Today in Digital Marketing - Your Ad Was Denied. Reason: [A HAT]

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, meet the unbranded long-form ad that could be taking over podcasts soon. It's not a Twitter edit button, but it's close. The new WordPress update will keep you on Google's good side. And Facebook has some bad news for brands in the social issue space. It's Friday, March 5th, 2021. Happy Employee Appreciation Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And first, we should talk about yesterday's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:30 892 of you received a version that was at 130% speed. So apologies for that. We actually edit at that speed. And as it turns out, when you leave that speed button on in Logic Pro, it exports at that speed, which we did not know. So the version that's up now is corrected. My apologies for those of you who thought that either you or I were over-caffeinated. We fixed it. On with the show. When Twitter first started, the idea was to replicate text messaging, short 160 character maximums. And once you send it, it's gone. You can't take a text message back. That was the vision co-founder Jack Dorsey had, and it's a vision he's still obsessed with. This is the

Starting point is 00:01:17 reason, by the way, we don't have an edit button on Twitter. It's not for any policy reason or technical limitation. Dorsey himself says he doesn't want one because text messages don't have one. We started as a SMS text messaging service. So as you all know, when you send a text, you can't really take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling. But it seems soon we'll be getting as close to an edit button as Jack Dorsey's vibe will let us. A programmer has found references to an undo button in Twitter's code. The way undo generally works online

Starting point is 00:01:48 is it's not really undoing anything at all. Instead, it's holding it for a certain amount of time before sending. And within that time window, you can edit it. And it looks like that's what Twitter will be doing. So far, their test code only gives users five seconds to change something before it goes out. So just enough time maybe to

Starting point is 00:02:05 spot a typo. This also means its potential inclusion in any publishing API would be pointless. Nearly all third-party tools that use the publishing APIs of social channels do so to let their users schedule content. If it's going out when you're not actually looking at it, that five-second window won't help. Still, progress? I guess? The podcast ad format has, for the most part, fallen in line with its radio cousins. 30 or 60-second ads in the middle of a show, sometimes at the start or end. And that's about it. There are also those ads that fall

Starting point is 00:02:45 on the other side of the spectrum, full branded podcast series. Companies like Gimlet Creative and Pacific Content produce complete series for a car brand or a consumer goods company and try to make it compelling enough to drive an audience. Now, TED, the annual invitation-only tech conference, thinks it's figured out a third option to sit somewhere in the middle. Last month, it launched what it calls its Audio Collective, or as we normal people would say, a podcast network. As part of that network, they're offering a kind of unbranded long-form podcast ad, only three minutes long, quoting Marketing Dive, rather than having a hurried and forceful sales message squeezed into quick sound bites, the storytelling ads are designed to engage listeners

Starting point is 00:03:30 in a narrative that blends with the surrounding audio content. Brands including Accenture, Google, Lexus, and Dove have worked with TED. TED's team consults its internal marketers to find compelling stories that draw in listeners and embed a story about the sponsor at the end of the segment, unquote. This new ad format might be compelling to an advertiser, but it's bordering on that once sacrosanct line between advertising and editorial.

Starting point is 00:03:59 For example, the host of Ted's Work Life podcast interrupted his show to interview one of their sponsor's customer service workers. That worker told a heartwarming story about how a customer had lost a favorite shirt of theirs, and the rep sent him two more shirts. Then the host reads out an offer for savings at the brand's website. Another Ted podcast do it too, again from MarketingDive.com, quote, Ted created a native ad featuring the host of the Far Flung podcast that searches for the world's most surprising and imaginative ideas. In the segment, he profiles a Nigerian American woman who started an emergency blood delivery service called Life Bank. After learning that hemorrhaging was a leading cause of death for women in the city of Lagos, where heavy traffic

Starting point is 00:04:39 limits emergency care, she started a company that relies on motorcycle drivers equipped with Google Maps to plot the quickest route. It didn't really mention Google, said Ted's marketing rep. It was just about how she was using technology to impact the community and solve a problem, unquote. And look, I know host-read ads exist. I've done them. But in almost all cases, the industry so far has done them as brief 30 or 60 second spots, clearly a marketing script, and usually with the same ad music behind it. This is our ad music. When you hear this under what I'm saying, you'll know we got some money for it. But these new ads Ted is trying are more like short infomercials masquerading as editorial content. That may be a good thing for us when we're wearing our digital marketing hats

Starting point is 00:05:28 and a bad thing when we're wearing our podcast consumer hats. Also, they are not cheap. The costs vary from $150,000 to $650,000. As you may know, Google plans to consider the speed of your brand's website in its search ranking. It already does this to some extent, but they formalized it as a metric called Core Web Vitals, which is actually three measurements, how soon content appears on your page, how soon someone can interact with the page, and how much your page layout jumps around. It's less a score and more about whether you pass or not. If you

Starting point is 00:06:06 pass, you get a small ranking boost. Well, if you've been pushing off the task of speeding your brand's website up and you use WordPress, WordPress has some good news for you. Their 10.1 update of Gutenberg, that's those new content blocks in the editor, uses some trickery to speed up the loading of those blocks. So basically, as long as you're keeping your WordPress site updated, you should benefit at least partially from this. Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor goes into effect in May. Attention scammers! Google has a new content policy for its Google Ads platform.

Starting point is 00:06:42 It's called Evasive Ad Content. This means they now explicitly prohibit manipulations of trademark terms in ad text, the use of invisible Unicode characters in ads, and manipulations of images or videos to hide policy-violating content. This is something they've always thought poorly of, of course, but now they are cementing it in their official policies

Starting point is 00:07:04 in case people actually need to be told this stuff, and apparently some people do. It goes into effect on May 4th. Like most other Google ad policies, you'll get a warning first, at least seven days prior to any suspension of your account. This in stark contrast to Facebook's ad policies, which will ban your entire ad account for, you know, any reason. Here are some examples. It's Friday. You used a vowel. Or that image had a hat in it.

Starting point is 00:07:34 Shame on you. While we're on Facebook here, a brief update for those people who market in the social issue or political space. We reported earlier that Facebook had lifted its previous ban on that ad content. Today, though, the company announced, quote, the control that allows people to see fewer social issues, electoral and political ads is now available in more than 90 countries. People have told us they want the option to see fewer political ads on Facebook and Instagram. So now more people around the world can make that choice, unquote. This is, by the way, in addition to a small deranking of related organic content. People will have to opt out of this kind of advertising, so, you know, who knows how many actually will. But even if it's just a few, for the rest of us, that means a tiny bit less competition in the ad market. And that's generally a good thing. And this afternoon, Facebook reported

Starting point is 00:08:31 that some advertisers are experiencing issues either with reporting or optimizing their campaigns based on view-through metrics. They're aware of it and are working on it. One thing they're apparently not working on, this new business media folder we're all starting to see now. Have you seen this? So now we have a business media folder and an ad account media folder. The former, I guess, stores assets across your entire business manager. I say, I guess, because you can't actually pull those assets up in ads manager. On the bright side, I think we found the company's new positioning statement.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Facebook. Who the hell knows? Honestly, it works on so many levels. Who knows, like, what do brands know about you? Or who knows, like, they're adding crap to Business Manager that they never explain? You think Zuckerberg would like it? Who knows?

Starting point is 00:09:27 So, despite my better judgment, I'm back on Overwatch again. I mean, I've been almost touching platinum, so I have to keep playing, right? I'm still in ESO, grinding to hit CP 160. I think I'm 155 now, so another dungeon or two and that's when the gear grind will really start. I've also maxed out provisioning, started to work on jewelry. So, that'll be my weekend. I hope you have a restful one as well.

Starting point is 00:09:49 Don't forget, you will find a link to our perks program with exclusive discounts on marketing tools, training, and services at todayindigital.com slash perks. And if you'd like to extend an offer to our listeners, it's free to do that. Just go to todayindigital.com slash promote.

Starting point is 00:10:06 Links to all of those are, of course, in our show notes. Today in Digital Marketing is produced on beautiful Vancouver Island by EngageQ Digital. Production support and fact-checking by Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis. Music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Todd Maffin. I'm off to grind some dungeons. Have a restful weekend, and I'll talk to you on Monday. I pick another goal for me to go at. My sky's so blue. I remember nights was so black. Was hard for me to picture this even with a Kodak.

Starting point is 00:10:47 But lo and behold, we step into the echelon. Those who get they repping on when the pressure's on. Those with physical stature, mind just as strong. Earning trophies, achieving highs, records gone. Leave a legacy that survives eons. Like the Pantheon, true champion. Practice makes perfect. Keep the repetition.

Starting point is 00:11:07 Blood, sweat, tears. here's the definition of me A full life with no regrets Directly in the face of danger Firmly planted on the ground This is how I define me

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Ad Was Denied. Reason: [A HAT]

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