84% of Listeners Prefer This Podcast to That Other One

[00:00:00] It is Tuesday, April 30th. Today, the sales boost you could get by telling your customers

[00:00:07] how to write their reviews, Instagram tweaks its algorithm to favor smaller accounts, why

[00:00:13] does Apple hate advertisers so much, and collateral damage the video app that might

[00:00:19] go down with the TikTok ship? I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead, today in

[00:00:24] Digital Marketing. In the world of online shopping, it's not

[00:00:29] just any review that catches the eye, it's the ones that put one product up against another

[00:00:35] that truly sway consumer decisions. This from some new research that highlights how comparative

[00:00:40] reviews not only drive more sales but can also fix the damage of negative feedback. Researchers

[00:00:46] analyzed 58,000 reviews of 60 phone models and found with positive comparisons, that

[00:00:52] is to say someone says in their review, phone A is better than phone B, those boost

[00:00:57] sales by 26.5% and negative comparisons are almost 47% less harmful than regular negative

[00:01:07] reviews. The researchers speculate that comparative reviews are more convincing because they

[00:01:12] make the reviewer seem more knowledgeable. They soften negative points by comparing

[00:01:16] them to worse alternatives, whereas regular negative reviews focus on product flaws which

[00:01:22] can scare off potential buyers. Despite this though, reviews where consumers

[00:01:26] pit one product against another are relatively rare in the wild. The study found only 10%

[00:01:32] of online reviews feature comparisons. E-commerce platforms like Amazon and Alibaba and Best

[00:01:38] Buy, they will show comparisons on their product pages but don't actually encourage

[00:01:43] writing comparative reviews. So worth testing in that text above the review field, perhaps

[00:01:48] encourage customers to draw comparisons in their reviews asking specific questions about

[00:01:54] how your product fares against another. That research is published in the Journal of Interactive

[00:01:58] Marketing, it's called The Effects of Comparative Reviews on Product Sales.

[00:02:07] Instagram is introducing several changes to its ranking system to give smaller, original

[00:02:11] creators more visibility across the platform. The goal is to level the playing field

[00:02:16] and reduce the dominance of large accounts and reposted content. The changes come after

[00:02:22] months of criticism from creators who felt the algorithm was hurting their reach. Besides

[00:02:27] giving more distribution to smaller accounts, the change will also replace reposts with

[00:02:32] original content in recommendations and will remove accounts that simply aggregate content

[00:02:38] from the recommendations panel. Instagram will also add labels to reposted content

[00:02:43] linking users to the original creator. The label will be visible to followers of the

[00:02:48] account reposting the content and for now can be removed by the original creator or account

[00:02:55] reposting it. First, they took away ad tracking data. Now Apple might want to take away ads

[00:03:04] entirely. Reports this week say Apple's plans for their next operating system will let

[00:03:10] users hide specific sections of websites like ads. This isn't wild speculation either.

[00:03:17] This functionality is showing up in the latest Safari test builds. It lets users basically erase

[00:03:23] unwanted content and remember these preferences for future visits. Users would also have the

[00:03:28] option to restore the original view of the page. This presumably would operate similar

[00:03:32] to the boost and zap feature found in the new Arc web browser. From what people

[00:03:36] with early access to the betas are saying, this would look similar to popular ad blockers

[00:03:41] like One Blocker and Ublock Origin which use cosmetic filters to manage web page content.

[00:03:47] While this might enhance user experience by reducing clutter, maybe even speeding up loading

[00:03:52] times, it's likely to draw criticism from advertisers and publishers who rely heavily

[00:03:57] on ad revenue. In addition to these browser specific enhancements, Apple seems to be

[00:04:02] integrating AI more deeply across its product line. The forthcoming M4 chip and iPhone

[00:04:07] 16 are expected to boast AI processing capabilities that take place directly on the device.

[00:04:18] Microsoft's AI Assistant co-pilot is now fully available for all advertisers in the

[00:04:22] company's ads platform. This comes out a month after they let more people into the beta test.

[00:04:27] This AI includes recommendations for assets like images and copy, text to image generation,

[00:04:33] of course, and a chatbot to get answers and synthesize information. As for that chatbot,

[00:04:39] one screenshot we've seen shows that this could actually live up to the hype.

[00:04:42] For instance, you can ask the bot to give you a breakdown of ad performance within a specific

[00:04:46] date range and it'll just go get you that data rather than you trying to track down the

[00:04:51] report section, turn on the right columns, set the date range, and so on. That bot though

[00:04:56] is still in testing and is not part of the larger rollout announced today.

[00:05:04] Google has made some updates to its performance max campaigns. They include

[00:05:08] a new customer value mode to help the purchase optimization find high value customers.

[00:05:14] New customer acquisition goals are now in search ads 360 campaigns, a beta test of a new campaign

[00:05:20] objective focusing on customer retention. Contact your Google rep if you want to be in that.

[00:05:25] Some better age and gender options are under audience insights. You can now exclude specific

[00:05:31] IP addresses account wide so that would help making sure you're not spending money on people

[00:05:36] at your company. And a kind of split test feature that replaces your final URL with a more relevant

[00:05:42] landing page from your website. This one is also in beta.

[00:06:10] A new law aimed at forcing TikTok to sell its US assets or face a ban has put its sister

[00:06:40] Capcut in jeopardy. Capcut is a popular video editing tool. It's probably the most feature

[00:06:46] rich editor that's free for most functions and takes inspiration from the big players like Final Cut

[00:06:51] Pro. The Washington Post reports today that multiple lawmakers have confirmed that Capcut

[00:06:56] would be subject to the same divest or ban requirement as TikTok. Creators quoted in

[00:07:01] the piece warned that a ban on Capcut would stifle self expression for many brands

[00:07:06] and young people who rely on the app to create and edit short form videos.

[00:07:11] Capcut's impact on social media has been likened to the impact of the electric guitar on music in

[00:07:16] the 20th century. It's pre-formatted video templates frequently trend across other platforms.

[00:07:22] Creators say that recreating the same effects in other editing platforms could

[00:07:27] take hours and the Capcut's tools have become synonymous with online videos.

[00:07:32] So some creators are starting to look for alternative solutions in case Capcut 2 gets

[00:07:38] smacked by the ban hammer, but many say reverting to previous tools would feel like a step back.

[00:07:49] And finally if you logged into Instagram over the weekend you may have noticed a sudden drop

[00:07:53] in your brand's following count. Don't worry, you didn't get canceled, you didn't get hacked.

[00:07:59] You were one of a number of accounts that were the victim of a nasty bug which Instagram says

[00:08:04] has now been resolved. Whatever followers you lost should be back now.

[00:08:13] So we crossed about 6,000 people per day now in terms of our audience. Most of those on the newsletter,

[00:08:21] a bunch of you of course here on the podcast. That means that we are going to be increasing

[00:08:24] our ad rates. Our ad rates are pegged to about $20 CPM which is I think you will agree

[00:08:29] pretty competitive for this kind of specialized audience. Anyway we'll be doing that in the

[00:08:33] coming days so if you're interested in snatching up some ad space either here on the podcast

[00:08:38] or in our newsletter check out our ad site. You can find it at todayindigital.com slash ads

[00:08:44] or tap the link at the top of the show notes. Some ad placements are as cheap as $10 for now.

[00:08:51] I'm Todd Maffin, thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

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