Glimmers of Sunshine Amidst the Online Advertising Storm

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

• Q3: Amazon Comes Out on Top
• Amazon Exposed Viewing Data
• Pinterest Users Flatline
• Shipping Increases Are Coming To Town
• YouTube's New Channel Layout
• Will Advertisers Boycott Twitter?
• Yes, Facebook Was Down.

Below is the transcription from this week’s topics

Q3: Amazon Comes Out on Top

Finally, a little bit of good news for the online media buying space.

After Snap, Alphabet, and Meta all reported lacklustre revenue from advertising this week, Amazon announced yesterday that its ad sales picked up in the third quarter.

From advertising, the e-commerce giant generated $9.5 billion, a 25% increase year-over-year.

Q3 Losses

Quoting an analyst from Insider Intelligence:

Both Google and Amazon have been more resilient to recessionary headwinds in the digital ad market given their tight closed-loop reporting and minimal exposure to iOS disruption of targeting and measurement.
This quarter, Amazon held up better than Google in part due to the added boost from Prime Day in July, compared against a Q3 2021 that didn’t feature Prime Day.

He added the company's ad business is continuing to grow as it expands into streaming TV and builds out its Amazon Fresh grocery business, which will provide data that will fuel its ad offerings.

The Retail Media Movement

All that said, Amazon's ad revenue only represents 7.5% of its total net sales, but evidence suggests it will continue to grow as part of the retail media movement, Adweek reports.

Amazon is expected to control three-quarters of the U.S. digital retail media category this year.

Images: Adweek

Amazon Outpaces Snap, Meta, Alphabet in Q3 Ad Revenue

Amazon Exposed Viewing Data

Amazon's plans to rely on streaming TV for revenue may have been rattled a bit.

The company admitted yesterday it accidentally left an internal database filled with Amazon Prime viewing data exposed to anyone on the internet. With no password.

The Database Leak

A researcher found the database which contained over 200 million entries of viewing data, such as:

• The title of the streamed show or movie
• What device it was streamed on
• Subscription details
• Other internal data like network quality

Quoting TechCrunch:

While disconcerting that a company of Amazon’s size and wealth could leave such a huge cache of data on the internet for weeks without anyone noticing, based on our review, the data cannot be used to personally identify customers by name.
But the lapse highlights a common problem that underpins many data exposures — misconfigured internet-facing servers that are left online without a password for anyone to access.

Amazon took the database offline after a security researcher provided details about the exposure.

Mistakes Happen, Even to Amazon

In a statement, the company said that "there was a deployment error with a Prime Video analytics server," and that the problem had been resolved, adding that no account information (including logins or payment details) was revealed.

The tech giant also noted that it was not an issue related to Amazon Web Services.

Amazon accidentally exposed an internal server packed with Prime Video viewing habits

Pinterest Users Flatline

Pinterest announced its third-quarter results yesterday, reporting an 8% increase in revenue.

But, when it comes to monthly active users, the social media app has flatlined, with 0% growth year-over-year, at 445 million.

Generation Z users grew by double-digits.

But, as Forrester's principal analyst pointed out, the platform's flat global MAUs indicate stagnant user growth.

Pinterest also said it saw year-over-year growth in engagement, which was measured by:

• Impressions
• Saves
• Sessions

Q3 Loss

For the third quarter, the company's net loss was $65 million, while its adjusted earnings were $77 million.

Looking Ahead

In the fourth quarter, Pinterest expects revenue growth in the mid-single digits, considering greater foreign exchange headwinds than in the third quarter.

Images: Pintersest

Pinterest Q3 Global Monthly Active Users Were Flat Year-Over-Year

Shipping Increases Are Coming To Town

This holiday season UPS and FedEx rate increases are coming to town. We're going to spend a bit of extra time on this, since many of you are e-commerce marketers who rely on those.

Both UPS and FedEx announced their delivery rates will increase by 7% on average despite declining volumes. However, the full force of their changes could result in shippers getting even more Scrooged. How much more depends on several factors, including:

• The services they use
• The packages they ship
• The destinations of their deliveries

Retail Dive has a great piece up today about what parcel shipping experts say customers should consider when evaluating how the changes will affect their bottom line.

Surcharges Add Further Cost Pressures

The 7% average increase doesn’t account for surcharges that can be tacked on to the final shipping price, such as:

• Extra fees for residential deliveries
• Handling oversized packages
• Delivering to rural destinations

An executive from AFS Logistics noted that shippers should be especially aware of fuel surcharges since they apply to every package regardless of size or destination. The fuel surcharge percentages are subject to change weekly by both carriers.

Long Distance Gets Scrooged

The rate hikes particularly punish shippers that need goods moved over longer distances.

The article suggests that one way shippers can reduce their exposure to higher-zone deliveries is to fulfil orders from facilities closer to the end customer.

Rural Folk Get Scrooged

Both companies are also increasing shipping costs to rural destinations:

• For packages shipped to rural ZIP codes, FedEx will charge a $13.25 surcharge per package
• For UPS, its per-shipment remote area surcharge will increase to $13.05

To mitigate these delivery area surcharges, a parcel consultant recommended that online retailers find alternative carriers for delivery to the affected ZIP codes. Alternatively, shippers can negotiate the published fees with the carriers or pass the surcharge cost onto their customers.

Cooling Demand

Finally, with delivery demand cooling, will there be any relief for shippers?

UPS said in its earnings report earlier this week that it is open to passing along savings generated from its own productivity initiatives to its customers, suggesting prices could shift in the shippers' favour.

That said, don't hold your breath.

UPS and FedEx rate increases are coming. Here's how shippers can prepare.

YouTube's New Channel Layout

Image: YouTube interface

YouTube announced it's rolling out a redesign on all channel pages that splits content into three separate tabs:

1. Shorts
2. Live streams
3. Videos

As a result, Shorts content and Live feeds will no longer be found under the main Videos tab. The redesign will also give YouTube a new way to direct viewers to its TikTok clone.

Quoting TechCrunch:

Now, when users are watching Shorts videos in the Shorts feed in the main YouTube app, then navigate to the creator’s channel, they’ll be sent directly into this new Shorts tab to watch even more Shorts content. This could help YouTube boost its views for Shorts as those users will no longer be immediately lost to the creator’s long-form content, as before.

The company said that the redesign will be available on all devices in the coming weeks.

YouTube redesign gives long-form videos, Shorts and Live videos their own tabs on channel pages

Will Advertisers Boycott Twitter?

I think everyone's sick of the Twitter news, so I won't spend a tonne of time on this.

The deal went through last night. Elon Musk now owns Twitter outright. This means it will be delisted from the stock exchange, and also means we will lose some information — notably, financial reports, how many users they have, how its subscription products are performing, and how its ad products are performing.

According to The Wall Street Journal, advertisers are now weighing in as concerns over Trump being reinstated and the potential for Twitter to become a much less brand-safe platform.

GroupM's global head of partnerships told The Journal that letting Trump tweet again would be a red line for some major brands.

About a dozen of the advertising agency's clients asked to pause their Twitter ads if Trump returned to the platform, and the firm expected even more brands to be in contact if his permanent ban ended.

Previously, Musk has criticized Twitter's decision to ban Trump. For now, his plans to “Make Twitter Great Again” remain unclear.

One thing that is clear, though, the layoffs have already begun. Musk fired Twitter's CEO, CFO, and head of policy within minutes of the deal going through last night, and social media is full of reports of Twitter employees being called into meetings and fired.

Advertisers plan to boycott Twitter if Elon Musk lets Donald Trump start tweeting again, report says

Yes, Facebook Was Down.

And finally, as we were putting the newsletter and podcast together this afternoon, there were some reports that Facebook's marketing platform had gone down — ad manager, business manager, and so on.

Their status page, of course, reported that everything was a-ok — but I think it's become clear that Facebook has completely forgotten about updating that status page.

Anyway, if the platform seemed buggy today, it wasn't just you.

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