Today in Digital Marketing - YouTubers Get a Short Kick in the Ads

Starting point is 00:00:01 It is Monday, May 1st. Today, new ads for a new format. YouTube goes all in on Vertical. Also, Meta takes yet another perfectly good targeting tool and throws it in the trash. Instagram has a new way for brands to source user-generated content. And it's Meta Monday. Andrew Foxwell is here for a look at what the week ahead on that platform looks like. I'm Todd Maffin. That's Ahead, Today in Digital Marketing. In its push to short-form video, YouTube introduced several new Shorts ad formats today. The platform is expanding its Video Reach ads to Shorts, which uses AI to optimize brand reach through a combination of formats like skippable ads and six-second ads and so on.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Video Reach campaigns are really brand awareness ads. Previously, Shorts inventory was only available through performance-oriented ad formats like app install campaigns or performance max or video action campaigns. But now, reach ads will also be expanded to the in-feed environment, including on the company's home feed and search results. YouTube Select, that's a tool that lets advertisers choose curated packages of content, will also now be available for Shorts. And finally, YouTube is launching a new ad placement that will let advertisers purchase the first ad a viewer sees when scrolling through Shorts. TikTok offers a very similar format and it is very popular. YouTube says that placement will

Starting point is 00:01:23 initially be limited to some select videos, but it will be expanded later on. Well, certainly one of the most important platforms we digital marketers have in our tool set is Meta. For many marketers, Meta is where most of their spend goes. And so with that in mind, we are introducing a new column, Meta Mondays. Every week, Andrew Foxwell and I will chat about the latest changes there. If you don't know Andrew, he is genuinely one of the world's top meta media buyers. His agency handles millions of dollars of spend. His training courses are among the industry's best.

Starting point is 00:02:00 He hosts a Slack community of fellow advanced media buyers for the platform. And every Monday, you will hear part of our conversation here. If you join the premium podcast, you'll be able to hear the full conversation. But let's start, Andrew, back a week where that huge hiccup interrupted just a ton of ad campaigns. Do we know yet the full scope of that outage and whether marketers are seeing refunds yet? Yeah, you know, the general consensus was that it wasn't too bad in reference to, I mean, it certainly spent a lot of money, but performance after the outage was okay and things recovered okay. So that's a big win.

Starting point is 00:02:33 And sometimes these things can take a long time to recover from. So that's, I think, one big piece is it wasn't too bad after, which isn't fantastic, isn't, you know, is okay, but not great to hear. And that's especially good news because I think a lot of people were concerned that it was such a big shift that it may affect learning in the ad accounts, which of course

Starting point is 00:02:55 would affect, you know, campaigns beyond that. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's always some residual effects that you will feel as an advertiser when things are shut off or when you turn off an account. But it does seem like things were after the outage are delivering mildly, you know, the same, they're delivering, okay, you're getting the same amount of impressions you were. So that's a good thing. In terms of the refund, you know, basically, the initial feeling was, oh, we're gonna have to go through and submit all these testimonials and these videos and these walkthroughs of what happened.

Starting point is 00:03:27 And Meta has said, no, no, no, don't worry. We're going to go into the account and we are going to look at what was impacted and we'll let you know. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to submit anything. This is, of course, like a little bit, you could look at this in two ways. One is, do I actually believe this and am I going to get a four cent refund? Yes. Or, you know, do they actually care about this? And I think from we're going to give them time to hopefully make this right. I've heard more messaging about this from Meta, as I said last week, than I had previously on anything else of them being more empathetic in their response. So hopefully, and that means

Starting point is 00:04:05 that they're going to at least give us potentially credits that will be overly generous would be my guess. But it's going to be how you define, I think ultimately it's going to come down to how it's defined as impacted, what was impacted and what particular, you know, how do you define that? Like if everything's spent, but one spent normally, quote unquote, then is that impacted? And how do you determine that? So, you know, sort of 50-50 on hopeful and feeling like really worried about that, frankly. So there are actually like human beings at Meta that are going to make this call on an ad account by ad account basis? Apparently there are, I'm going to guess that what's going to happen is they're, they're looking at those that were, um, they're going to look at ad sets that, that basically spent proportionally, uh, more of their budget over a certain period of time would be my guess. So if it's spent quickly, they're going to say, okay, we know that normally you spend 5k a day and that's paced out a 24 hour period. And this spent 5k by 8am. And if that's the case, we will refund

Starting point is 00:05:05 you a certain percentage of that. So that would be that would be my guess for those people that, you know, I think for those people left the ads on, I think that they there's always a claim of a, you know, an upper hand that people have in these things. There's a lot of claims recently of thing. Oh, well, I left it on, I didn't touch it. Now, you know, I got great results the rest of the day. Well, you always have to take that stuff with a grain of salt. There's not a lot of areas for competitive difference and advantage within Facebook ad agencies. And so this is one of them that they're going to utilize. And some people are going to utilize, in my opinion, improperly to try to make people feel like they have some sort of upper hand in the strategy that others do not understand. So I think there's

Starting point is 00:05:49 probably 10% of the people that have said that online that actually were like, wow, I was surprised. Actually, I was on vacation and I forgot about it. And that was it was a mistake, but it turned out to be okay. So anyway, I think that's important to mention. In the full column this week, we chat about Advantage Plus, the meta shopping platform, how to use third party tools to change the way the meta platform shop looks, and his thoughts on the removal of geographic targeting from the meta platform. What's that you say? Hold on.

Starting point is 00:06:17 That's the next story. Hear the whole thing by subscribing to the Premium Podcast at todayindigital.com slash premium or by tapping the link in the show notes. And right now, the premium podcast is 50% off for up to a year. We have never discounted it that much. That offer disappears Friday. So todayindigital.com slash premium or tap the go premium link in the show notes to get the full Meta Mondays, no ads, weekend episodes, and much more. So yeah, Meta is taking more ad targeting away. All part of the industry's drunken infatuation with AI-driven campaigns.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Meta ad trainer John Loomer discovered a major change to location targeting in Facebook ads this week. Previously, advertisers could select from four choices for location targeting. They were people living in or recently in this location, people living in this location only, people recently in this location only, or people traveling in this location, meaning if you didn't change this, your ads would reach consumers who lived in or recently stayed in the selected location, even if it wasn't their home. But now, Meta has eliminated the drop-down menu and replaced it with only one option, that big combined living in or recently in. This change may not affect all advertisers, but some might need to consider the impact of targeting based on location. For instance, businesses that can only ship to specific locations or cater exclusively to local residents might want to ensure they're targeting the right

Starting point is 00:07:55 people. Local service businesses like plumbers, roofers, or flooring companies might want to target only residents of a particular area, not visitors. What does this mean for your currently running campaigns? Well, any current ad sets that are using customized location targeting are not affected by this update. But if you duplicate that ad set, the new ad set will use the new settings without a drop-down menu. And of course, any new ad sets that you create will also use this new method. It's possible that campaigns using the old method will have a deadline and stop running

Starting point is 00:08:28 if they're not updated to use the new living in or recently in setting by a specific date. Meta's done that before. But the effect of the change is not yet clear, as there really has not been any official statement from Meta. 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.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Advertisers may be spending less than a year ago, but that doesn't necessarily mean the industry is in a downturn. Instead, the latest financial updates and forecasts indicate that ad spend is neither accelerating nor slowing down this year. A report from Digiday suggests that this state of stability represents a correction rather than a downturn in the industry, as last year's decrease in spending was just a precursor to returning to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, so far this year, the ad industry has held up quite well. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon all recently reported ad revenue growth

Starting point is 00:09:43 during the first quarter. Advertising is expected to grow 7% this year and 11% next year, more in line with growth rates before the pandemic. Quoting the Digiday report, simply put, advertising isn't a negative market, but it is a slow one. And yet that's less about the economic downturn and more about the tough comparables of the year ago quarter when advertisers were spending at a rate that was unsustainable. Those days are long gone. That might surprise some, but it's not necessarily unexpected.

Starting point is 00:10:14 The rampant growth spurt online advertising was on was always going to run out of steam eventually. The pandemic just brought that forward. And in doing so, it turned the likes of Google and Meta into mature, slow growth ad businesses, unquote. The report also added that major players like Hershey, Procter & Gamble, and American Express all said they spent more on advertising in the first quarter. And even publishers and media buyers noted that spending is starting to pick up, despite a rocky start to the year. While ad revenue may have been up in its first

Starting point is 00:10:48 quarter, Amazon's online retail sales remained flat year over year, reaching $51 billion, as physical store sales grew 7%. The company recently reported product sales increased by less than 1%. Amazon's CFO told analysts that third-party marketplace sellers were responsible for 60% of goods sold, that's a rise from 55% the previous year. The e-commerce giant, though, experienced stronger growth in its services, with marketplace seller services increasing by almost 20%, subscriptions growing by 15%, and advertising by 20%. The company's AWS cloud service sales also rose by 15%. Overall, Amazon's net sales increased by 10% to $127 billion. But expenses also went up, with sales costs up by 15% and fulfillment costs up by 20%. Nevertheless, Amazon still managed to turn a profit this quarter

Starting point is 00:11:48 with a net income of $3.2 billion. A couple of Instagram updates to report. First, getting permission to use your customers' content just got easier. Instagram is testing a new feature that lets brands showcase user-generated content in their shop. The platform now prompts some shop managers to include UGC automatically in their product listings. When prompted, the system will display posts

Starting point is 00:12:14 in which your business has been tagged, which you can then link to product listings. When a user tags your brand in a post, you will have the option to request permission to feature your products in that post. It'll also be able to request direct tagging within any post where you've been mentioned, except for private accounts, posts with multiple product tags, or posts where the user has disabled those permission requests. Also, music is making its way into carousels and notes.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Users can already add songs to individual photos. But now Instagram is testing a new feature that lets you add a song to photo carousels and notes. Users can already add songs to individual photos. But now Instagram is testing a new feature that lets you add a song to photo carousels. They're also experimenting with letting users attach a clip of a song to notes. That's Instagram's text-based update feature, similar to how music can be added to individual posts or reels. And finally, TikTok has come up with a solution for combating deep fakes a new warning label the information.com is reporting today that the company is developing a feature that will let content creators disclose if their videos were made using generative ai the report suggests the ai disclosure could be similar to the way that TikTok creators identify sponsored post content, which includes turning on a branded content toggle in post settings.

Starting point is 00:13:29 It is unclear, though, whether TikTok will require or enforce disclosure. Quick reminder to snag that 50% off offer before it disappears at the end of the week for the premium podcast. It's just like this version of the podcast, except it has no ads. We have a whole bunch of deep dive episodes, story links in the show notes, audio chapters that let you jump between stories, and of course, the full length version of Meta Mondays with Andrew Foxwell. You can go to today in digital.com slash premium or tap the link in the show notes. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - YouTubers Get a Short Kick in the Ads

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