Today in Digital Marketing - What Meta’s 2023 Says About Marketers’ 2024

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Friday, February 2nd. Today, what this year holds for the meta ad platform, the web browser that could hurt Google's ad revenues, a warning about your brand's TikTok videos, and why Mastodon might be the sleeper hit for social engagement. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. 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.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. A big day for Meta today, which reported some great financials well above analyst expectations. The good numbers shouldn't be a huge surprise, though, given the large-scale layoffs that made the company a lot leaner. For more on all this and what Meta's results mean for marketers in the year ahead, I'm joined by our Meta Ads correspondent, Andrew Foxwell. Andrew has visibility into $300 million in Meta Ad spend through his Slack community called Foxwell Founders. Andrew, let's talk about the raw numbers first and then what this means for marketers in the year ahead.

Starting point is 00:01:18 So Meta reported on the first start, you know, better than expected Q4 results. So 40.1 billion above sort of a consensus of 31.9 billion. Oh, big jump. Which is a big beat. And it basically came in above about 18 to 20 percent above what Wall Street was expecting, which is a 29 year over year growth which is pretty unbelievable yeah no kidding so what contributed to this you know they talked about why um and a lot of it comes down to a number of different factors so um i think a lot of it was there continues to be a lot of spend that's coming from, well, you know, it's taking Google dollars. It seems to be, it seems to continue to be that place that those are really big dollars that don't have a lot of need behind them other than driving awareness, big air quotes.

Starting point is 00:02:32 So that's a big one. Another one, and I think that is true. that Meta talked about, you know, was look, advantage plus shopping campaigns and our AI algorithm is doing a better job of serving targeted ads. And I think that that is true. I think it's like that one is one of those where they're talking about it. And in reality, ASCs are holding spend and are allowing people to spend more consistently. Another one they called out was Reels monetization. So they're talking about, look, Reels is a big opportunity. And this was talked about last year.

Starting point is 00:03:15 I think even on this podcast, we talked about this, that like, because of the DAUs that they have, the daily active users, even if they monetized Reels like a half of a percent more, it would mean a pretty big bump in revenue. And they've done that. And I think a lot of it is the relevance of the Reels serving mechanism. So that's an interesting one. Yeah. So with that in mind, with last year's performance, how do you think 2024 is going to look for marketers in the year ahead? I think that you're going to continue to see in media buying itself and in campaign serving and or ad serving and in campaign structure, you're going to see more AI and automation being utilized, which I don't think is a surprise to anyone.

Starting point is 00:04:00 There's going to be more consolidation. There's going to be more copy that's AI generated. There's going to be images that are AI generated, the backgrounds of those images, etc. I think you're also going to start to see more interactive advertising is going to be a big theme. So Shopify has finally rolled out the ability to do 3D modeling on your own, basically from your iPhone if you're a Shopify store owner. So you're taking photos of things, you're able to do 360 images around them,

Starting point is 00:04:25 and that's going to be integrated in the meta shopping experience, which is different than Amazon, which in my opinion, you go into Amazon and you look at a listing on Amazon, it's like the Walmart versus Target. There's something inherently cooler about Target in the United States. It has a better brand. And I think that's kind of what we're coming upon here. So there's going to be more interactivity, which is likely going to realize higher AOVs are going to continue to see more ability for cost controls to be put into your campaigns. So being able to say, I only want to spend X amount of dollars, or I only want to have a conversion if it's this amount, that wasn't something that was within the early adoptions of ASC that is currently within the adoptions of ASC, and it's continuing to get better. So I would expect to see that a lot more as well.

Starting point is 00:05:23 And I think a final theme from an advertiser standpoint is there's going to continue to be more and more product tagging that allows you to go either to the website or to the shop, likely to the shop first. So your product catalog continues to be exponentially important. Your meta shop and Instagram shop continues to be exponentially important if you're an e-commerce advertiser. And I think that ecosystem and the way that it works is only going to continue to get better and bigger. I think so. Andrew, thank you. Good stuff. See you next week. Thank you. Andrew Foxwell is our meta ads correspondent. You can learn more about Andrew's digital ads training at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community of senior meta ad buyers at B.Link slash founders. Both of those are affiliate links. You'll find those links at the bottom of our show notes.

Starting point is 00:06:14 And this was only a portion of our full interview, which ran about 11 minutes or so. You can watch the full unedited interview. There is a link to it in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Google is updating its responsive search ads product. First, Google ads will now sometimes display just one headline instead of the usual two. Google says it often finds a single headline performing better. Quoting SE Roundtable's coverage of this today, quote, you can see how often your ads are being shown with one headline or a headline at the beginning of your description lines by reviewing the combinations report. If you have assets that are pinned to headline position one,

Starting point is 00:07:01 headline position two, or description position one, they will continue to show in their designated Google is also rolling out the ability to attach up to three headlines and two descriptions to campaigns at the campaign level. This is especially handy for advertisers looking to highlight specific promotions or sales, complete with start and end dates. The flexibility extends to pinning these elements in preferred positions, ensuring that they show up where you want them in every responsive search ad within your campaign. And last, Google is making changes to the account-level automated assets. Dynamic assets like images, site links, callouts, structured snippets, and so on, can now replace or appear alongside manually created assets. This is for Google's AI to select assets it thinks are most likely to enhance ad performance, even if it means mixing dynamic and manually created site links for optimal engagement.

Starting point is 00:08:02 A new web browser has taken a bold swipe at Google's dominance in the search engine world. The browser is Arc. It's been around for about a year now. Sort of a different way of browsing. It conflates bookmarks and open tabs. It has some helpful AI. I've been using it as my primary browser for a while now. This week, though, the company took a big shot at Google with its new feature called Instant Links. This skips the traditional search results page, instead opening links and multiple tabs related to the user's query right away. This move not only speeds up the search process, but also sidesteps the advertising revenue that typically comes with search queries. Another feature uses AI to scan the internet and offers suggestions tailored to the user's interests, like new dining spots or recipes, all neatly presented on a user-friendly web page.

Starting point is 00:08:59 This is similar to how its new iOS app, released on the weekend, will create custom web pages with bullet-point information on queries. We have an example in today's newsletter of a search that I did of my own name. And it's a web page, or at least it looks like one, but it's not really on the internet. It's essentially a pretty accurate summary of my job, the books I've written, my professional background, my background in journalism, and so on. Both of these features, of course, remove Google from the loop entirely. You never see a Google page and Google never sees the ad revenue. No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses,

Starting point is 00:09:47 data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. So it happened. Music from top artists like Taylor Swift and Drake have gone silent on TikTok. The blackout coming early yesterday when TikTok and Universal Music Group could not see eye to eye on a new licensing deal. This has left many brands and TikTok creators,

Starting point is 00:10:13 especially those who frequently feature music from UMG artists in their content, in a bit of a bind. Because not only can they no longer use that music in their videos, any of their previous videos that used that music, even if at a barely audible level, have been muted entirely, the whole video.

Starting point is 00:10:32 This is especially frustrating given how much TikTok pushed music as part of its best practices for brands. And it raises questions about the future of unofficial remixes and mashups, which are integral to TikTok's viral culture. But all that to say, if your brand had used music in your TikTok videos, it is worth going through the videos on your channel and perhaps setting any muted videos back to draft status.

Starting point is 00:11:01 I don't usually talk about my own home life in this news section of the show, though God knows I've made you suffer through me ranting about video games in the show Extra. But today I wanted to share some data based on a social media post I made. First, a quick explainer on the issue. My wife and I booked a vacation package through WestJet, which is one of two major airlines in Canada. The package included transportation from the airport to the hotel. My wife is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair. I called WestJet this week just to make sure they'd set up an accessible

Starting point is 00:11:28 transfer as they had always done for our previous holiday bookings. Suffice to say, no, they hadn't. And they said, no, they wouldn't. And we were basically on our own, even though they do provide that to able-bodied customers. This is, of course, against federal law in Canada and wheels are in motion there. But this is not a story about the issue as much as the social media post around it. After getting off the phone with the WestJet person, I did what many people do. I fired off an angry social media post. I posted it on Blue Sky, where I have 87 followers, on Threads, where I have 580 followers,

Starting point is 00:12:02 on Mastodon, where I have 865 followers, on LinkedIn, where I have about 2,400 followers, and I posted it on X, where I have about 10,000 followers. The worst performing post, as you can probably imagine, even though I have about 10,000 followers there, by far X was the worst performing there. It got no retweets, no likes. It only got one comment because it came from a friend of ours. Now, to be fair, I basically stopped posting on X more than a year ago. And now I only go there when I want to get the attention of a company that's been shitty. The others were pretty underwhelming too, all except for Mastodon, which was ridiculously viral. 349 engagements, as I'm speaking this sentence,

Starting point is 00:12:47 more than half of which are reposts. The closest to that was LinkedIn that had 16 engagements. Thought it might be interesting to rank engagement as measured by followers, so here are those numbers. Engagement rate for X and Twitter was 0.01%. LinkedIn was two-thirds of 1%. Threads was 1.2%. Blue Sky engagement was 5.7%.

Starting point is 00:13:14 And Mastodon was 40% engagement. Of course, this is a sample size of one, causation correlation and all that. But still, 40% engagement? I'll take that any day. And finally, Google is waving goodbye to an old friend, the cache link, in its search results. When you clicked it, you got a view of what Google's systems saw when it crawled to that web page. It was designed to help users access pages during the Internet's more unreliable days. But now a Google spokesperson says the Internet is reliable enough to no longer need the link.

Starting point is 00:13:57 Except the Cache Link wasn't just a workaround for slow-loading pages. It was a Swiss army knife for SEO experts, journalists, and so on. It allowed for debugging websites, monitoring competitors, and even served as a makeshift VPN by offering a view of sites blocked in some regions. This change doesn't mean Google is ruling out all forms of historical web page access. Danny Sullivan from Google hinted at a potential collaboration with the Internet Archive to fill the gap. But for now, no promises were made. So an update on the WestJet's angry social media post story.

Starting point is 00:14:45 As I was recording that last story, WestJet called back and... What we will do is we can book the private transfer for you and we will not charge you for it. What was weird throughout the whole thing was that this rep seemed to think that we wanted like a limo or something like that. And we just wanted a vehicle that wasn't a bus with three stairs. We just wanted an accessible vehicle of some kind, a car even. Anyway, problem solved. Was it because WestJet's a good corporate

Starting point is 00:15:07 citizen? Perhaps. Might also be telling that this call came maybe two hours after we looped Canada's chief accessibility officer into the issue. Apparently she made a call. Anyway, I'm sure it's just coincidence, right? I mean, these things happen. WestJet would have, I mean, they probably would have called anyway.

Starting point is 00:15:23 None of this is probably a big deal. That will do it for the week. Today in digital marketing is produced by our agency, EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Snunamik First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 00:15:55 Have a restful weekend. I'll see you on Monday. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - What Meta’s 2023 Says About Marketers’ 2024

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