That’s So Meta

CHANGES IN THE WAY WE MARKET ONLINE, ACCORDING TO META

This week Meta published a paper titled “Rethinking Media Mix Effectiveness in the New Digital Landscape.” Was that title written by an AI bot? Probably. Does it contain a lot of valuable insights? Definitely.

The reason for the study was to evaluate how people are actually interacting with brands right now and to provide some guidance to anyone who’s looking to market to just about about anyone. One quote jumped off the page:

“One billion people message businesses every week”

Things like live chat, DMs, and other conversational tools can feel like an afterthought, but this report suggests that, for a lot of people, messaging with a business has become a must-have. They provided a few stats to back up the idea:

• 1 in 3 people chat with a business at least once a week
• 70% of respondents said they feel more connected with business they can message
• 52% of Gen Z respondents agreed that messages on Instagram help them build relationships with brands

For the rest of these insights, let’s remember who the source of the paper was. Unsurprisingly, the common theme was that digital marketing (in particular Meta-based digital marketing) can, and should be, used for more than just conversion-based efforts.

Several case studies, quotes, and other proof points showed that, when in comes to brand building, buying ads on Meta can be roughly 3.2X more efficient than traditional media like television.

For those of us who have limited ad budgets, the exciting possibility there is that it may be in our best interest to branch out beyond “Buy Now” style ads. The type of ads that simply raise awareness and tell our stories may actually be quite effective on Meta’s channels. Which raises the obvious question of exactly how, and where? Meta is a giant sprawling digital landscape, so in order to take action, we need specifics.

The short story: Reels are perhaps the most cost efficient ad unit in the world.

The slightly longer story: Combining Reels with Meta’s Advantage+ suite of tools can lead to the following:

• 20% more sales
• 24% higher return on ad spend
• 36% higher reach

The data is indisputable, however these insights could likely be applied to other platforms like TikTok with similar — or even better — results.

What Meta has provided us all with in this paper, more than anything, is quantifiable evidence that people are engaging with brands on social channels right now, and that brand-building efforts may actually be a better use of media budgets than direct sales ads.

The paper closes with the following semi-ambiguous, but generally good advice for us all:

• Shake up your media mix - ie. try new channels and don’t be afraid to tell a story
• Shift to AI-powered, outcome-based planning - ie. use Advantage+ and other tools like it
• Boost campaign performance by raising the floor - ie. spend more money (feel free to disregard this one entirely)
• Master growing formats to remove the ceiling - ie. new formats deliver better results to early movers

Read the full report

THE NEED FOR MEDIA LITERACY

DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU WATCH

The recent tragedies experienced by people in Israel and Palestine have caused a lot of us to rush to social media to try to make sense of it all.

Before we get into to the topic of misinformation, we want to acknowledge and respect the many people who have been impacted, either directly or from afar. This conflict has already caused unimaginable hardship to many thousands of innocent residents of Israel and Palestine, and millions of people around the world.

At times like these, we tend to look to our newsfeeds because, since its inception, social media has been held up as an unedited version of events. It has given rise to the “citizen journalist” phenomenon, and serves as a platform for major political events that famously included the Arab Spring Uprising.

Today, social media has become even more powerful, yet significantly less trustworthy. What started as easy-to-spot Photoshop-fakes have been replaced with incredibly accurate, AI-based content that has fooled just about everyone at some point or another.

Pair that with an industry that incentivizes engagement over everything, literally rewarding people for attracting attention at all costs, and you end up with newsfeeds that are filled with incredibly sophisticated content that seems to be almost entirely uninterested in what’s actually true. And yet, there are some people who are still working to create an internet that delivers on the promise of real, unfiltered information, and some of them are trying to help us sort through this increasingly challenging web of misinformation.

The highly respected team at Vox Media identified this very need and developed a simple, but effective tool for deciphering what content is worth your attention, and what should be discarded. The method is called SIFT, and it stands for:

• Stop
• Investigate the source
• Find better coverage
• Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context

Its power lies in its simplicity. The next time you see a news story that surprises you, presents shocking information, or elicits an emotional response, give the SIFT method a try.

Here’s a hypothetical example:

Facebook post claims “New information suggests that Person X was responsible for atrocity Y, here’s why you should be afraid”

• Stop for a moment before jumping to any conclusions, and certainly before hitting the Share button
• Investigate by looking at who created the content, what else they’ve created, and their track record for truth-telling
• Find other sources on the same topic – if there are none, or the other sources seem sketchy, that may suggest that it’s not worth your time. If reputable sources seem to back up the claim, then it’s worth considering.
• Tracing claims is remarkably easy on today’s internet. Copy and paste quotes into a search, click through the links in the article, and/or search the topic until you find the original source of the information.

With the incredible technologies we all have available to us today, it is possible for anyone to create very believable-looking content that says just about anything you want. That’s why it’s so important that we all equip ourselves with a high degree of digital literacy.

The guide Vox created is a great place to start, and a fantastic source for information on what’s actually happening in the recent Israel-Palestinian conflict. And,the same lessons can, and should, be applied to all digital news that we’re consuming, especially when it’s polarizing or controversial.

• Read the Vox guide to Israel-Palestine that describes the SIFT method here
• For a European perspective, check out this interview in the BBC of an Oxford professor specifically on the topic of misinformation on Twitter
• Al Jazeera, a high quality news site based out of Qatar, published this article: “Social media platforms swamped with fake news on the Israel-Hamas war”
• Finally, you may want to check out this report: “Social Media Platforms Were Not Ready for Hamas Misinformation” by the Centre for Strategic & International Studies that was originally created to combat misinformation during the Cold War era.

It seems that the only thing everyone can agree on is that fact that we should all be inherently skeptical of the sensational stories — and even videos — that we are seeing online.

YOU MAY BE SUPRISED TO LEARN WHICH IS THE FASTEST GROWING CHANNEL

A RUNDOWN OF SOCIAL PLATFORM GROWTH THIS YEAR

It seems to be common knowledge that TikTok is taking over the internet. And yet, while TikTok may be racking up a huge number of total users, this year the fastest growing social platform is actually Snapchat. Here’s a rundown of the top 5:

1. Snapchat +13.4%
2. TikTok +12.7%
3. Instagram +7.9%
4. Facebook +1%
5. Twitter -2.7%

There have always been many reasons to write off Snapchat — the users are too young, it’s largely a messaging platform, the content is challenging to create — but the mounting growth numbers make it a tempting opportunity, especially given the way that most other brands disregard it.

The other story here is the two at the bottom of the list. Facebook and Twitter once ruled the social media jungle, and have recently stagnated, or even regressed.

We seem to be entering into a new phase of social media platforms, which is exciting for those of us who are paying attention.

To read more about Snapchat’s recent growth, along with the other, check out the full article here.

A FEW MORE STORIES WORTH A CLICK

STUFF THAT WILL MAKE YOU JUST A BIT SMARTER THIS WEEK

• Canva’s new Magic Studio brings together the best AI content creation tools, and makes them available within Canva’s editor
• Linkedin is adding an AI-enabled advertising tool called Accelerate that will apparently change the way we all advertise on Linkedin
• Instagram is adding the ability to share a story with multiple group lists
• Google is adding new sender requirements to make our inboxes “less spammy”

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting