Today in Digital Marketing - The Talent War Comes for Ad Tech

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, we're getting closer to one-click enabling of international e-commerce. Are the retail giants winning the talent war for ad tech? Why you should reconsider offering promotions this holiday season? And the OG of target marketing returns. It's Wednesday, September 14th. I'm Steph Gunn, filling in for Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. We start with a big announcement from Shopify aimed at fixing some of the hurdles you face

Starting point is 00:00:30 selling your products and services internationally. Hurdles like tax, duties, language, and more. The e-commerce giant announced Markets Pro today, a new product with enhanced compliance features, including international tax and duty compliance. This means they will handle the tax registration, filing, and remitting on your store's behalf. And shipping with DHL. This adds express shipping labels with negotiated rates and customs documentation management to the mix. Their services also include more payment methods, local currencies, and guaranteed duties collected up front. On top of Markets Pro, Shopify also announced Translate and Adapt, a new app that lets merchants target international markets without spending money

Starting point is 00:01:12 on translation services. The new app lets merchants translate their stores using both manual and machine translations, adapt custom content for different markets, and improve local SEO. Starting today, U.S. merchants have early access to Shopify Markets Pro, while globally, all merchants now have access to Translate and Adapt. As marketers continue to push the two biggest online ad platforms to bulk up their advertising support options, some bad news. Both Google and Meta are losing ad staff, and they're losing them to the retail giants. As behemoths like Amazon and Walmart seek to expand their advertising businesses, the two companies are, of course, looking for people

Starting point is 00:01:55 with that experience. To find out the winners and losers in ad tech talent wars, intelligence platform Revelio Labs recently analyzed public employment data to determine the movement of people in advertising roles, specifically focusing on the big players. And indeed, the biggest hirers were Walmart, Amazon, and Instacart. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook saw a number of departures in the wake of the hiring spree. The numbers themselves aren't huge, but the trend is concerning. Of the 22 Google ad people

Starting point is 00:02:25 who resigned, more than half went to Amazon. These newer, fast-growing, and high-paying opportunities also lured employees from traditional media and advertising companies. Ad agency Starcom lost 14 employees to Walmart, and NBCUniversal lost 9 to Amazon. Again, not huge numbers, but certainly not the direction Google or Meta probably wants to see things move. And it could point to an even stronger push for media budgets from those retail players. With warnings of a slower Q4 ahead for digital marketers, new research says you may want to consider repositioning your pitch if you're aiming for new customer acquisition. A new study from Nielsen IQ says you should focus more on your product's benefits rather than the usual offers and discounts. Talking about benefits

Starting point is 00:03:10 also yielded better results than online reviews, attractive packaging, the unavailability of a competing brand, and even the usually strong word of mouth. Aside from the drawing power, shoppers are also often hyper aware of the benefits and claims offered by brands. That said, to hook new buyers, product quality needs to match the claims. Nielsen's research also found that 7 out of 10 consumers consider themselves trend leaders or innovation seekers and recommends localizing a new product in order to appeal to the trendsetting disposition of consumers. It might be time to start literally sliding into your customers' DMs via direct postal mail. There's an interesting piece up on Adweek today that looks at why brands should be considering the OG of target marketing. Recently, and somewhat surprisingly, there has been a small

Starting point is 00:04:04 shift from paid digital ads to direct mail. The piece suggests the change in direction is a result of a few factors, such as digital ads becoming increasingly ineffective with the looming death of third-party cookies, a growing amount of ad fatigue among consumers, the rising costs to run digital ads, and poor revenue results from ad giants. Quoting Adweek, The unsettled economy has a part to play in these lows, but performance marketers are catching on to the fact that digital ads are eroding in value,

Starting point is 00:04:35 and they're reinvesting in other, more promising channels. While direct mail has traditionally been used for top-of-funnel brand awareness, new innovations lend advertisers tailored direct mail campaigns based on online behavior, down to the fully responsive individual level you'd get with digital ads. Most notably, data found direct mail marketing drives higher response rates, with average engagement per mailer increasing by roughly 20%. Quoting Adweek again, in this data set, a single engagement includes recipients either scanning a QR code on a mail piece, visiting a website via the unique

Starting point is 00:05:12 URL printed on the card, or making a call or text to the printed phone number. The total impressions resulted from retargeted digital ads on Google and social media after the mail piece was delivered. Not only is direct mail engagement trending up, you could argue that the intent built into a single offline-to-online engagement carries 10 times the value of a single online click. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Marketers have highlighted some of the biggest challenges we will face in the next 12 months, and those forecasts came out today in a new report from the World Advertising Research Centre. The analysis identified three major trends that will impact the industry. First, the talent shortage is still real. Clients are increasingly looking for strategists, but agencies are concerned about competing with strong technology and consulting firms. Nearly half of companies polled are concerned about finding the right talent. And it doesn't look good for agencies. Less than a third of marketers said they expected their next role would be agency side. Next, consumer habits will be affected by the cost of living crisis. Seven out of 10 brands and agencies believe inflation and recessionary

Starting point is 00:06:45 fears will have an impact on marketing communications, from tone to branding. Finally, there is still a long way to go in industry diversity. The study found that there is a lack of progress in diversity, with researchers adding that more tangible changes in hiring are needed to serve clients effectively. The study also noted that agencies themselves lack diversity on their own teams, which impacts their ability to provide clients effectively. The study also noted that agencies themselves lack diversity on their own teams, which impacts their ability to provide clients with diverse insights and advice. Data has been provided by WORX survey of over 700 brand and agency strategists globally. Measuring TV advertising remains an uphill battle.

Starting point is 00:07:23 As we enter the next quarter, Digiday today has a great piece up looking at where TV advertising's measurement shift stands. First, disparities between measurement providers' methodologies and results slowed the measurement shift in the spring. Now, coming out of the upfronts, networks and agencies seem to be bogged down by these seemingly always fluid methodologies adopted by the measurement providers. Meanwhile, Nielsen's updated measurement system has suffered a setback. Last month, it announced that its updated measurement system, Nielsen One, was not ready for use as a basics for transactions. Nielsen had planned to rule it out in the fall. Quoting Digiday, that delay lowered confidence among TV network and agency executives that Nielsen One will be Quoting Digiday, Furthermore, while many measurement providers are experiencing methodology issues, a short list of measurement providers has emerged,

Starting point is 00:08:25 suggesting the measurement changeover is happening. Which brings us to the lightning round. The ad sales team at Warner Brothers Discovery keeps shrinking. Yesterday, the company laid off 100 employees in that department. Adweek reported the layoffs are in line with the company's reported plan to cut up to 30% of its ad sales staff. The Emmy Awards were on last night, but don't worry if you missed it. So did a lot of others. The awards show fell to an all-time low in viewers, not even getting 6 million. This is the third time in the past four years a new low record has been set. Social media managers rejoice. The

Starting point is 00:09:06 Unicode consortium, which maintains the official emojis catalog, has updated its list to include 31 new emojis, including a pushing hand, a shaking face, which the kids tell me will mean I'm shook, a moose, a goose, and the long-awaited pink heart. Some media reports say Zoom might be getting ready to compete directly with Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. Quoting the information, It does raise the question, what does Zoom really want to be? For a while, it looked like it was becoming the internet's underlying video infrastructure, powering everything from conferences to yoga classes.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Now, Zoom seems to be pivoting back to being a work tool, and if it has its way, one that's used for much more than video. And finally, with Christmas less than 100 days away, Twitter has released its annual holiday planning guide to help marketers plan their tweet marketing strategy. The company says discussion around the upcoming holidays has already started on its platform.

Starting point is 00:10:12 Time's off today, so it's my turn to sit in the hot seat again. And it's a big week in my house. Our pug just celebrated his 13th birthday yesterday. So he is 91 in dog years. I baked him a cake to celebrate, which is actually more than I did for my three year wedding anniversary, which is today. Don't forget that you can get this podcast as a newsletter as well. So you'll get newsletter exclusive content with videos as well as links to dive deeper straight to your inbox Monday to Friday. And there's also a free option as well, where you'll get an issue every Friday. Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter

Starting point is 00:10:47 to sign up or tap the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Talent War Comes for Ad Tech

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