Today in Digital Marketing - What is Going On With Facebook Attribution?!

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

It's getting worse — attribution in your Facebook analytics are disappearing. Also: Twitter upgrades its pixel, TikTok catches up on quick-loading mobile landing pages, Snapchat's new augmented reality can be powered by your product catalog, Meta restructures its agency program...Go Premium! No ads, more stories, and extended deep-dive weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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. Today, it's getting worse. Attribution in your Facebook analytics are disappearing.

Also, Twitter upgrades its pixel. TikTok catches up on quick-loading mobile landing pages. Snapchat's new augmented reality can be powered by your product catalog. Meta restructures its agency program. And on the Premium Podcast, with more stories, no ads, and exclusive Deep Dive Weekend episodes, tap the link in the notes for more. If Facebook is losing teens by the millions, why is its overall user base getting younger? It's Wednesday, January 26th, 2022. Happy Australia Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQDigital,

and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing episode 548. Back in the glory days of video games, like the late 80s, early 90s, the game giant Nintendo had a very unique service. A phone line with counselors at the other end. Not counselors to help you with your mental health, but to help you with your game. You want to freeze

him by hitting him in the head. Okay. But then you want to spear him kind of midway through his body. All right. So it kind of cuts him in half, basically. Continue to the right until you get to this real big drop-off. That's when you want to use the umbrella. Looks like a sort of like a balloon with a plus sign on it. Well, then you have to go and fight Astos. Remember, these were the days before wikis that would tell you everything. The phone line was hugely popular until the company retired it in 2005. I often think back to that phone line and think that if I were granted one wish,

one company I could force to have a similar line, one with answers to stumbling blocks, it would be Meta. And I'm guessing that would be yours too. I'll also bet you this, this week we'd all be calling about missing attribution data. guessing that would be yours too. I'll also bet you this, this week we'd all be calling about missing attribution data. Attribution, knowing where a lead or sale came from. Did they see

our Facebook ad? Was it a Google search? A TV campaign? We've lost some of that data, of course, with iOS 14.5. But in the last couple of weeks, many media buyers have been noticing it getting worse. Much worse. Yeah, so the last two weeks have been crazy. Rock Ladnik runs the Flat Circle agency. I spoke with him this afternoon. So I think it started in like on the second week of the new year

and there was a lot of attribution data that was just completely lost. So accounts that before had, let's say, 60 to 70% of data being attributed, that fell down to like 30% to 40% or even lower. And that makes media buying a very hard job. And it's very account-specific and completely random.

It goes like between weeks. Some accounts are better at attributing, some are others. And yeah, it's making life hell right now. Do you have any gut feel as to why this is happening? So I spoke with a couple of Facebook representatives. And one of them is actually in the developer part. And they just said that they're working on their attribution modeling a lot. He couldn't disclose pretty much anything,

but a lot of work in progress in the backend is happening right now. Are there any workarounds? What can digital marketers do to counter this mess while it's happening? Basically, what we've all been doing for the last half a year or something when iOS 14 hit, so looking at dashboards, comparing data between what you're seeing in ad accounts and your Shopify and other dashboards and other tools that what you're seeing in ad accounts and your Shopify and

other dashboards and other tools that can help you with attribution. And then figuring out what the best practices are when it comes to like scaling or optimizing. And that's where the big issues are happening right now. Rokhladnik runs the Flat Circle Agency. He spoke to me this afternoon from his office in Slovenia. Heads up, agency people. Today is the switchover day for Meta's new partner program. The company is simplifying their program into just two tiers across all markets. Those tiers will be the member tier and the badged partner tier. Account tier agencies will now be part of member tier. Preferred and premium tier agencies will now be known as Badged Partners. Meta says this is a cosmetic change only.

Nothing has changed structurally. This won't have an effect on your access to existing benefits, regardless of your designation. By the way, apparently the email that Meta sent out about this this morning was full of dead links. So truly, nothing has changed. All snark aside, by the way, I am seeing reports that Facebook had some big overspending issues for ad campaigns early this morning European time. One media buyer said 35% of his campaign's daily budget disappeared in that short window and the results were terrible. So, as always, keep a close rein on your media buys

and an even closer rein on your Facebook media buys. To Twitter now. The company announcing today it plans to improve your ad campaigns that drive traffic to websites with the launch of three new ad products. Also, the platform renamed its website clicks and conversions objective to website traffic. Here are the new thing products. Also, the platform renamed its website clicks and conversions objective to website traffic. Here are the new thingies. Number one, site visits optimization. This is a new goal, which will help you find and serve your ads to the audiences most likely to visit your website. By enabling the Twitter website tag, that's their name for their pixel, the platform can track

actions that people take on your website and then attribute them to your campaigns. According to Twitter, while testing with advertisers who had website traffic goals, site visits optimization outperformed existing offerings and resulted in a lower cost per site visit of 31%. Number two, aggregated measurement. You knew this was coming. This is all part of Twitter's response to Apple's app tracking transparency, the feature designed to provide conversion metrics by counting events in aggregate for audiences who have opted out of tracking on iOS devices. Brands will be able to see an aggregated view of site metrics and conversion events in Twitter ads manager reporting. And the platform says, while results may vary depending on the specific advertiser or campaign, it saw an average 31% increase in attributable site visit conversions.

And three, event manager. This is like Facebook's, kind of a centralized hub that will help you manage your Twitter pixel and its web-based conversion events. The update includes a new interface for setting up your pixel, clearer prompts for setting up your conversion events, and updates on the status of those conversion events. 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. TikTok has caught up to some of the other platforms with the introduction of what they're calling an Instant Page ad product. This is, of course, similar to what Facebook calls an instant experience. Instant page is, quote, a lightweight native landing page within the app that loads up to 11 times faster than standard mobile pages, unquote. Instant page will let the viewer view videos and images, swipe through carousels, and click on buttons to explore another destination,

all without leaving the app. The ad setup is really nice, lots of drag and drop. It's compatible with conversion, reach, traffic, and video views objectives. Also a new ad product from Snapchat to tell you about. This one aims to boost the augmented reality experience for consumers and brands. The platform has announced that shopping lenses are now available. These let users interact with, try on, and purchase multiple items within a single lens by simply swiping through the lens product cards, a new user interface specifically for

shopping. Check today's premium newsletter for screenshots of what it looks like. For consumers, the lens provides links to make purchases on new lens product cards that appear as users virtually try on products. Key product information is in real-time, allowing users to make purchases on items and styles that are in stock and ready to ship. And real-time updates for consumers also means real-time analytics for marketers. The shopping lenses are linked directly to your product catalog, and brands will be able to gain insights when a product is tried on virtually. Beginning today, brands can connect their product catalogs to their AR lens experiences. To Instagram now, the company today announcing some improvements on how you can schedule an

Instagram live with live in profiles. Up until now, the only way you could promote a live was by creating a post or a story to advertise it. With this update, anyone who visits your profile page will be able to see that you have a live broadcast coming up, which could attract more viewers.

The new display allows you to list your upcoming Instagram Live streams on your profile with a banner. When that banner is clicked, it will offer additional details in a pop-up prompt where people can sign up to receive a notification of when the stream will start. Schedule as many lives as you wish. A side-scrolling list of your Instagram lives will be displayed on your profile. Some numbers out this week from Microsoft's ads business. They say that more than $3 billion was spent on their platform last quarter.

The company released its earnings report yesterday for Q4 of last year. According to the report, search and news advertising was up 32% year over year. And LinkedIn's revenue, remember Microsoft bought it some time ago, LinkedIn's revenue grew by 37%. The company's total revenue from advertising, including LinkedIn, has surpassed $10 billion over the last 12 months. As for LinkedIn, it accounted for another $3.5 billion in Microsoft's revenue that quarter. In total, Microsoft reported record revenue of $51.7 billion for the quarter ending December 31st. And finally today, Instacart announced two new features for its ads manager platform aimed at increasing awareness of CPG brands, complementing the company's online checkout capabilities and ultimately driving more sales.

Those two features are first, new brand pages. Consumers will be able to find in-stock products from retailers that they've recently browsed or purchased by visiting a brand page. And advertisers can customize the page and create a curated collection for their brand. And number two, a suite of display products. Advertisers will now be able to create product banners that appear to users as they browse Instacart. Not much to say here. Check out the premium podcast, of course, todayindigital.com slash premium feed or tap the link in the bio.

And if you'd like to comment on what you hear and have me read your tweet out, just include the hashtag TIDM or leave a voicemail at todayindigital.com slash voicemail. Or you can tap the link for that in the show notes as well. Talk to you tomorrow. How do I pronounce your name? Rok Hladnik. Rok? Rok, like hard rock.

Rok, like a rock. It's the same pronunciation. Rok I have no problem with. It's the last name I'm going to mess up. It's Hladnik. Hladnik. Hladnik. Hladnik. Chladnik. Chladnik. Alright. I'll do my best. That is going to be great.