which has some of the best training courses on the Facebook ad platform.
Everything from optimizing and scaling campaigns to auditing your ad account to the art of influencer performance marketing.
You can learn more about those courses through our affiliate link at B dot link slash Facebook courses or tap the link in the show notes. By the way, my full conversation with Andrew is actually more than a half an hour long, covers a ton more detail. That will be coming to the premium podcast feed tomorrow morning in a special weekend edition.
It's not too late to sign up. Just go to todayindigital.com
slash premium feed or tap the link in the episode notes.
While we're on the topic of the Facebook, excuse me, the meta ad platform, a couple of significant changes to let you know about.
First, Instagram has made two updates to video ads.
You can now create Instagram ads from existing Instagram videos.
After you upload a video, select use existing post within the ad setup section and then choose the video.
Also, a new range of aspect ratios will be supported for video ads in Instagram Feed and Instagram Explore.
Second, advertisers can now use
automated lookalike audiences
in addition to their retargeting.
Previously, advertisers were using retargeting
with dynamic ads to remind people about products
they've previously browsed or purchased
and may have seen a decrease
to their targeting audience size
as more people
are opting out of app tracking with iOS 14.5. So what does it do? Quoting the company,
when you turn on the automated lookalike audience option, it will automatically create a lookalike
audience based on your retargeting selections. If you choose to not use the automated lookalike
audience, you may see a decrease in your audience size.
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. Well, who could blame you if you jumped off your chair this morning when you saw the error message in Google Ads reading this?
Broad match keywords are on.
Keywords will be saved as broad match.
An error message that came up when you tried to enter exact match keywords.
I'm sorry, what?
Because broad match is pretty much the opposite of what advertisers want when using exact match keywords.
One user yesterday tweeted Google after seeing the alert and asked, quote, Where are you hiding these new settings so I can keep my client's account from spending on BS keyword variations? Unquote.
Where indeed, Google? Well, turns out it was just a bug. This message is an error that we are working to remove. The message was intended for a potential opt-in experiment,
but has no impact on how keywords are saved or the traffic to which these keywords match.
Our apologies for the confusion.
You know that dumb privacy banner on all websites these days,
including yours, asking you to accept cookies?
The accept button is easy, but the reject cookies button is buried under a bunch of clicks asking
you to turn on different groupings or some other nonsense. Well, the French think it's nonsense too,
and now both Google and Facebook are being fined for making it too confusing for consumers to reject browser cookies.
France's data protection agency has fined Google $170 million and Facebook $68 million because,
quote, refusing cookies should be as easy as accepting them, unquote. According to EU law,
when citizens give up their data online, they must do so with a full understanding of the choice
they're making. The agency says that tech giants are tricking users by using manipulative dark patterns to get them to accept cookies.
Quoting the agency, the websites offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies.
However, they do not provide an equivalent solution enabling the internet user to easily refuse
the deposit of these cookies.
Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies against a single one to accept them,
unquote.
There is a three-month deadline to change the ways of the companies when they're operating
in France, at least. The popular CMS WordPress has announced high-level threat vulnerabilities and is advising that
users update their sites immediately.
The company said four vulnerabilities have been patched that are rated as high as eight
on a scale of one to ten.
Usually we see these in plugins, but in this case, the vulnerabilities are actually in
the WordPress core itself.
Since these vulnerabilities are now in the public code, it is important for users to update their WordPress installation to the latest version, which is 5.8.3.
Remember, if you want to hear the full interview with Andrew Foxwell on what Facebook ads will look like in 2022. You will want to subscribe to the premium feed of this podcast.
You get more stories in each episode, no ads.
It comes out earlier than the free feed and a couple of times a month,
exclusive access to deep dive episodes with industry experts.
In addition to Facebook ads tomorrow,
we'll be doing a deep dive episode later in the month on local SEO.
You can sign up at todayindigital.com slash premium feed
or tap the link in the show notes.
Yes, Kat is doing very well.
Otis is fitting in quite nicely.
We really want to get him a cat tree and a couple of toys, but we've been completely snowed in here, which I know.
I live in Canada.
You'd think that would be a normal thing, but the part of Canada I live in, Vancouver Island, does not get a lot of snow.
So this is a new, this might be the most snow in a single winter
I've ever experienced in my life.
And I'm old now.
I've got a lot of years.
Anyway, we're hoping it'll melt
and Otis will get the toys
that he deserves.
Our dog, on the other hand,
is giving a lot of side eye
right now to Otis,
who, you know,
is the favorite child.
Today in digital marketing
is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories
of the Tsunamik First Nation on Vancouver
Island. Scripting and promotional support
by Steph Gunn. Podcast music
licensing by Source Audio.
And our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is
never gonna dance again.
Guilty feet have got no rhythm.
I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful
weekend. I'll talk to you on Monday.
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