Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter's 1.9 Million Accidental Errors
Episode Date: April 28, 2022Shocking 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 3 straight y...ears... But its recent earnings report may explain why it became a target for acquisition...And are the days of Instagram posts behind us? Go Premium! No ads, weekend editions, story links, audio chapters, better audio quality, earlier release time, and more.Get each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links).HELPFUL LINKS:ADS: Reach thousands of marketers from as low as $20 with our ad options.MORE CONTENT: Email newsletter, expert interviews, and blog posts.HANG OUT: Join our Slack communityEnjoying the Show? Tweet about us • Rate and review • Send a voicemailFOLLOW US:The Show: LinkedIn • TikTok • Reddit • FB Page • FB GroupTod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • Twitch • InstagramRECOMMENDED:Jyll Saskin Gales — Inside Google Ads Andrew Foxwell — Foxwell Founders Membership • Scaling After iOS14 • All CoursesCheck out the steep "Podcast Perks" marketing discounts we've negotiated for youOthers — AppSumo lifetime marketing deals • Riverside.FM podcast recording siteCREDITS: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. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Ad coordination by RedCircle. Production coordination by Sarah Guild. Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.(If the links in the show notes do not work in your podcast app, visit https://todayindigital.com )Some links in these show notes may provide us with a commission.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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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?
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.
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,
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,
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
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,
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.
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Has video completely killed photo sharing?
If you haven't already started
to pivot your brand's content to video,
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.