Today in Digital Marketing - Which Font Sells Better — 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 or 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬?

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, May 7th. Today, how curvy is the font you're using in your product ads? It could make a difference. Also, TikTok isn't going down without a fight. How Amazon wants to close the funnel gap. And Google removes one of its oldest features. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. TikTok is taking legal action against the U.S. government, challenging a recent law that could ban the app unless its Chinese owners bite dance sell it. A lawsuit was filed this morning and argues that the law infringes on the First Amendment rights of its users. TikTok says the legislation, which requires a sell-off in nine months, is unconstitutional. It says not only is selling the app not possible, given Beijing's stance against selling critical operational technology, but that the law also targets a platform that

Starting point is 00:00:57 many American businesses rely on. Legal experts say this case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The outcome could set a precedent regarding the government's ability to regulate international tech companies on national security grounds. The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have also expressed opposition to the law. So all signs point to a pretty fierce legal battle ahead. TikTok's lawsuit comes amid debate over security risks posed by the app and its immense influence on pop culture. The company says it's taking action to address concerns it is separating U.S. user data and claims to be strengthening content control. And so today's trivia question, what was TikTok's Chinese sister app called before it was renamed to Doyin?

Starting point is 00:01:46 Was it A.me, VideoStar, Clipsync, LuckyYou, or Vibe Video? We'll have the answer in tomorrow's episode. Yesterday's trivia question, what was the original concept of YouTube when it was founded? It turns out it was originally a video dating site. When we asked that in our newsletter, 62% of people got that wrong. When launching a new line of chocolate cookies, choosing the right font might be as crucial as the recipe itself. Some research recently highlighted by the Aerie newsletter has found that for products meant for pleasure, like chocolates, fonts with rounded edges significantly

Starting point is 00:02:28 enhance consumer appeal. The insight comes from a series of experiments where so-called pleasure products advertised with rounded fonts were preferred over those with sharp-edged fonts by up to 26%. But the shape of the font becomes less critical when the

Starting point is 00:02:44 product's main appeal is its functionality, like tools or insect-repellent candles. Consider brands that sell utility, Microsoft, Dell, Gillette, all companies that use angular product fonts. In these cases, consumers either didn't seem to have a preference one way or the other, or the difference was tiny. So why does this rounded font effect happen? The researchers say rounded fonts make products seem friendly and engaging. There were some limitations to the study. First, it looked at how people viewed a brand or product. It didn't measure how a font choice affected sales. It also didn't study other ways of formatting fonts, like using bolds or italics, and the study didn't look

Starting point is 00:03:25 at products targeting specific genders. This could result in some differences, since masculine products often use sharp angular typefaces. The paper was published in the Psychology and Marketing Journal. It's called The Role of Typeface Curvature in Increasing Preference increasing preference toward hedonic products. Amazon's ads division is rolling out new ad formats for Prime Video. First, the lineup includes shoppable carousel ads, a sliding lineup of products that viewers can add to their cart using most remotes. These ads pause the content, giving viewers time to interact and then resume once they're done. Additional formats like interactive pause ads and brand trivia ads are also on their way across prime video TV shows, movies, and live sports. Like they sound, pause ads activate when viewers press pause, displaying translucent ads overlaid with options like add to cart and learn more. Brand trivia ads engage users with fun facts

Starting point is 00:04:26 and the chance to shop directly, gather more information or claim rewards like Amazon shopping credits, all from their remote control. The ad tier of Prime Video, which was launched back in January, initially included just standard pre-roll and mid-roll ads.

Starting point is 00:04:41 But Amazon's been trying to get further down the funnel than the basic brand awareness consideration ads. These shopping ads, which take place without needing to switch to another device, do help marketers get further down the funnel. You may have noticed when Googling, well, anything in the last couple of years, that it seems like your results end up coming from some unlisted page on a major news publisher's site written as a sales listicle. To me, Forbes and People were the big shockers. Why did they both have pages riddled with affiliate links

Starting point is 00:05:17 trying to sell 37 different models of food processors? Well, last night, Google began enforcing its new site reputation abuse policy, which is designed partially to respond to these kinds of sites. Some people call this practice parasitic SEO. Quoting SE Roundtable, quote, It seems some large reputable sites were hit by this update, including CNN, USA Today, the LA Times, Fortune, the Daily Mail, and many more. Google specifically targeted these sites using manual actions, where Google manually took actions on these sites and notified them of these actions with a message in Google Search Console. These are not algorithmic actions, unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Which to me makes it sound like they had a list of these sites that they were ready to go after and then just pulled the switch yesterday. All that to say, if you have these kinds of pages on your site, it might be worth checking your search console a little more often over the next couple of days to make sure that you too are not caught in this net. Meta now lets most Instagram accounts cross post their content to Threads, the company's Twitter challenger. This is opt-in, and you can disable the cross-posting toggle anytime you like.

Starting point is 00:06:30 This is, of course, a quick way to get your brand's content more eyeballs. But a couple of things to note if you're considering it. First, this applies only to images from the main feed. Your Instagram videos and reels won't cross over. Any hashtags you have on your Instagram post will be converted to plain text when it lands on threads. That's because threads doesn't really use hashtags in the traditional sense. It lets you apply a single topic tag to a post. If this sounds familiar, it's because earlier in the year, they started testing cross-posting from Facebook to threads. This wasn't always seen as positive, as many brands and people consider the platforms for two different purposes.

Starting point is 00:07:15 And finally, one of the telltale signs that a news anchor really didn't understand the internet was when they introduced a story by mentioning the raw hit count of a Google search. You know, when they would say something like, Google says there are 92,612,000 pages about anorexia. No, that's not what that meant. Still, that number was an interesting, if not particularly useful, metric to look at. Some people used it to see how many pages Google had indexed from a particular website,

Starting point is 00:07:47 though Google reps have always said that's not a particularly accurate measure. But now, you can't. Because Google has removed that number from the search results page. You can still get to it if you really need to for some reason. You will now find it buried under the Tools menu at the top of the page. Don't forget this week only the premium podcast is on sale for 50% off. That means you'll get no ads whatsoever. And it's got a bunch of other stuff that's quite handy. The premium podcast has audio chapters, which means that you can jump directly to a story you're interested in by just tapping it in your podcast app. It's

Starting point is 00:08:23 better audio quality. We've negotiated deals with marketing platforms to give you discounts there too. If you want to check it out, just go to todayindigital.com slash half off. That's H-A-L-F-O-F-F. The sale ends at the end of the week. And if you've been around here long, you know, we rarely put this on sale. So again, the ad free premium podcast is on sale at todayindigital.com slash half off, or just tap the link at the top of the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you

Starting point is 00:08:59 do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.

Today in Digital Marketing - Which Font Sells Better — 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 or 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬?

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