Blocking the Blocklists

Today In Digital Marketingis a daily podcast and daily newsletter showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. This week, Tod touches on:

ADVERTISING: Advertisers reconsider the keyword blocklist for brand safety.

COMMERCE: 47% of retailers find multi-channel sales overwhelming and difficult to manage.

SOCIAL MEDIA: LinkedIn shares insights into its feed algorithm as part of spam tackling efforts.

ADVERTISING: Elon Musk forces smaller advertisers to pay for verification to run ads on Twitter.

MEDIA: BuzzFeed News, which ushered media into the digital age, announces its shutdown.

Below is the transcription from this week’s topics:

Breaking Down Blocklists: Context Over Keywords

Last month, I stumbled upon a marketing goldmine.

It was a bunch of programming code from a video game I play called Slay the Spire. It's sort of a card game.

The code I found online was for its leaderboard. You remember these — play Pacman, get a high score, and you can put your initials in. (I'm aware I'm dating myself with that reference, thank you.)

With Slay the Spire, though, you can put your whole name in if you want. Or your username. Or really any words you want.

And that's the problem. You know the saying: Give the Internet an inch, and it'll take it vile.

The code was a list of bad words that the game would block from usage in the leaderboard. Profanity, racial slurs, sexual references. Even common words like camgirl, OMG, and — my favourite — Santorum. Spelled like the American politician, though you might want to Google that word... if you don't have a weak stomach.

The list was a goldmine for me, because I run a social media engagement and moderation agency. And it provided more words we could add to our existing list of full service and client-specific blockwords.

In the media buying world, blocklists are used too: Terms and topics that the advertiser doesn't want to appear next to.

And an interesting piece up on Digiday suggests that keyword blocklists may be doing more harm than good.

The Problem with Blocklists

Experts say these lists often reward soft content while penalizing socially relevant and controversial topics, such as hard news, leading to missed opportunities for brands and depriving publishers of revenue from premium audiences. It can also create roadblocks for diverse advertising featuring underrepresented groups.

Moving Beyond the Blocklist

The piece is definitely worth reading — it says advertisers must challenge themselves, their media buying partners, and their brand safety vendors to create ways to avoid punishing hard news.

Quoting the piece:

Consumers are smart. They know what they are getting into when they visit hard news sites. If they see a story about a violent protest on a reputable news site, they will not think that a brand advertising on that site is violent. Blocking all news stories covering violence is too crude an approach to brand safety.

More E-commerce Channels, More Problems

Navigating the ever-expanding world of e-commerce channels is no easy feat for retailers, with half saying there are too many channels for them to effectively manage.

Multi-Channel Woes

A new survey from Wunderman Thompson published this week found that while almost all organizations have a multi-channel strategy in place, they face the following challenges:

• Two-thirds said they could be using digital channels more efficiently.
• Nearly half indicated they struggle to maintain a consistent brand experience across every channel.
• Half of the organizations said they have difficulty benchmarking their own omnichannel initiatives to evaluate success.

The report also found that the majority of brands have tailored strategies for individual e-commerce platforms, but one in ten believe there is no differentiation between them.

Easiest Channels for Sales

Marketplaces, social commerce, and direct-to-consumer sites were viewed as the easiest channels to facilitate sales, with two-thirds of survey respondents considering them vital to a company's future.

In terms of budget allocation for 2023, each channel is expected to receive a relatively even spread, with marketplaces, social commerce and D2C sites expected to receive a fifth of retail budgets.

Bright Side for Digital

And finally, more than half said it's hard to find agency partners with the right expertise for making retail media investments. While half said it’s difficult to identify the right retailer sites to buy media on to drive traffic and sales.

Images: Wunderman Thompson

How LinkedIn's Algorithm Works

If you're looking to boost your content on LinkedIn, the company yesterday shared some insights into how its feed algorithm works.

Unlike other social platforms, the platform highlights community building and niche relevance rather than solely maximizing reach for popular posts. However, posts that generate high engagement will still be widely shared.

Going Viral

So how can B2B marketers go viral? LinkedIn measures a post's performance based on several factors, including:

1. The Post Author

The influence and popularity of members posting and engaging with a post are measured, along with followers and connection counts, diversity in industry, location, and level of the network of these members.

2. Engagement Signals

User engagement such as likes, reactions, shares, comments, and views are also taken into account.

3. Temporal Signals

This includes the velocity of likes/reactions, shares, comments, and views. LinkedIn says these act as the strongest signal for the cascading effect happening in the network.

While velocity is important, Social Media Today points out that the main factors in gaining maximum traction on the platform are likely as you would expect:

• The number of followers that you have
• The number of connections that you have
• Your location
• The seniority of users in your network

Though LinkedIn doesn’t say that likes, comments or shares hold more weight in its ranking system, it's likely that that's another factor taken into consideration.

Image: LinkedIn

No Twitter Blue? No Ads For You.

Twitter has found a new solution to its ad spend problem – stick it to the smaller advertisers!

Earlier this morning, the company sent an email to some advertisers explaining that starting today, those who don't meet a certain spend threshold will have to pay for verification to run ads on Twitter.

Businesses, however, that spend at least $1,000 per month already receive gold checks, or soon will, and will continue to enjoy access to advertising without interruption.

Meaning, if your brand isn’t spending at least $1,000 per month, you will need to pay for the blue check to continue running ads, or find another platform.

This shouldn't backfire at all.

Image: Twitter via Matt Navara

RIP BuzzFeed News

It's the end of an era. BuzzFeed, a pioneer in digital media, is shutting down its news division.

The New York Times reports the division ultimately struggled to adapt to the challenging economics of digital publishing, which has affected many of its peers.

It's a sad conclusion for a publication that was once seen as a serious challenger to traditional media outlets that were slow to embrace the internet. However, despite its successes, the news division failed to generate revenue.

In an email to employees yesterday, BuzzFeed's chief executive said the news division closure is part of a wider round of job cuts. The shutdown will affect about 60 of the company's 1,200 employees. BuzzFeed will also cut 120 people across its business, content, tech and administrative teams.

Image: Canva

Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com