Remember Facebook?

A VERY META UPDATE

Last night, as I was waiting for the series finale of Succession (incredible ending btw), it’s as if the TV-programming Gods knew I had been working on this Meta update, because the random channel I was watching in the meantime served up The Social Network movie. Of course, I couldn’t turn it off, and in case it’s been a while since you’ve seen the dramatic re-enactment of Facebook’s founding, I’ll give you the TLDR;

Harvard nerd, Mark Zuckerberg, was angry at his then-girlfriend, so he created a website where students could rate each others’ hotness, and then share their relationship status. Fast-forward a couple of hours and that website becomes so popular that everyone, including his former best friend, is suing him for his billions of dollars.

Today, that value is approaching a Trillion, and it seems that we’ve all come to accept how all-encompassing and ubiquitous the thing that Zuckerberg created is. It really is remarkable to contrast the largest network ever created — that now includes Instagram, WhatsApp, encrypted messaging, AI-generated ad networks, and VR headsets — against the movie’s storyline, which heralds the invention of The Facebook Wall as a breakthrough innovation.

The movie reminded me of just how far we’ve come in so little time, but it also reminded me that a world existed, not so long ago, that didn’t include Facebook at all. Perhaps that world will exist again sometime in the not-so-distant future, but for today, Meta is one of the most dominant forces in digital marketing, and one of the primary sources of ad-driven revenue for businesses across the world, so it’s worth checking in on them to see exactly what’s up in the world that Zuck has wrought, and how that applies to all of us who exist in his social network:

• First, the bad news: Meta was hit with a record 1.2 billion euro ($1.75 billion CAD) fine by a privacy regulator in the EU over its handling of user information, and given five months to stop transferring European users' data to the United States. Read the story on cbc.ca
• They’re coming for Twitter (again): The most common move at Meta is to launch a slightly less innovative version of a competitor’s product, then use its scale to crush them (ie. Snapchat, Meerkat). For whatever reason, that tactic hasn’t worked against Twitter, but it’s not stopping them from trying again with something they’re calling Project Barcelona. According to early releases, it will include text updates of up to 500 characters, links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length, as well as likes, replies, and re-posts in the app. This is also Meta’s first attempt at building a decentralized network, which it says will make your profile compatible with other decentralized systems. Social Media Today has the early leaks
• They’re at least trying to make our work more efficient: Soon we’ll be able to use third-party services to schedule IG Stories. Meta is opening up a portion of its API that it has, up until now, kept entirely locked off from developers. It will be interesting to see if this marks a further loosening up of its API restrictions. Read the update directly from the source at Meta
• Everyone is on board with AI these days, here’s how Meta is using it: It’s been no secret that the back-end targeting has long been powered by AI models, and those only appear to be getting better at thir jobs. They’ve also released something they’re calling “Sandbox,” which is a generative tool that allows us to upload a single ad, then have the AI generate multiple variants of our copy and creative. Time will tell if this is more of a tool or a toy, but it does appear to be a time saver, if nothing else. TechCrunch has the Sandbox news here
• Apparently they still think that VR is going to be a thing: Meta has previewed their latest headset, called Meta Quest 3. Apparently, it is “far lighter and thinner” than the original Quest 2, which people complained was clunky and uncomfortable. They haven’t announced a price yet, but it will be coming out around the same time as Apple’s much-anticipated headset, and both are rumoured to come in at a much higher price than the previous models, which retailed around $400 USD.

As for their core product, we’ve previously written about how Reels continues to pick up steam, regaining market share from TikTok, and advertisers seem to have no realistic alternatives to the Meta-universe. So, at least for now, it seems that life is good for Mark and his social network.

However, much like the boardroom drama at Waystar RoyCo, there is no shortage of sharks in the water circling Meta. So, while they may be the dominant force today, the smartest strategy will always be to take nothing for granted, leveraging the tools of today while experimenting with what’s next.

PEOPLE ARE ADDING “REDDIT” TO GOOGLE SEARCHES

THEY’RE NO LONGER SATISFIED WITH GOOGLE’S STANDARD RESULTS

In a strange turn of events, an increasing number of Google searches now include “Reddit” at the end. It seems that people are growing distrustful of the stock results Google is serving up, but don’t love the search bar that Reddit provides, so they’re mashing the two together.

The creator of website Weird Marketing Tales, Brandon Rollins, identified the phenomenon about a year ago, and the numbers have only continued to increase since then. Using a combination of data and observations, Rollins speculated 5 causes for the shift:

1. Google has more ads than ever before
2. Google is making it harder to tell ads and organic results apart
3. Medium-quality content machines often outrank “good” content
4. Influencers and bloggers pack their content with affiliate links
5. Looking to Amazon for reviews doesn’t help as much as it used to

There are a couple of ways to read this story, one being that Reddit is a place worth revisiting for brands, and the other is that SEO is becoming more distributed as people seek out their answers from a broader array of sources.

Both of those perspectives would be right, and both are inconvenient for us as marketers, but they both also signal an opportunity for smaller brands to seek out pockets of the internet that big brands may not be nimble enough to be focus on.

WHAT DOES REDDIT TELL US ABOUT TRAVELLERS’ PREFERENCES?

OUR FIRST REAL YEAR-OVER-YEAR INSIGHTS SINCE 2019

Speaking of Reddit, they have published insights about the travel industry based on their own users’ behaviour, and it is revealing.

For the past three years, the tourism industry has had a near-impossible time benchmarking any year-over-year data, so we’ve defaulted to 2019 for just about everything, but that’s now a pretty stale comparative. The numbers Reddit presents contain some of the first real comparatives that we’ve seen in the post-COVID era:

• 73% of Reddit users plan to travel the same amount or more in 2023 vs 2022
• There has been a 37% year-over-year growth in mentions of travel-related terms and brands
• There has been an explosion of subreddits about travel topics, and some of the most popular include: /roadtrip, /CampingandHiking, /solotravel, /digitalnomad
• The final data point is less of a comparison than it is a flex from Reddit, but it’s telling nonetheless: 61% of people on Reddit say that they trust content and brands on Reddit more than any other platform

So this corner of the internet, at least, seems to be optimistic about travel, which is news because we had all wondered whether the “Revenge Travel” rebound may sink backwards in 2023.

The other instructive takeaway is how sub-communities — like Reddit, Quora, Eater, GoodReads, Strava — will always tend to trust information for their own communities over all others. Pair that with the story above about search behaviours and you may just have yourself an insight worth acting on.

Download Reddit’s Travel Infographic Here

LOCAL SEO REFRESHER

SIMPLE IS EFFECTIVE

Sometimes, SEO can feel like doing homework, but it is still the #1 source of traffic for most businesses — especially local ones — so when we saw this common sense breakdown of stuff you should be doing, we had to pass it along.

Consultant Shane Barker has created a plain-language summary of the essential, but uncomplicated, things that every business with a street address should be doing on a regular basis. Want to skip straight to the plot? Here’s his 3-step advice:

1. Optimize your Google My Business Page
2. Optimize your site for Local SEO
3. Build local links and citations manually

As with most things worth doing, success won’t come immediately, and there’s no silver bullet, but when you make these basics an ongoing practice, the benefits will build over time.

Get the full guide here

A FEW FOR THE ROAD

MORE NEWS TO KEEP YOU ON THE CUTTING EDGE

• Airbnb was listening when influencer Alix Earle’s travel plans fell through, so they stepped in and created a huge win for the brand — see how Airbnb rescued Alix’s Italian vacation
• TikTok is prompting its users to add places and reviews to their posts, which seems to suggest that TikTok is coming for Google as a source for online reviews
• How do your Google Ads compare? Wordstream shares industry benchmarks
• Over 50% of product searches now start on Amazon

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting