Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter is Becoming a Dangerous Place for Brands

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Tuesday, November 1st. Today, the real reasons brands are bailing out of Twitter. You'll pay to use color in Photoshop now. Instagram's new plan means more data but also pricier ads. Microsoft will let you import your entire Google Merchant Center. And product tagging gets an API enhancement. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. The new Twitter under Elon Musk is becoming a much more risky place for brands to be. First,

Starting point is 00:00:38 let's talk about brand safety. Up until last week, Twitter staff could remove tweets that were anti-Semitic or called for violence or tweets which used the N-word. They removed the tweets from people's feeds so that brands didn't have to worry about having one of those tweets right beside their logo and ad. Now, that's gone. The new Twitter management has frozen employee access to internal tools used for content moderation. People who work in Twitter's trust and safety department can no longer penalize accounts that break rules

Starting point is 00:01:04 around misleading information, offensive posts, or hate speech. Trust and Safety Department can no longer penalize accounts that break rules around misleading information, offensive posts, or hate speech. And it only took minutes from Elon Musk's takeover on Friday for the use of the N-word to start flooding the platform. Bloomberg reported a 1,700% spike in the use of the racist slur on Friday and Saturday. And worse, Business Standard reports that the number of staff with access to brand and safety moderation tools at all has gone from hundreds to 15. 15 people, none of whom even have the same ability to remove unsafe content as they did a week ago. That's the entire team now devoted to making the platform a safe place for brands using a castrated set of tools. There are probably more people cleaning the floors of Twitter offices

Starting point is 00:01:52 than there are cleaning their content feeds. To be clear, Twitter always had a brand safety problem. It's one of the few remaining large-scale social platforms that has no problem with porn and nudity being on its feeds. It wasn't even six weeks ago when dozens of companies pulled their Twitter marketing campaigns after discovering that their ads had appeared alongside child pornography accounts. Quoting searchengineland.com, a Reuters review found that some tweets include keywords related to rape and teens, which appeared alongside promoted tweets from corporate advertisers. In one example, a promoted tweet for shoe and accessories brand Cole Haan appeared next to a tweet in which a user said they were trading

Starting point is 00:02:36 teen and child content. In another example, a user tweeted searching for content of, quote, young girls only, no boys, unquote, which was immediately followed by a promoted tweet for a children's hospital, unquote. Second, your brand's verification badge is about to become worthless. Elon Musk seems particularly upset about the blue checkmark that indicates an account has been verified. Verified doesn't mean important. It doesn't mean famous, although many important and famous people have it. It means that Twitter has confirmed that the account claiming to be a brand or person is actually that brand or person.

Starting point is 00:03:15 It means that consumers know that when Disney tweets from their HR account, it's really Disney and not some parody account or troll account or scammer. Soon, though, according to an announcement by Elon Musk today, anyone will be able to purchase a blue checkmark for $8 a month and pretend to be your brand. The username DisneyRecruiting, for instance, is available. I could take that account, buy a blue checkmark, and start tricking people into believing I'm actually Disney's HR department. If your brand has a blue checkmark, not only will it become meaningless, it may actually harm your brand, since it won't be long before that checkmark is associated with scammers and fake accounts. Third, some of the most senior executives responsible for managing brand relationships have either quit or been fired. Jay Sullivan, general manager for consumer and revenue product, gone. Sarah Personette, the chief customer officer, gone. The top policy executive, gone. And of the hundreds

Starting point is 00:04:15 of people who do the day-to-day legwork, helping advertisers with their campaigns, clearing automated ad rejections, partnering to help agencies bring clients on board. Well, let's just say things don't look good because today is an equity vesting event. And now that Twitter is private, stock previously given to employees converts to cash today. There's no more reason to hang on. Pretty much every report we have about what it's like inside revealed Twitter has become a chaotic mess with almost nothing working the way it used to. Twitter managers have told some staff they have to work 12 hour days, seven days a week. Some managers reportedly slept at the office over the weekend.

Starting point is 00:05:00 Company Slack channels have gone silent after Musk tweeted content from an internal channel. Software engineers were told to print out the last 50 pages of code they worked on, then told to bring those pages to a meeting, then the meetings were postponed, then cancelled, then they were told to shred the paper with their code. So what are brands doing? As a result of this, some brands have pulled up stakes and left for greener pastures. Agencies, like ours for the record, have advised clients to suspend ad campaigns and reconsider their organic programs. And, a small and related production note, I'm not sure how much we'll be covering Twitter from here in. I don't think there's a marketer on the planet who thought Adobe's plan to stop selling their software outright wasn't evil. Nobody wants to pay hundreds of dollars a month for the same software they used to buy for about the same price. Well, friends, you ain't seen nothing yet. Imagine if I told you

Starting point is 00:05:55 that you would have to start paying to use color. I'm not kidding. Starting this month, Pantone is putting 15,000 colors behind a paywall on some of the most popular Adobe products. And if you don't pay, they will turn those colors to black, even in files you haven't opened or used for years. A designer recently tweeted a screenshot of a notification from Photoshop that says, this file has Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to changes in Pantone's licensing with Adobe. Apparently, Pantone color books were phased out of Photoshop Illustrator and InDesign software updates released after August. Well, after this month, the only Pantone color books remaining for use without a license will be Pantone CMYK coded as well as uncoated and Pantone metallic coded. Customers who rely on any other Pantone colors will need a license, aka a monthly subscription. Pantone Connect costs $60 per year or $8 per month. Instagram has found a way to make things great for marketers and in

Starting point is 00:07:10 the process, by the same action, make things worse for us. Let's start with the good. Instagram is popping up messages in the app for some people, asking them to turn on app permissions that they've previously disabled. Specifically, the ability for Instagram to use their activity for ad targeting. There was an exodus of people turning that off when Apple's iOS 14.5 started prompting people to disable ad tracking. That meant fewer signals, which meant worse data, which meant lousy targeting, and so on. This time, Instagram is willing to bribe them to turn that tracking back on. In that dialogue box consumers are seeing, other than the usual, ads are more relevant,

Starting point is 00:07:50 we won't share your data, yada yada, is a new option. Quote, you'll see fewer ads in your feed, unquote. If that dialogue box isn't just straight up lying, Instagram will apparently reduce the number of ads in people's feeds if they cough up more of their activity data. That could be a pretty compelling reason for some. And that's where the bad comes in. Fewer ads are great for consumers, but terrible for marketers. Digital ads are sold at auction, of course, which means a supply and demand economy. The less ad inventory available, the higher that price will likely be for those placements. It won't hurt Meta any, since while they'll have fewer ad spots to sell, those spots will sell for more money, likely making up the difference. There's a lot we don't

Starting point is 00:08:34 know. How many people saw this message? If it was a test or full rollout, how many fewer ads exactly people will see? But like a lot of news this quarter, no matter how you slice it, it's not good news for us. 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. Yesterday, Google announced it's splitting its Ads Data Hub tool into two entities.

Starting point is 00:09:19 The first is for marketers to build and target ads. This new Ads data hub for marketers is a new way for advertisers to analyze data, get access to insights, and be better informed when they buy media. As marketers use the new option and accumulate new query templates and workflows, the company says there will be less need for additional technical resources. Google also plans to implement publisher-advertiser identity reconciliation, also known as PAIR. With the implementation of PAIR, marketers will soon be able to activate their audience segments on new inventory, including

Starting point is 00:09:50 YouTube. The second entity is for measurement. With the Ads Data Hub for Measurement Partners, partners can provide YouTube measurement services on behalf of marketers, advertisers, agencies, or publishers. Google said that with this launch, it'll be easier for partners to offer accurate measurement and deliver real-time insights. For marketers, this means they can work with independent third-party partners to calculate and report on YouTube ad performance. Google noted these measurement services will be available to marketers via partner vendors. From data to deals, the holiday shopping season is upon us, and Google announced new ways for consumers to find deals online today. First, it's added new coupon and promotion labels to

Starting point is 00:10:38 shopping search results. On items running a special promotion, Google Search will display a new promotion badge. Previously, results would show when items were on sale or the price had dropped. Now, customers can see specific promotions and compare them to others right in search. Google is also adding a new coupon clipping feature, which will let shoppers copy promo codes when they're ready to buy. These features will roll out in the coming weeks. Finally, Google is launching Price Insights, which will show consumers how merchants' prices compare to others and whether they are low, typical, or high. Google added that merchants can track their deals and review their promotions from anywhere they manage their product

Starting point is 00:11:15 listings. To Microsoft now, the company announcing a number of new product updates today, including credit card ads. These are available now globally to advertisers. These ads appear on the right side of Bing search results and run alongside mainline text ad placements. The Performance Max import tool is also now available with or without a merchant feed. This lets you import your Google PMAX campaigns as Microsoft smart shopping campaigns and local inventory ads, as well as dynamic search ads. Microsoft also announced a new conversion setup wizard beta, now available to advertisers with no coding required. By having Microsoft Clarity Insights for Microsoft Advertising enabled within your universal event tracking tag setup,

Starting point is 00:12:02 you can now set up conversion tracking by event as well as measure performance. There's also a new UET tag dashboard, which can help you monitor tag data and fix any issues that arise. The dashboard includes real-time insights into the data that gets sent via UET tags and some troubleshooting action recommendations. With the end of expanded text ads nearing, you can now upload responsive search ads recommendations to your accounts with the Bulk API. And here is your reminder that the deadline for migrating from expanded text ads to responsive search ads is February 1st. The company also announced a new partnership with PrestaShop, which is an open source e-commerce platform similar to Shopify. Also starting this month, retailers will be able to import their store information from Google Merchant Center to create Microsoft Merchant Center stores.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And for retailers working with aggregators, the platform says it has removed the all or nothing choice for direct retailers, and they can now choose to block only specific aggregators from paid listings. Instagram announced a product tagging API for Reels yesterday that lets brands and creators do exactly that, tag products via third-party partner platforms. The platform launched product tagging in feed posts earlier this year. Now it's expanding the API to its TikTok clone. This feature is available for integration by any content publishing API partner and is already integrated with Hootsuite, Later, and Sprout Social.

Starting point is 00:13:34 And finally, Meta is trying to resuscitate Facebook profiles. Yesterday, the company announcing its professional profile setting on Facebook is now available to anyone on its platform. What is professional mode? Well, it was originally designed for creators looking to monetize their followings on the platform. When the features turned on, anyone can have access to creator tools now on their personal Facebook profile without having to create a separate page. The profile setting gives creators access to monetization features and analytics

Starting point is 00:14:06 tools, tools that used to be only accessible via brand pages. Tools include Meta's Reels Play bonus program, stars for audience donations, post scheduling, and an in-app creator support hub. The social network is also launching in-stream ads with eligible professional mode creators, which will let them earn money by enabling ads before, during, and after longer videos that they upload to their profile. Halloween went great.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Thank you for asking. I had a lot to live up to the last couple of years. I've done this big game show on the porch with all sorts of fancy studio lights. I had the Price is Right theme playing nonstop for two hours, which, by the way, Price is Right theme playing nonstop for two hours,

Starting point is 00:14:45 which, by the way, if you listen to it nonstop for two hours, you will eventually hear the voice of Satan telling you to kill things. However, all of a sudden, at like 7.15, and probably my own fault because I was playing Double or Nothing with some candy, we ran out of candy. 7.15, prime trick-or-treating hours. I felt terrible. I even sent my poor wife out to the store.

Starting point is 00:15:04 I'm like, please get me more candy. They were all out. So we had to use the international we have no more candy signal, which is of course to turn off all the lights inside the house and out. And even still, some lovely kid all by himself stood at the door of our completely

Starting point is 00:15:20 dark house, rang the doorbell because he wanted to tell me this. Your house was always the doorbell because he wanted to tell me this. Yeah, your house was always the best. Thank you. My heart. Thank you, kid. You made my night.

Starting point is 00:15:32 Remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter, too, with images, charts, videos, links to dive deeper, and there's a free tier. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter is Becoming a Dangerous Place for Brands

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