Today in Digital Marketing - Where We're Going, Marty, We Don't Need Headlines

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, October 5th. Today, no headlines for you. X kills off one of marketers' greatest assets. Also, why TikTok has pulled out of its fastest-growing market, how buy now, pay later might save the holiday buying season, and the social media trend du jour is a little fishy. 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. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen.

Starting point is 00:00:50 One of the most important parts of a post on social media is the headline. Whether you want people to be intrigued enough to read the post it's linking to, or whether you want people to buy the product it's selling, the headline is a key piece of that puzzle. But that puzzle piece has been removed from the game on X. The site today removed all headlines from all link posts on the web and on Apple devices. Well, some Apple devices, you can still see headlines on the Mac app, which is still called Twitter and hasn't been updated in a year. The only thing left is whatever text was in the post and the metadata image from the link. There is a tiny indicator of the domain name overlaid on the image,

Starting point is 00:01:34 but for the most part, link posts are now practically indistinguishable from image posts. The timing of this for marketers couldn't be worse, of course. Brands are in the final stages of this for marketers couldn't be worse, of course. Brands are in the final stages of planning for Black Friday, and this quarter is the most important for consumer-facing brands. There was no announcement or warning that this was going to happen other than Musk tweeting back in August that he thought the idea would make the site look nicer. I actually think it'll make posts look even more cluttered if we now have to include the body copy and the headline and the description text all in the post text area. Also, as Gizmodo noted in its coverage today, quote, the idea that clicking on an image will now take you to some unknown website is sure to make X or Twitter an even bigger target for hackers and scammers, a quality that could drive even more advertisers away,

Starting point is 00:02:25 unquote. When Musk first floated this idea a couple of months ago, an inside source told Fortune at the time, quote, it's something Elon wants. They were running it by advertisers who didn't like it, but it's happening, unquote. It's possible this is X's way of deprioritizing news publishers in the feed, something that most social platforms have been doing in the last year or two. But you don't have to be on social media long to know that most people don't even read the articles there anyway. They see the headline, get angry about it, and reply to the post. It's the headline they're responding to, not the article.

Starting point is 00:03:03 So killing off headlines, the one thing people rally around, sure seems like a weird strategy for a platform desperate to increase engagement. YouTube has added a new filter to its Shorts camera. That's the tool brands and creators use to record vertical videos for their platform. And this filter is the company's first that uses generative AI for shorts. It's an effect called Bloom. It gives you a three second countdown, then takes a still image and turns you into a flowery topiary. It's fine, I guess, though it doesn't actually use generative AI on the live video, which TikTok has been doing for a while now. It also doesn't really have any kind of brand marketing application I can see, unless you're a flower shop, I guess.

Starting point is 00:03:50 I did a test of it if you want to see what it looks like. It's in today's newsletter, which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link in the show notes. More of these are coming. The company last week announced a whole slew of generative AI on its way early next year, including custom video backgrounds based on a text prompt like pile of puppies or a school hallway. YouTube is also expanding access to its partner program, bringing 23 more countries into the fold with lower qualification thresholds. TikTok has pulled its e-commerce business out of Indonesia after the country last week banned social media platforms from getting into the retail business. Specifically,

Starting point is 00:04:33 social platforms are no longer allowed to do e-commerce transactions on their site. They can still promote products, just not actually sell them. Indonesia is surprisingly important for TikTok. It is its fastest growing market, for one thing, and adoption of live shopping has had a strong uptake. The Indonesian government says this move will shield small businesses from the competition posed by large e-commerce company.

Starting point is 00:04:59 It also accused the industry of using predatory pricing tactics. In a statement on its website, the Chinese-owned TikTok confirmed it had stopped selling on TikTok shop in Indonesia at 5 p.m. local time yesterday. 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 00:05:39 Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. After a couple of slow years in the commerce space, Adobe forecasts that marketers will see an uplift in spending this quarter. In November and December, the company expects almost 5% growth in online spending compared to last year. And Adobe does have the numbers to run those kinds of forecasts. It tracks 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs, and 18 product categories. Sales using buy-now-pay-later models are expected to increase almost 17% compared to 2022. They also named some specific categories they expect to perform exceptionally well. Electronics,

Starting point is 00:06:20 apparel, furniture, home goods, and toys will make up more than half of the online spend this season, along with, interestingly enough, groceries. They're also expecting to see record discounts of up to 35% off, especially during Cyber Week. And perhaps most notably, mobile will beat desktop for the first time as the preferred channel for online shopping. And finally, TikTok has been host to a number of foodie trends. Remember the feta tomato bake or the flavored water or those butter boards that seem to be everywhere for about a day? Well, friends, it's time to welcome a new competitor to the ring, tinned fish.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Yeah, apparently videos about canned seafood are trending. Videos tagged with hashtags like sardines, tinned fish, and tinned fish talk are closing in on 500 million views. And we know who to blame for it, at least partially, the TikToker who goes by the account name DayWithMay. Some of her videos are past one million views. You likely know by now that every Friday night, my husband and I do tin fish date night. This week's board is a little adventurous. And also, I think it might be my best one yet.

Starting point is 00:07:39 I'll be honest, this is one of those things that I thought, well, that's dumb. Who would watch a video of people just opening tuna cans? Of course, we have our tried and true mussels and always favorite. Stay tuned to see how we feel about this row. But I have to tell you, it's oddly entrancing because it's not only tuna. We know what tuna looks like when you peel the metal lid off, but I genuinely did not know how some tinned fish looked like when they were packaged this way and found myself watching about a dozen of these this morning before I finally snapped out of it. Business Insider did a great piece on this trend this morning and speculated that it's popular because of how inexpensive tinned fish is compared to other protein alternatives. And also, much of the North American audience may not have seen some of these international staples.

Starting point is 00:08:30 So there you go. Your next viral video is waiting for you to reel them in. Okay, I'll stop now. Don't forget we have two free resources for you our slack community has a thousand people in it marketers just like you and our free email newsletter comes out every single day that's what you hear in the podcast and more tap the links in the show notes see you tomorrow another regular weekend same old faces i know Same old face as I know But for me it'll have to find me the deep end Of a lake with my fishing pole

Starting point is 00:09:12 Got a cooler full of ice cold beer Round up a couple of buggies and we'll disappear

Today in Digital Marketing - Where We're Going, Marty, We Don't Need Headlines

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.