Today in Digital Marketing - Your Site's Privacy Notice Is Scaring Your Customers Off

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, advertisers aren't convinced by Google's new privacy sandbox offering. Google's AI might change your business hours. Teenagers hate Instagram? TikTok continues to dominate the app charts. And on the Premium Podcast, with no ads, more stories and deep dive weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more. Time is ticking. Data suggests how prepared advertisers are for the cookie in the show notes for more. Time is ticking. Data suggests how prepared advertisers are for the cookiepocalypse. Spoiler alert, we might be doomed. It's Friday,

Starting point is 00:00:32 April 8th. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And a quick note before we get started, you may be hearing drilling and banging noises during this episode. That is, as I mentioned yesterday, our DEC reinforcement project is underway. One of the jobs of a marketer is to instill in the consumer a sense of trust, trust in the brand, trust in the product or service, trust in how the company handles their personal data, and so on.

Starting point is 00:00:56 That latter job is often fulfilled by putting a privacy notice on the site. Sometimes we do it because it's the law in our country, sometimes in an effort to show people we are a responsible company. But are we shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot? That's what Aaron Braw and his colleagues set out to discover. Dr. Braw is an associate producer of marketing at John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.

Starting point is 00:01:19 He is co-author of a new scientific research study called the Bulletproof Glass Effect, Unintended Consequences of Privacy Notices. I spoke with him recently about his study. Here's a short clip from the conversation. We conducted a series of six experiments involving nearly 20,000 people, and we compared consumers' interest in purchasing from a website or an app that either included or didn't include a privacy notice. And one of the things we found is that telling customers how their personal data is protected can undermine consumer trust and discourage them from making a purchase. So I like to compare it to going to an elementary school and seeing bulletproof glass and metal detectors, right?

Starting point is 00:02:02 Their purpose is there to protect you, but instead of making you feel safe, they could make you feel more vulnerable. It's interesting because that's counter to, I think, everything that is both instinctive as marketers and everything that's taught as well. Like, you would think that the more we layer on sort of, you know, we'll take care of your data, the more secure people feel. Yeah. And, you know, so certainly this does challenge that intuition, right? That telling consumers how their personal data will be protected is going to be good for business. And for most firms and privacy advocates, that's not great news. As researchers, my co-authors and I are definitely supportive of respecting consumers' privacy. And we want to encourage

Starting point is 00:02:44 firms to be responsible and transparent in their data practices. So another thing we looked at after kind of initially discovering this is how could we provide actionable guidance to managers on how to effectively convey privacy information without hurting purchase interest. And so we tested how changes in the wording of a privacy notice affected consumers' willingness to purchase. And we found that consumers were less turned off by privacy notices that included what we call benevolence cues. So those would be statements like, we care about protecting your privacy, or we respect you and promise to treat you fairly,

Starting point is 00:03:23 or we're committed to the protection of your information. And the interesting thing is that although these statements don't offer any legal protection to consumers, they do seem to help build trust by conveying to consumers that companies have good intentions. And so adding these benevolence cues to a privacy notice can reduce or even reverse its negative effects on purchase interest. Among the other topics we chatted about, whether that reduction in purchase intent also translated into a reduction in the perception of a product's value, what differences there were between generations and genders, the surprising effect that happened when he tested having people

Starting point is 00:04:01 click a privacy link and that link resulting in a 404 file not found error, how marketers who can't control whether or not there's a privacy notice or what it says can counter some of its negative effects, and much more. That full conversation is coming to the premium feed tomorrow. You can get it by signing up for the premium feed. Either tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium. Premium podcast feed members also get a show with more stories and no ads. After Google announced stage one of testing for its privacy sandbox offerings a couple of weeks ago, many questions remain around its topics program regarding its implementation, effectiveness, and impact on us

Starting point is 00:04:46 advertisers. A great piece in Marketing Dive today explores why advertisers remain uncertain. If you need a refresh, Topics replaces Flock. That is Google's first response to the cook apocalypse. The program works by collecting information on a topic that a consumer has expressed interest in over the past three weeks and gives it to advertisers when they visit websites. To protect consumer privacy, that information is only kept for a limited amount of time. The article points out a few potential challenges for the program. Since Topics is being rolled out on a limited basis, it's hard to know how well it'll perform. Using a limited scope will set the bar low and won't offer an accurate picture of

Starting point is 00:05:25 how topics will perform in the long run. Another issue is scale. Because consumers must opt in, the trial may not gain the traction it needs. The piece notes that topics will likely never be as precise as third-party cookies, but that doesn't mean there won't be any benefits. As a result, topics' efficiency is unclear, a problem that will likely persist until the final technical design is understood. Remember yesterday when we told you using AI to write your webpages is against Google's guidelines? Funny how the rules don't apply to them, hey? Google has shared how it uses AI to update your business hours on Google Maps. This is the first time, I think, anyway, that Google has said that it even does this.

Starting point is 00:06:11 The company also shared that if it's confident enough in the AI's prediction of what your business hours probably are, it will change those hours in its listing of your company. Here's how the AI analyzes the information to determine if it should do the updates. First, to determine if the hours are incorrect, it looks at when the business profile was last updated, the times of similar shops, and data from popular times. If the business hours appear to be incorrect, its algorithm looks at even more data to determine whether the hours should be updated, such as checking with real humans, including Google Maps, local guides, and business owners

Starting point is 00:06:49 to verify predictions. Google doesn't explicitly tell users when hours are updated by its AI and explained that AI is used, quote, pretty much everywhere else in Google Maps, unquote. That, according to The Verge. The company says it's on track to update the hours for more than 20 million businesses around the globe in the next six months. So consider this your sign to make sure your business hours are correct or Google will do it for you. 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.

Starting point is 00:07:38 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.

Starting point is 00:08:18 Be protected. Be Zen. New data is showing where you could be spending your ad dollars if you want to target Gen Zs. And that app is, of course, TikTok, which has finally surpassed Snapchat as the most popular social media app among teens, according to the report. Here is how teens ranked the platforms. TikTok is their favorite social media platform. Snapchat took second place and Instagram was third again. More than half said Amazon is their number one favorite e-commerce site. The demographic also spent more, spending increased by almost 10% compared to last year. That's driven by women spending more on fashion,

Starting point is 00:08:57 with clothing and footwear purchases up almost 15%. Similarly, digital purchases were boosted by fashion expenditures with 9 out of 10 upper-income Gen Zs shopping online. The data comes from Piper Sandler's survey of more than 7,100 U.S. teens. And while TikTok may be the top social platform among teens, it has the potential to become the number one platform for all consumers. A new, different report has found that, once again, TikTok was the most downloaded app this quarter, with more than 186 million installs globally. It dominated in overall downloads as well on Apple's app platform, beating out Meta's platforms. Meta did, however, maintain its dominance of the Google Play charts, so those would be Android phones. Facebook was the most downloaded app on Google Play last year,

Starting point is 00:09:49 but this past quarter, Instagram claimed the top spot with more than 125 million first-time installs. TikTok also maintained its position as the top-grossing non-game app overall as well on the App Store. The platform generated more than $820 million in consumer spending this quarter. It is important to note that TikTok's numbers include consumer spend on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which actually contributes to nearly 60% of its overall revenue. But according to another analysis, U.S. spending on TikTok increased 125 percent quarter after quarter, suggesting that American users at least are looking to spend more on the app.

Starting point is 00:10:31 The data comes from Sensor Tower and Data AI. Well, after saying that they have an edit button in the works, Twitter is apparently on a roll with giving marketers what they want this week. This time, it's testing a new feature that could help with your brand safety. Twitter announced it is, quote, experimenting with unmentioning a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations available on the web for some of you now, unquote. Users with the test untagging feature can select the three-dot menu next to a reply and pull up a prompt offering to get you out of the conversation. The pop-up explains that leaving the conversation will untag you from replies, but your username will remain. If a user removes themselves from a tweet, their Twitter handle turns gray and they cannot be tagged back into the thread. A new report predicts annual marketing spend

Starting point is 00:11:29 will increase by 30% by 2025, reaching $4.7 trillion. The forecast, however, indicates that marketing spending is dependent on location as well as industry. As a result of the pandemic, companies in China and India will see the fastest growth. Interactive media and services, as well as travel and leisure, are among the fastest growing industries. According to the report, U.S. companies spend the most on marketing, accounting for $1.4 trillion, or 40% of global marketing spend in 2021. The data was provided by Forrester. So the deck work, the reinforcing of the deck to support a small hot tub is going much faster than I thought.

Starting point is 00:12:14 We've tripled up on the jousts, joists, I don't know the name of these words. We've got a reinforcing beam. There was electrical work and apparently it'll all be done maybe even tomorrow morning. Then we get a structural engineer to sign off on it to make sure the work is done right. So very exciting news. And our thanks to the user named Fiduciary Financial Advisor who reviewed this podcast saying for you to equate the entire crypto market investment possibilities with meme coins is as short-sighted as you can get. I have not listened to much of your program, but I for sure will not listen to any more.

Starting point is 00:12:53 Thank you for the review. If you'd like to review the show and have a chance of me reading it out, just tap the link in the episode notes or go to todayindigital.com slash rate us. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamik First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Step Gun, podcast music licensing by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle, and actor Will Smith was banned today from 10 years worth of Academy events, part of his punishment for smacking Chris

Starting point is 00:13:25 Rock on stage at the Oscars. And while that's resolved now with the Academy, it does not resolve the dispute our theme composer Mark Blevis has with him. I keep telling Mark to just let it go, but today Mark emailed Will Smith saying, now you're punching and you're kicking and you're shouting at me. I'm relying on your common decency. So far, it hasn't surfaced, but I'm sure it exists. It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist. Have a restful weekend. I'll see you on Monday. Just let it go.

Starting point is 00:13:56 Just let it go. Just let it go

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Site's Privacy Notice Is Scaring Your Customers Off

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