Today in Digital Marketing - Yelp’s 100 Million Stale Reviews

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. 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Starting point is 00:01:00 Today, almost half of Yelp's reviews are outdated. Google and Meta's Jedi Blue ad deal is under scrutiny in Europe. How Google plans to surface more short form video in search results. Is your brand ready to build its own AR game? them. And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and extended weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more, YouTube's tips for marketers to improve channel performance. It's Friday, March 11th. I'm Steph Gunn, filling in for Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing. European and UK antitrust regulators have launched an investigation into Google and Meta's so-called Jedi Blue agreement, allegedly a deal between the ad giants that potentially undermined competition. The European Commission said in a statement that it was concerned that the agreement may form part of efforts to exclude ad tech services competing with Google's open

Starting point is 00:02:02 bidding program, and therefore restrict or distort competition in markets for online display advertising to the detriment of publishers and ultimately consumers. It is also being investigated by the UK's Competition Market Authority, which is concerned that Google may have teamed up with Meta to put obstacles in the way of competitors who provide important online display advertising services to publishers. Meta and Google have defended the deal, saying that the investigations were misguided and the allegations made about this agreement are false.

Starting point is 00:02:33 In the event that the two are found to be in violation of the EU competition law, they could be fined up to 10% of their global annual revenue. Your brand's TikTok video could become a search result in Google. Google said in a recent Search Off The Record podcast that it is experimenting with ways to show more short-form video in search results due to how useful and informative they can be for searchers. How would Google surface more short-form video? The platform would crawl and index them like any other piece of content, which is already being done with self-hosted short videos, like Google Web Stories. It was proposed that it might be possible with other video formats as well. This would include any videos that have a URL that can be visited in a browser, like TikTok.

Starting point is 00:03:30 Can Yelp continue to grow? According to its most recent investor presentation, the company is facing some major barriers going forward, as its user growth and review volume have stalled and almost half of its reviews are stale. The review platform did do a couple of things right during the pandemic. It reduced expenses and increased income to pre-pandemic levels. However, Yelp is facing some major problems despite strong sales, including low consumer desktop traffic and the fact that mobile app usage has stalled. Also, Yelp's review count is declining. The company highlighted an impressive 244 million reviews in its presentation, but almost 100 million of them are from 2015 or older. It has introduced more

Starting point is 00:04:13 products and services aimed at businesses, but will it be enough or is it too late? So you've built your own AR lens for your brand. Are you ready to build your own AR game? Niantic Labs, the company behind the wildly popular AR-based Pokemon Go game, has announced it is acquiring AR firm 8th Wall. The announcement comes as the 8th Wall builds its platform, Lightship, for brands to build their own AR games. The acquisition aims to equip developers, brands, and agencies with a complete set of tools to create interactive AR experiences that are easily accessible and work on mobile devices,

Starting point is 00:04:54 no app required. The company added that joining forces will empower more Lightship developers to realize their visions for AR in the real-world metaverse. Do you have business insurance? their visions for AR in the real-world metaverse. financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Twitter is making it easier for users to escape the algorithm and choose a reverse chronological feed. Yesterday, the platform announced a design change which lets you swipe between Home,

Starting point is 00:05:44 Algorithmically Served, and Lat latest, which is reverse chronological. This has existed for a long time under the sparkle icon in the top right corner, but now you'll be able to add latest timeline as a tab at the top. The option is available on iOS and it will be coming soon to Android and the web. As for the impact on marketing, it's probably a mixed bag. For smaller brands that don't usually appear prominently in their followers timelines, people will likely see more of your tweets if they're on the chronological feed. Or it could be that there's so much volume on the chronological timeline, given that there's no algorithm ordering the tweets, that your brand's messages are lost in

Starting point is 00:06:19 the pile. A nice addition for content managers who post to Reddit, the platform is rolling out creator stats to more desktop users, which will provide more insight into how their posts are performing. Performance metrics will appear on the post detail page after it has received 10 views. The insights will be accessible to the original poster or moderator, and it will expire after 45 days. These metrics will display total post views, upvote rate, community karma earned, and total shares. Google has a new ad format out, but you'll probably only care if you sell cars. The company today announced it will roll out vehicle ads to all U.S. advertisers beginning this month. The format shows customers an image of the car plus information including

Starting point is 00:07:10 make and model, price, miles, and advertiser name. Clicking on a vehicle ad takes the customer to the vehicle description page on the advertiser's website. From there, consumers can perform further actions such as contacting the dealer, filling out a lead form, and or deciding to visit the dealership. And finally, another short update on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Russian government confirmed today it will limit access to Instagram. The Russian government said it will restrict access to the app, stating that the platform is being used to distribute informational materials containing calls to commit violent acts against citizens of the Russian Federation, including military personnel. My only plans this weekend include trying to watch every single Fast and Furious movie.

Starting point is 00:08:02 There are nine of them now. The last one I watched was the last one with Paul Walker in it, which came out in 2015, which also happens to be as old as millions of Yelp reviews. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next Friday. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by Engage Q Digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuk First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is me, Steph Gunn. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle.

Starting point is 00:08:32 And our theme composer, Mark Levis, is a maniac. And he's dancing like he's never danced before.

Today in Digital Marketing - Yelp’s 100 Million Stale Reviews

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