Today in Digital Marketing - Your New Reality: VIRTUAL Ads

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Starting point is 00:01:05 The search engine that wants your media budget but won't give you back campaign data. Spotify's Clubhouse clone is out. Google's big algorithm update has started to roll out. And Amazon is running out of people. It's Wednesday, June 16th, 2021. Happy Youth Day, South Africa. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Take a close look at that VR game you're playing. That billboard in the background of the city builder you're playing is not advertising a fake brand. That's a real brand, a real ad, a real campaign with a real budget. Yes, Facebook is moving advertising into virtual reality. I mean, you didn't think Zuckerberg bought Oculus for $3 billion so he could play Beat Saber, did you? That VR advertising started today as a test group with a small group of games. So far, seems the model Facebook's going for is sort of like their audience network, much of which are banner ads inside free-to-play mobile games. The games that host these ads will get a share of the revenue. Facebook says the ads in virtual reality

Starting point is 00:02:07 should operate the way they do on the regular platform. Users will be able to hide specific ads or all the ads from a brand. There'll be some kind of why-am-I-seeing-this-ad interface. As for data collection, Facebook says, quote, while testing ads in Oculus apps,

Starting point is 00:02:23 Facebook will get new information, like whether you interacted with an ad and if so, how. For example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hit the ad. We do not use information processed and stored locally on your headset to target ads like raw images from the sensors, images of your hands, or any weight, height, or gender information that you choose to provide to Oculus Move, unquote. They also went out of their way to remind people that they don't use the content of your conversations to target people with ads. That's probably true, though. You can't blame the public for taking what Facebook says here with a grain of salt. Remember, when they first bought Oculus, they said they wouldn't require people to get a Facebook account to log in. Now, though, the only way to use the device is to log in with a Facebook account to log in. Now though, the only way to use the device

Starting point is 00:03:05 is to log in with a Facebook account. This is still a very early test. Facebook did not give any details on any kind of wider release date. For those of you who manage Facebook groups, the company today announced some new tools to help with moderating. First, you'll be able to set up criteria that Facebook will use to automatically moderate comments and posts. For example, you could add the names of a bunch of multi-level marketing companies, and Facebook will both decline the content and send the poster a little note saying why they were declined. There's also going to be a new moderation alert called Conflict Alerts. This will trigger when Facebook detects that contentious or unhealthy conversation is taking place. It'll also be able to put a limit

Starting point is 00:03:49 on how often specific people can comment, so you could force them down to one comment every five minutes if you wanted. Quoting TechCrunch, the idea here is that forcing users to pause and consider their words amid a heated debate could lead to more civilized conversations. We've seen this concept enacted on other social networks as well, such as Twitter's nudges to read articles before retweeting, or those that flag potentially harmful replies, giving you a chance to re-edit your post, unquote. Also, admins will be able to see a kind of Santa's naughty list of each member, find out how many posts of theirs have been removed,

Starting point is 00:04:24 or how many times they've been muted. On the flip side, it'll also show you how many posts in general someone's made, so I suppose you could find people who contribute a lot and haven't had any enforcement actions to maybe upgrade them to a group moderator status. All that said, though, there does seem to be one big brand safety hole in the new tools. While posts and comments are fairly easy to moderate,

Starting point is 00:04:44 Facebook is bringing group chat back. So anyone in your brand's group can now start a chat at any time. That's a little harder to moderate, given that there's no API connection. These changes are rolling out around the world in the coming weeks. About a year ago, I switched from Google's Chrome browser to Brave, a browser that uses the open-sourced Chrome code, but unlike Chrome itself, doesn't send any data back to Google. Since I was locking down my browser, I thought I'd lock down my web search too. I know you can turn off web search history in Google, but Google still knows what I searched for.

Starting point is 00:05:22 I'm not actually as paranoid as that sounds, but I generally do prefer to err on the side of privacy, so I started using DuckDuckGo, which is mostly Bing, actually. And it's okay. It's okay. About 90% of my searches gets me, you know, what I'm looking for, but I still have to flip over to Google every so often. Well, if reports are to be believed, a new search engine is close to launch, and apparently it's really, really good.

Starting point is 00:05:46 It's from the people behind the Brave browser, people who have pretty damn solid internet pedigree. One of the founders is the inventor of JavaScript and another co-founded Mozilla. The company says, quote, Brave search does not track you, your searches, or your clicks. It's impossible for Brave to disclose any information about you to anyone. Unlike DuckDuckGo, they appear to have been building out their own ranking algorithm and not licensing someone else's database. Reports I've seen say their algorithm's really good, like almost on par with Google. Anyway, it's in closed beta right now, but might be a place to test ads once it launches.

Starting point is 00:06:39 For years, the huge VidCon convention for mostly YouTube creators has been sponsored by YouTube, of course. The two went hand in hand. Some people sometimes even refer to it as YouTubeCon. Well, VidCon has a new sponsor, TikTok. Variety reports TikTok will take over from YouTube at this year's convention in October. YouTube's not completely out. They still secured a secondary sponsor position, but that's got to hurt. Google is spinning it as their decision, telling media they, quote,

Starting point is 00:07:10 thoughtfully worked through our VidCon plans months ago, unquote. But you got to wonder, quoting socialmediatoday.com, YouTube, of course, still offers more lucrative monetization options for creators. But as TikTok continues to evolve and build out its e-commerce and influencer marketing opportunities, it is becoming a more recognized space for creator discovery and growth, which could become a key consideration in the race to retain top talent, unquote. YouTube, of course, raced to create a TikTok clone in its app called Shorts and created a $100 million fund to encourage people to create more for it. But they've definitely given up mindshare.

Starting point is 00:07:50 As VidCon itself noted, quote, as the title sponsor, TikTok will have top talent and execs participating in all three of VidCon's tracks, creator, community, and industry, and will have the keynote address spot. Is Amazon running out of workers? That's what the New York Times reports. Their investigation published yesterday claimed that Amazon's senior executives expressed concerns that their warehouses would literally run out of workers because of the high churn rates. Between July and October of last year, the company hired more than 350,000 workers,

Starting point is 00:08:29 but the Times says many lasted just days or weeks. Even before COVID, Amazon had a yearly turnover rate of 150%. That's twice the average of other retail and logistics firms. Another way to look at that 150%, Amazon was said to be losing 3% of its entire hourly workforce every week. And again, that's before the pandemic. Amazon employs nearly a million people in the U.S. alone, most of whom are paid by the hour. The company is on track to become the largest private U.S. employer within two years, surpassing Walmart.

Starting point is 00:09:08 Last month, it said it would hire 75,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada. Average starting pay, a bit over $17 an hour. Last month, it was Twitter. Yesterday, it was Facebook. Today, Spotify released its clone of the live audio app Clubhouse. Interestingly, they've chosen not to bundle it into their main mobile app. It's a separate app called Greenroom. It's an interesting decision, actually.

Starting point is 00:09:35 You'd think an integration of the two would have spinoff benefits in terms of usage. But they did buy out another app called Locker Room to get a jumpstart on this, so this looks more like a rebrand or reskin of that app. I tried the app. It appears to have one colossal bug, at least when I tried it anyway. Part of the onboarding apparently includes being presented with a list of topics, and you pick a few to get started. I say apparently because my screen was completely blank. Like, it said, what are you into? And then there was this giant blank area on the screen, and a button that said next that I couldn't press

Starting point is 00:10:08 because I hadn't selected any topics that weren't there on the screen for me to select. Anyway, I restarted the app, got past that, got into a room, and even there it seemed like there were kinks to work out. One random guy who wasn't an admin or moderator apparently managed to change the title of the room. As you can imagine, this came as a surprise to the actual moderator. Oh, shoot.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Okay, because you're the one that changed it to Hatercast? Yeah, man. Y'all know the vibes. Well, y'all won't know about it. Alright. Dude, my app is lagging. Spotify says they're working on a tighter integration between the two apps to enable things like notifications. When a podcaster you already follow on Spotify goes live, or it could recommend rooms for you based on your past listening habits.

Starting point is 00:10:55 One thing it does have that the others don't is a text chat feature that moderators can enable. The moderator in the room I was in had it enabled. And after the debacle with the title, some guy's chat message popped up at the bottom reading, Too many old heads for my comfort. And finally, it's happening, folks. The long-awaited Google Page Experience update has started rolling out. This is a change to its algorithm that will start calculating core web vitals, which we have talked lots about here. If it's new to you, just go Google that phrase, core web vitals. Company says, while this is a big update in terms of how Google operates,

Starting point is 00:11:36 individual websites shouldn't notice much of a change in their ranking. Well, exciting day for me today because my wife is gone. That in itself is not exciting. I'm not a complete asshole. But what it means is that when my wife is gone, it means that I can play Overwatch and scream. Which is my natural want to do when I'm playing that game. You know, normally when people are at home, I've got to keep the rage bottled inside. I am in Platinum though, surprisingly. And I will be the first to admit

Starting point is 00:12:06 I do not belong in platinum. I think I got to platinum by riding the coattails of a Smurf at some point. I'm sure I did. That's how I always end up in platinum, but I will fall. I will fall perilously and quickly this afternoon. There will be much loud raging,

Starting point is 00:12:22 and it will feel so, so good. Talk to you tomorrow. Inside my heart for all this time Through the days we spent The time that came and went You've been a resident of my heart

Today in Digital Marketing - Your New Reality: VIRTUAL Ads

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