Today in Digital Marketing - The Meta Marketplace Where Nobody's Buying

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Thursday, September 29th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, too little, too late. Instagram's influencer marketing program has stalled out. Also, Meta kills off the only app we wanted. Are auto-generated video ads coming? LinkedIn adds some new ad features, and we knew it was coming. A hiring freeze finally arrives at Meta. How will that affect your campaigns?

Starting point is 00:00:26 Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. A few months ago, Instagram began testing its creator marketplace, which is similar to TikTok's program with the same name, as a new way to connect brands with influencers. Business Insider has a great piece up today about how that test is coming along, and the verdict is not so good. Back in July, Instagram started testing the marketplace with a handful of U.S.-based creators. But now, two months in, influencers Business Insider spoke to said it's failing to deliver brand deals. It's crickets, said one influencer. Insider spoke with over a dozen creators who use the marketplace.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Out of the 12 creators, only one of them has been able to get a deal. The article points out that a shortage of brands isn't the problem. There are more than 100 businesses listed in the app's marketplace, many of them big brands like Nike and Hotels.com. Creators choose the brands they'd like to work with, along with up to 10 areas of interest. After adding their preferences, creators wait for brands to contact them via DM and offer a potential deal. As for that one influencer who landed a contract, the process went smoothly, but he hasn't landed another since the summer. So why isn't the program catching on? The piece suggests Instagram took too long to enter the space.

Starting point is 00:01:41 As a result, the broader influencer marketing ecosystem has been dominated by third-party companies that connect brands with creators. What's Meta's point of view on the experiment? A company spokesperson told Business Insider, creator marketplace is still in early testing, but that it's, quote, pleased to see many creators and brands already connecting and negotiating new deals through the platform, unquote. Uh, okay. Earlier this week, a third-party Instagram app called the OG app launched. It used Instagram's API to pull in content, which it then put into an ad-free feed. Well, time for a quiz.

Starting point is 00:02:23 What did Meta do when they heard of you? Okay, bye. They haven't said specifically, but 24 hours later, the app has been pulled from Apple's App Store. At about the same time, the personal Facebook and Instagram accounts of the app's developers and everyone on the development team were banned off those platforms. I mean, it doesn't take a genius. The app was marketed to those that miss the old Instagram and let users remove ads, remove those irritating suggested content panels, disable reels, disable the explore page, and make custom feeds to see posts from specific people. In other words, the Instagram app we all want.

Starting point is 00:03:02 But no, you can't have it. At least not on Apple devices. The app is still technically available in the slightly more sketchy Android App Store, though Meta has cut them off from the API, so it's basically an empty shell now. Apple told 9to5Mac that it removed the OG app because it used Instagram's API in an unauthorized way, violating both Meta's terms and its App Store review guidelines, Apple noted that this could have exposed users' accounts to privacy and security vulnerabilities. And this sounds like blatant spin to me. The app got its Instagram access through Instagram's own

Starting point is 00:03:37 API. It's not like you manually typed in your username and password into the app. No, you logged in with Instagram, and Instagram's login API sends a token back to the app. No, you logged in with Instagram and Instagram's login API sends a token back to the app saying you're good or you're not. If that's a security risk, then the entire Instagram authentication system is a security risk. In response, the OG app's creators went down swinging, quoting them, Everyone knows Instagram sucks. We made it better and got a lot of love from users. But Facebook hates its own users so much it's willing to crush an alternative that gives them You can understand Instagram not wanting people to flock to an ad-free feed, though some platforms let third parties do this.

Starting point is 00:04:25 Twitter, for instance, has no ads when you use any non-Twitter app. Even their own TweetDeck has full, real-time content with no ads. As for the OG app, it gained traction fast prior to its removal. It had racked up more than 10,000 downloads and ended up in the top 50 of the most downloaded apps.

Starting point is 00:04:47 Here's another nice thing Meta won't let us have. Earlier today, the company announced Make-A-Video, a new AI system that lets people turn text into video clips. Think AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E, but for video. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the work as an amazing progress. He said, quote, it's much harder to generate video than photos because beyond correctly generating each pixel, the system also has to predict how they'll change over time, unquote. But like text to image AI,

Starting point is 00:05:17 there's still a long way to go. It is obvious that the videos are artificial. The subjects are blurry. The animation is distorted. The clips aren't longer than five seconds. They don't have audio, but they do cover pretty much any prompt you want, such as a young couple walking in a heavy rain, a teddy bear painting a portrait, or my favorite, a baby sloth with a knitted hat trying to figure out a laptop. I've tweeted that photo, by the way. You can find my Twitter handle in the show notes. It's at Todd Maffin. But unlike Dally and the other text-to-image apps popping up everywhere, you can't play with it. It's just an internal meta-prototype for now.

Starting point is 00:05:58 But still represents a significant development in the field of AI content generation. Are the days of ad agencies making video and TV ads coming to an end? A few updates to report from LinkedIn. First, it announced four new ad features for B2B marketers yesterday. First, offline conversions. This lets advertisers connect offline conversions tracked through third-party tools directly to LinkedIn by manually uploading CSV files to Campaign Manager. This offline data will be automatically incorporated into aggregate reporting on ad conversions. Second, free audience insights are now available in Campaign Manager for both matched and saved audiences.

Starting point is 00:06:35 It generates aggregated insights based on topics and content that targets have engaged in, but also job titles, years of experience, seniority, location, company name, and so on. Third, document ads. This lets advertisers promote long-form content directly into members' feeds where they can read and download the content without leaving the platform, such as white papers, case studies, and so on. You can also gate your document with a lead gen form to collect leads. And finally, the new media library provides advertisers with a single location for managing, selecting, storing, and uploading all the media they use on the platform for single image and video ads.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Next up, LinkedIn has also added new features for company pages. Select users already have access to these features, but this represents a wider rollout. First, post templates are now available. These are similar to Facebook's post templates, but with more options to customize those posts. post templates are now available. These are similar to Facebook's post templates, but with more options to customize those posts. Link stickers are now available. And finally, LinkedIn will let all company pages pin comments beneath their brand's posts. a season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots so when you do always make sure

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Starting point is 00:08:39 As the cookiepocalypse nears, more brands are focusing on generating first-party data. One tech company, Full Throttle Technologies, has been quietly selling its API product called Audience Flume to agencies and publishers. In turn, these companies are offering it to their clients. Digiday has a great piece about this up today. While the API product has been on the market for more than a year, it's just now being formally launched. Audience Flume is said to be a high-speed audience API that delivers first-party data. The tool latches onto the browser cache of a client's website to generate a household profile. The data can be used to generate privacy-compliant

Starting point is 00:09:15 campaign tactics. Quoting an executive, our technology on their site essentially transforms a lot of that data dying on the vine with an opt-in into first-party household data. That's where our patent fits in. We figured out a way to better recognize returning devices from a previous household and how to collate all that into a privacy-compliant household address that is essentially hydrated with more metadata, unquote. According to a senior partner at GroupM's Medicom, the API seems promising. He's been using it for a major beverage client who he declined to name and said he hopes the tech will be adopted on a broader basis within his agency. Which brings us to the Pulitzer Prize winning lightning round. Bad news if you were hoping Meta would hire more support people for advertisers.

Starting point is 00:10:06 CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling employees this afternoon, the company will implement a hiring freeze and that budgets for most teams will be cut. Quoting Bloomberg, Meta's further cost cuts and hiring freeze are its starkest admission that advertising revenue growth is slowing. Unquote. What does this mean for your ad campaigns? Nothing good. While specific departments weren't named, support teams are often the first to get slashed when there's a tech

Starting point is 00:10:30 pullback. The social network Nextdoor is adding new targeting options for public organizations to reach people in specific neighborhoods. The company says it will also make it easier for those agencies to run ad campaigns that target people across multiple markets. Amazon said today it will increase its wages starting next month. The average starting wage for fulfillment employees will go from $18 an hour to $19 an hour. They've also expanded a program that let people take up to 70% of their wages earlier than the usual weekly or biweekly schedule. TikTok reports it deleted more than 113 million videos between April and June. That's up 11% over the previous quarter. More concerning, they report a 62% increase in fake profiles over the previous quarter. And Instagram has banned Pornhub from its app.

Starting point is 00:11:22 I know you're thinking, well, of course they did. It's porn. But no, it wasn't. Pornhub from its app. I know you're thinking, well, of course they did. It's porn. But no, it wasn't. Pornhub was well aware of the policies, so stuck to goofy memes. Or so I'm told. I've never. I haven't. Instagram, though, says they're rigid about their rules and Pornhub penetrated its policies multiple times.

Starting point is 00:11:40 The company's spokesperson wouldn't say which specific policy was rammed hard, but it sounds like encouraging visitors to slide into their website was enough to smash the ban hammer. Kornhoff says the acrobatic position Meta has taken will hurt the livelihoods of an already marginalized group of independent creators for whom Instagram is an important marketing tool. For the record, Kim Kardashian's Instagram account, which recently featured a giant photo of her backside, is still online. Well, if you have news that you think our listeners should know about, something your company has launched, whatever, please let us know on our news page today in digital.com slash tips or look for Pitch Us a story in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamik First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn, production coordination by Sarah Guild, podcast music licensing by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle, and not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, is one of the world's most popular EDM DJs. He's having a big concert at his mansion in Los Angeles tomorrow, though I'm told my previous behavior

Starting point is 00:12:58 has kept me off the guest list for this one. I tried to lobby to get in. I told him, look, Friday night, I crashed your party. Saturday, I said, I'm sorry. Sunday came and trashed me out again. I was only having fun. Wasn't hurting anyone.

Starting point is 00:13:14 And we all enjoyed the weekend for a change. I'm Todd Mathen. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow is a stat holiday here in Canada, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Starting point is 00:13:25 So we will be back Monday. Have a restful weekend, friends.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Meta Marketplace Where Nobody's Buying

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