The Fruit Basket That Nearly Up-Ended the PPC Industry

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

• INSTAGRAM: The Reels Algorithm... Revealed
• PPC: Google Can Keep Selling Tradename Keywords: Court
• FACEBOOK: Anti-Vaxxers Kill Profile Image Frames
• METAVERSE: 5 Trends For Your Brand To Watch This Year
• METAVERSE: How To Get Your Brand in Front of a Younger Audience
• COMMERCE: Walmart's Second-Party Ad Platform Rakes in $2B
• PPC: Google Isn’t Taking Away Standard Shopping Campaigns… Yet
• META: What Consumers Are Talking About on Facebook
• FREELANCE: LinkedIn Lets Freelancers Show Off Services

Below is the transcription from this weeks topics

INSTAGRAM: The Reels Algorithm... Revealed

Instagram has revealed the algorithm behind the discovery of Reels. (Reels, of course, being Instagram's version of TikTok videos.)

This algorithm is different than the ranking factors for Feed posts and Stories. In those cases, the ranking factors that contribute to discovery are — in order of importance:

1. Information about the post (like if it's bright, or a video, or when it was posted)
2. Information about the author
3. The viewer's Activity on the platform
4. The viewer's Interaction History

But we've now learned that Reels shakes things up a bit and the most important factor becomes the activity and interaction history of the user. In other words, how the user has responded to Reels with similar content.

This is something we've all suspected, anecdotally, for some time — yesterday, Instagram confirmed it.

So that's Feed, Stories, and Reels. There is a fourth content surface, and that's Explore (that's the Search tab). Instagram said yesterday that one is also a bit different, and puts more priority on interaction history and much less on who actually posted it.

PPC: Google Can Keep Selling Tradename Keywords: Court

An attempt by a company called Edible Arrangements to sue Google for selling its name via search ads, has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Georgia in the U.S.

A company called Edible IP owns the trademarks and intellectual property of the fruit basket company. It filed a $209 million lawsuit against the search giant in 2018 claiming that:

• Google selling the keyword "Edible Arrangements" to competition violated Georgia law.
• The company said Google began auctioning the "Edible Arrangements" keyword in around 2011.

The lawsuit actually called it "theft," since they say Google did not ask Edible IP for permission to use its name.

If they'd have won, the decision could have called into question the entire system of selling keywords.

But the court ruled that selling keywords is not theft.

According to the court:

...Trade names are only protected from use by others to the extent that such use is deceptive or there is a likelihood of confusion by the public

and Edible IP failed to prove that Google's use of the name caused consumer confusion or that the company intended to deceive the public.

Here we all thought the cookiepocalypse was going to be our industry's downfall. Turns out it almost was a literal basket of fruit.

FACEBOOK: Anti-Vaxxers Kill Profile Image Frames

In 2015, Facebook launched profile image frames — a way to slap your logo or a statement over top of your profile photo. These started as a way to show your support for your favourite sports team...

...but evolved to include non-profit support, brand campaigns, then pretty much anyone could make a frame and upload it for people to use.

And I think we know by now — whenever we give the general public access to things, somebody finds a way to ruin it for the rest of us.

That's happening now with Profile Frames — Meta announcing today it will drop the feature entirely for all but a small handful of government organizations.

This is because anti-vaxxers were using it to get around the ban on misinformation.

In a development I don't think will surprise anyone, Meta itself didn't proactively do this... they only decided to ban this use after the media picked up on it. And then, only on a per-frame basis.

In time, it started to shut down categories of businesses and profiles that were able to create these — even turning off its Frame Studio tool for regular people.

Today, the company announced it's going to restrict frames even further:

On March 21, only profile frames from certain government services or organizations and those providing authoritative information on COVID-19 will be available.

What are those certain government services? Apparently municipal, state and local agencies (yes, this includes election regulators), emergency response agencies, public health agencies, and local law enforcement.

On the COVID side: The World Health Organization, UNICEF, Centers for Disease Control, and national government agencies or ministries of health.

And that's it.

Quoting SocialMediaToday.com:

So, basically, profile frames will now be cause-aligned specifically, and there’ll be no more fun, decorative frames, outside of some of the generic ones provided by Meta.
Which is a bit of a shame. It’s not a major functional change, and it won’t have a big impact on how people use Facebook, but still, it is a little sad that we lose an entire creative option because of a level of misuse, which, due to complexities in detection, Meta can’t simply weed out and police at scale.

METAVERSE: 5 Trends For Your Brand To Watch This Year

There's an interesting piece in Adweek today sharing what they think are five trends to watch out for in the metaverse:

Experiences that simulate real life

• It says immersing consumers in everyday experiences in this digital space will attract a larger audience, and you should strive to create immersive brand content that shows your operations from behind the scenes.Authentic brand integrations
• There are a variety of genres that can offer brands opportunities to engage their existing fan communities, as well as reach new audiences. Capitalize on the growing interest from users aged 17 and upThe significance of self-expression through digital identity
• Adweek says there will be a big opportunity for fashion and beauty brands to make their presence known in the metaverse. A growing creator talent pool

The full article goes into more detail and is definitely worth a read if you are interested in this space. The is called “As Interest in the Metaverse Grows, Here Are 5 Trends to Watch in 2022”

METAVERSE: How To Get Your Brand in Front of a Younger Audience

If you're looking to dip your marketing toes into the metaverse world, you don't need to buy a fancy headset — you might want to start by looking at Roblox, the wildly popular kids' video game.

Actually, to call Roblox a game isn't quite accurate. It's more of a creative platform where people — mostly kids at first — build mini-games and small worlds to fool around in with their friends.

A lot of friends — according to the company's earnings report, it has 45.5 million average daily users, an increase of 40% year over year.

That's a lot of tweens on a platform, and a number of brands are already targeting them including Gucci, Nike, and Forever 21.

RetailDive reports one opportunity for your brand is selling virtual items that can be worn or used by an avatar. And those virtual items can translate to real-world money:

• Last year, Gucci offered a limited-time digital version of a bag. It originally sold for around $6, but when people started flipping it, its prices went up.
• One user paid over $4000 for a digital purse. The real-life version of that purse sells for $3400.

COMMERCE: Walmart's Second-Party Ad Platform Rakes in $2B

With third-party data on its way out, many marketers are casting a glance toward the second-party data space. Those are platforms that sell their first-party data to other organizations.

Some of the biggest players in this space are actually American drug store chains like CVS, Walgreens, and so on — they've got a tonne of customer data, their own ads platforms, and more placements than you might think: from in-store TV displays to ads on the back of paper receipts.

One such platform is Walmart's — they call it Walmart Connect. Today, we saw their financials and it's kind of crazy.

For the first time, the company broke out advertising revenue into its own line item:

• For the fiscal year, its ad business generated $2.1 billion.
• Active advertisers increased by more than 130%.
• In Q4, more than half of the ad sales came from automated channels.

According to the retail giant's earnings call, executives expect Walmart Connect to become a top 10 ad platform within the next few years. Yes, in the same list as Meta and Google and Amazon.

Walmart's U.S. e-commerce sales only grew by 1%, which may not seem impressive, but keep in mind that we're looking at 2021 data there, and the e-commerce sales of 2020 were extraordinarily high due to store closings everywhere. When we look at a two-year timeline, Walmart's e-commerce is up 70%.

PPC: Google Isn’t Taking Away Standard Shopping Campaigns… Yet

Some good news if you still rely on Google's Standard Shopping campaigns.

Google has confirmed that campaign type "will be supported for the foreseeable future".

Shopping campaigns offer a set of manual controls that many advertisers rely on, which might be reassuring for some advertisers, as Google Ads continues to release more automated products.

This means advertisers will still have this shopping campaign type after Smart Shopping campaigns are transitioned into Performance Max campaigns sometime between July and September.

META: What Consumers Are Talking About on Facebook

Meta this week released a new "cultural trends report", which analyzed billions of online comments and posts across its platforms to identify evolving conversation trend shifts.

The report focuses on four main global themes and trends that relate to them:

• Diversifying identities:
• Discussions about gender roles, gender symbols, and gender-neutral language are on the rise, creating the likelihood of gender-neutral products and marketing.
• Research also found that people are going through "historical reckoning" trying to come to terms with and reconcile historical injustices. Brands can respond by leading with meaningful action and making statements.
• Awareness and understanding of people with disabilities also continues to rise. Brands need to engage in more inclusive marketing and practices, and make PWD more visible in advertising
• Relationships renegotiated
• There is a growing awareness of the importance of balancing screen time with real-life activities.
• Greater expectations
• A rise in digital marketing. Small and midsized businesses and entrepreneurs used digital tools to fight the pandemic, and e-commerce was critical for survival.
• People are looking for hybrid work, reevaluating traditional education, and pursuing new careers.
• Millennials still place a high value on higher education, while Gen-Zers are more likely to consider other options.
• Expanding values
• Consumers are valuing "next level sustainability", shopping local, wellness activities, and plants.
• Almost 60% of respondents worldwide make an effort to shop locally.
• When it comes to e-commerce and social commerce, the report notes that as the line between online and offline blurs, when consumers see a product they expect to be able to buy it, via mobile app, social media post, or live shopping broadcast.

FREELANCE: LinkedIn Lets Freelancers Show Off Services

A nice update for those of you who freelance your services out to businesses... LinkedIn has added a couple of enhancements to its Services Marketplace — that's the platform set up to compete with Fiverr, Upwork, and the likes.

They're letting you link Service Pages to personal profiles. These are similar to the pages attached to an organization's page.

This means if you have a company page for your freelance business, you can now link that page and your personal Services page. This is meant for one-person businesses, so you won't find this if you have more than one admin for your Company page.

You can also add some media to those pages, like a sample of your design work or links to news stories you were covered in.

Three Small Items

Google Phasing Out "Following"

Google says it will be removing the ability for people to follow business listings on Search or Maps. Also going: Welcome offers.

The follow feature launched in 2018, letting users get updates from businesses in their For You tab. The year after, they let companies set up offers to people who followed their profile.

Podcast Consumption on the Rise

Some new research from Edison has found that people who listen to more than five hours of podcasts each week are listening even more now — the average is now 11.2 hours each week, up from 10.5 hours, and 9.8 the year before.

On the marketing side of things, 51% of podcast Super Listeners report they pay more attention to ads on podcasts than on other media, up from 48% last year.

Meta Admits to Week-long Dedupe Error

And finally, four days after we reported on it, Meta this afternoon admitted there was a bug with their Conversions API, which prevented their system from de-duplicating incoming event data:

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