Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter's Future: A Thousand Algorithms?!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, a law prohibiting platforms from removing content has been put on hold, for now. Which marketing strategies convert online shoppers? Snapchat launches a new ad product to target Gen Z vacationers. Are customizable content algorithms coming to Twitter? And if so, how will that affect digital marketers? It's Wednesday, June 1st. I'm Steph Gunn, filling in for Todd Maffin. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing. We begin today with some big news from Meta. Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating

Starting point is 00:00:34 officer and the second-in-command to Mark Zuckerberg, announced she is stepping down from her role after 14 years. The company's chief growth officer will take over this fall. Sandberg will continue to serve on Meta's board of directors. In a Facebook post, Sandberg said, Mark and I will transition my direct reports over the next few months, while Zuck said in a separate Facebook post that Meta is also planning an internal reorganization to coincide with the shift. A new law in the U.S. would ban social media platforms from taking down material is on pause. Yesterday, in a split decision, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a Texas law that could fundamentally change platforms like Twitter and Facebook by requiring them to allow hate speech and extremism on their platforms. In a 5-4 ruling,

Starting point is 00:01:27 the justices put the measure on hold, granting a request from tech groups that represent the platforms, Bloomberg reports. The tech group said the ruling would bar platforms from removing neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan screeds or propaganda about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court allowed the law, formerly known as HB20, to go into effect. The Texas law, backed by Republicans, prohibits social media platforms with more than 50 million users from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. According to the Texas governor and other Republicans, the measure is necessary to protect conservative voices from being silenced. Bloomberg noted that a spokesperson for Facebook said that the company would wait for

Starting point is 00:02:11 a response from the tech groups, while Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. This is not the end of the matter, though, as the Supreme Court only put the controversial Texas law on hold, while a constitutional challenge goes forward in a lower court. If it does, in fact, come into law, this could have a significant effect on how brands manage comments and engagement on their social channels, perhaps even finding themselves in legal trouble for moderating their Facebook pages. Watch this space. A new study released yesterday found that email continues to reign supreme as the leading method of marketing to online shoppers. When asked about which marketing efforts influenced

Starting point is 00:02:54 their decision to make an online purchase, nearly 45% of consumers indicated general email. The study by Digital Commerce 360 surveyed more than a thousand online shoppers and suggests that online retailers should take advantage of email communication that can be generated during order placement. At least one in five consumers refer to these email types as influential, including offers within order confirmation or shipping notification emails, items left in carts, and back-in-stock emails. Interestingly, traditional postal methods, such as catalogs and other printed material sent through the mail, influence online purchases almost as much as email. Among the other marketing efforts that consumers believe

Starting point is 00:03:38 influence their decision to make online purchases, a third of consumers indicated that ads on the content that they see online have the most influence. One in five said search engines. One in five also said advertising on social media. Only one in ten indicated retargeting influences them to make a purchase online. Though you've got to wonder how many consumers are even aware that they're being retargeted to. Well, influencers were the least significant among respondents. And apparently, you can't overdo it. The study found high frequency of marketing emails results

Starting point is 00:04:10 in strong open rates. 7 out of 10 online shoppers open email advertising a few times a week, and 4 out of 10 open it daily. That said, open rates are one thing, but getting them to convert is another. According to the study, despite high open email rates, the majority of shoppers only make a purchase as a result of an email monthly. What type of content should you be focusing on to get your customers to open your emails? Not surprisingly, 60% of online shoppers that emails about promotions and discounts get them to open your brand's email. As for what social media platform you should be advertising on, over two-thirds of online shoppers said that Facebook is the

Starting point is 00:04:50 social channel most likely to lead to a purchase, followed by YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and surprisingly, Twitter beat out TikTok. 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.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Snap Inc. unveiled a new ad product today to target Gen Zs and Millennials with Wunderlust. The platform announced dynamic travel ads just in time for travel season, which will specifically serve hotels, airlines, tours, and online travel agencies. This is the first category expansion outside of e-commerce within Snapchat's current dynamic ads offering. The company said the ads build on a foundation of location features such as location data, snap map, and places. Snapchat said dynamic travel ads can provide brands with benefits including advanced audience targeting based on Snapchatters' intent to travel to specific places, locally relevant campaign delivery to serve companies in the travel industry,

Starting point is 00:06:10 and a customized catalog set up to build the needs of travel advertisers. The company also said that its new ad product can help reach a broader audience of travelers as well as drive bookings. Twitter employees are facing just a few issues right now. First, a changeover in leadership. Second, a hiring freeze. And third, getting trolled by Elon Musk on Twitter. Now, on top of all of that, some will be assigned new jobs, Bloomberg reports. Twitter is shuffling its product team. The company is apparently removing resources from efforts to grow the scope of the product, like audio spaces, newsletters, and communities, to focus on more immediate needs, such as user growth.

Starting point is 00:06:52 There has also been some speculation about layoffs, but according to the company, no layoffs are planned at this time. A Twitter spokesperson stated that the company is making some updates to its consumer product team structure and roadmap to better focus on the area that will have the greatest positive impact to the public conversation. And I guess TweetDeck for Mac didn't make the cut. Today, the platform announced it's cancelling the product in a tweet that says, we're saying goodbye to TweetDeck for the Mac app. July 1st is the last day it'll be available. You can still use TweetDeck for the Mac app. July 1st is the last day it'll be available.

Starting point is 00:07:27 You can still use TweetDeck on the web. But if you're looking for an alternative to the web, 9to5Mac recommends Tweeten. Todd played around with the Substitute app this morning and said it's a solid replacement. While Twitter is restructuring its product team, a recent discovery suggests new algorithmic controls may be coming. Yesterday, a reverse engineering expert tweeted the finding in the backend code of the app and said, Twitter is working on content control tools. From what it

Starting point is 00:07:57 appears, it'll provide a more official way for third parties to enhance the experience within the Twitter app, including letting the third party tools provide custom timelines. This could essentially enable users to pick their own algorithm, not just Twitter's home timeline algorithm. If this does end up happening, this could end up being chaotic for digital marketers. While the various platforms' discovery algorithms aren't well known, at least there's only one of them, and we generally know what goes into them. If third parties can start making their own sorting methods, we'll lose that loose predictability

Starting point is 00:08:34 we've had. The concept is, of course, in line with Elon Musk's efforts to push more algorithmic transparency on the platform. Musk recently criticized Twitter's current algorithm sorting, which he claims manipulates the experience of users. Yesterday, Pinterest announced an expansion of its ad business into Japan. Now, all Japanese businesses will be able to launch campaigns on the platform. Like other businesses with access, they can upload product catalogs to Pinterest and automatically turn their products into shoppable product pins.

Starting point is 00:09:08 The Pinterest channel on Shopify provides access to Pinterest shopping features, catalog ingestion, and an advertising buying interface that does not require editing code. A bug in Google Business Profiles was temporarily disabling product management features in Merchant Center. Yesterday, an SEO software company reported that businesses can no longer edit current products in their Google business profiles and can only add new products through Merchant Center. However, according to Search Engine Roundtable, Google confirmed it was a bug that lasted a few hours and that the tech giant has no intention to force people to manage their products in the Google Merchant Center.

Starting point is 00:09:53 If disconnecting from overwork is so hard, how come a bottle opener can do it? That's part of Heineken's latest marketing campaign in which the beer company devised a unique bottle opener, one that shuts down work apps when cracking a beer. The product, called The Closer, looks like a regular bottle opener with Heineken branding. In the campaign video, people are shown feeling overburdened with work demands and then abruptly unplug as they snap off the cap of a Heineken, which automatically shuts down their laptops. Now, if only Heineken could create a bottle opener that prevents your Microsoft team status from changing too away.

Starting point is 00:10:34 So I'm throwing my best friend a bachelorette party this weekend. My dining room table is currently filled with all sorts of novelty items, all of which I bought online. So, you know, my targeted ads are really something else this week, but one of them got me pretty good. So I had an ad for erotic tarot cards and they do very amateurly read tarot. So I figured that this could be something fun that we could all do together this weekend. So I got them in the mail yesterday and the pictures are quite detailed and graphic. I don't know what I was expecting. I think I thought that they were going to be more of like a harlequin romance tarot set. Nope,

Starting point is 00:11:12 not at all. It's a good thing that the bride's mother isn't coming. I'll have to let you know how it goes on Slack next week. Almost 900 digital marketers just like you are in our Slack community. Inside, you'll find great advice on campaign setup and scaling. Jobs get posted there. People use it to get advice, all sorts of stuff. It's free to join. Just tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash Slack. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:11:38 Todd's back tomorrow. You live your life your way. Hang tight, let's ride your way you make it look easy and that's just because you a boss easy like a sunday morning

Today in Digital Marketing - Twitter's Future: A Thousand Algorithms?!

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