Today in Digital Marketing - Unraveling Threads
Episode Date: July 6, 2023It has the users of Instagram, the advertisers of Facebook: Is Threads the threat to Twitter it seems to be? Plus: TikTok loses popularity, B2B buyers are younger than you think, and why YouTube is re...writing the comments left on your brand’s video..Thanks to our sponsors!- Go to HelloFresh.com/digital16 and use code digital16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping.✨ 𝗚𝗢 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗨𝗠! ✨Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Weekly Meta Ad platform updates with Andrew Foxwell✅ Weekly Google Ad platform updates with Jyll Saskin Gales✅ Earlier episodes each day✅ Story links in show notes✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-exclusive Slack channels✅ Marketing headlines each morning in Slack✅ 30% off our Newsletter✅ Back catalog of 30+ marketing science interviews✅ Discounts on marketing tools✅...and a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium.🔘 Follow us on social media🎙️ Subscribe free to our other podcast "Behind the Ad"🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digitalIf you like Today in Digital Marketing, you’ll love Morning Brew.Get smarter in 5 minutes (and it's free!)There's a reason more than 4 million marketers and business people start their day with Morning Brew - the daily email that delivers the latest news from marketing to the ad business to social media. Business and marketing news doesn't have to be boring...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free.Check it out!.💵 Send us a tip🤝 Join our Slack: todayindigital.com/slack📰 Get the Newsletter: Click Here (daily or weekly)📰 Get The Top Story each day on LinkedIn. ✉️ Contact Us: Email or Send Voicemail⚾ Pitch Us a Story: Fill in this form🎙️ Be a Guest on Our Show: Fill in this form📈 Reach Marketers: Book Ad🗞️ Classified Ads: Book Now🙂 Share: Tweet About Us • Rate and Review.ABOUT THIS PODCASTToday 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 Audio.🎒UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS• Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin Gales• Google Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin Gales• Foxwell Slack Group and Courses .Some 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 is Thursday, July 6th. Today, it has the users of Instagram, the advertisers of Facebook.
Is Threads the threat to Twitter? It seems to be. Plus, TikTok loses popularity, B2B
buyers are younger than you think, and why YouTube is rewriting the comments left on
your brand's videos. I'm Todd Maff. That's Ahead. Today, Digital Marketing.
Meta last night launched Threads, its Twitter rival, a day ahead of schedule.
Within the first 24 hours, the app had more than 30 million signups. So far, I'd say the general opinion is that Threads is well-built, if a little underwhelming in terms of excitement.
But a piece from Gizmodo today points out this might actually be the key to its success. Quote, on a chaotic internet fueled by outrage,
dull might be what users and advertisers want. All Meta has to do to crush Twitter is to provide a
safe and stable alternative where you can make your dumb little posts and get likes from your
followers. So far, it's working.
Threads is pure banality.
If Threads can get around some headwinds,
the app has major advantages that could pave the way for Meta's victory and Twitter's disaster.
Unquote.
So, to the marketing implications.
First, many brands have jumped on already. This in stark contrast to other Twitter competitors,
Blue Sky, Mastodon,
T2, Spoutable. Most of these have been given a pass by brands, which makes sense given that
Threads pulls its data from Instagram, where brands already have a presence, so it's easy
for them to hop in. On the advertising front, nothing. There are no ads on Threads, but the
company says ads will be how they monetize.
For now, they're just working on building the app and its community. Almost certainly,
you'll be able to run ads to Threads, and it will show up as a placement in Ads Manager.
For influencer marketing, nothing established. There are no partnership labels or the same kind
of connection tools that Instagram has, though I suppose nothing preventing you from running that sort of campaign informally.
One of the more surprising things Meta promises is it will soon join ActivityPub.
That's the growing decentralized network that Mastodon and other platforms use.
If that comes to fruition, it means people will be able to easily leave threads, take
their content with them to another platform, and redirect their followers to their new home.
It also means you'd be able to follow someone's threads account on, say, Mastodon, or vice versa.
And the API that would drive that most likely would not push ads down the pipe, much in the way Twitter's API or Reddit's API contain only the content, not the ads.
That's part of the reason why not everyone is convinced
they'll follow through on decentralization. Liz Hagelthorne worked at Twitter, today runs
PostMarket, a content licensing platform. I spoke with her this afternoon.
I've seen a lot of promises, especially in press and PR, only to monopolize the future.
I can definitely see a world in which Th exploits and takes advantage of current decentralized networks. But will that be a two way street where the decentralized network can take advantage of threads? I don't see it happening without a paywall for API access or some type of, you know, deal with the devil there. That's never happened in Instagram's entire history until competition came along. The app, still in its infancy, of course, falls short in a few areas.
One of the biggest problems is that you can't set your timeline
to view posts from just the accounts you follow.
So most people's feeds are overrun by celebrities,
brands and influencers that you don't follow on the app.
The head of Instagram says it's on the list of features he wants to add.
Other features on that list include post editing support, hashtags, searchability, and an easier way to switch between accounts. This afternoon,
one of Twitter's lawyers sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter threatening to sue Meta over the app.
The letter claims that Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees to develop threads,
which is a little rich considering Elon fired more than half the
company's employees. But Twitter says many of these people still have access to its trade secrets
and Meta took advantage of the situation by creating a copycat app. A Meta spokesperson
late this afternoon posted this to his own threads account. To be clear, no one on the
threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. That's just not a thing.
You can follow us.
We've added our own accounts.
My own personal one is at Todd Maffin and our podcast and newsletter account at Today in Digital Marketing.
To other news now with online shoppers apparently shifting their search habits.
TikTok's role as an e-commerce search engine
is waning among U.S. adults, according to a recent study. The study found that half of
respondents typically begin their search on Amazon, making it the top choice, followed by Google.
The study found that most people using TikTok, Instagram, or Reddit as their starting point for
product searches are younger millennials and Gen Z,
but data shows a steep decline in TikTok being used as a search engine among these age groups, with Gen Z's usage dropping from 20% to 10% and millennials from 10% to 5% between August 2022
and last month. On the other hand, Amazon's popularity as a go-to search engine increased
by 45% for both age groups. The data comes from Civic Science's survey of more than 5,000
U.S. online shoppers.
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Marketers need to refresh their social media marketing strategies due to B2B buyers being younger than they think they are,
according to a new Insider Intelligence report published yesterday.
These buyers are digitally savvy, dominate online conversations, actively participate in the purchasing process,
and rely on social media content for information and solutions.
As the number of young decision makers continues to rise, social media's influence in B2B marketing
strategies grows as well. The report notes that millennials are influenced significantly by social
media content when making final purchasing decisions. Recent surveys by W Promote and
Ascend 2 found that social media has become
the most effective B2B channel for both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel strategies,
according to nearly half of marketers. LinkedIn is also witnessing a shift toward a younger user
base. It's projected that millennials and Gen Zs will make up more than 60% of the total U.S.
users on the platform this year.
Overall, B2B professionals' engagement on social media has increased significantly.
A recent report indicated that almost 40% of professionals across various sectors
engage with content multiple times daily, compared to 30% in 2021. As we've reported previously, Adobe recently added an indemnity clause to
protect enterprise users from legal issues related to copyright problems in AI-generated content.
This means that Adobe will cover the costs of any legal actions related to AI-generated content on
their platform. Now, Shutterstock is taking on Adobe with its own
generative AI indemnification offer. The company announcing today it's offering enterprise customers
full indemnification for the license and use of generative AI images on its platform. Because
Shutterstock's AI image generator is trained using images it claims to have already had permission
to use.
The company says it's unlikely anyone using its products will be on the hook,
since those images have already been licensed.
And finally, YouTube is testing a new feature that could get your brand's content some more reach,
hyperlinked keywords in video comments. Currently, viewers have to leave the video in order to learn more about a topic or product
mentioned in the comments.
Now, the platform is experimenting with hyperlinked keywords that let users click on them and
initiate a new YouTube search while the video continues playing in the mini player.
Phrases or single words in comments that encourage exploration will be hyperlinked.
YouTube says it selects the linked keywords based on user preferences and commenters cannot modify them.
Creators, though, can remove links from video comments.
Sometimes when some big thing happens and you're looking at tweets or social media posts and someone's posted a video, you see a reporter in there saying, hey, can we use this?
You know these posts?
So last night, after I got on threads and found it, that it was just full of people that I didn't follow.
I made a old man rant about it on my TikTok.
Went a little bit viral.
And a reporter from NBC showed up or an associate producer or something like that showed up and said,
hey, can we use this with credit?
I'm like, yeah, sure, go nuts, whatever.
Didn't think anything of it.
Woke up this morning to discover that the Today Show
from NBC had actually used a clip of it.
I still haven't seen it, but
that was kind of cool anyway.
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And once again, me on threads, at Todd Maffin, us on threads, at Today in Digital Marketing.
Thanks for listening.
See you tomorrow. Outro Music