Today in Digital Marketing - The Mid-Roll Ad Format Everyone is Watching Closely

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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, Google automates even more of your ad campaigns. Is your brand name feminine enough?

Starting point is 00:01:07 Will viewers reject Snapchat's new mid-roll ads? Instagram's new feature will be welcomed by social media managers. Microsoft ads now usable by 29 more countries. And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and extended weekend episodes. Tap the link in the show notes for more. American legislators have a new target, social media algorithms. It's Monday, February 14th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Google has announced that the way automated extensions work will change next month.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Just to back up a little, extensions are those things you put under your ad, like a phone number or a site link. An automated extension, if you're opted in, let's Google puts things in there that it thinks would work well or provide better results. So those three changes are first automated extensions will be shown with manually created extensions beginning in mid-March. Previously, dynamic site links, dynamic call outs and dynamic structured snippets were not eligible for showing with a manually created site link. Number two, a new report for automatically created extensions. You'll be able to view individual reporting for these automated extensions on the extensions page of Google Ads. And the ability to add site links, callouts, and structured snippets to ad groups, campaigns, and accounts. Beginning mid-March again, when those elements from higher levels in your account are predicted to improve your performance, they will be eligible to serve alongside extensions of

Starting point is 00:02:32 the same type from lower levels. It is a tiny bit confusing, and our premium newsletter has got some very pretty, very colorful graphs to help explain it all. New research suggests that brands with linguistically feminine names have an advantage. On average, the top-ranking companies on Interbrand's global top brands list over the past 20 years have more feminine names than the lower-ranked companies. And how do you tell which names are linguistically feminine? The study determined it this way. If it has two or more syllables and stresses on the second or later syllable, or if it ends in a vowel. According to the report, people perceive linguistically feminine brand

Starting point is 00:03:18 names as warmer and therefore choose them more frequently, an effect termed the feminine brand name advantage. The study found that brands with feminine names seemed warmer to participants, and this increased their purchase intentions. People apparently preferred to watch videos on a YouTube channel that had a feminine name, and participants would rather take home a hand sanitizer with a feminine brand name instead of taking a cash incentive or a hand sanitizer with a masculine name. Additionally, the research identified limitations to this advantage. When a particular product is marketed specifically to men, like men's sneakers,

Starting point is 00:03:52 both masculine and feminine brand names are popular. And it turns out people generally prefer feminine names for hedonic products like chocolate, whereas they prefer masculine names for strictly functional items like bathroom scales. The study is published in the Journal of Marketing. It is titled, Is Nestle a Lady? The Feminine Brand Name Advantage. Snapchat is testing a new placement for ads. They are experimenting with mid-roll ads that appear in the stories of creators. For now, that group is only a small group of U.S. influencers.

Starting point is 00:04:29 This is something that will be up to those people. Creators will be able to turn on ads within their stories and receive a share of any revenue generated by those ads. Revenue share is calculated according to metrics like posting frequency and engagement. Who is in that small group? For now, it's only going to be offered to Snap stars. Those are creators or public figures with large following who have been verified on Snapchat. They have a little gold star

Starting point is 00:04:52 as an indicator. This is a pretty risky move for Snapchat. Platforms that have used image stories, like Instagram, have long jammed ads between those panels. This, though, would insert mid-rolls into the middle of a video story, much like mid-rolls into the middle of a video story, much like mid-rolls on YouTube. Probably good for marketers.

Starting point is 00:05:25 We'll have to wait to see what the viewers think of it. 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. Instagram has finally launched a long-awaited feature that could help clean up your brand's inbox. The platform has added Stories Likes, which is a way for users to engage with your content by liking any of your brand's stories in their feed. It'll show up between the send message and the paper airplane icon. It'll be a little heart icon, and when you tap it, that will send a like to the creator. Unlike previous iterations of this, it will not create a new DM thread. Likes on stories will be private and do not have counts.

Starting point is 00:06:10 Instead, they will appear as hearts next to people's handles. And if this all sounds familiar, yes, it's just like TikTok. The new feature is being rolled out to all users beginning today. Microsoft Advertising Today announced that it is now available in 29 new countries across Europe and Africa. With the expansion, the company will be able to offer advertising in nearly twice as many markets. With these markets, advertisers gain access to new audiences and can reach consumers in 19 additional languages. This will expand on the platform's footprint to reach 41 million consumers, making 400 million searches on Microsoft and partner sites per month. Well, it turns out to win the unofficial title of the best Super Bowl ad, you just have to stop trying so hard.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange app, spent $14 million on an ad that was essentially a QR code that just bounced around the screen for 60 seconds. The ad was so successful that after its debut, the company's website suffered an outage. The ad paid homage to the old DVD screensaver logo, which bounced around the screen and stood out from the competition by incorporating a gaming element because viewers had to capture the floating code on their phone before the timer ran out. When the QR code was scanned, the consumer was redirected to the company's promotional website, which offered a limited time promotion of $15 worth of free Bitcoin to new customers, plus the chance to enter a $3 million giveaway. As a result, interest in the offer crashed the company's website after people checked it out.

Starting point is 00:07:51 The ad also drove in-app installs, making the app climb to number two in the App Store charts just hours after the ad aired. And finally today, you may be missing some conversion data in Google Ads. It's not just you. The company confirmed that it experienced a delay in reporting a portion of conversions using data-driven attribution. The delay occurred on February 9th between 7.54 p.m. and 12.34 p.m. the following day. Those are in Pacific Times. The issue has been resolved, and it is working on recovering the conversions that were affected. Google has also confirmed that auto bidding was not affected. I finally did it. I uninstalled Overwatch. I rage quit it. I was already in silver. That's a bad

Starting point is 00:08:40 place to be. And I played three games, lost all of them, fell even deeper into silver, swore at my Xbox, and then immediately uninstalled the game. I have done this before because I am essentially a man-child. Now I have nothing to play, so I might finish Assassin's Creed. Or you know what? I might just hang around in Minecraft for hours and hours. But we try really hard to make this a good use of your time, video game rambling aside. And if you find it valuable, we'd really appreciate it if you'd take a minute to rate and review us. I've made it easier

Starting point is 00:09:12 for you than you think. There is a link in the episode notes that will take you right to the review page of your app. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Mid-Roll Ad Format Everyone is Watching Closely

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