How to Stop the Facebook Admin Spam Messages

[00:00:01] It is Friday, January 19th. Today, those Facebook spam DMs are out of control. Turns out there's an off switch for them buried in business manager. We'll tell you how to find it. Also, product

[00:00:14] placement comes to online videos, a new way to generate leads on LinkedIn and the first installment of our digital marketing helpline. I'm Tod Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Well, every Friday we check in with our meta ads correspondent

[00:01:25] ndrew. Hello, Andrew. Hello. I see that meta is removing from its ads manager soon. The ability to use detailed targeting. Is this interest? Is this and or what what do they mean by this? They're not removing necessarily interest targeting, they're moving detailed targeting, which is the ability to do and equation targeting. So,

[00:01:55] this would be things like an interest in gardening and trucks. That's being removed. It's not out of the question that over time they will remove, you know, targeting interest targeting generally. I think that a lot of the signal that they just want, you know, us to know that like by using

[00:02:19] advantage plus or by using broad targeting, they're better at finding those people than we are with interests. And that also I think reflects upon the inaccuracy of interests, which is true in some cases that they don't have a lot of really good info on that particular target. And so, you know, it's sort of a combination of those things. But as of now, they're

[00:02:49] removing detailed targeting, which is the and equation. And it should be gone within the month. But not a lot of people are using this anyway. It just made things a little too narrow at this day and age.

[00:03:01] I confess, I used it. We used it for running ads for this podcast. In fact, we would say people whose job titles have digital marketing or marketing VP in it and people who also are interested in podcasts, which to me is kind of a perfect

[00:03:19] audience. I still, I just don't understand how that interest targeting has gotten so low quality, how they've let it get so low quality that they're now just saying, you know, it's crap, we're just going to pull it.

[00:03:33] Well, to be honest with you, I think what it is is it's a difference between what the social graph in referenced interest was built on before and the signals that went into said social graph versus the signals that are currently being utilized under Cappy or engagement signals.

[00:03:54] So I think engagement signals were obviously part of it before a lot of the social graph before was built on pages you follow, etc. Which I know it still is, but I think it was an incomplete picture versus now it's more built around, you know, the activity you're

[00:04:11] utilizing on like a more commerce basis, kind of I think and it also seems to be more accurate based on the post iOS 14 signals. So I think that's this system is built to not have to do that.

[00:04:26] And from Meta standpoint, they want to make it easy as easy as possible for someone to launch a campaign and not do targeting and just press go and say we'll find you those people.

[00:04:38] And so by removing this, this is a barrier really. I'm not saying it's great. I actually really have always liked interest targeting and I think we'll still see interest targeting but the detailed targeting allowed you to feel more comfortable certainly in the targeting that you had.

[00:04:56] I felt that way, but I don't think moving forward its accuracy is going to be as locked in as it once was. So I think that's probably why they're removing it for now.

[00:05:08] I would imagine if they're relying more on sort of having us do broad, more broad audiences and then they're using AI to sort of focus down.

[00:05:16] I would imagine that the only real targeting lovers that we have is in the creative itself, which I'm not certain people think of creative as a targeting mechanism. But is that a focus that you're seeing in your community?

[00:05:29] Definitely. Yeah, I mean it absolutely is. Creative is targeting at this point in time and it will continue to be so. So I think that this is why you see such a rise in creative strategists, people hiring creative strategists, etc.

[00:05:45] So yeah, absolutely. I think this is a big deal and I think if you haven't invested in diversifying the set of creatives that you have, it's absolutely essential you do so because it'll make your life easier moving forward.

[00:05:58] Yeah. Andrew, we run at our end an engagement and moderation firm. We handle the social media engagement of medium sized brands so we look at their mentions.

[00:06:08] We reply, we're in their DMs replying to people but these days the DMs, I don't think this is an exaggeration to say dozens an hour of spam messages and they're all kind of the same from Facebook.

[00:06:20] They're all, and they're not from Facebook. I mean they're on Facebook's platform. They're all sort of like you've done something wrong, you violated this and your page is going to be shut down.

[00:06:28] Now at our end we use a tool where we're able to filter those and sort of move them aside. If we can filter these out, why can't Facebook?

[00:06:37] Yeah, this is an issue that really arose and I did get confirmation this morning from Metta that this is something that was flagged immediately by engineering.

[00:06:48] So it was a ton of Facebook messages that were phishing messages were spamming Facebook pages so they found a loophole and engineering is on it and hopefully these have subsided.

[00:07:01] Another option that you do have in terms of going basically putting a little bit harder filter on these things is you can go in and go to the Metta business suite, go to your inbox, go to settings and then go to chat plugin and turn off guest chat and hit publish at the bottom right of the page.

[00:07:26] And that seems to take away 99% of it. There's something in the guest chat function that allowed people to just go create and enter chatting to you and sending you phishing messages so it's one thing Metta is aware of it, but this was a major issue.

[00:07:44] I put this on Twitter and it got like, I don't even know 30 retweets and it had thousands of hundreds of thousands of impressions because it was such an issue for people this week and the last couple weeks.

[00:07:56] So if you haven't tried turning off the guest chat that's one Metta is also on top of it hopefully meaning that they're going to make it better in the next few days. Yeah, hopefully. It feels like a tsunami. Andrew, good stuff. Thank you. See you next week.

[00:08:11] Thank you. Andrew Fox. Well is our Metta ads correspondent. You can learn more about Andrew's digital ads training at be dot link slash Fox well or his slack community of senior Metta ad buyers. We are in there as well at be dot link slash founders.

[00:08:29] Both of those are affiliate links. You can find those links at the bottom of our show notes. Tech support at the various platforms are terrible if they exist at all which is why we have started the digital marketing tech support helpline.

[00:08:47] Call in with a problem you're having. We will find an expert to suggest some ways to fix your problem and today's our first comes from Greg Turico.

[00:08:56] So I have a customer who runs a resort property off the coast of the United States and have a number of rental homes as a part of the resort property.

[00:09:05] It seems that intermittently when they boost a post for a rental home on Facebook they get rejected because Facebook has a policy against quote discriminatory practices and quote. Are there other people out there that have faced this issue before and how do they get around it?

[00:09:19] It feels like a trivial issue because it's a boosted post for a rental property as a part of a corporation that owns a resort.

[00:09:27] It doesn't seem like it violates any of the discriminatory practices policies that Facebook has in place but we can't figure out what we're doing wrong and why these boosted posts keep getting flagged.

[00:09:37] For some help on this earlier today I spoke with Robert Brill CEO of Brill Media in Los Angeles. They are a 20-person agency specializing in digital media buying and I asked him assuming of course that Greg's people are checking that little this is about housing special category box.

[00:09:54] What could be going on here? I think the issue here is the boosting of the post. I firmly believe that there's some system issue that boosting a post with a housing ad is causing some sort of flag to go up.

[00:10:09] Like there might be a bug in the boosting system you think? There's bugs all over Facebook. There are bugs that are consistent for months and years at a time and then there are bugs that happen over the course of five hours and then they get resolved.

[00:10:19] We vehemently are against boosting posts like 100% of the advertising that we run is through Facebook Business Manager and ad accounts. We don't do anything with boosted posts because it's far less effective.

[00:10:32] Now if we are running ads in Facebook Business Manager and we select a special category, do ads get declined? Of course. We are running a political ad right now that's getting declined because it's probably against terms of service. So there you have it.

[00:10:48] This sounds to Robert like a bug in the boosting system.

[00:10:51] A couple of troubleshooting ideas would be to try running the ads through ads manager like a regular campaign or maybe try running them through a different ads manager account if you have access to one or are willing to set one up for testing.

[00:11:02] And if all else fails you can appeal the denial to meta and hope that you get an actual human being to read it and not just the digital cousin of the boss that denied it in the first place.

[00:11:13] If you have an issue with your digital marketing and would like a couple of ideas to try to get it fixed call into our helpline by going to todayindigital.com.

[00:11:21] If you're the organizer, you know it's more than just running a meeting. You have to synthesize and categorize themes get the team involved, decide next steps and make it all a fun safe space where teammates can be able to do their job.

[00:11:32] And that's the top of the show notes.

[00:11:40] Let's be honest, retros can be boring and if you're the organizer you know it's more than just running a meeting. You have to synthesize and categorize themes get the team involved, decide next steps and make it all a fun safe space where teammates want to participate.

[00:11:55] Miro is the visual collaboration platform that helps you run effective, engaging and actionable retrospectives. We use Miro at our agency to map out a client's messaging for our engagement team. That can be complicated. A lot of if bends.

[00:12:10] But making it visual and sharing it directly with our client sped things way up. Plus our side can share spitballing ideas with private mode. The client doesn't get to see our thoughts until we've decided on the approach.

[00:12:22] Whether you work on the marketing side or in product design engineering or UX, bring your team together on Miro. And your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at Miro.com. That's three free boards at Miro.com

[00:12:41] Do you want someone who understands you like no other? Someone who can be your true wish and want to experience the most beautiful adventure of your life?

[00:12:52] The shopping platform Shopify revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide. With Shopify you only focus on your online shop, without programming or design knowledge. Thanks to the efficient design and intuitive social media and online marketplace integration, you can sell and sell through Instagram, eBay and Co.

[00:13:12] It was never easy to reach new target groups. Shopify offers a single secure platform for all tools to build up your online business. Just go to shopify.de.com and start shopping. Shopify.de.com Just go to shopify.de.com and start shopping.

[00:13:34] Made for Germany, powered by Shopify. I've always wanted to, I feel like you see this in celebrity news or whatever all the time where it's like a couple is always just naked on a boat.

[00:13:43] You're listening to the Asian Boss Girl podcast and if you're thinking, okay, weird cross promotion, Todd, this is not a sponsored segment. But the poster behind the three co-hosts visible on their YouTube version of the episode is sponsored.

[00:13:59] It's just a small poster, maybe even just letter sized for the Garnier Fructus shampoo brand. You might not even notice it. You certainly won't notice it after about the halfway mark because after that point, the poster disappears.

[00:14:14] No, it's not a continuity error. It didn't fall. It was never there to begin with. It was a virtual product placement which came from a company called Rembrand. Their ad tech allows for post production insertion of visual products into videos, specifically video podcasts.

[00:14:34] Since June, Rembrand has been working with about 50 creators placing ads in their content. The company's raised $9 million from investments from Bold and L'Oreal. Rembrand's system can insert products within a few hours and they say they're working on a self-serve platform that could get this down to minutes.

[00:14:50] The cost ranges from about $10 to $30 CPM. That's more or less the same as traditional podcast ad rates.

[00:14:58] LinkedIn is introducing sponsored articles allowing company pages to promote their articles directly on the platform and include a call to action button like Unlock article which will require users to sign up if they want to continue reading.

[00:15:18] They're still rolling this out so you may not have it quite yet. Over time, LinkedIn says it plans to integrate additional post amplification and CTA options. But of course the effectiveness of this tool largely depends on the quality of the articles.

[00:15:33] For now only articles authored by company pages are eligible to use this. And finally Reddit's on again off again IPO seems to be back on again. If it actually happens this would be the first major IPO in the social media space since Pinterest in 2019.

[00:15:53] This is reporting the company plans to publicly file late next month, launch a road show in early March and finalize the IPO by month's end. Valued at about $10 billion in 2021, Reddit wants to sell about 10% of its shares with the final IPO valuation set closer to the listing date.

[00:16:12] So remember if you've got a question that is stumping you, you need some tech support and the platforms aren't giving it to you.

[00:16:32] Turn to us friend we will get an expert for you and if we use your question on the show you will get a free subscription to the premium newsletter.

[00:16:40] It's easy to do just go to todayindigital.com slash voicemail or tap the link at the top of the show notes.

[00:16:48] And that'll do it for the week today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of this new name at First Nation on Vancouver Island.

[00:16:57] Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild our theme is by Mark Bleviss music licensing by Source Audio ad coordination by Red Circle. I'm Todd Mappen have a restful weekend friends. I'll see you on Monday.

[00:17:38] From innovative startups to family companies with long tradition, the Commerce Platform Shopify revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide. With Shopify you can sell products via popular channels whether it's personal POS system or a comprehensive e-commerce platform. Social media and marketplaces like Facebook, Instagram and eBay are supported.

[00:18:01] Thanks to the constantly growing selection of innovative functions and the reliable technical support it's very easy to build your business with Shopify. Whether product presentation or order and payment development. Shopify offers everything you need for your business. So you can focus on your business.

[00:18:21] Shopify is free to try and bring your business forward. Shopify.de-try So Shopify.de-try Made for Germany powered by Shopify.