Today in Digital Marketing - Which Facebook Ad Drove Sales? You May Never Know.

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Facebook ads are costing more these days. Livestreaming is set to revolutionize e-commerce. Pinterest has an eye on what themes your next campaign should touch on. WhatsApp finally gets its own ads functionality. And an API change from Google could claw back some missing iOS data.Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at TodayInDigital.com/newsletterPodcast Perks: Exclusive Deals for ListenersAdvertising: Perks (free!) • Ads • Classifieds • Brand TakeoversJoin the Community: Slack or DiscordEnjoying the show? Please rate and review us!Follow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok (daily digital marketing tips)Get this as a daily email newsletterLeave a VoicemailToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital. Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Facebook ads are costing more these days. Be protected. Be Zen. could claw back some missing iOS data. It's Thursday, April 29th, 2021. Happy International Dance Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Facebook's Q1 results were still coming in when we went to air yesterday,

so I didn't get too deep into the numbers. This morning, though, found this nugget. The average price per ad rose 30% from the previous year on Facebook's ads platform. And you might be thinking, well, there was probably 30% more competition in the ads market. No, not quite. I mean, there was competition, but the number of ads delivered only increased by 12%. Quoting some analysis from marketingdive.com, quote, Facebook's management said revenue gains in the second quarter would be strong compared with last year's weakness Quoting some analysis from MarketingDive.com, later in 2020. Apple's new limits on ad tracking will begin to affect its revenue during the current quarter, unquote. Other than that,

we covered the big numbers in yesterday's show. Daily active users were up 15%, but that growth came outside the US and Canada, where those numbers have been flat for a while now. It also crossed an important, if somewhat terrifying, milestone. The Facebook ecosystem, which includes Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, now counts more than a third of this planet's total population as active users.

Yes, one out of three people on Earth are daily active users, if Facebook's numbers can be trusted. Still with Facebook for a moment here, they're still struggling with how to monetize WhatsApp. After all, nobody wants their private chat interrupted by a brand message. Earlier, they gave some thought to having ads in status updates, but that idea got shelved too. Now they think they've got a solution, if a little on the weak side.

Businesses on WhatsApp will soon be able to create Facebook ad campaigns within their WhatsApp business tools that promote their WhatsApp presence, if you followed that. It's actually something you've been able to do for a while now, but you've always had to go through Facebook's ads manager to do it. Now, for brands that may not want to set foot in ads manager, and who could blame them, they'll be able to do it from within WhatsApp itself. You'll be able to use your catalogs uploaded to the WhatsApp side and run Facebook or Instagram ads, which will open up

in users WhatsApp app. So that's the good news about Facebook ads. Here's a little bad news. Maurice Ramey, who worked at Facebook for about six years and now runs an agency, reported on Twitter, quote, One of the big limitations for ads post-iOS 14.5 will be iterative creative testing. Dynamic creative testing will no longer show which ad permutations drove sales, making it harder to glean insights for creative iteration. Before iOS 14.5, you could load up a number of different creatives for Facebook and have it automate the best combos for you.

Yes, DCT will still work for performance optimization, but one of its key components, creative insights, will be disappearing. I also think over time, Facebook will figure out a way to make these insights visible again, One of its key components, creative insights, will be disappearing. I also think over time, Facebook will figure out a way to make these insights visible again, albeit with modeled data, unquote. Yes, this is mostly true. Remember, if Apple isn't sending the data, Facebook can't report it. But that doesn't mean all your data from dynamic ads will be gone. Facebook still knows how many people clicked on it, what CPM each one gets, how many negative reports each one gets, and so on. But yes, post-click activity,

which most of us probably care more about, like conversions, are indeed one of the victims of this adpocalypse. So you've got your Shopify store up, you're running some Facebook ads, some Google ads. Do you have a strategy for live streaming your products and sales? If not, you may be giving up some significant mindshare if research from Coresight is true. The company says e-commerce live streaming will be one of the top business trends this year, and we only have to look at China for that potential future, where this is all but the norm now. A study the company did last month found that 60% of U.S. consumers integrate social platforms into their shopping process.

And we can only assume that number will go up as the shop-from-home trend in the past year becomes more integrated into the buying cycle. In particular, pretty much all the platforms are racing to build an in-app purchase experience tied to live streaming, where user watches an influencer show off a product, and if the consumer wants it, they tap a button on the screen, which pops up a payment form right inside the app. And presto. Incidentally, one of the biggest trending hashtags on TikTok so far this year has been TikTok made me buy it. 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. From time to time, Pinterest comes out with a summary of topics that are trending, which might give you some ideas for your own marketing campaigns. Today, they released a new report that suggested users have started planning for a post-pandemic life, including looking ahead to what more socializing could look like. Main themes? Searches that include the word vacation spiked in March, in particular high-end vacations

like dream vacation destinations and luxury vacation, all seeing big jumps in search traffic. Also, people might be considering fashion again now that we may all soon be able to go outside again. Pinterest reports searches containing the word outfit are at an all-time high. There's decidedly a retro tone here. Among the most popular, 60s and 70s fashion, zebra pants, hippie jewelry, and the term Y2K outfit ideas is up 230 times its normal value.

Look, I get that if you weren't alive in the year 2000, Y2K might be, you know, kind of a fun thing now. But speaking on behalf of all old people, that shit was a little traumatizing at the time. Really, people were quitting their jobs and buying log cabins off the grid in preparation for it all. By the way, what is Y2K fashion exactly? As far as I can tell on Pinterest, a lot of baggy bleached denim and oversized windbreakers.

Generation Z is searching for party ideas, dinner dates, and entertaining, and overall, terms about home renovations are on the rise. In particular, search terms like grand millennial decor, indie room, sage green aesthetic and eclectic home. And finally, Google has released a new version of its ads API version 7.0. This means, of course, the third-party platforms should be adding some new functionality over the next few weeks or maybe even days if you're lucky.

Highlights include call-out assets, structured snippet assets, site links assets, and the API now supports conversion reporting for Apple's SK Ad Network. This will let marketers claw back a little bit of data around conversions that happen on iOS apps. Remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter too, complete with images, related videos, links to dive deeper,

even newsletter exclusive content. And there's a free tier as well. You'll get an issue every Friday. Newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops. Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in this episode's notes. And if you've got a marketing position you're trying to fill, or maybe you're looking for the next great gig, consider a classified ad right here. It's just 20 bucks.

You can book it online. That link, too, is in this episode's description. By the way, update on the dandelions. I am winning the war. That link, too, is in this episode's description. By the way, update on the dandelions. I am winning the war. My mom got us this cool, amazing foot-operated pedal dandelion root yanker outer. We actually have been looking at this on, like, Amazon and in local hardware stores. It's like $120, you know.

But holy crap, this thing does. It's amazing. Like, you just step. You literally just, like, step on. You literally just like step on it. Yeah, you step on it. And then you kind of yank back. And the whole thing comes out. By the way, do you know how big dandelion roots can get?

I swear, they go like a mile under. Anyway, don't get me started. We'll be here all day. Talk to you tomorrow. One more time and I, if I have you, in a way I'll never lose sight. Don't tell me no, I got to have you. I won't ever let you go, so don't you tell me no. Oh boy, I need you.