Today in Digital Marketing - You’re #1! (Well, you’re actually #6.)

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

YouTube is quietly asking top creators to help it build a product catalog for future direct sales… some good news about your job prospects as a digital marketer… why you should consider deleting any disapproved ad campaigns from your Facebook ads manager… new brand options for Amazon ads… and more behind the scenes on the monetization of this podcast: this time — the first programmatic campaign is approved.Join our Slack community! TodayInDigital.com/slackNot subscribed yet? Subscribe links at TodayInDigital.com HELP SPREAD THE WORD:Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publishReview Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST:Produced by: engageQ.com Advertising: RedCircle.com/brands and TodayInDigital.com/adsClassified Ads: TodayInDigital.com/classifieds Transcripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com Email list: TodayInDigital.com/email Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio)TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA:Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffinTod’s agency: engageQ.comTikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffiTwitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin (game livestreaming)Source links and full transcripts at TodayInDigital.com Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, YouTube is quietly asking top creators to help it build a product catalog for future direct sales, some good news about your job prospects as a digital marketer, why you should consider deleting any disapproved ad campaigns from your Facebook ads manager, new brand options for Amazon ads, and more behind the scenes on the monetization of this podcast. This time, the first programmatic campaign is approved. It's Tuesday, October 13th, 2020. Happy Ada Lovelace Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed

today in digital marketing. Reports say YouTube has its sights set on becoming a top e-commerce shopping site. Consumers would be able to directly purchase items they see in videos. This could be huge for those popular unboxing videos or product review videos or any of those here's some wacky thing I bought from China YouTube channels. I love those. YouTube says already 55% of people use videos to make purchase decisions. As it stands now, of course, consumers are directed off the YouTube page and over to the merchant's site when they're about to make a purchase. They want to have the conversion happen right on YouTube.

Better user experience, quicker purchase, maybe more impulse buying. And YouTube would like it because they'd probably take a cut. A report from Bloomberg over the weekend said they're asking some creators to tag and track products shown in their clips. This would presumably be building a product catalog for them. The report also says YouTube has been quietly testing an integration with Shopify as well. Good news, you are in demand, friend. Data from LinkedIn's Economic Graph, which maps more than 700 million people, has found that digital marketing specialist is now in the top 10 of most in-demand jobs. They got this partly by looking at which positions have the most job openings available,

but also what jobs have grown most in the last four years, and whether the jobs pay a livable wage. For the record, digital marketer comes in at number six, software developer is number one, and the most in-demand skills for a digital marketer, social media, content strategy, SEO, marketing channels, Google Analytics, and Google Ads. By the way, some career courses

in LinkedIn's video learning platform are still free until the end of next March. It's happened to all of us. You work hard developing some killer creative, set your Facebook ad with the perfect targeting. I mean, you really get into the weeds, you know, like 2% lookalike on ad to cart with an interest restrictor.

You hit submit and Facebook disapproves your ad campaign. Why? Who the hell knows? Sometimes you actually do go against policy, but more often than not, you got denied because the AI bots made a mistake. Well, a new article up at socialmediaexaminer.com says you may want to consider deleting any disapproved campaigns from your ad account, lest Facebook penalize you even more. Quoting their piece, to reduce the risk that your ad account will be retroactively flagged for previous disapprovals, take the time to document and then delete disapproved Facebook ads. Taking these steps will help minimize the chance that compliance bots will ding your ad account for ads that aren't even live anymore. This also plays a larger role

in your ad account's quality ranking and health. Facebook ad account health helps ensure your ads continue to deliver and meet your benchmarks for ROI, CTR, and CPC, unquote. One thing the article does note is that, quote, Facebook gauges your ad account's health based on your history of advertising on the platform. If you have a ton of disapproved Facebook ads, this counts against you regardless of how many of those ads you document and delete, unquote. So then why are we deleting these ads? They say it's still worth doing because, quote, while this method isn't? They say it's still worth doing because, quote, while this method isn't a guarantee

Facebook won't flag your ad account, it will help decrease your chances of getting flagged for old ads that were rejected. Facebook frequently changes their ad policies in response to national events and updates to the platform, so it's helpful to stay up to date with these changes as they happen in addition to documenting and deleting disapproved ads, unquote. One last bit about Facebook.

The company this morning said it would start rejecting ads that discourage people from getting vaccines. But ads advocating against legislation or government policies around vaccines, includingCOVID-19 vaccines, are still allowed. Some new options for those of you who run ads on Amazon's site or are thinking of it. They are now letting some advertisers add their brand logo and customize the headline in sponsored display ads. Those are the ads that run on product description pages, customer reviews, shopping results pages, that sort of thing. One item to note here, while shopping display ads can target by views, product, or interest, if you use this new logo and headline option, only product targeting will be available. Also, while we're on the topic of Amazon, they are the proud new owners of two potentially valuable domain names,

podcast.com and podcasting.com. No word on what they paid, though Podnews says someone recently was pitched $2 million to buy one of them. The domain's forward to audible.com, which doesn't have third-party podcasts on it. Amazon Music does in four countries, but that's not where those domains go. So maybe Audible will be jumping into the fray soon, too. This is a digital marketing podcast, after all, and so I have promised to keep you up to date on the behind the scenes of the monetization of this podcast. The last thing that happened was I moved my podcast host from Anchor, which doesn't permit any monetization if you're outside the US, as I am,

over to Red Circle. Red Circle uses programmatic ad insertion. The way the process worked was I got an email proposal with a link yesterday, and the proposal was for Klaviyo.com. The link had all the details. They wanted to buy 30,000 downloads. That's a really cool part of the Red Circle platform.

Rather than pricing it by the spot, like, say, whatever, 100 bucks per ad, this platform will drop the ads in until they hit the 30,000 download count, then it turns off. What I don't control is where in the episodes the ads will show up. There are pre-roll and post-roll slots, and every time I upload an episode, I have to pick a natural mid-roll insertion location. So you and I will be hearing any ads that run on this podcast at about the same time. Anyway, apparently this ad will start dropping in as of next Thursday, and because it's inserting them with each download, those 30,000 could come from the back catalog too. They figure it'll take about three weeks to get all 30,000 downloads. I deliberately lowballed my CPM rate for the first campaign at $15 CPM just to, you know, see what happens.

So after Red Circle's 30% cut, I'll be making a whopping $320. But that's $320 US, so, you know, like about $800,000 Canadian. Also, I jacked my CPM rate up to $22. Still a deal. Average CPMs for podcasts are running about $25 for a general audience and more for a specific audience like this. And finally, a little bit off topic,

I do a small community podcast for my hometown called the Nanaimo Chronicles. We're having a provincial election here. And as part of that, I've been doing deep dive interviews with the candidates. But the rule for the interviews is that they are not allowed to talk about their party or its platform or policies. It's just about them. This is the second series like this that I've done, and the candidates get really quite deep, quite revealing.

One, I'm pretty sure, actually comes out as LGBT in his episode. So, I'm going to drop the trailer for the series at the end of today's show in case you like those kinds of people, stories, podcasts. It's only a minute long, so feel free to skip if it's not your jam. Yes, thank you. I had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was Canadian Thanksgiving and it's no episode yesterday.

I'm very proud of myself. I made a spectacular dinner, a sweet potato and apple gazpacho, turkey spring rolls, and a wild rice and green bean salad, even pumpkin pie cupcakes for dessert. It all came from this mobile app I use. I don't usually pay monthly subscription fees for mobile apps,

but this one's really worth it. Anyway, okay, talk to you tomorrow. If I took all the stars from the midnight sky They wouldn't hold a candle to the way you shine. Well, here we are again. This time it's a provincial election. And like last year's federal election, for the last couple of weeks, I've been meeting with each of the MLA candidates in both Nanaimo ridings. Interviewing them about where they came from, what drives them, what they've overcome, and what they've learned. Everything was on the table with one rule. No politics.

And so Tracy said, so what did Dr. Brett Foster say? And I just said, I've got a brain aneurysm. Well, that's not what you go home and tell your wife on Christmas Eve. Yeah, that was 100% genuine tears last night. Like just, it's so powerful. Nature is incredibly powerful. And it's become a bit of what guides me. It's my mentor. He was an alcoholic and could not quit. And I had never experienced anybody that even drank. She's larger than life. And she got knocked out by cancer and died in a matter of weeks. I don't know how long I will have. So I had better make sure that I am doing the work

that is the absolutely most important to me. You know, I've always been open with her, but I haven't been open publicly. You know, people will say, have pride and be open about who you are, accept others, all of those things, and yet I wasn't really being terribly open. Politics scares me, that public exposure part of it.

By and large, most people have come to a real acceptance that people love differently. I'm Todd Mathen. The Candidates, Season 2. Coming later this week to the Nanaimo Chronicles podcast. Produced by Nanaimo's EngageQ Digital. Subscribe free wherever you get your podcasts. Or visit NanaimoChronicles.com.