Banks: The Only Winning Move is Not to Play

[00:00:00] It is Monday, October 21st. Today, an e-commerce crisis brews as payment processors scramble

[00:00:08] to form new banking partnerships to maintain operations. Plus, the FTC's new click-to-cancel

[00:00:15] rule, how it will affect your campaigns. Why is Googley… Googley? No, screw it, I'm

[00:00:20] leaving it in. Why is Google handing your leads to your competitors and pulling a fast

[00:00:25] one? Why your streaming media buy might not be what you think it is. I'm Todd Maffin,

[00:00:32] that's ahead, Today in Digital Marketing. Wells Fargo has stopped providing a critical

[00:00:38] service to fintech companies, leaving a huge problem for payment providers and, in turn,

[00:00:44] marketers. The bank's exit from the BIN sponsorship business means companies like Square, Stripe,

[00:00:52] and PayPal need to find new partners to process credit card transactions. The fintech sector is

[00:00:58] facing a major threat as banks become more cautious about working with their businesses. Banks are

[00:01:04] under pressure from regulators to ensure their fintech partners comply with laws and regulations.

[00:01:09] This has made it riskier and more expensive for banks to work with fintechs. So some fintechs are

[00:01:16] having to turn to smaller banks or alternative partners. Deutsche Bank has emerged as a possible

[00:01:22] replacement for Wells Fargo, but it is being selective about which merchants it will work with.

[00:01:27] Square is still looking for a new partner to replace Wells Fargo. It's currently relying on

[00:01:32] JP Morgan Chase, but they're currently without a backup. The exit of Wells Fargo from the BIN sponsorship

[00:01:39] business has significant implications for merchants and marketers. It could lead to disruptions and

[00:01:45] increased costs for companies like Square and Stripe, which would likely pass that down the line.

[00:01:52] The website The Information has a great piece about that today. You can read it on their website.

[00:01:56] Look for the piece called Bank Drama for PayPal and Square after Wells Fargo bows out. We have a

[00:02:03] direct link to it in today's email newsletter.

[00:02:05] If you sell any recurring service that can be bought online, the American Trade Regulator is

[00:02:15] about to make it easier for your customers to cancel their subscriptions. The Federal Trade Commission has

[00:02:20] a new click-to-cancel rule that will require sellers to make cancellation as simple as signing up was.

[00:02:27] The rule applies to most subscription services and will go into effect in about six months. The new

[00:02:34] rule is part of the FTC's effort to update its 1973 negative option rule. The FTC received more than

[00:02:42] 16,000 comments on the proposed rule, including complaints from consumers and feedback from businesses.

[00:02:48] The new regulation will also prohibit sellers from misrepresenting facts, failing to disclose terms,

[00:02:54] and of course making it hard to cancel. The FTC says it will enforce the rule,

[00:03:00] but it was hardly a guaranteed thing. In the end, the FTC board vote was 3-2. One board member,

[00:03:07] in her dissenting statement, said the only reason the majority wanted it passed was because it favored

[00:03:13] their political candidate in the upcoming American elections.

[00:03:21] If you sell home services and use Google's local service ads, you're not going to like this. The

[00:03:28] company is testing letting users request quotes from multiple of your competitors even after they've

[00:03:34] selected your specific business. For those in the test, when a user clicks on a business in LSAs,

[00:03:41] a request competitive quotes button now appears, letting the users select multiple businesses to get quotes

[00:03:48] from. The user can then enter a message and their email address, and Google sends the request to all

[00:03:55] the selected businesses simultaneously. The new feature, if it comes to pass, and judging from past

[00:04:00] history, it probably will, it raises questions about how advertisers will be charged for those leads.

[00:04:07] Will all businesses that receive the request be charged, or just the one that was originally selected?

[00:04:12] Google has not provided answers to those questions. This isn't the first time Google has tested

[00:04:17] features that allow competitors to appear alongside a specific business's listing. In January, Google

[00:04:24] introduced a feature that showed competitors after a user messaged a business directly.

[00:04:34] You might soon see a small uplift in ad impressions for your campaigns. Google has started disabling

[00:04:41] uBlockOrigin, a free ad blocker on its Chrome browser. The move part of the company's plan to phase out

[00:04:47] older extensions that use its previous Manifest version 2 framework. Now some users are reporting

[00:04:53] that Chrome has indeed disabled the ad blocker in an update. Raymond Hill, the developer of

[00:05:00] uBlockOrigin confirmed the deprecation of the extension in the Chrome Web Store. Hill had previously warned that

[00:05:05] the phase out was coming and had been critical of Google's decision to limit the capabilities of

[00:05:10] third-party Chrome extensions like his. Some Chrome users are switching to alternative browsers,

[00:05:16] like Brave or Firefox, that still support uBlockOrigin. For its part, Google says its new

[00:05:23] manifest version 3 framework can still allow developers to create ad blockers for Chrome, including uBlock's

[00:05:30] own Origin Lite. Spending on experiential marketing like live events is expected to hit $128 billion

[00:05:42] this year, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time. This is a 10.5% jump from last year,

[00:05:49] that beats the 9.7% growth seen in 2023. B2C companies will spend the most, a predicted $90

[00:05:57] billion this year there, and B2B companies will spend about $38 billion. The data from a recently

[00:06:03] released study by PQ Media, the study says the industry is still recovering from the pandemic,

[00:06:08] with the U.S. remaining the largest market. In 2023, the U.S. spent $52 billion on experiential

[00:06:15] marketing. That makes up more than 45% of global spending. According to Patrick Quinn, CEO of PQ Media,

[00:06:23] experiential marketing is becoming more important because of better metrics and customer engagement.

[00:06:29] The return of live events has contributed to the spending rebound. Live events were the fastest

[00:06:34] growing channel in the B2C space, up almost 10% last year. Marketers are expected to focus on

[00:06:41] in-person experiences like music festivals to connect with consumers. B2B marketers have found value in

[00:06:48] conferences and industry events, especially with the rise of AI tools. We have a link to the full

[00:06:54] study in today's email newsletter. You can sign up for free by tapping the link at the top of the show

[00:06:57] notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. An interesting piece at Ad Exchanger says that while many

[00:07:08] advertisers are rushing to buy up streaming inventory, they're missing some key differences between

[00:07:15] what's labeled as streaming and what it actually means. To some, streaming means content delivered via a

[00:07:22] platform like Amazon Prime Video. But what about live feeds like Thursday Night Football? The terminology

[00:07:29] gets money when it comes to connected advertising, sometimes called CTV. CTV is available in nearly 90%

[00:07:36] of US households and makes up a third of viewing time. But only 40% of CTV audiences are exposed to ads

[00:07:44] in this environment. A significant amount of the inventory distributed to that 40% is actually sold via

[00:07:51] traditional TV channels, sometimes known as linear. Let's look at a one-hour primetime program that airs

[00:07:58] on both linear TV and a free ad-supported TV channel. Those are sometimes called fast channels.

[00:08:06] So the program has 20 minutes of commercial time. 18 minutes are sold by the cable network on a

[00:08:13] national basis. The remaining two minutes are sold by the streaming platform. But the 18 minutes of

[00:08:20] national ad time are actually sold as linear, not streaming. This means that ad buyers would need to

[00:08:26] make linear purchases to access the majority of inventory on a fast channel. In fact, between 20% and 25%

[00:08:34] of all ad-supported streaming can only be purchased via linear. This limited inventory is often sold at

[00:08:41] CPMs five times greater than what linear commands for the same impression. The full piece is definitely

[00:08:49] worth a read. It's called Pulling a Fast One. You can find a link to it in today's email newsletter.

[00:08:58] We have started something new in the newsletter. It is the study of the day. Often people email and

[00:09:03] want access to research about the marketing world, the e-commerce world, consumer behavior, and so on.

[00:09:10] There are a ton of studies out there, many more than we have time to cover in the podcast. But every day or

[00:09:15] almost every day in the newsletter, we have started putting a link to a story, to a study that we have

[00:09:21] selected. Today's is called How and Why Consumers Are Shopping in 2024. It is definitely worth a read.

[00:09:27] And as usual, that is in our email newsletter. The link is at the top of the show notes.

[00:09:33] All right, that's it for today. See you tomorrow.