Today in Digital Marketing - Why Cinema Ads May Be In Your Next Media Spend

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, the places you're buying ads are not the places where consumers want you to be. at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. And the single tweet that might go down in history as the cheapest, simplest, and most effective political ad of all time. It's Wednesday, September 23, 2020. Happy Bisexual Visibility Day. I'm Todd Baffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. Some good news, finally, from the ad industry. The U.S. advertising marketplace, at least part of it, grew in August. That was its first monthly year-over-year growth since March.

Starting point is 00:01:13 Growth was about 6% over last August. I say only part of it because this data is from a market tracker that really only looks at media buying processed by the major ad agencies and brands. So it doesn't factor in the smaller brands and agencies. It's entirely possible that growth could be smaller or non-existent when you consider how smaller budgets are probably more impacted by pandemic spending freezes. Then again, quoting Media Post, quote, smaller brands tend to be even more reliant on digital media than expensive national media

Starting point is 00:01:42 like broadcast and cable TV. And the data shows that digital is leading the turnaround as well. In August, digital ad spending was nearly 18% over August 2019. During the same period, national TV advertising declined almost 11%. The data affirmed projections of many analysts that the U.S. ad recession would bottom out during the summer and would begin to rebound heading into the fourth quarter. So that's spending on the industry side. Let's check in with consumers.

Starting point is 00:02:14 A new Kantar study says where brands are spending their money might not be where your future customers are looking. Quoting Marketing Dive, marketers worldwide tend to prefer advertising on established digital platforms, such as YouTube, contrasting with consumer sentiment that's generally more positive about advertising they see on newer platforms, like TikTok. TikTok was number one globally in Kantar's ranking of consumer preferences for digital ad platforms, followed by Instagram, Snapchat, Google, and Twitter, unquote. So a couple of things here. Remember, we're not talking about where the spend is here, right?

Starting point is 00:02:53 We're talking about essentially where consumers want your spend to be. The study surveyed 4,000 consumers, more than 700 senior marketers. Did you notice the one platform noticeably not on that list? Facebook. And when you take digital out of the mix and look at advertising channels overall, can you guess what the number one was? The number one choice of consumers where they want to see your ads, where they believe they will be most receptive to your ad campaigns? Guess what the number one platform was? Cinema ads. Yeah, that one blew me out of the water too. Right behind it, sponsored events, magazine ads, and digital out of home, like

Starting point is 00:03:34 billboard screens. Once again, just so we're all clear on this, we're not talking about the most effective channels in terms of media spend, not the most popular, just where consumers report they will be most receptive to your advertising. Again, quoting Marketing Dive, quote, Cantor's research suggests marketers may be overly reliant on digital channels for ads as consumers tend to prefer offline channels overall because these are perceived to be better quality, more trustworthy, less intrusive, and not overly targeted. What a difference a sentence makes. As you know, Google, like all digital platforms, has a bunch of help pages.

Starting point is 00:04:16 They're set up to let you use their platform more efficiently. And Google has one called How Google Determines Local Ranking. Today, SEO consultant Barry Schwartz noticed the addition of just one line, one very important line. It reads, More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business's local ranking. This is something, of course, we suspected for some time. Google engineers have all but said it outright, but now Google is confirming it.

Starting point is 00:04:44 Again, this is for local SEO, not the main index. So we're talking about Google Maps mostly here, which, let's not forget, is still where many, many people find businesses. So, if you don't already have a please review us online sign in your window, dot, dot, dot. You've got to question the timing of Amazon's latest move. Amid talk of all the antitrust investigations, Amazon now says it will start limiting how many ads can run for smart speakers and video doorbells that are not owned by Amazon. So this would mean the Google-owned Nest, for instance, won't be able to run as many ads.

Starting point is 00:05:24 Don't go looking for an official announcement on their site, of course. This is reporting from the Wall Street Journal that spoke with Amazon employees and executives at said rival companies. Quoting the journal, the strategy gives an edge to Amazon's own devices, which the company regards as central to building consumer loyalty. Are we all on board the vertical stories bandwagon now? Seems everything's going that way. And now your website can have stories too. Google has released a plugin for WordPress called Web Stories. It brings a familiar full screen tappable story format to people who visit your site. It's actually been in beta for a number of months now,

Starting point is 00:06:05 but it's now available to everyone in the WordPress plugin director. It's easy to use, all draggy and droppy, has a free stock photo, free stock video library, built in, comes with a bunch of templates. It's not for everyone, of course, but if your brand is already playing around with Instagram stories and TikTok and Snapchat, the Web Stories plugin might be a good addition.

Starting point is 00:06:32 Earlier this year, Twitter added reply controls that would let you choose who can reply to your tweets. Everyone, like it's always been, only accounts you follow or only accounts you specifically mention in your tweet. That functionality is now coming to another platform. Sadly, that platform is not Facebook, but LinkedIn is apparently testing this. A user on Twitter posted a screenshot of a test group he's in there. The options are anyone can comment, no one can comment,

Starting point is 00:06:54 or only your connections can comment. LinkedIn hasn't said anything about this, but if they were to have, I bet you their PR person would have sent out the usual social network boilerplate. You know the one. We're always working on ways to bring the best possible user experience to our users, and we'll let you know if we have more to share. See, LinkedIn? I even wrote it for you.

Starting point is 00:07:22 A few smaller items now. First, Google has launched a new learning center for its ads products. They're putting tutorials for their products, betas, and some best practices material there. Interestingly, the videos are hosted by the actual developers who built the tools in question, which is nice. There's about a dozen or so on topics ranging from local campaigns to smart bidding for store visits and a guide to lead gen on Google. The URL is adsonair.withgoogle.com slash practitioner dash series. There's also a link in the transcript of today's show. Second, Hootsuite has added five new organic and paid report templates in analytics to help you monitor key metrics across your social accounts. They cover Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There's also a YouTube overview as well.

Starting point is 00:08:02 Third, some bugginess at Twitter today. This afternoon they said some tweets are delayed and apparently they've been locking a whole whack of accounts out today. They said this is a bug. Even went out of their way to say it was not because they tweeted about any particular topic. They are working on a fix as we speak. And we are starting to see the first of the rebranded products start to roll out. If you'll recall, a number of brands said they would rename their products after people said their names were

Starting point is 00:08:28 racially insensitive. Brands like Aunt Jemima and Eskimo Pie. Well, the first one is out. Uncle Ben's Rice will now be Ben's Original Rice. And the character of the black man on the cover is gone, perhaps because he was never Uncle Ben at all.

Starting point is 00:08:44 The real Ben was a Texas rice farmer who created the brand. The man on the packaging was a waiter and a chef in Chicago named Frank Brown. And finally, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden this week released what is almost certainly the cheapest, simplest, and most effective ad in the history of politics. It's only 10 seconds long and consists of two parts.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Here's the first. It's a clip from a recent Trump rally. And the second part will follow it. If I lose to him, I don't know what I'm going to do. I will never speak to you again. You'll never see me again. I'm Joe Biden and I approve this message. Look, hey, I have no dog in this race. I'm Canadian, right? So I don't care one way or the other. And this is not a political show by any stretch. But you have to admit,

Starting point is 00:09:37 no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, you got to admit that's pretty brilliant. As I am recording this, that tweet has had more than 273,000 retweets and over 17 million views. Oh, and a correction from a listener named Pavel in the UK. He says, just a note of the last bit about MailChimp. You mentioned that they integrate with Shopify and although that is technically correct, they had a nasty breakup, which means you need to use third-party integration. Thank you, Pavel. That's true, actually.

Starting point is 00:10:15 Last year, they had a big blowout. Shopify said MailChimp wouldn't sync customer data like opt-out preferences with their database and then MailChimp said Spotify wanted every iota of data collected even retroactively. So they broke up. opt-out preferences with their database. And then MailChimp said Spotify wanted every iota of data collected, even retroactively. So they broke up. And then MailChimp cut a deal with Square to launch shoppable landing pages.

Starting point is 00:10:32 So Shopify retaliated with an email marketing tool of their own. As Pavel mentioned, though, you can still connect the two. You'll just need a third-party or middleware platform to do it. Always up to receive corrections, by the way, even small ones. Just tweet me at Todd Maffin. One tiny thing before I close today's episode, I am going to be changing the podcast feed to a new provider this weekend. So all that to say, if come Monday, you do not see the podcast update after, you know, like four o'clock in the afternoon Pacific time. Do go to todayindigital.com.

Starting point is 00:11:06 We'll have the new feeds up there. Theoretically, Anchor, the current provider, should be redirecting the feed just fine. And the new provider should be resubmitting things. But, you know, that all-important RSS feed controls everything. So it'll happen over the weekend. So, again, Monday or Tuesday goes by. You don't see this podcast. Please go to todayindigital.comcom and all the real links will be there. More breaking news from the world of

Starting point is 00:11:29 digital marketing tomorrow. I'm Todd Mappin. Talk to you then. What I gotta do

Today in Digital Marketing - Why Cinema Ads May Be In Your Next Media Spend

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