Today in Digital Marketing - Your Dream Instagram Placement is Here

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Instagram tests the ad placement we all want... Twitter finally joins the commerce club, in a somewhat muted way... You may be shocked to learn how much of a cut the ad intermediaries make... Is Google ignoring content in accordions?Go Premium! No ads, more stories, audio chapters, and extended weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia (TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin- Twitch: https://twitch.tv/todmaffin  Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you 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. 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. Today, Instagram tests the ad placement we all want.

Twitter finally joins the Commerce Club in a somewhat muted way. You may be shocked to learn how much of a cut the ad intermediaries take. Is Google ignoring content in accordions? And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories, and extended weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. What is domain spoofing? And why does it have the potential to destroy your ad campaigns? It's Wednesday, March 9th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Imagine you could buy any position you wanted

for your ad in the Instagram app, even a placement that doesn't exist yet. I'll bet you'd want that at the very top of the feed. That placement isn't available, but it might be soon. The company confirming yesterday it is testing ads at the top of the feed with a small number of users. We're not clear exactly how this will work, but it doesn't seem to be directly inspired by TikTok's premium placement, the first video that appears when the app is open. For Instagram's version, the company says that the ad will only appear at the top of the feed if users have spent some time in the app. Whether this means active users will see it when they open the app within a certain number of hours of their last use, or if this will only appear if people refresh the top of the feed,

we're not sure. Instagram plans to collect feedback about the ads. They haven't made any promise about whether it will make it to the ads manager in a more permanent form. Twitter is expanding its shopping features in an effort to push commerce on the platform. The company announced it is testing a new shopping tool called Twitter Shops, which will allow merchants to showcase up to 50 of their products in a digital catalog. Unlike Instagram Shops, transactions do not take place on the Twitter platform. Instead, consumers will click on the View Shop button above the merchant's tweet to visit the shop, but when they're ready to complete the purchase, they'll click on the item and be redirected to the merchant's website.

A limited number of merchants are currently participating in Twitter Shop's test group, and iPhone users in the U.S. should be able to view and interact with the new tool. If you're a Premium Podcast member, earlier in today's show, you would have heard a story about how one major publisher may have misled advertisers about where their ads were placed. Now, another story to share with you about the woes of advertising technology. A recent study found just how much of a cut ad tech companies are taking from publishers' revenue. Publishers being the websites on which ads appear. These are places like news sites, blogs, and so on.

The study identified several ways ad tech providers are depleting revenue from publishers, including high take rates. Fees charged by intermediaries ranged from 22% to 45% for half of all ad impressions, with an average of 35%. Some ad tech vendors took 80% to 98% of the transaction, with publishers receiving pennies on the dollar. This study was done by Adalytics. Is content that is collapsed and hidden within accordions really indexed and ranked by Google? Accordions, in web form, are those collapsible and expandable areas

on a web page which can hide and reveal text. Google said years ago that they do index that content, but a new test by an SEO professional says otherwise. It was reported on Twitter that this person saw a significant increase in rankings for extremely competitive terms after making content that was hidden behind accordion dropdowns visible by default. They added that the content, while collapsed, was fully rendered in the HTML, so Googlebot did see it and index it, but it didn't rank well.

Google has said that these case studies are wrong, but it might be worth testing it yourself to see how your collapsed content ranks. Meta has announced new features to help Facebook group administrators manage interactions and reduce misinformation. Here's a look at the new tools for admins. First, the option to automatically reject incoming posts that are identified as containing false information by third-party checkers, the ability to automatically approve or deny member requests based on specific criteria the admin sets up, such as answering the members' questions, an overview section on the group's admin homepage to simplify reviewing tasks,

and a new insights summary on mobile to understand how their groups are doing. The platform is also introducing new tools to help admins grow their groups, including an option to send invites via email and QR codes that admins can download and share. 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. As tech giants cut ties with Russia-affiliated news agencies, the world's largest photo archive that marketers use every day is following suit. However, this time the repercussions are less about punishment for Russia's war in Ukraine and more about preventing the spread of misinformation. Getty Images is terminating its partnership with Russian news agency TASS for violating its editorial policies.

While not all TASS photos relate to Ukraine or contain misinformation, the agency has reportedly made various false claims over the past several years. A study conducted by a company that monitors misinformation and ranks the credibility of websites gave TASS a score of 20 out of 100 and advised anyone publishing its photos to, quote, proceed with caution due to its severe violation of basic journalistic standards. All right, I know this doesn't have anything to do with digital marketing, but I'm kind of a little fascinated still by this whole McDonald's has an API for its ice cream machines. You may remember last week we told you about a fast food chain, Jack in the Box, in fact,

trolling McDonald's over its broken ice cream machines in a brilliant marketing stunt. Well, here's an update on the McBroken website. Now, the tech company that helped franchise operators monitor and adjust the broken ice cream machines is suing McDonald's for $900 million in damages. The lawsuit alleges that McDonald's engaged in business interference and deceptive trade practices, among other charges. The company's device is called the Kitsch Solution. It enabled franchise owners to remotely monitor and control the machines, which, as we are

all aware, are well known for breakdowns. However, McDonald's is alleged to have fabricated safety claims, quote, to mislead Kitsch's customers into believing that safety testing determined by the Kitsch solution would cause serious human injury to users, unquote, and these claims are false, according to the suit. The plaintiff company Kitsch says its value would be $900 million if this whole dispute thing with McDonald's never existed. So I'm still sworn off from Overwatch.

I finished Cyberpunk. I've been thinking lately I've been spending a little bit too much time on the Xbox. So I took a page from my wife's hobby, which is, I mean, she plays Xbox too, but she has real hobbies, knitting, sewing, crafting, and things like that. So after like years of deciding whether or not I'd get into it, I actually went out and bought some paints, a very non-technical hobby, and it's miniature painting. So I think people use them on Dungeons and Dragons games and things like that. I'm not into the games, but I thought I would try out painting. And I thought I would

also stream it because, I mean, I guess I'm a masochist and a sucker for humiliation. So I'll be streaming my miserable attempt at painting these miniatures. I'm 51 years old. I have bad eyesight. This is it's not going to go well. But if you want to follow along and watch, follow my Twitch channel, which you'll see a link to in the show notes under the heading follow Todd. It's twitch.tv slash Todd Maffin. So and I'll probably do it tonight and on the weekend as well. So anyway, don't ask me anything because I don't know anything about it. I'm new and the one I've started sucks already. All right, talk to you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

So when you 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.