Today in Digital Marketing - Their Is No Mistake In This Title.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, February 3rd. Today, the secret engagement hack that's very counterintuitive. Google's ad revenue is down while Amazon's is up. Did Bing accidentally leak its new AI-powered search engine? Twitter's company verification will cost your brand thousands and how one brand is turning a customer mistake into an ad campaign. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Cracking the code to TikTok's algorithm may be easier than you think. Want your brand's content to go viral? Make a mistake. Slate has an interesting piece up today on how making intentional errors is now an algorithmic growth hack. Take Dr. Joshua Landy, for instance,

Starting point is 00:00:43 a critical care physician who posted a video on TikTok explaining a dilemma presented by a patient who needed an MRI. An x-ray showed his patient's chest riddled with birdshot pellets from a shotgun accident 30 years ago. Prior to this post, his videos received anywhere from 1,500 to 6,000 views. But this post racked up more than 800,000 views. He soon realized a mistake was driving engagement. In his commentary, he referred to the projectiles as buckshot when it was really birdshot. Over 1,600 people have now called him out on his error. As the article points out, with his honest mistake, Dr. Landy discovered a very intentional growth hack deployed by TikTok power users, creating a glitch that users have to scratch. It turns out that people really like telling others they're wrong on the internet. with Jay and rhymes with one of the 50 states, the pet video that calls a puppy a little angle,

Starting point is 00:01:46 and the cooking reaction for General Tso's kitchen in which the chef incorrectly identifies almost every ingredient. Mochiko flour, beef base, another duck egg, whisking and vodka, maple syrup. The piece continues, quote, it's a specialized subgenre of trolling, one where the goal isn't so much enragement as quantifiable engagement. They're selling I remember seeing just a few weeks ago a user on Reddit say that she uses mansplaining as a tool. She'll ask a question, then log out of her first account, log into a throwaway that has a clearly female username and answer it incorrectly. Within minutes, people come rushing in to correct her. She says this turns out to be a very effective way of getting a correct answer quickly. All right, some industry news now. Google yesterday posting its first drop in ad revenue since the start of the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:02:48 For the fourth quarter of last year, Alphabet reported $59 billion in ad revenue. That is down 3.5% from the same period the previous year. This marked only the second time ad sales fell since 2004. Even YouTube got caught up in this, posting a second straight quarter of declining revenue for its fourth quarter, with ad sales falling nearly 8% from a year prior. The Wall Street Journal notes that Google is facing one of its most challenging advertising environments in recent memory due to a worsening economy and new competitive forces in fields like artificial intelligence. To that end, Google's CEO said that the company would make its AI program available to the public in the coming months.

Starting point is 00:03:31 He also promised that new AI features would be coming to search, quote, very soon. Incidentally, someone over at the Microsoft search engine Bing apparently hit a key too early this morning. According to one user on social media, he saw Bing's homepage show the rumored new AI forward screen. Instead of the usual search field, a larger field was there with the prompt, ask me anything. This fellow took a screenshot, which we have in today's newsletter. The screenshot shows one example. That example reads, arts and crafts ideas with instructions for a toddler using only cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, paper, and string. He says the new UI disappeared seconds after.

Starting point is 00:04:12 And incidentally, if you're still not sure what the big deal is here and why the search engines are panicking about this, I just tried that exact same search in Google. The top result was a link to a Pinterest page that showed just one image, which looked like a thumbnail with the title 20 Simple Cardboard Box Activities for Kids. Pinterest wouldn't let me actually see any of the content until I logged in. Once I did that, turns out that image was a link to a blog post, which itself was just a list of links to other blog posts with kid activities. Literally no content on this first blog post, just a link and a credit. That was Google's top result. I tried the same search with ChatGPT,

Starting point is 00:04:51 a newer version of which Microsoft is licensed. It got an actual answer and a detailed one at that. It returned four results. This is what the first one said. Cardboard box castle, cut out doors and windows from a large cardboard box and let your toddler decorate it with paint markers or crayons. You can also add a drawbridge using string and paper, unquote. So expect a huge change in the very nature of search engines, perhaps days or

Starting point is 00:05:17 weeks away. As Google's ad business slows, Amazon's continues to thrive. During the last quarter, the e-commerce giant grew its advertising business by nearly 20% year over year, bringing in more than $11.5 billion in ad sales in the last three months of 2022. The company, however, expects weaker performance this quarter due to economic woes. Still, research firm Insider Intelligence projects that Amazon ads will continue to grow this year by 20%, giving the company a 7% share of the overall digital ads market. With Twitter's drop in its user base and, more importantly, advertiser base, Elon Musk continues to look for pennies in the couch, and he thinks he's found some in a new program called

Starting point is 00:06:08 Verified for Organizations. Essentially, you'd pay to get a gold checkmark on your company's Twitter account, and your employees would get your brand's logo as a secondary verification mark, but not the gold checkmark, and only the blue one if they pay for Twitter Blue, which appears to be something only individuals can do now. Or maybe any account can now? Perhaps unless they upgrade to the gold one? Or maybe it's an addition and not a replacement? Honestly, nobody's quite sure. One user posted, we recently had a business verified and it was just a subscription to Twitter Blue.

Starting point is 00:06:43 I don't think this is right, unquote. One thing Twitter is sure about now, though, is the pricing. Last night, company reps began emailing brands saying the Verified for Organizations program will cost brands $1,000 a month plus $50 per enrolled employee per month. So let's take a company of, say, 20 people. That's $24,000 a year. And what do you get for $24,000? A promise to make your brand's tweets and those of your enrolled employees rank a little higher in the algorithm. Oh, and a gold checkmark, but only for the company. Two other quick Twitter items today. Musk says the company will start

Starting point is 00:07:23 sharing revenue with people who write tweets which have ads placed in the reply thread. But there's a catch. You have to pay to be paid. Only people who are subscribed to Twitter Blue will be eligible to receive these payments. No details on how much of a cut Twitter plans to take. And accounts with the legit old school blue check marks will lose those check marks in the next couple of months unless they pony up for the subscription. So expect a whole new round of impersonations coming. 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

Starting point is 00:08:06 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. Following disappointing results over the last quarter, paid media could start out in 2023 less optimistic than it has in decades. An analysis of fourth quarter activity by marketing agency Tenuity showed spend growth across digital media has slowed, including streaming video, paid social, paid search, and e-commerce. But Digiday is reporting today that while the analysis indicated soft pricing for digital ads in Q4, Tenuity's VP of Research said it showed promise for performance channels. Quoting that executive, those channels and platforms that have really been proven drivers

Starting point is 00:08:51 of performance, really tried and true campaign types in terms of driving that return on ad spend, those still grew pretty meaningfully, unquote. According to that executive, the Q4 scatter market for video, including streamers, was quite soft, which led advertisers access more premium inventory than they typically could afford. Due to weak demand, streaming video advertisers can expect to keep getting discounted inventory in early 2023 since the market hasn't really tightened. As for paid social, comparing this past Q4 to the previous years, the average CPM on Meta's platforms was down 22%.

Starting point is 00:09:28 That's good news for media buyers. But when you compare it to the same quarter two years back, CPMs were 26% higher and Instagram CPM 15% higher. The report notes that the main saving grace for the company is the continued success of its TikTok clone Reels. Impressions across Meta properties grew 10%, the strongest growth since 2020, thanks to Reels inventory, which accounted for more than 8% of Instagram ad impressions during the last quarter. Moving to paid search, over the last year and a half, Google's search ad clicks remained stable, but weakening pricing growth saw text and shopping ads slow their growth patterns. Google search spending in the U.S. increased 10% year-over-year in Q4, but cost per clicks only rose 2%. Finally, Amazon-sponsored products grew nearly 20% year-over-year in Q4, slower than the 25% growth in Q3, as CPCs fell in aggregate for the first

Starting point is 00:10:23 time since 2020. Meanwhile, the report found Walmart-sponsored products clicks skyrocketed 98% in Q4 compared to Q4 the previous year, while the average CPC fell 60%. YouTube now lets your brand collab on a live stream with other brands or creators. The feature they call Go Live Together was first introduced last year, but the company has expanded its live stream co-hosting feature across iOS and Android mobile devices. The feature lets brands and creators with 50 or more subscribers invite a guest to live stream with them. There can only be one guest at a time, but guests can rotate during the same stream

Starting point is 00:11:03 and do not require the 50 subscriber minimum. Any creator can be invited to participate. Desktop marketers, though, no soup for you. This feature is currently only available in the mobile app. You can, however, schedule a co-stream through YouTube on desktop, but both host and guest will need to connect to the scheduled stream through the app on a mobile device. Some interesting news on the payments front. Starbucks has a new partnership with the payment service Venmo that lets its rewards members use Venmo accounts to load and auto-reload their card funds. PayPal, which owns Venmo, said Venmo accounts can be added in the Starbucks app

Starting point is 00:11:42 or the Starbucks card section of the company's website. Customers can also pay from Venmo directly after adding their account to the app. Companies are also enticing customers to try out the new payment method with a promotion. Rewards members will receive 100 bonus stars, those are perks for spending money there, when they add $15 from Venmo to their Starbucks card or spend $15 or more using Venmo as a direct payment in the app until February 10th. In the wake of recent slowdowns in gadget reports, this isn't the first new partnership for the coffee giant. Last month, it worked with DoorDash to offer 95% of its in-store menu items via the delivery service and launched an alternative reward system

Starting point is 00:12:21 that lets customers collect NFTs. And finally this week, what happens when a six-year-old boy orders over $1,000 worth of food on Grubhub after borrowing his father's phone? Why, an ad campaign, of course. Mason Stonehouse was left playing some games on his dad's phone, but instead started ordering delivery after delivery, which soon started literally piling up on the family's doorstep. The boy's mother told media that Grubhub reached out to the family and offered them a $1,000 gift card following the smorgasbord of unexpected deliveries. She also said the company is considering using the family in an online promotional campaign. crafter, specifically fiber arts crafter, so sewing, knitting, and lately a lot of yarn stuff. And, you know, her hobby started out the way I think

Starting point is 00:13:27 most of these do, is she buys yarn at a store and then does whatever yarn people do with it. And then it kind of got a little closer to the start of the supply chain. She started buying sort of unprocessed yarn. There's a word for it, I forget. She's got a loom

Starting point is 00:13:43 so she can do all that stuff. Last night, I get this text message from her saying I'll be back in 20 minutes. She comes back, she's got basically raw wool that clearly just came off a sheep, and it smelled, there's no nice way to say this,

Starting point is 00:13:59 it smelled like shit. Like actual literal shit. Right off the farm. So, literal shit, right off the farm. So, I mean, I think the natural next step is having sheep in our living room. That will do it for the week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Ad coordination by Red Circle. Music licensing by Source Audio. And you know, not many people know

Starting point is 00:14:37 this, but our theme composer Mark Blevis is actually one of the world's leading trainers of restaurant staff. He told me the other day, though, it's actually pretty simple, this job. He said the blonde waitresses take their trays, spin around, and they cross the floor. They've got the moves. You drop your drink, they bring you more. Don't forget our LinkedIn newsletter. We're past 100 subscribers now.

Starting point is 00:15:01 It's free. Just go to todayindigital.com slash top story or you can tap the link in the show notes. I'm off to try to climb out of Copper 5 in Rainbow Six Siege. Yes, I'm that bad. Have a restful weekend, friends. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you Monday. It's never been so okay All the colors seem to shine They laid in the morning yesterday So we're gonna live our lives

Starting point is 00:15:30 In our own way, our own way

Today in Digital Marketing - Their Is No Mistake In This Title.

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