Is Facebook’s Biggest API Gap Closing?
Today In Digital Marketing is a daily podcast showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. Today, Tod touches on:
Social media community managers rejoice! One of the biggest gaps in Facebook’s API is closing.
Twitter says don’t panic about Apple’s ad tracking changes.
Amazon’s revenue from ad sales are much bigger than you ever thought.
Adobe makes common PDF actions free.
And this week in What’s Instagram Copying Now?
Below is the transcription from this episode
It’s Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021.
Happy Heroes Day, Mozambique!
I’m Tod Maffin from engageQ digital. And here is what you missed, Today In Digital Marketing.
Facebook Group Messages
Love them or hate them, you can’t deny that Facebook Groups are powerful ways to communicate with people. The algorithm still prioritizes groups over brand pages. And there are stronger moderation controls.
So they why have so few brands embraced Groups as part of their social strategy? I can’t speak for other brands and agencies, but I’ll tell you why WE’VE recommended our clients not use Groups — moderation. Or, more precisely, the lack thereof.
Oh, it’s not that you can’t moderate comments and posts. You can. You just have to do it on Facebook’s site. Because until now, it’s not been in the API. Which means the third-party tool you ACTUALLY use for your social management — like Hootsuite, Agorapulse, Sprinklr, CoPilot, Buffer — all those…. Can’t do anything beyond publish content.
Yes, I said it. Until now.
We use Sprout Social here at our agency, and noticed yesterday some new text on their channel onboarding screen. It read: “Manage incoming messages — coming soon.” A Sprout rep told me later that, yes, it’s happening. And will roll out on their platform some time THIS quarter.
This is a big deal and could very well put a lot of brands into the Groups space. If and when Sprout or the other platforms start rolling this out, you’ll hear it here first.
Twitter and IDFA
Google’s doing a webinar about it. Facebook’s running hate ads in newspapers about it. And now Twitter has come out with its own thoughts on Apple’s forthcoming IDFA update.
The TLDR: Unless you’re marketing a mobile app, you should be okay.
Quoting the company: "We have taken steps to support Apple’s proprietary attribution solution, which enables click install reporting aggregated at the campaign or ad group level."
"We currently believe that [IDFA] will largely impact App Install and App Re-engagement products."
"We do not believe any immediate action is needed at this time for advertisers who leverage products other than our App Installs products. For example, if you are an advertiser that leverages website, video, and awareness products, no action is needed as of now. We will continue to share updates if this changes."
Amazon Quarterlies
The quarterlies are trickling out and, with it, some interesting data around the digital ad market.
For one, Amazon's advertising revenue grew 64% in Q4 year-over-year. Which means, for the first time, revenue from ads is now higher than their subscription services, like Amazon Prime.
Ad revenue also grew faster than any other income category. Including their cloud service — AWS. Even including their primary e-commerce operations.
An ROI Genome report recently found Amazon ads have about a 20% higher ROI than a brand's average marketing ROI. Obviously, that’s for select B2C categories only.
So, with those good numbers, they’re diving in even deeper. Quoting MarketingDive.com: “To make the platform a more appealing destination for advertisers, the company is using a deep learning model to show more relevant sponsored products and improve the relevancy of ads shown on the product detail pages, and has seen "rapid adoption" of video creative format for sponsored brands. These developments can help Amazon keep pace with other advertising platforms and retailers that are bolstering their own ad networks, like Walmart.”
Google’s Quarterly Results
Also reporting this week was Google — more record numbers there. 23% up in Q4 ad revenue. The shining star there: YouTube. Which, on its own, garnered 46% more ad dollars than the previous Q4.
Perhaps more relevant to our work as digital marketers: YouTube says it now reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than all linear TV networks. Combined.
And this stat, which is so mind-boggling, that I’d like to know the methodology employed here, but the company claims 70% of its user reported buying something from a brand after seeing it on YouTube.
Yes, Covid affected ad spending. Remember, in Q2 they reported their first ad sales decline in the company’s 26-year history.
Amazing what a few months will do.
Google My Business and Co-Working Spaces
Whether you’re just launching your business, or you’re a small boutique agency or something — you might be working from a co-working space. Co-working spaces have a lot of benefits, but until now, there’s always been one big drawback — Google hasn’t allowed most businesses operating within co-working spaces to have their own Google My Business profile.
Sure, lots of small companies have gotten around this, but officially it’s been a bit of a challenge.
Now, Google’s added a couple of guidelines that, if followed, will get you your own profile. Basically, if your business is based in a shared office, to qualify for a GMB profile your business must have its own clear signage, you must accept customers there, and the location must be staffed during business hours.
That’ll be good news, once we’re all allowed to work together again.
By the way, there does seem to be a small bug this week in Google My Business profiles. Some digital marketers reporting their “Complete Your Business Profile” box is stuck at 85%, and even adding everything it wants does not get it up to 100%. Google is aware of the issue and is working on it.
Web Stories Update
If you do any level of B2C marketing, you may have experimented with vertical stories. Hell, you might be doing nothing BUT Stories. And chances are, that work has appeared within other platforms — Instagram, Snapchat, and the likes.
Those are great platforms for discovery and big audiences, but they come at a cost — you need to adhere to the policies of that platform. Maybe what you sell is in one of those iffy categories, like cannabis or adult toys.
Luckily, there is another place for your Stories — one that that isn’t reliant on your adherence to any other platform’s policies — and it’s a spot most digital marketers aren’t using.
They’re called Web Stories. They live on your web site. And people using mobile devices can swipe through vertical media just like they’re used to on the other apps.
Google has developed one of the most widely used versions of this — a plugin for Wordpress. And this week, they released an update with some compelling new features.
First, your own Stories feed can now be monetized, if you want. You just basically turn that on in the plug-in’s settings. Of course, this means your visitors will get ads occasionally between your Stories.
And there’s a new Page Layouts section, and new text animations. Google says coming soon, they’ll dd things like Ken Burns-style animations and a timeline that will let you control easing and delays with more granularity.
And, in case you’re wondering, yes content in those Web Stories on your web site WILL COUNT for ranking in Google’s index — with one exception. Google will NOT rank your Stories if you’re using them only as clickbait or teasers and require people to visit your main site to read the full content.
Adobe PDF Changes
Adobe has put some of its PDF functionality onto the web and outside the paywall. You can now convert from Word to PDF, compress a file, or e-sign a PDF on their web site, and without their monthly extortion fee. I’m sorry, I read that wrong. Subscription fee.
You can also password protect a PDF, split a PDF into two, or merge multiple PDFs in the browser, no need for the app.
And, it has jumped on the .NEW trend as well. You can now go to PDF.new to create a new PDF.
You’ll still need a paid subscription for the other stuff, like editing, redacting, or using OCR.
Tiny Items
And two small items to wrap up:
Two New Podcasts a Minute
First, new data from Chartable shows more than 885,000 new podcasts launched in 2020. When you do the math, that’s almost two new podcasts every minute. Education podcasts were the top category. The Internet Advertising Bureau says despite the pandemic, podcast ad revenues are expected to come in at 15% higher in 2020.
Instagram Stories - Swipe Up
And finally, Instagram confirmed today that it’s testing a new method to navigate from one Story to the other. Currently, as you probably know, you tap on the right side of the screen. The new method they’re working on? Swiping up. It’s almost as if they’re copying the idea from TikTok. But — bah, Instagram would never copy a competitor. Would they?
Extro
Don’t forget, I’m building out a Twitter list of listeners of this podcast, so if you are listening right now and want to be on that list, just tweet the hashtag #TodayInDigital. That’s all you need to tweet, if you want. You can also comment on the show with that hashtag or give us some feedback, but if you just want to be added to the list, just tweet #TodayInDigital.
And my extended conversation with Jon Loomer about how the forthcoming iOS changes will affect digital marketing campaigns is available right now in our Slack community, which is free to join. Just go to TodayInDigital.com/slack or tap the link in this episode’s notes.
And now, here it is, your moment of digital marketing zen.
Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com.