Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter's 1.9 Million Accidental Errors

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, shocking new numbers suggest consumers don't actually care about being tracked at all. Meta reports its slowest revenue growth in a decade. Twitter overcounted its daily users for three straight years. But its recent earnings report may explain why it became a target for acquisition. And are the days of Instagram posts behind us? It's Thursday, April 28th. I'm Steph Gunn, filling in for Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. How do consumers feel about apps tracking their data?

Starting point is 00:00:37 Evidence suggests that the opt-out rates on Apple mobile devices are not nearly as disastrous as marketers first predicted. Apple's app tracking transparency has been in effect for a year now, and its adoption is widespread. A new study has found that 8 out of 10 apps have implemented the ATT prompt and have shown it to consumers. And fears that nearly all users would choose to opt out of the tracking appear to have been overblown. Half of the users who had been shown the prompt tapped on the allow option.

Starting point is 00:01:04 According to the report from AppsFlyer, the consent level was highest when users launched the app for the first time, with 40% of people allowing tracking. Researchers found a 30% drop in consent occurs in the first two hours following download of an app. The study also notes that showing a post-ATT in-app notification to non-consenting users can also be beneficial, since they may not know they have the option to change their tracking settings. In its first earnings update of the year, Meta yesterday reported its slowest revenue growth since going public. The industry questioned whether it had plateaued and was now on the decline after its last report indicated a decline in usage. The report indicates that Facebook user growth may be back on track, but it's not in the clear yet. In its first quarter,

Starting point is 00:01:55 its user base and revenue increased, but it's losing momentum. First off, the number of daily active users continued to level off, reaching 1.9 billion, an increase of only 4% year over year. The company reported 2.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook, up just 3%. For Meta's Family of Apps chart, which includes users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, the trends were similar, as family monthly active people and daily active people both increased by 6% compared with the first quarter in 2021. In terms of revenue, Meta brought in $27 billion for the quarter, up 7% year-over-year. While Meta does note that ad impressions delivered across its apps increased by 15% year-over-year, a decline in revenue in its biggest two ad markets,

Starting point is 00:02:46 North America and Europe, is a concern. Finally, according to the report, the metaverse is off to a rough start. The tech giant's Reality Labs division posted an almost $3 billion loss in its first quarter of 2022. In an earnings call, Zuckerberg said, I recognize it's expensive to build. Here are 1.9 million reasons why Twitter may have accepted Elon Musk's $44 billion deal. According to its earnings release, the company admitted to overcounting the number of users on its service for at least three years due to a technical error in linked accounts. Twitter noted that it launched a feature in March 2019 allowing users with more

Starting point is 00:03:31 than one account to link them together, enabling them to switch more easily between their different accounts. The multiple accounts belonged to a single person, yet each was counted separately as a monetizable daily active user. Consequently, the platform said it re-ran the numbers for the daily active users metric, which it had over-counted in previous quarters, and adjusted the totals. The results found Twitter overstated its users by anywhere from 1.4 million to 1.9 million, depending on the quarter. In spite of Twitter's miscalculation, its earnings report numbers provide some insight into why it might have been acquired. For the quarter, it posted revenues of $1.2 billion, up 16% year-over-year. A significant portion of its revenue comes from advertising,

Starting point is 00:04:21 which increased 23% year-over-year to $1.1 billion. This will be interesting considering yesterday we reported that many advertising industry analysts anticipate a volatile future for the platform. Over the same period, subscription and other revenue fell by almost a third, totaling $94 million. No details were provided on the Twitter Blue subscription service, but most industry watchers believe it, too, is off to a slow start. 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

Starting point is 00:05:05 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. Has video completely killed photo sharing? If you haven't already started to pivot your brand's content to video,

Starting point is 00:05:23 you might want to start. Meta announced during its earnings call that watching Reels now makes up more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram. The company also reported that video of all kinds makes up half the time users spend on Facebook. Meta did not specify how much of that time is made up by Reels, but it claimed that Reels is also performing well on Facebook. Zuckerberg said during the call that although Reels don't monetize as well as Stories currently do, the company is optimistic about its future. He also mentioned that the company is working on enhancing its AI recommendation algorithm as the company tries to keep up with TikTok. Another platform feeling the heat from social media's current golden child is Pinterest, which addressed the threat of TikTok in its first quarter earnings report.

Starting point is 00:06:14 The future is not looking so bright for the image-sharing platform. While Pinterest added 2 million monthly active users in Q1, it's down 9% year over year. Quoting the company, Time spent on competitive, video-centric consumer platforms remains a headwind, particularly in our more mature markets. These declines were most pronounced for our desktop web and mobile web users, with mobile app users showing more resilience. The company did bring in $575 million in revenue versus the $573 million expected. However, while Pinterest posted better year-over-year results, its quarterly results decreased.

Starting point is 00:06:59 From financials to the feeds, with the news that Google Ads has released a small upgrade to its API version 10.1. The update provides support for Discover campaigns, campaign groups, local service campaigns, and more. By using the GoogleAdsService.search and GoogleAdsService.search stream, you can create and update campaigns and retrieve their attributes and performance metrics. And the campaign group service lets you create, update, and retrieve their attributes and performance metrics. And the campaign group service lets you create, update, and retrieve campaigns, as well as their performance metrics. Local services campaigns previously in beta are now in general availability.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And finally, Google has added the following types of assets, including dynamic real estate, dynamic custom, dynamic hotels and rentals, dynamic local assets, and more. And finally, maybe this whole Twitter thing was just a dream. An opinion piece in Reuters Today speculates that Elon Musk won't even buy Twitter. The piece points to a few compelling reasons why the Doge father could get cold feet, and no, none of the reasons include Twitter's miscalculation about its daily users. The first reason is Tesla, as stock has fallen about a fifth since Musk revealed his stake in Twitter. The second is China. The article suggests that China, where Tesla produces

Starting point is 00:08:20 half of its vehicles, could hold Tesla hostage if Musk-owned Twitter doesn't play ball. And the final reason is Twitter's stock, as it's currently trading 11% below his offer price. According to the terms of the acquisition, if he does back out, Musk would be required to pay a fee of $1 billion. So I had kind of a strange experience this morning while I was out walking my dog. Someone ran up to me. They like chased me down to ask me if I wanted to breed her. I'm like, first of all, she's fixed. Second of all, she's almost nine. That's like 63 in dog years. And third of all, adopt, don't shop. You know, I understand that dogs are quite the hot commodity

Starting point is 00:09:03 because of the pandemic, but I feel like that is still a super weird thing to ask a stranger walking down the street. I'm going to make sure that I take a different route tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow. It's okay.

Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter's 1.9 Million Accidental Errors

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