Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter is Becoming a Dangerous Place for Brands
Episode Date: November 1, 2022The real reasons brands are bailing out of Twitter. You'll pay to use colour in Photoshop now. Instagram's new plan means more data, but also pricier ads. Microsoft lets you import your entire... Google Merchant Centre. And product tagging gets an API enhancement?✨ GO PREMIUM! ✨ ✓ Ad-free episodes ✓ Story links in show notes ✓ Deep-dive weekend editions ✓ Better audio quality ✓ Live event replays ✓ Audio chapters ✓ Earlier release time ✓ Exclusive marketing discounts ✓ and more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premiumfeed 📰 The TiDM Newsletter: Get It (daily or weekly)✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review 🎤 Follow: LinkedIn • TikTok • FB Page/Group👨🏻💼 Follow Tod: LinkedIn • TikTok ------------------------------------🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses 👍 TOOLS WE RECOMMEND• Social media mgmt: Sprout Social and Agorapulse• Marketing tools: Appsumo• Podcast recording: Riverside.FM💡 MARKETING SPOTLIGHTIf you like Today in Digital Marketing, you’ll LOVE Stacked Marketer: the free daily newsletter that gives marketers an edge on the competition in just 7 minutes a day.Covering breaking news, tips and tricks, and insights for all major marketing channels like Google, Facebook, TikTok, native ads, SEO and more.Join 32k+ marketers who read it daily. Sign up free now! ------------------------------------ Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate Producer: Steph Gunn. Ad Coordination: RedCircle. Production Coordinator: Sarah Guild. Theme Composer: Mark Blevis. Music rights: Source AudioSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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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,
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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Talk to you tomorrow.