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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT and SOURCES:

TODAY — It’s not just Facebook that’s going to suffer from Apple’s looming change to ad tracking… yet another huge acquisition in the podcast space — this time, by an unlikely buyer… How well did the user-generated TikTok musical do? And if Shopify is in second place for the biggest e-commerce platform with only 3% market share, who’s number 1? And how do they have 40% share?

It’s Tuesday, January 5th, 2021.

Happy National BIRD DAY.

I’m Tod Maffin from engageQ digital. And here is what you missed, today in digital marketing.

IDFA

We’re getting some more analysis now on the effect of Apple’s forthcoming changes — changes that Facebook claims will decimate the effectiveness of its audience network.

Well, it won’t just be Facebook, according to new research from MKM Partners. That group says Snapchat, too, is at high risk of being affected.

To back up a little — Apple will soon be adding a pop-up box on its devices — when you open apps that collect data on that app’s users. That box will offer to disable ad tracking. And, most industry folks believe the general public will get spooked and say “Yeah, disable tracking please, that sounds awful.” And no tracking means — well, no tracking. No ability for us digital marketers to get access to the important metrics we need to evaluate a campaign.

Quoting SocialMediaToday.com: “According to MKM's analysis, which looked at total user numbers, first-party data access and relative revenue contribution from various types of ads, Facebook and Snapchat are likely to see the biggest impact from users opting out via these new prompts. MKM says that Twitter and Pinterest will also see impacts, though to a lesser degree, with Google and Amazon at the bottom tier of exposure among the big tech players. MKM also notes that many other ad providers outside of the large players will also see reduced effectiveness as a result of the change.”

“According to CNBC, Bank of America analysts have also predicted that both Facebook and Snap will be hurt the most, potentially seeing a 3%-5% revenue headwind as a result of the update.”

“How this will change your approach to Facebook advertising is impossible to say until we see how many people opt-out, but the debate alone will likely see more businesses shift to first-party data tracking approaches, in order to negate any reduction in ad targeting capacity as a result of the new warnings.”

This is a huge story in our space, of course, so I’ll keep letting you know about new developments. So far, Apple has not given an exact date for this to kick in, other than to say some time this year.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/report-suggests-facebook-and-snapchat-will-be-most-impacted-by-apples-idfa/592848/?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

Breaker

Another day, another big acquisition in the podcast space. The podcast app Breaker has been bought by — no, not Amazon… not Spotify… but… Twitter! 

And, as Twitter is fond to do when it acquires things, it will be shutting the app down in 10 days.

I don’t think many people are quite clear about where Twitter’s head is around this. They’ve never really signalled an interests in podcasts before, and their forays into audio, as reported here, have been — a little weird.

They’re testing something called Spaces, which is a kind of invitation-only audio conversation room. But they haven’t ever really signalled an interest in podcasts, per say. And it’s possible they’re STILL not really interested in podcast.

This was an acquihire, of course. They wanted the PEOPLE, not their app. And those people, in a blog post, said they’ll be helping Twitter build “beyond the scope of traditional podcasts.” 

Whatever that means.

The Breaker app will be shutting down a week from Friday.

https://wersm.com/twitter-acquires-social-podcast-app-breaker/?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

Podcast Merch

Speaking of podcasts, you know — as a digital marketer — that an important part of sales is UPSALES.

There are plugins for e-commerce sites, there are separate apps, there are entire platforms dedicated to upsells.

For podcasts, that upsell is usually for Merch — t-shirts, mouse pads, that kind of thing.

And you might be surprised to know that podcast merch is turning out to be a huge business. 

The podcast network Stitcher has a job called “head of merchandising” and that person, Marisa Morales, told the Wall Street Journal this week that their merch sales are doubling every year. 

Quoting the Journal: “This fervent merchandise market has no parallel in traditional media. Newspapers and periodicals still sweeten subscription deals with giveaways—many of us have New Yorker tote bags languishing in our closets. But podcast merchandise operates as a standalone phenomenon that sees listeners plop down $30 just for a T-shirt or $60 for a hoodie. As Ms. Morales said, merch appeals because it makes a listener’s connection to a podcast tangible.”

So, I guess I’ll be making some new mouse pads soon.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-boots-to-coffee-podcast-merch-has-become-big-business-11609780256?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

Ratatouille

Over the past holiday, TikTok hosted in interesting experiment of sorts in the marketing of a performance.

The show was called “Ratatouille, the TikTok musical.”

You may have even seen people on TikTok talking about it for the last couple of weeks. It’s been a pretty popular topic.

And you might think — wait, Ratatouille, the Disney show? That’s not a musical. And you would be right. What THESE performers did was to create their own songs for it. And they outsourced pretty much the entire show using using hundreds of short videos sent in by fans.

Then they added some professional Broadway performers, actual stage directors, and released it on New Year’s Day. 

In just four days, the show generated over $1 million dollars. 

All proceeds are going to the Actors Fund.

https://wersm.com/ratatouille-raised-over-1-million-for-the-actors-fund-on-tiktok/?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

Wordpress

Quick — what is the top e-commerce platform? Shopify? Magento? BigCommerce?

No, no, and no. Turns out, the top platform is Wordpress. Well, sort of.  A popular Wordpress plugin is WooCommerce which is a pretty full-featured e-commerce platform in its own right. Woo-commerce exists on just shy of 5% of web sites in the world. Not Wordpress sites. ALL SITES. Yes, 1 out of 20 web sites on the Internet run WooCommerce. It is the most popular Wordpress plugin on the Internet.

Wordpress itself is huge, of course, and getting bigger. New data released this week from W3Techs shows WordPress is now running nearly 40% of ALL websites in 2021. Last year, that share was 35%. And when you only look at sites that use a content management system, WordPress’s market share is 64%.

By comparison, Shopify is second for CMS share — but has only 3% market share.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-powers-39-5-of-all-websites/391647/?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

Small Items

And one small item to wrap up:

Insights from Google My Business are missing data again. This is your data on how much web traffic and calls get from Google Maps. It’s  December 27th and 28th that’s missing.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-insights-missing-data-30701.html?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com 

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Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://TodMaffin.com) and produced by engageQ digital (https://engageQ.com). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts.