Good news for Facebook GROUP admins and — wait for it... probably bad news for us Facebook Advertisers. A huge acquisition in the podcast space. Google employees form a union. Why is the head of one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies missing? And three myths about getting into YouTube’s trending section — busted!
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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.
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We’re back… And today: Good news for Facebook GROUP admins and — wait for it... probably bad news for us Facebook Advertisers. A huge acquisition in the podcast space. Google employees form a union. Why is the head of one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies missing? And three myths about getting into YouTube’s trending section — busted!
It’s Monday, January 4th, 2021.
Happy National Journalist Day (Día del Periodista) - Mexico.
I’m Tod Maffin from engageQ digital. And here is what you missed, today in digital marketing.
FB Groups
Facebook is rolling out its Group Engagement Alerts tool more widely now. These alerts let group admins know when your group has a sudden spike in engagement. Sometimes that’s a good thing, of course, but not always.
More importantly, you can also get alerts when someone posts content matching a specific term — that’d be for bad words, mostly. Some third-party social platforms already provide this.
One interesting addition is that you can now turn on an alert that watches for when someone edits a post that you previously approved.
Wondery
A big acquisition in the podcast space — the Wondery network, which is known mostly for its true crime shows has been bought by… Amazon.
The two companies didn’t say what the price tag was, but analysts believe it was about $300 million.
What does Amazon plan to do with Wondery? Well, add it to their Amazon Music platform, for one. Basically the same kind of idea as Spotify — streaming, probably a few series will convert to exclusive.
I guess this is good news for media buyers? Sort of?
Being in Amazon’s circle means podcasts will show up as essentially a placement on the Amazon network, at least at some point.
So far, people aren’t seeing any dramatic changes in CPM since this podcast network buying spree started. Definitely something to watch.
Speaking of CPMs, by the way — I’m seeing lots of people reporting that — overall, digital CPMs are down again… in some cases, WAY down. This is, of course, because of the holiday season being over. This happens every year. Enjoy it while it lasts, kids.
Leathern Out
Another surprising development — the head of Facebook Ads has left the company. And rather abruptly too.
Rob Leathern announced on December 30th that he’d be leaving Facebook - the next day.
I wish Rob well, of course. He was somewhat responsive on Twitter and definitely handled one of Facebook’s biggest challenges.
But, under his watch, the huge number of issues with Facebook Ads never got any better. In fact, most people will probably tell you they got worse. And while, yes, the pandemic played a part in that, you can’t blame COVID for the behaviour of the Facebook bots that were locking people out of their accounts left right and centre.
It wasn’t clear whether Leathern walked off the plank or was pushed — he did say he was planning to “work on consumer privacy beyond just ads and social media.”
If I could get only ONE thing in 2021… it would be a functioning Facebook ads platform, with responsive and actually helpful ad reps, rather than the glorified first-year sales reps everyone who isn’t spending $10 million a month gets.
Auto Updates
An interesting discussion out there in SEO forums about a popular plugin that turned on automatic update and, seemingly, caused a lot of issues by doing so.
The plugin in question is the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress.
First, some background. In a big update last year, Wordpress added the ability for admins to opt-into automatic updates. That meant that if a plugin published a patch or update, your site would automatically update it, rather than you manually having to do that.
And while that SOUNDS like a great idea, some people prefer to manage updates. Or choose to leave an old version in place, even at the risk of security issues. This is especially true of plugins like SEO tools that have the power to change content.
Which is why a LOT of people were upset that this All-in-One SEO plugin appears to have forced everyone who uses its plugin to have Automatic Updates on. Even people for whom it was deliberately set to the off position.
One webmaster wrote: Multiple sites have updated without my permission and while all auto updates are disabled. Your once reliable plugin has destroyed hundreds of pages of social meta data on multiple sites and broken the layout. How dare you update my websites without my permission.”
So, all that to say, if your brand uses Wordpress as your web platform, maybe log into your Plugins admin page and check to make sure the status of auto-updates is how you’d like it.
YouTube Trending
I spend fair amount of time on YouTube. There’s a few creators I follow — coffeezilla, the Lock Picking Lawyer, Freakin’ Reviews. My nephew Sushi Guy 51.
And so I spend most of my time on the Subscriptions feed. There’s also the Home Page feed, where I suspect MOST eyeballs go. But there’s a third feed that is also quite popular: Trending.
Trending isn’t really personalized. It’s sort of a Top Ten list that doesn’t take your own preferences into account. Everyone in your country sees the same list as you do, in the same order.
And over the holidays, YouTube talked about the three most common myths about getting your brand’s content to surface in that feed.
Quoting from SearchEngineJournal.com:
Myth 1: Preferential Treatment There’s a myth that, in order to show up on YouTube trending, you have to either pay someone or know someone who works for the company. This isn’t true. YouTube doesn’t accept payment for placement in Trending, or have any favoritism when considering the eligibility of appearing in YouTube Trending.
What YouTube does consider when curating videos for Trending is: How quickly the video is generating views, Where the views are coming from (including off YouTube), The age of the video, and How the video performing compared to recent uploads from the same channel
Myth 2, and still quoting from SearchEngineJournal: Exclusive to Big Creators — It’s a commonly held belief amongst creators that Trending only surfaces late night talk show hosts or large YouTube creators. That’s not true. In fact, YouTube even ensures at least half of the videos on Trending are from homegrown creators.
In addition, YouTube Trending has sections for “creator on the rise,” and “artist on the rise,” which showcases a smaller channel for a whole day
Myth 3: There’s a Perfect Time to Publish — Theories around the formula behind YouTube Trending lead creators to believe there’s a “right” time to publish to improve one’s chances of getting featured.
That’s not true. As mentioned, the list is updated every 15 minutes, which means every 15 minutes there’s another chance to appear in Trending.
Google Union
And workers at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have formed a union.
The Alphabet Workers Union is part of the Communications Workers Union, and it’s open to direct employees and workers at subsidiaries. It’s just the U.S. and Canada for now.
The cost of membership is 1% of wages.
In an inaugural tweet, the union said: “The past few years at Google have been tumultuous: secret military AI projects, multi-million dollar payouts to execs who sexually harassed our coworkers, profiting from hate speech, & more. Coworkers who’ve voiced concerns have even been fired, illegally, as retaliation.”
It says so far its members were responsible for the cancellation of those alleged military projects and a $15 minimum wage for contractors.
Alibaba Founder
If you’re in the ecommerce space, you’ve no doubt heard about the Chinese giant Alibaba. It’s basically a wholesale site that’s popular with dropshippers.
Media reports say its founder, billionaire Jack Ma, has been missing for more than two months. He even failed to show up for a taping of his business reality show.
And, this is a little frightening — his disappearance coincided with the date he gave a speech criticizing the Chinese government for stifling innovation.
Jack Ma was one of the world’s biggest donors of face masks at the start of the pandemic and his foundation focuses on education, female leadership, and the environment.
His last tweet was on October 10th, last year.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-ma-missing-232138645.html?utm_campaign=TodayInDigital.com
Small Items
And four small items to round things out.
First, yes, a lot of the Internet crashed today. Slack was down for a lot of people. Notion was down — you might recall that’s the platform we here at the agency adopted for all our client records. Fun fact: Notion does not have an offline mode. So when they’re down, they are DOWWWWWN.
Second Todoist, which we also use here, was also down. It’s back up. If you use their app, you may need to log out of it, then back in to get it working.
Third, Microsoft has added new metrics to its Webmaster Tools reports. They are: crawl requests, crawl errors and indexed pages.
And fourth — here’s yet another reason why you should be moving at least some of your content creation to the short-form vertical video format. Google is now testing showing TikTok & Instagram videos in search results. And not just intermixed. I’m talking in a row of their own at the very top. It is very prominent looking. I have a feeling 2021 will get a lot more vertical.
Finally
One small change to the podcast this year:
I have stopped livestreaming the production of it. I had fun last month doing it, but it did mean I had to put on pants and everything, and if we’re still going to be in lockdowns, well, you know. It was fun, and thanks to those of you who joined me.
My wife and I had a restful holiday. I was a little out of sorts. This past year, despite the pandemic, I’ve come to really enjoy the routine of the workday. Review the podcast script, tweak it a little to shit on Facebook more, client calls, writing ad strategies.
And a couple of days over the holidays, I really wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Against my better judgement, I reinstalled Overwatch — you might recall I rage quit it last month. I’m TRYING to get into Assassins Creed Valhalla. And I’m trying to force myself into Planet Coaster because it seems like a game I’d get into like I did Cities Skylines, but… I don’t know. Not jiving on it quite yet.
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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.