Today in Digital Marketing - The Slow Death of the Impulse Buy

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Inflation ruins everything fun — what does that mean for your brand? TikTok launches a new Shopping Ads suite... and shares its algorithm's secret sauce... A Pinterest tool to boost checkout conversions… Meta launches new features for Reels… And the Grinch that stole Amazon FBA...THIS WEEK ONLY - 50% OFF PREMIUMGet the Premium Podcast for just $4.99 a month. This sale ends this weekend.Go Premium! No ads, story links in show notes, deep-dive weekend editions, better quality, live event replays, audio chapters, earlier release time, exclusive marketing discounts, and more! Check out https://todayindigital.com/premiumfeedFor information on advertising, our social media, contact info, and everything else, please go to https://todayindigital.com/shownotes➡ Join our Slack at todayindigital.com/slack_____________Need to Upgrade Your Digital Marketing Skills?*Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Founders Slack GroupFoxwell Digital CoursesMarketing Tools We Use and Recommend:*Sprout Social: Full-service social media managementAgorapulse: Full-service social media managementAppsumo: Lifetime deals and discounts on marketing toolsRiverside.FM: Studio-quality podcast interview recordingShor.by: Smart link-in-bio service with full analytics* Some links may provide affiliate revenue to usOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, inflation ruins everything fun. What does that mean for your brand? TikTok launches a new shopping ad suite and shares its algorithm's secret sauce. A Pinterest tool to boost checkout conversions, Meta launches new features for Reels, and the Grinch that stole Amazon FBA. It's Wednesday, August 17th. I'm Steph Gunn filling in for Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Inflation has targeted its next victim, impulse buys. According to a new survey, one out of two shoppers say that they are less likely to grab an unplanned treat while grocery

shopping, while one out of five are much less likely. While consumers are avoiding splurging on unnecessary items, the survey also found that in order to save money, shoppers are changing what they buy. A whopping three out of four consumers say that they are switching to more affordable brands, and three out of four also say they are buying different groceries altogether. One out of two are buying in bulk, and two out of five are shopping more at low-cost retailers. However, compared to high prices, stock levels are more of a nuanced issue. Nearly a third of consumers say they haven't noticed any change. Three out of five grocery shoppers, however, have noticed a drop in stock.

The report suggests that as consumer loyalty drops with their purchasing power, and if a particular product isn't available, consumers are increasingly open to purchasing from competitors. Data has been provided by Field Agent's survey of over 2,700 shoppers. Big e-commerce news from TikTok today. The platform just dropped a new shopping ad suite of three new ad formats that will be available for testing. First, video shopping ads. This lets brands feature one or multiple products in their in-feed video ads in front of consumers who are more likely to buy their product. Second, catalog listing ads. This lets advertisers scale their product catalogs across the app and expand advertising beyond the For You page. With this format, advertisers can promote

their products across shoppable services such as recommended products or related products. Finally, live shopping ads. This lets brands direct users from the FYP to their live shopping event. In other TikTok news, Oracle has started auditing the platform's algorithms, Axios reports. In order to ensure that Chinese officials are not manipulating algorithms and content moderation models, TikTok will now let the U.S. data hosting partner Oracle review them regularly. The report noted that the review started last week after TikTok started routing all of the new traffic from U.S. users to Oracle servers. A spokesperson told Axios that the audit gives Oracle access to TikTok's algorithm, the platform's secret sauce,

to ensure that outcomes are in line with expectations and that models have not been manipulated in any way. How much should your brand be investing in YouTube? Digiday's new study out today examines how content publishers are investing time and money on YouTube and how that's translating to revenue and brand recognition. According to the survey, four out of five respondents posted content on YouTube last month, a big increase from last year. Among the four out of five publishers who use YouTube, more than half post at least once a week. Nearly a third said every day, and a fifth said they post once a month. When it comes to investing in original content,

publishers are spending the most on YouTube content compared to other platforms. Nearly a third said that they make a significant investment in creating original content for YouTube, as opposed to a quarter each on Facebook and Instagram and a fifth on TikTok. But how does ad spend stack up? Only a quarter say that they've purchased ads on YouTube in the past month. Compare that to three out of four buying ads on Facebook, nearly one out of two on Instagram, and surprisingly, TikTok falls behind again, with just one out of 10 publishers buying ads. Finally, YouTube's brand appropriateness is on the rise. 55% of respondents said YouTube is appropriate for brands,

while only 15% felt the platform is only somewhat brand appropriate, and not one respondent to this year's survey said YouTube is not appropriate. Digiday's survey polled over 70 publishing professionals. Pinterest and Shopify have teamed up to eliminate some of the friction in online buying and make add to cart easier. With hosted checkout, both merchants and customers can eliminate multiple steps from the checkout process. Quoting Pinterest, usually when people want to shop from a product pin, there are several steps before the final purchase. They click the pin, visit the retailer's own site, and go through extra steps to add products to their cart, enter payment and shipping details, etc. Hosted checkout removes many of

these steps. People can browse, click, and buy, all without leaving the Pinterest shopping experience. When a customer shops a product pin, they select the product they want, including details like color and size, and then tap buy to enter hosted checkout via Shopify. The feature is currently available to select U.S. merchants who are in the Pinterest verified merchant program and use Shopify to sell their products. 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. Meta's plans to push to Reels continues. The company announced new updates yesterday for Instagram and Facebook. First, the company is rolling out an Add Yours sticker for Reels. You might be familiar with this feature from Stories. The sticker lets you respond to other users' content with your own following a prompt. For example, post the last pic of your pet, no cheating. With this new feature,

you'll be able to post AdWords questions via Reels clips and view responses. Next, auto-create Facebook Reels. This feature automatically compiles archived Facebook stories into Reels clips. The company also announced it's expanding access to its Starz creator donations to Facebook Reels for all eligible creators. And Meta's creator studio also now offers insights into Reels performance that social marketers will appreciate, including reach, minutes viewed, and average watch time. In addition, all users can now cross-post Reels from Instagram to Facebook. And finally, Meta is launching Reels Remix features for Facebook Reels, allowing you to remix Facebook Reels sequentially,

letting you remix by showing your clip after the original Reel. In response to inflation, chief marketing officers are allocating more money to social and offline advertising, according to recent research. New data from Gartner has found that the retail CMOs they polled spend over a tenth of their budgets on social advertising, more than any other channel and ahead of search ads. Nearly two-thirds of retail respondents said that they increased offline co-op and partner advertising. As of this year, marketing budgets have increased to about 10% of company revenue, up from 6% in 2021. However, they are still not back to pre-pandemic levels. In light of the current economic environment, Gartner's report recommends keeping in mind

what we have learned from the pandemic cuts. Earlier today, Google confirmed a bug with its coverage report in Search Console, where it reported pages were indexed when they weren't. Quoting the company, Today we fixed a Search Console issue that affected many properties. We were reporting pages that are not indexed as being indexed. As a consequence, you might see a drop in your indexed pages in the index coverage report. Google has added an annotation to the report in Search Console so you can spot where these glitches happened in case you noticed a spike one way or the other.

Another holiday peak season charged to report, this time from Amazon. For the first time, the e-commerce giant will be charging a peak season fee on its fulfillment services for third-party sellers from October 15th to January 14th. The fee will cost an average of $0.35 per item sold through fulfillment by Amazon in the U.S. and Canada. The company said the fee will cover increased fulfillment and logistics costs associated with holiday shipping. I'm currently babysitting an eight-week-old puppy.

My parents just got a King Charles Cavalier, and I have two senior dogs that are incredibly lazy, so I was really anticipating that today was going to be an absolute nightmare, thinking she was going to get into everything and chew everything, but she was fine. Turns out my geriatric dogs are much more work, although she is still pretty new. And if she turns out anything like their other dog, she will be wreaking havoc

on us all in no time. Listen, have you ever wanted to ask Todd a question? Well, you can if you join our Slack group. By joining, you'll get instant access to advice from over 900 marketing professionals you can get help there's also a spot where you can promote yourself and there's even a place where you get to find out what's coming up on each day's episode it's free to join all you have to do is tap the link in the show notes or you can go to todayindigital.com slash slack thanks for listening and Todd will be back to you tomorrow I'm going to get some puppy cuddles.