Today in Digital Marketing - The New Shopify: More Self-Service, Fewer Human Reps

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, August 22nd. Today, Shopify is about to pull VIP support from its best customers. Will anyone buy Twitter ads now that you can't even have links? Threads rolls out its desktop version, the PR community that every brand in the world jumped in on, and on the ad-free premium podcast, which you can learn more about by tapping Go Premium in the show notes, a new way to rescue your hacked meta accounts, and details on the app campaign type that's

Starting point is 00:00:30 getting surprisingly good results. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead. Today in digital marketing. 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. Bad news for brands that spend a lot on the Shopify platform.

Starting point is 00:01:10 The company says it will soon remove direct access to merchant success managers. These are Shopify employees that advise plus level merchants on how to launch and run their online stores. Plus merchants pay at least $2,000 a month for access to the premium platform and includes features like tax services and wholesale tools that sellers on cheaper plans don't have access to. But according to an internal email obtained by Insider.com, that premium offering is about to get a little less premium. The change will affect about 16,000 plus merchants who will have to use Shopify's help center or general support teams for help instead.

Starting point is 00:01:45 In typical PR doublespeak, the internal email told staff the goal was to provide a better merchant experience. In terms of revenue categories, plus merchants making less than $2 million in annual sales won't have any kind of human support. Brands making between $2 million and $10 million also won't have a specific rep, but they will get access to what Shopify is calling a merchant success team. The change was supposed to happen earlier this month, but was delayed due to workers' concerns.

Starting point is 00:02:15 A Shopify spokesperson confirmed the change to Insider and said the company was investing in more self-serve success resources and hiring third-party support contractors. The change is all part of a larger transformation plan called Code Yellow, which aims to put AI at the center of Shopify's support division. The company revealed its roadmap for Code Yellow in a town hall in July. Still with Shopify for a moment, merchants who advertise on TikTok will soon get more data on their campaign performance thanks to a new integration with TikTok's Events API.

Starting point is 00:02:54 The API lets businesses share data from their website with TikTok, which helps them measure and optimize their work. The integration should make it easier for Shopify merchants to track actions like page views, add to cart, purchases, and more, without needing to install any code on their website. This new system does not rely on cookie tracking. TikTok says that this does not change the type of data that's shared between Shopify and TikTok, but rather improves the accuracy and attribution of the data. According to TikTok, advertisers who use both the TikTok Pixel and the Events API see 19%

Starting point is 00:03:32 more events captured and 15% lower cost per action. The integration is available for Shopify merchants who are already using the TikTok Pixel for Shopify. They can update their tracking parameters through the TikTok app in the Shopify dashboard. Speaking of TikTok, the company today launched a new way for brands to reach potential customers, ads that show up in the app's search results. The new search ads toggle lets brands target users who are looking for new products or brands by typing queries into the app's search box. The ads will appear in the search results page along with relative content and hashtags.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Brands can choose which keywords they want to bid on and also add negative keywords to avoid showing their ads for unwanted queries. But to be clear, this is an extension of an advertiser's TikTok video ad buy. It is not a standalone ad product, quoting TechCrunch. The addition of the ad slot could pose a challenge to Google's search ads business, given that the search giant even admitted that younger users today are now often starting their searches on social apps like TikTok and Instagram, not on Google, unquote. Indeed, a Google vice president at a conference last year said this, quote,

Starting point is 00:04:47 So you have decided to run an ad campaign on X, the former Twitter. You've got your body copy and the link to your store. Except one problem. Soon, that link will not show on the ad. At least not the way it does now. Links on X look like links everywhere else. An image at the top, pulled from that page as metadata. Then the headline or page title below.

Starting point is 00:05:24 And a bit of description text below that. Yesterday, Elon Musk said he didn't like the way those looked and plans to remove almost everything. Your headline, your link copy, whatever call to action there is, everything except the image. So that will soon be the new link preview on X. No link, just an image with the website domain in tiny text in a corner. Or maybe not. After all, Musk has a habit of saying things and backing away or saying he was joking or whatever.

Starting point is 00:05:56 This is apparently being done for two reasons. One, Elon wants the timeline to fit more tweets in a single screen full. And two, something something rid the world of clickbait. That latter bit is a tiny bit disingenuous, since as socialmediatoday.com pointed out, quote, people will still be able to write the same text manually. So it's not entirely clear how this will help in negating bait clicks, unquote. So how does this impact marketers? If this does happen, you may need to

Starting point is 00:06:25 start inserting your headline or call to action into the image itself if you want to use that space. But that won't help your currently posted content, which will also apparently get the treatment retroactively. External links have a reach penalty on XNow anyways. Whether this will push even more brands to just give up on the platform entirely remains to be seen. So how is X doing anyway? Some interesting new data finds that the app's renaming from Twitter has all but tanked its ranking in the App Store. Media strategist Eric Sofert, writing on Thread, said this, quote, Twitter has built a ubiquitous household name brand over the course of two decades and then simply abandoned it,

Starting point is 00:07:12 leaving it to be exploited by competitors unopposed through the mobile platform's branded search ads. My hypothesis is that while they terminally online are entirely aware of Twitter's rebrand to X, most consumers aren't. And their searches for Twitter on platform stores surface ads and genuine search results that are in no way redolent of Twitter. So if you don't know that Twitter changed its name to X and searched for Twitter, the top result is a paid ad from a competitor, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, etc. And the result for X doesn't look anything like Twitter.

Starting point is 00:07:50 It doesn't have the name, doesn't say formerly Twitter, and isn't even blue. It's just the ugly X icon and the slogan, blaze your glory, unquote. Currently, Threads is number two on the Apple App Store's top free downloads list. X is sitting at 51. Over on Google's Play Store, Threads is number six and X is 66. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

Starting point is 00:08:27 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. One of X's many arch nemesises is Meta's

Starting point is 00:08:47 Threads app, which launched to much fanfare, then quickly dropped in engagement levels. Well, some expect those levels to tick up again. The company today launching its web app on desktop, allowing users to post, view feeds and interact via desktop. This is big news for marketers who prefer to do their social media work on the web, as opposed to the current mobile workaround of, I don't know, emailing themselves the post copy, then switching to their phone, copying the text, switching over to Thread's mobile app and pasting it.

Starting point is 00:09:15 So while this is welcome news to many content managers, the big feature that marketers rely on for their day-to-day work, an API, is still apparently out in the distant future. The company's talked about search enhancements coming, post-enhancements, even a direct connection with federated networks like Mastodon, but has been mostly silent on creating an API which would let brands use third-party tools to post, reply, and analyze their channel's data.

Starting point is 00:09:42 The desktop version of Thread started to roll out this morning. It may take a few days to get to you. Well, six months after the introduction of the AI-powered Bing with Bing Chat, the search engine's market share has seen a decline, both globally and in the U.S. When Microsoft launched this version of Bing, there were expectations that it might challenge Google's dominance in the search market. But the numbers tell a different story. In July,

Starting point is 00:10:11 Bing's U.S. market share stood at 6.56%. According to StatCounter, this was a slight increase from February's 6.35%, but a decline from March's peak of 6.61. Notably, Bing's U.S. market share was consistently above 7% in 2022, even reaching a high of 7.82% in November. Microsoft challenges these figures, saying their internal data shows Bing is gaining on Google, though a VP would not quote specific numbers. Data from analytics firm Comscore shows a 6% drop in Bing's unique visitors and total visits from February to July. Year on year, there was a 2% decline in July. One of the things users frequently ask metaphor is a simple algorithm-free reverse chronological view of their Facebook feeds. Instagram relented, somewhat, by hiding that feed under its logo.

Starting point is 00:11:10 But Facebook has resisted showing its users a simple, non-personalized feed of people and brands they follow. This week, Meta said it had a change of heart, though one forced upon it by European regulators. MedEd today announcing that users in the European Union will soon have the option to view non-personalized content feeds on Facebook and Instagram. This aligns with the EU's Digital Services Act, which requires larger platforms to offer users the choice to turn off AI-driven personalization. European legislators say the DSA counters the pitfalls of AI-driven feeds, like reduced user autonomy, filter bubbles, and the risks of automated manipulation. Instead of AI-driven content, users can opt for feeds sorted chronologically or by local popularity.

Starting point is 00:12:00 The exact date for the AI off switch remains unclear. It is expected soon, though, given the DSA's compliance deadline of August 25th. Noncompliance could result in penalties up to 6% of global annual turnover. This move by Meta follows a similar announcement by TikTok earlier this month. Their non-algorithmic feed option, too, will be exclusive to the European community, leaving the rest of the world without this choice. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Google today began the rollout of its August core update. These updates change the search algorithm to account for new trends, try to combat spam and a bunch of tweaks. It often takes a few days to roll out fully,

Starting point is 00:12:43 but if you have an SEO tool and notice some volatility in your rank position, that could be why. Amazon has reintroduced its ground shipping service for sellers. The service offers US delivery for packages up to £50 within 2-5 business days, including weekends. Amazon had paused this service in 2020 due to the surge in e-commerce demand. X says it's aware of the issue where tweets posted before December 2014 with images or links were broken. After a day-long silence on the issue, the company today saying it was a bug, no actual images or data were lost, and it will be fixed soon. And Elon Musk, the most followed user on X, has long railed against bots and fake users. But new research finds that 42% of Musk's own followers have no followers of their own. 40% have never actually posted a tweet ever.

Starting point is 00:13:38 And less than a third of 1% subscribe to the platform's subscription service. And finally, a disabled American teenager and his father recently got some attention when they posted on social media about ketchup chips. For those non-Canadians out there, ketchup is a popular flavor of potato chips right up there with salt and vinegar. But for some reason, ketchup chips have never made it down into the U.S. Like other great things like Coffee Crisp, poutine, and the free health care you'll need after eating poutine. A 15-year-old Jacob, who's blind and deaf, loves ketchup chips. He and his dad went on a trip north to buy a bunch and posted about it on social media. And that's when pretty much every social media manager for every potato chip company ran into their boss's office and yelled, oh, my God, we have to send them our chips. The No Frills grocery chain emailed the family to say they should expect a couple of packages. What arrived was a pallet of nine huge cases of chips.

Starting point is 00:14:41 Then the old Dutch foods company sent them a bunch. Then Heinz, that doesn't even make potato chips at all, sent boxes of bottled ketchup along with custom printed bright red shirts with the words annual Lieberman ketchup crew road trip on the front. Then Lay's chips said they'd be getting in on it, too. But at this point, Jacob's dad had to tell them, please, please don't. We have way too many bags in ketchup chips to last a lifetime. In fact, now they've started donating shipments to schools, soup kitchens, anywhere,

Starting point is 00:15:19 just to get them out of the damned house. So, a lesson for us all, I guess. Jumping on the bandwagon might not always be something to relish. Once again, we are looking for a production assistant to cover Steph's one-year mat leave, some promotional tasks, writing social media posts, some basic graphic design, wrangling interview guests. You can work from home. It's actually only one to two hours a day.

Starting point is 00:15:43 For more information, tap the link at the top of the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash production. I'm Todd Mappin. See you tomorrow. 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 00:16:41 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - The New Shopify: More Self-Service, Fewer Human Reps

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