Today in Digital Marketing - Why Marketers are Pulling Back on Virtual Reality

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Marketers are pulling back on virtual reality... Tips on making sure you still show up in Google after their big algorithm change this week... Search Console gets a big video update... TikTok offers tips for one of its highest-producing ad products... and Twitter tries its hand in podcasts.Links to stories we covered: This is a Premium exclusive feature. Go Premium! No ads, story links in show notes, deep-dive weekend editions, better quality, live event replays, audio chapters, earlier release time, exclusive marketing discounts, and more! Check out https://todayindigital.com/premiumfeedFor information on advertising, our social media, contact info, and everything else, please go to https://todayindigital.com/shownotes➡ Join our Slack at todayindigital.com/slack_____________Need to Upgrade Your Digital Marketing Skills?*Inside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Founders Slack GroupFoxwell Digital CoursesMarketing Tools We Use and Recommend:*Sprout Social: Full-service social media managementAgorapulse: Full-service social media managementAppsumo: Lifetime deals and discounts on marketing toolsRiverside.FM: Studio-quality podcast interview recordingShor.by: Smart link-in-bio service with full analytics* Some links may provide affiliate revenue to usOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, marketers are pulling back on virtual reality. Tips on making sure you still know how to show up in Google after their big algorithm change this week. Search Console gets a big video update. TikTok offers tips for one of their highest producing ad products. And Twitter tries its hand at podcasts. It's Monday, August 22nd. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Well, based on some recent pictures Mark Zuckerberg shared of his version of the metaverse,

which the internet described as worse than a 2008 Wii game, we might still be a long way from a functioning metaverse. But new research indicates that the space may be worth investing in still. Digiday has a great piece up today looking at how marketers are really using VR and AR. Here's what the marketing landscape looks like today according to the study. First, augmented reality, that's AR, has gained popularity among marketers in the last five years while VR, virtual reality, like the kind Mark Zuckerberg likes, has declined in the last five years. Why? Well, using AR, marketers can facilitate pre-buying behaviors like using a filter to try on clothes or makeup or seeing what a product would look like in a space. Augmented reality tech has also become more accessible to consumers

through smartphones, while VR campaigns are hindered by some pretty big barriers like production costs and lack of consumer adoption. The top reason marketers use augmented reality is for social media and entertainment purposes. Three out of four use it for social media and camera filters. The majority use it for virtual try-ons as well as real-world overlays. But the big story I think in this study is that marketers are seemingly choosing meta-owned platforms to deploy augmented reality and actually dethroning Snapchat in the AR landscape. Two out of three respondents say they produce content for Instagram, which has become the most popular platform for AR, followed by Facebook in second place. Third

place went to owned and operated platforms. Those are platforms that are owned by the brand itself. TikTok came in fourth, beating Snapchat. Though marketers have decreased overall VR usage, those who have adopted it are creating immersive entertainment environments and acquiring new customers with it. Google is rolling out a site-wide algorithm update this week. It's called the Helpful Content Update. We learned about it first last week. It's called the Helpful Content Update. We learned about it first last week. We reported it then.

We have more details now. We know the algorithm is intended to prioritize people-first content, but what does that mean? Google says it's really four things. First, helpful content is created for a specific audience. It features expertise, it's trustworthy and credible, and it meets the wants or needs of the searcher. With this new update, how can you create content that will be successful? According to Google, answering yes to the following questions mean you are probably on the right track with a people-first approach. Here we go. First, do you have an existing or intended audience for

your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you? Does your content clearly demonstrate firsthand expertise and a depth of knowledge? Does your site have a primary purpose or focus? After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to achieve their goal? Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience? And finally, are you keeping in mind Google's guidance for core updates and product reviews? Google also recommends removing any content that isn't helpful, quoting the company, any content, not just unhelpful content, on sites determined to have relatively high amounts

of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in search, assuming there's other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content. In other Google news, the video indexing report for Search Console is now available to all users. Earlier today, the company announced that it has completed the rollout of the report to all properties where Google can detect video on the site to help you understand how your videos perform on search. The report shows the status of video indexing on your site and helps you answer questions like, in how many pages has Google identified a video, which videos were indexed successfully, and what issues are preventing videos from being indexed. Also, if you fix an existing issue, you can use the report to validate the fix and track how your fixed video pages are updated in Google's index. If it has not detected a video on your site,

you will not see the report at all. financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. TikTok has provided some new tips for its instant page shopping ad display option. You might know this as instant experience. On Meta's platform, it basically lets you connect your ads to a page built within TikTok, which would load faster. Customers can view everything on this page from videos to images, and then click to explore another destination without leaving the TikTok app. Among the tips, the platform also says the option can be used as a channel to drive high intent users to learn more about a product or service where ad creatives

can't go into detail. TikTok noted that its users prefer being led to a page within the platform rather than being redirected to an external site, and that campaigns using the feature achieve a 25 to 35% higher click-through rate on call-to-action buttons. According to the company, campaigns that use an instant page reduce their cost per acquisition up to 75% compared to campaigns that don't use the feature. If you're new to the ad format, TikTok also shared some basic best practices, such as setting up several different instant pages to test their varied effects on your selected audiences, including a broader target audience at first, then narrowing down to higher performance segments, and considering both your

instant pages average view percentage and average view time when analyzing its performance. Shopify Capital announced it is launching in Australia yesterday, offering $2.5 million in funds to merchants in that country. Shopify Capital is a new player in the Australian market, but has already established itself in the US, the UK and Canada, lending more than $3.8 billion to its merchants since 2016. With the service, businesses there can apply for and pay back funding within the Shopify platform that they use to manage their business. Quoting the company, as merchants make sales, they repay based on an agreed fixed percentage of daily sales, lowering cash flow risks by removing the uncertainty of compounding interest rates and hidden fees. There is no specified time limit for repayment.

Merchants pay back funding based on their sales, so payments flex with their business, unquote. And finally, Twitter continues to push audio content. This part of the company's latest push, podcasts, will be added to the platform. The audio tab will soon offer access to podcasts alongside spaces, according to an app researcher. Screenshots indicate there will be a new introductory screen for the option in the app, which notes that the audio tab will include both podcasts and spaces, providing more options for listeners, either live or recorded. That's all. Hope it does better than Facebook podcasts.

Kind of a short episode today. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice. A little raspy, I think. I actually got back from the hospital. Nothing to worry about. It was just a test. It was a meth, methicoline challenge. Anyway, it's a way of testing whether or not you have asthma. And what they do is they literally take your breath away. They administer a drug that restricts your ability to breathe. Then they measure your inability to breathe. And then they give you drugs to bring your breath back again, essentially. I mean, as medical tests go, it is probably not as unpleasant as some. Certainly not as unpleasant as the stick up the nose into the brain test for COVID was.

But the specialist hasn't given the official version of what it is. But the respiratory therapist says it's probably asthma. And, you know, everyone here in BC has a little bit of asthma anyway. So what am I complaining about? See you tomorrow.