Today in Digital Marketing - Trust Issues: Is the Agency/Client Model Doomed?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Wednesday, March 20th. Today, marketing agencies say trust is disappearing in their client relationships, and client CEOs are partially to blame. Also, some updates for Google Media buyers. Why is YouTube letting any random person edit your brand's video captions? Trust me, you actually want this. By the way, yesterday, apparently I said it was Thursday here in this intro. My apologies if that made your to-do checklist skip a beat.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Today is Wednesday. 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. Some new research is shining a light on the growing tensions between marketing agencies and their clients.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Those strains are denting the quality of creative work. The Lions State of Creativity's fourth annual survey polled 3,000 marketers and creatives and found nearly half, 45%, of agencies described their client relationships as difficult. Clients, on the other hand, seem less troubled by the partnership dynamics, with 32% saying they find the relationship easy and only 37% acknowledging difficulties. The root of the friction appears to be creatives feeling undervalued,

Starting point is 00:01:39 seen merely as extra hands rather than strategic partners. Quoting one creative director from Ecuador quoted in the study, quote, the agency is not seen as a partner, rather a maker that exists only to do what they are told, leaving no room for experimentation, feedback, or even bold ideas to be executed, unquote. Plus, some agencies don't feel aligned with clients' other external partners and want more of a say in choosing these collaborators. Client CEOs were specifically called out, with many agencies in the study saying that despite talking a good talk about wanting to take risks, at the end of the day, CEOs usually opt for the safe route.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Here's how one brand manager from Ukraine said it. Quote, we're open to new ways of showing our products to our potential and real customers. But sometimes our CEO wants our department to lower the level of creativity and use more common patterns. Unquote. The full study is actually a really solid read. Recommend it for anyone who is in that agency or client relationship. We have a direct link to it in today's email newsletter, which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Google Search Ads 360 has launched a closed beta that is aimed at bricks and mortar stores. The beta has some new options for off-site retail media campaigns, specifically what they call a privacy-centric way for participating retailers to let brands use their first-party data as a source for Performance Max campaigns.

Starting point is 00:03:19 It's also testing more self-service options in this category. And they're improving reporting with closed loop reporting at the brand campaign or SKU level. Closed loop reporting lets brands directly tie ad spend to sales at the individual product level. Lowe's is one of their early beta partners. Apparently, they're starting that testing today, so it could be a while before it filters down to the rest of us. For now, that testing is still being done as a managed service. In other words, a Google rep has to plug in the pieces. But Google says they're hoping that promised self-serve option won't be too far behind. If you want to be part of this beta and have a Google rep, the company

Starting point is 00:03:59 recommends you reach out to them to get on the list. They say they'll be expanding the beta to other countries over the coming months. Another Google ad announcement, they're launching a direct integration between Display and Video 360 and Disney's real-time ad exchange. Google says this will let marketers reach audiences across Disney's properties, quote, at more meaningful moments with great speed and accuracy, unquote. Google and Disney have been involved in partnerships of some way or another for more than 10 years now. So Disney's inventory will now be bookable by all display and video 360 advertisers. They've also expanded addressability with Google audience segments widely across Disney's portfolio. Quoting Google's announcement, quote, beginning in April, display and video 360 will be one of the first demand side platforms to integrate with DRAX, that's the Disney system, creating a foundation to streamline premium

Starting point is 00:04:56 inventory for marketers across the industry. Among other benefits, it will let advertisers re-engage their audiences on Disney's inventory using publisher-advertiser identity reconciliation with Disney's audience graph as the source. Penske Media, known as PMC, which owns sites like Variety and The Holiday Reporter, announced today it will become the exclusive seller of Vox Media's advertising inventory in Canada. This agreement was actually inked about two weeks ago. It will let PMC sell the entire Vox Media portfolio. Vox Media will still manage its programmatic and branded content, quoting Adweek. The partnership comes one year after PMC invested $100 million in Vox Media in February 2023 for a 20% stake in the company, but it does not signal any change in the two companies' relationship, unquote. PMC will charge a fee

Starting point is 00:05:53 to handle this. They wouldn't say what the fee was. It might be pretty high. Madweek says traditionally fees for similar arrangements are between 25 and 40%. ComScore numbers say this partnership now makes the two groups the second largest source of digital media inventory in Canada. 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. YouTube is planning to outsource the captions on your brand's videos to the general public.

Starting point is 00:06:50 I know, what could go wrong? Actually, probably not much. This is going to be a crowdsourcing thing to let people flag mistakes made by the auto-generated captions. It'll take some upvoting by multiple people to make a caption change, and even then, it won't actually change anything. Quoting Google's statement, quote, this test will roll out on a small percentage of English language channels with auto-generated captions enabled. During the experiment, suggested corrections to the captions track will not be automatically merged into the video for viewers, but creators whose captions receive suggested corrections will be able to view these suggestions in the transcript panel, unquote. YouTube is also working on letting channel managers segment their retention data. Right now, you can see how long your content has retained its audience through its playtime, but there's no way to see the difference in retention between your subscribers, random people, and so on.

Starting point is 00:07:44 Some screenshots circulating on social media today show an update apparently being tested, which will let you analyze viewer retention by subscribers, non-subscribers, new visitors, returning visitors, organic traffic, and paid traffic. This is actually really valuable data. YouTube says it expects to roll it out more fully soon. This feature joins a whack of other data points YouTube has added, including improved

Starting point is 00:08:10 video earnings display, playlist analytics, and alerts for product tag mistakes. Also, its long-awaited thumbnail A-B testing tool should be coming sometime in the next few months as well. Holy moly, we have a story for you. Tomorrow, an investigation into a new spam technique being used by fake businesses to knock your brand out of Google Maps. This was discovered by the Sterling Sky Agency. We will have full coverage of this on tomorrow's show. In the meantime, follow us on social media. We are almost everywhere.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Just go to todayindigital.com slash social or tap the link at the top of the show notes. I'm Todd Mathedon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Trust Issues: Is the Agency/Client Model Doomed?

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