Today in Digital Marketing - When ‘For You’ Becomes ‘Forget You’

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, September 10th. Today, you suck and so do your TikTok videos. Meta cancels a sneaky UTM parameter used by some marketers. What the Shopify PayPal deal means. And the disturbingly simple trick that's breaking WhatsApp. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Not very mindful, not very demure.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Your brand's TikTok may be more of a miss than a hit. New research has found that eight out of 10 videos on the app fail to capture consumers' attention and generate positive emotions. According to new research from the ad agency David, 85% of brand videos on TikTok underperform, generating weak emotional responses and, more importantly, poor brand recall. The study also found that a quarter of these videos actually triggered strong negative emotions like anxiety, fear, and discomfort, potentially risking brand reputations. 60% of brand videos were forgettable, ranking below average in both emotional engagement and brand recall. Branded TikTok content was 10% less likely to generate intense positive emotions than the global average and attracted 2.5% less attention. We have a link to the full study in today's email newsletter, which you can get for free by tapping the link at the top of the show

Starting point is 00:01:29 notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Meta has been emailing a very scary sounding email to marketers the last few days. We've gotten a few emails asking if we know anything about it. First, the scary part, quoting from that email, quote, soon we may automatically restrict data such as certain parts of URLs and custom parameters. Your existing audiences may be using rules that include data that's restricted. Some of your ad sets may be paused, unquote. Now, it is often unclear about, well, everything, and this one is no exception. Let's back up a little. They're talking about custom parameters here. That's the data in UTM parameters. UTMs carry information about the link source, the medium, the campaign name, and so on. They come at the end of a URL and are often used

Starting point is 00:02:26 by advertisers to track the effectiveness of a campaign. If you're running 20 ads to the same URL, one from Meta, one on Google, one in an email newsletter, one from a QR code on a billboard, this lets you encode that URL with a signal that helps you track back the source of that click. Although it sounds like what Meta is saying is that they are dropping UTM parameters, they're not, as far as we can tell. They seem to be talking about UTM data which can compromise a user's privacy, specifically UTM data that discloses what specific web page or path a user came from. This could be used to infer more information about that person than meta or that person wants. For instance, it could give

Starting point is 00:03:12 away that they clicked that link on a web path about chlamydia and well, now that data is potentially associated with the user. This also means that if you use this strategy and you built custom audiences off data that included file paths, those audiences will likely break. One person on LinkedIn said he believes that audiences that combine URL paths with another rule, like device, don't work anymore and can't be used in campaigns. We have reached out to Meta to see if they can provide any other specific examples, and we'll update this story if we hear back. Shopify merchants in the U.S. can now accept PayPal as a payment option.

Starting point is 00:03:56 PayPal announced its new role yesterday, letting the platform process credit and debit card transactions for Shopify payments. This partner brings PayPal alongside Stripe, Shopify's main payment processor in the US. It's part of PayPal CEO's strategy to revitalize the company and stay competitive with faster growing rivals like Stripe and Adyen. Part of the strategy included enhancing checkout experiences

Starting point is 00:04:21 with features like Fastlane, which speeds up purchases by auto-filling card and shipping details, as well as forming more partnerships, even with direct competitors. Just a few weeks ago, PayPal announced that Adyen would offer Fastlane to some of its U.S. merchants. Now, with this latest move, it seems PayPal is coming for Stripe's territory. Marketers are ramping up their ad budgets for 2024. According to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, ad spend projections have jumped to 12% from the 9.5% it forecasted at the end of last year. With a resilient economy fueling optimism, the report found a 2.5% rise in consumer spending

Starting point is 00:05:07 in the second quarter of 2024, easing buyers' fears of instability. Retail media is also seeing an increase. Buyers have revised their year-over-year projections from 22% to 25%. The study also found that buyers are prioritizing cross-funnel KPIs and shifting focus to reach optimization, as interest in new KPIs wanes. Meanwhile, measurement challenges persist for the industry, despite subsiding economic concerns.

Starting point is 00:05:38 The report also notes that goals can differ by channel. For example, in digital video, buyers are determining success via business outcomes like sales and store and website visits. Roblox is leveling up virtual commerce by teaming up with Shopify to let brands sell real-world items within its virtual world metaverse. The gaming platform will soon integrate Shopify's checkout feature, letting developers, creators, and brands on Shopify sell physical items directly within Roblox games. That helps it tap into its audience of nearly 80 million daily active users as of the second quarter of this year. Retailers are increasingly exploring the Roblox platform

Starting point is 00:06:24 to connect with Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers. Walmart was one of the first to sell real-world items on the gaming platform back in September of 2022. Through its IRL commerce shop, the retail giant let users purchase physical items and receive digital twins for their avatars. Users can also try on and buy trending content, customize their virtual Walmart cart, and showcase their favorite items. This new Shopify integration will expand this kind of real-world shopping on Roblox to a wider range of retailers. Hackers are setting their sights on WhatsApp's ViewOnce privacy feature,

Starting point is 00:07:06 with developers from crypto wallet startup Zango calling it completely broken and trivially bypassed. Zango's team discovered that the feature, designed to let messages be viewed only once before disappearing, was not properly enforced by the server. Instead of ensuring messages vanished, ViewOnce messages are treated like regular messages, with a flag indicating they should only be viewed once. Attackers, as it

Starting point is 00:07:31 turns out, can easily remove this flag, turning these messages into regular ones that can be downloaded, forwarded, and shared. Zango also found code examples on GitHub of a modified Android client and a Chrome extension that can exploit this flaw. The team said it alerted WhatsApp through Meta's bug bounty program more than two weeks ago. A spokesperson confirmed the issue is under investigation and that they're working on a fix, advising users to only send view once messages

Starting point is 00:08:00 to people they know and trust. Feeling a little bit better. I got my first night of sleep in about a week, a full night anyway, which was heavenly. Boy, you don't really realize how much sleep matters until you don't get it anymore, eh? I don't know how I got to this age and didn't realize that. Anyway, that's it for today.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - When ‘For You’ Becomes ‘Forget You’

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