Today in Digital Marketing - The Real Reason Facebook Changed Its Feed Today

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

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Today, 19 years too late, but Facebook finally adds the one thing users have been asking for. How will its new chronological feed affect your brand? We have extended coverage today. Plus, influencers get hacking insurance, Reddit's peculiar approach to brand safety, some small but welcome YouTube changes, and the most meta thing ever, Meta Suze Meta. It's Thursday, July 21st. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Look, I get that companies have to put the best spin on things that they can, and that no matter what the actual message is, public relations people write things like it's always a benefit to the consumer. We're tripling our prices

so we can provide even better service. We're closing half our stores for the safety of our team members. But today's announcement from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have been the single most disingenuous statement in the history of corporate America. Today, Zuckerberg posted this, quote, one of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people don't miss friends posts. So today, we're launching a feeds tab where you can see posts from your friends, groups, pages and more separately in chronological order, unquote. Honestly, give me a break. This is something users have been asking for for more than a decade. And what, only now the surveys got to your desk?

And you called a meeting and said, hey, I'm seeing reports that people want a chronological feed. It is so transparently insincere, so egregiously hollow, that once again, it makes meta look like a literal parody of itself. But yes, Facebook is bringing back a chronological feed, something they had in the very, very early days of the platform. Today, Zuckerberg announced that the news feed will be split into two. First, the Home tab. This is the new name of the default tab you'll see when you open the app, which will provide algorithm-based recommendations for reels, stories and other personalized content. You won't necessarily have to be following accounts to see content here. And the feeds tab, which will let you see a chronological feed of recent posts from the people and brands you follow, along with posts from groups and pages without any suggested for you posts. But of course, this doesn't have anything

to do with responding to the requests of their users. Users in the millions have been asking for this since forever. They're doing it now because they're getting their ass handed to them by TikTok and the bean counters at Meta see the future. And that future is not sunshine and lollipops. Instagram capitulated about four months ago after pressure from American lawmakers. At the time, the head of Instagram, Adam Masseri, said they were making the change because they believed users wanted more control. Which is true. They do. But they've wanted that control since Instagram switched away from the chronological sort. Like the Facebook change today, that was really about TikTok.

Also, side note, in case you still don't think Meta is in a state of panic about TikTok, just hours ago, Masseri announced that every single video on Instagram will now be a real. Every one.

Here's a clip from his announcement. And that doesn't mean that every video has to be a dancing video or a lip syncing video, but it means that when you create a video on Instagram, you have access to all of those tools. So there'll just be one video format on Instagram and it will be Reels. Maybe my snark level is higher than it needs to be on this, but does anyone else find it telling that Masseri's first point of reference about reels and TikTok videos is that they're lip syncing dancing videos? I spend a lot of time on TikTok. Whenever I hear someone say this, it kind of makes me think they've never really spent any real time in the app.

Because unless you're a teen who likes that kind of content, you're really not seeing lip-syncing and dancing. My TikTok is full of cats, marketing people, interesting geography facts, some true crime, and I'll admit a disproportionate number of videos about Neil Patrick Harris. But my wife's is almost entirely about disability issues, crafting, and First Nations. For Instagram to fall back to dancing and lip-syncing as a description of these types of videos, to me at least, demonstrates a concerning lack of understanding about their primary competition. Anyway, back to Facebook's changes. So, the new Facebook Home will be like TikTok. Feeds will be like the OG Facebook. As a result of this, the reach of your brand's organic content might change. How? Nobody's

quite sure yet. On one hand, having a more discovery-focused page at launch might bring you more non-fan viewers. Then again, it could also mean that your current fans won't switch over to the new feed and your content will get even more lost than it already is. For some thoughts on this, Brad Klein joins me now. Brad is a partner of the digital marketing agency 5Mill. Brad, what's your take on this? Is this a net positive or a net negative for us digital marketers? I think it's a net positive in some ways and a net negative in others. I think the brands, it's all going to be about more about what time you're posting and when your audience is going to be most active. That being said,

if we don't have that curated feed where people are reacting based on engagement, brands are going to have to be more specific about when they post because Facebook's not going to elevate those posts anymore because of, hey, this one's getting 50 likes and downplaying the one that got two likes. So from a consumer point of view, they may see a lot more noise and lower quality. And then brands are going to say, oh, well, look, we actually got posted at three o'clock in the afternoon. It gained some traction. But without that separation, I don't see brands focusing as much on quality anymore. They're going to be focused more on volume, which is going to up, of course, the work of organic social content.

And then on the ad side, where I do a lot of my work, it then becomes even noisier and more white noise. And you have to stand out even more so. And I think this just lends itself to brands posting more often, which is going to annoy consumers, which will push people to other platforms. It remains to be seen, but I think it's all in the eyes of the consumer. Are they enjoying it? And if they are, great. If they're not, we've got to pivot fast. Brad's agency is 5mil.

It's at 5mil.com. Meta also indicated that some friends posts may appear in the Facebook Home tab, and the Feeds tab will indeed include ads. Starting today, some iOS and Android users will be able to access the tabs. Over the next week or so, Meta expects those updates to roll out globally. And honestly, Mark, what's wrong with saying you're doing it to help your brand compete in the busy social media landscape? You know, the truth. You knew it had to come sooner or later. Influencer insurance.

A new startup called Notch now offers insurance to protect creators when their accounts get hacked. The company says it found 85% of marketers would pay more for an influencer if they had that kind of insurance. As Notch's co-founder explained, if a large company with a lot of brand integrity works on a campaign with an influencer who got hacked, it could cause very, very big damage to the brand itself in terms of reputation. But as Marketing Brew noted today,

marketers aren't sold, arguing that hacking schemes affecting influencer campaigns are actually quite rare. One influencer agency VP said that in six years of managing creators, there have only been three hacking incidents. And all of them were caused by the influencer giving their password to someone or buying followers. Instead, the VP suggested that insurance for brand accounts could be more useful, noting that influencer accounts getting suspended during campaigns

happens far more frequently than getting hacked. 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. LinkedIn Business Manager rolled out to everyone in public beta yesterday. The new dashboard lets marketers link all ad accounts, matched audiences, and pages in a centralized platform. We reported on this a few weeks audiences, and pages in a centralized platform. We reported on this a few weeks back when it was in a private beta. Ad access can be granted or removed with one click, allowing control over who can create and edit campaigns, manage pages, and pull reports. Matched audiences can also be shared across ad accounts, which lets advertisers

see audience changes across all of the accounts and campaigns using them. This public beta is now open to all marketers who want to use LinkedIn's Business Manager. The process does not require the recreation of ad accounts, campaigns, or pages, and it does not affect billing. New features being developed include an invoice dashboard that will let you download, filter, and view billing activity and invoices across all ad accounts, revenue attribution reporting, and two-factor authentication. A new study has found that ad spend declined for the first time this year, breaking a 15-month growth streak. According to the report, in June, monthly ad spend entered negative year-over-year growth territory, declining 3% compared to last

year. June also marked the first month this year that the majority of product category groups reduced ad spend. In June 2022, digital TV grew nearly 10%, but linear TV went down 20% most comparable to July of 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 sports disruptions. There was modest growth among media companies with meta growing 6% and Disney 4%. But Q2 as a whole saw slower growth compared to Q1 of this year due to June's ad spending declines. A 60% share of dollars was spent on digital media this quarter,

with CPG and financial services marketers leading the way. The data came from Standard Media Index's U.S. latest core release, which measures activity across TV, digital out-of-home, print, radio, and more. It's sometimes interesting to see how the different platforms handle their ad policies. Some, like Meta and Google, are largely enforced by automated bots, but sometimes, depending on the platform, it's more granular. An interesting piece today at Marketing Brew found that admins at Reddit hand-pick each community's ability to be monetized one by one. For instance, you can't run ad on the Red Hot Chili Peppers subreddit, but you can on the Drunk subreddit. The article's authors were able to view Reddit's brand safety labeling using a third-party API tool, which collects all

sorts of data, like whether a post is tagged NSFW or has a spoiler and so on. The results also give descriptors to subreddits like all ads, no ads, and some ads. How is Reddit determining where ad placement should be? According to a spokesperson, every new subreddit is labeled no ads until it goes through a manual human review to gauge if it's considered safe. Moreover, the spokesperson noted Reddit does not, quote, just leave that safety up to AI,

unquote, stating it is constantly revising and refining the list of acceptable communities for advertising. YouTube announced a couple of small but nice updates this week. Shorts and video descriptions will soon support text formatting in the form of markup. So things like bold, italics, and strikethrough. You're not going to see a little bar, a formatting bar that has bold buttons and italics buttons. This is literally using the Markdown system. So Google that if you're not familiar with Markdown. On top of that, YouTube also added custom loyalty badge options to three- and four-year channel members.

We started with Meta, we end with Meta, but not the Meta you think of. This time, Meta, all in caps, is a small business operating in the immersive and experiential technology industry. Of course, not to be confused with Zuckerberg's brainchild. Well, Meta is suing Meta. How Meta is that? That is to say Meta, the tiny Meta, is suing the Zuckerberg Meta. All Meta says it was founded in 2010, more than a decade before Facebook rebranded in 2021. Their court case alleges that Facebook is now doing exactly what Meta has done for more than a decade under the Meta name and mark, conducting the same immersive experiences at the same events and venues, working with the same creators and the same companies.

They even managed to take a dig at Facebook in the complaint, quote, the Meta mark is now infected by the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook. We will keep you updated on the court case, of course, but the good money, the good money's on a settlement. I'm so excited. There are landscapers outside working on our lawn. When we got the house four or five years ago, it came with the standard issue contractor, cheap ass, no effort lawn. You know, the one that they put in that turns into dandelions after about a month. So anyway, we're still going to have the dandelions and the cheap lawn, but they are planting some nice flowers,

some drought tolerant flowers, which is less about the drought and more about my inability to keep plants alive. But what I'm really excited about is they are putting in some herbs, rosemary. They also are weed eating, which is great because we own a weed eater, but when I bought it, I failed to realize in the product description

it did not come with a charger. So it's been dead for like a year. Anyway, I'm going outside to check on it. I will see you tomorrow.