Today in Digital Marketing - The Oglivification of Short-Form Video Content

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, April 19th. Today, TikTok's 10-minute triumph, Safari's third-party throttling, Instagram's BioLink bonanza, and Amazon's porn predicament. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in digital marketing. In 1963, a newspaper ad for the Rolls-Royce brand of cars appeared. It had a photo of the car and the headline, At 60 miles per hour, the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. The guy who wrote that headline went on to become an advertising legend. His name was David Ogilvie.

Starting point is 00:00:41 In one of his books, he said that headline was the best he'd ever written. I remember when I presented that to the client. This is him on the David Letterman show. They were all engineers at Rolls-Royce. Head man at Rolls-Royce, very serious. He said, we really must do something about that damn clock. More notable, I've always thought, was the enormous dump of body copy in the ad. 15 paragraphs worth. 719 words.

Starting point is 00:01:09 Ogilvy became known for long-form copy. He once said, Factual advertising like this outsells flatulent puffery. The more you tell, the more you sell. It's interesting to look back at his campaigns today, where the going wisdom is to keep it short, capture attention in the first two seconds, have a brand mention in the first four seconds, and consider ending it after six seconds. But is it possible we're starting to see a return to the long-form ads? The Hilton hotel chain recently challenged the norm of TikTok marketing with a 10-minute-long

Starting point is 00:01:43 video ad. And they weren't hiding it either. Pop culture celebrity Paris Hilton even said it would be right at the start. Would you watch a 10 minute TikTok? No. Well, you should. Because Hilton believes it matters where you stay. And the people that stay with this TikTok for the full 10 minutes are going to have a chance to win Hilton honors points, experiences, swag, and more. Is it going to be you?

Starting point is 00:02:12 No. We put a link to the whole 10 minute ad in our premium newsletter today. So far, it has more than 35 million views and half a million likes. The virality of campaigns like this, despite their length, maybe even because of their length, is sparking the industry to rethink TikTok brand marketing conventions. A great piece from Quick Frame today looks at the ad success and what long-form videos might mean for brands' future ad strategies. According to the Quick Frame piece, the ad success was partly because of its entertaining and self-referential nature, a concept that kept the audience's attention from start to finish.

Starting point is 00:02:51 This suggests that regardless of video length or platform, a strong concept and script, of course, are critical. It's also important to understand the platform and create content that feels native to it, while providing an angle that sets it apart from the competition. But before you supersize all your ads, it would be a mistake to assume that long-form video is the future of TikTok ad campaigns. As the article notes, it's risky to make a 10-minute spot your core video strategy. Instead, a different approach is to create long-form TikTok creative spots that can be easily re-edited into shorter ones. This gives maximum flexibility and an array of spots that can live on several platforms and target different audiences. The piece is at

Starting point is 00:03:37 quickframe.com slash blog. Look for the article called From Short Form to Long Form, what we can learn from a 10-Minute TikTok Ad. Apple is taking another cookie out of the jar for advertisers. The company is closing a loophole in its Safari browser that lets sites pass off third-party partners as first-party cookies, which goes against Apple's efforts to limit third-party access as first-party cookies, which goes against Apple's efforts to limit third-party access to user data. Adweek reported today that the move has caused frustration among those in the ad industry due to the lack of communication from Apple, which is expected to impact the structure of numerous sites. Third-party cookies are no longer an option

Starting point is 00:04:20 to track audiences since Safari deprecated them way back in 2017, so websites have developed techniques to cloak them as first-party cookies. While legitimate cases exist, where sites work with third parties to enhance their functions, this technique can be used by shady ad tech firms to covertly track users. Apple has not officially confirmed the move nor an effective date, but an agency executive quoted in the Adweek piece said that the change is already causing anomalies in websites' data. But an Apple web developer said last week that the change hadn't actually been implemented yet. Either way, the executive recommends that brands start breaking up their reporting

Starting point is 00:04:59 into other browsers to avoid making decisions based on incorrect data. With these types of cookies deleted every seven days, identifying returning users will be harder. Brands should also rely on shorter-term metrics such as last touch or data-driven attribution instead of first touch. Overall, as cookies are deprecated, the executive noted that companies should be building their own stores of data and analytics and relying less on shortcuts like Google Analytics. 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 is coming for Linktree and other LinkedIn bio tools. You will soon be able to add multiple links to your brand's Instagram bio page. Those bio pages will soon be able to include up to five links, which can direct

Starting point is 00:06:12 your followers to other content like online businesses or your store or events and causes, links to other social media platforms, and so on. The links can be titled and reordered through the mobile app's profile editing feature. Socialmediatoday.com points out that it's bad news for linking tools. Instagram's restrictions on external links have been the driving force behind the popularity of these link aggregator tools. But with the new feature, users may opt to cancel their paid subscriptions to third-party apps like Linktree. Still, it is a welcome update for brands and social media managers. Reddit announced yesterday that it will start charging businesses for using its API. But not all businesses. The New York Times reports that Reddit's API will remain free

Starting point is 00:07:01 to developers who want to build apps and bots that help people use Reddit, as well as to researchers who want to study the platform strictly for academic or non-commercial purposes. But companies that extract data from Reddit without benefiting users will have to pay, according to the company's CEO. Reddit says large tech companies will no longer be able to use its API, for instance, to train AI chatbots to accelerate their services, at least not without coughing up some dough. As the New York Times reports, the move comes as Reddit looks for ways to monetize its vast array of user-generated content, which has increasingly been used to train high-profile text-generating machine learning models like ChatGPT. And that will bring us to the lightning round. TikTok has confirmed you can still upload 10-minute videos in the app, despite reports that the recording option had been removed from the UI.

Starting point is 00:08:00 The company clarified it was testing a feature that let users record videos up to 10 minutes long directly from within the TikTok app. That test has now ended, but users can still upload those longer videos from their camera roll. Meta has started its latest round of layoffs, and it appears to mostly affect technical roles. Reports suggest layoffs could be around 4,000 people. Some laid off employees have posted on LinkedIn, including those in engineering, user experience research, and technical program management roles. And Google Meet has added a new feature that lets you turn off individual feeds during meetings. Users will not receive any notification

Starting point is 00:08:38 that you have switched them off, and the meeting layout won't change for any other participants. And finally, Kindle has a porn problem. Amazon's Kindle store and app have come under scrutiny for selling explicit pornographic content at low prices, despite Apple and Google's app stores prohibiting that kind of content. Reuters reported yesterday that both companies have warned Amazon about porn on their app,

Starting point is 00:09:07 expressing concerns about children accessing that kind of content. It doesn't take much to find this material either on the Kindle store. A quick Google search found some e-books with titles like Topless and Naked Viking and Saxon Women and AI Eve in Paradise, containing AI-generated porn. Some of these self-published books are even available for free through Amazon's $10 a month e-book subscription service. Amazon has since changed Kindle's age rating in the Apple App Store from four years and older to 12 years and older after receiving notice of alien and dinosaur porn, among other erotic titles on its platform. Spring has sprung.

Starting point is 00:09:55 We had our landscapers out to have a look at the disaster that occurred when I failed to weed for the last six months. So I'm going to go do some weeding. See you tomorrow. Every year springtime comes and I break away To a place where the trees and the flowers and the sky all shine Upon my garden At a bed part the shades let the light come in As it fills up the room it begins to fill my mind

Starting point is 00:10:28 With all those bright ideas

Today in Digital Marketing - The Oglivification of Short-Form Video Content

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