It's Temu's World. We Just Advertise In It.

[00:00:00] It is Monday, April 22nd.

[00:00:03] Today your ad costs are going up.

[00:00:06] Is it all Tmoo's fault?

[00:00:08] TikTok influencers say their peers are going into brand deals a little too aggressively and

[00:00:13] the hilarious glitch at Microsoft which is sewing confusion among the mics.

[00:00:20] I'm Tod Maffin.

[00:00:21] That's all ahead today in a shorter than usual episode of Today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:27] It's been a lot of profanity out there lately in DTC social media.

[00:00:31] I mean, there often is between Meta's volatile performance and marketing tools like cookies

[00:00:36] being pulled.

[00:00:37] There's a lot to complain about.

[00:00:39] But I don't think I've seen as much anger as I've seen in the last week or two and

[00:00:43] it's all because of Tmoo.

[00:00:46] Tmoo, the e-commerce giant that sells extremely discounted products, is chewing up a lot

[00:00:52] of ad inventory.

[00:00:54] And in an auction like the ad platforms are, increased competition means higher prices.

[00:01:01] For whatever reason, most of the complaining seems to be about Meta's prices and people

[00:01:05] checking the ads library are finding Tmoo deploying thousands of campaigns each week.

[00:01:12] Adweek has a great piece about all this today in case you too are seeing higher than

[00:01:16] usual CPAs quoting their piece quote,

[00:01:19] Tmoo's strategic takeover of advertising space on Meta, Google and other platforms is

[00:01:25] impossible to ignore.

[00:01:27] Reports and industry pros suggest an almost audacious investment from the Chinese e-commerce

[00:01:33] newcomer with figures rumored around the $2 billion mark in 2023 alone.

[00:01:38] This colossal spend aims at carving a substantial footprint in the US retail space.

[00:01:44] But the implications, challenges and outcomes of such a move truly impact media buyers every

[00:01:50] day unquote.

[00:01:52] Tmoo became one of Meta's top advertisers last year.

[00:01:55] The company is expected to reach more than $6 billion in revenue this year.

[00:02:00] The piece also quotes DTC marketer David Herman as saying quote,

[00:02:03] For 2024 on top of Tmoo and Xi'an we have a presidential election coming.

[00:02:09] If we think things are high now it may even go higher.

[00:02:14] Tmoo is the first company to be spending this aggressively.

[00:02:22] However, is Meta still able to work for the majority of advertisers as a profitable choice

[00:02:27] of traffic?

[00:02:28] I believe so, but it's not easy and I feel for those in direct competition with a

[00:02:34] site like Tmoo.

[00:02:36] So that's why media buyers are struggling with the deluge of e-commerce ads.

[00:02:44] What about consumers?

[00:02:45] They too say they're feeling it and one area they're most certainly not appreciative of

[00:02:50] it is TikTok.

[00:02:52] American TikTok users in particular have been flooded with ads for products in TikTok

[00:02:56] shop, other countries too.

[00:02:58] And that's affecting the business of influencers on the app.

[00:03:02] Business Insider today published an interesting piece about creators frustration with

[00:03:06] this trend and their fellow influencers who are all too happy to use their feed

[00:03:12] to sell products.

[00:03:13] Quoting from the piece, quote,

[00:03:15] Manrika Kaira said TikTok used to be a fun place to be with trends, dynamic discussions

[00:03:19] with other creators and hilarious jokes.

[00:03:22] But it's morphed into a pseudo shopping channel, she said.

[00:03:25] Quote, I'm seeing some of my favorite creators promoting products that they don't

[00:03:29] know work or they know don't do what you are saying they do, she said.

[00:03:34] Kaira's criticism mirrors the feelings of many gen-zetters who are growing tired

[00:03:39] of seeing relentless ads on their social media feeds, unquote.

[00:03:43] The piece notes that while the cost of living has put financial pressure on people, still

[00:03:47] retail sales went up last month and that's despite prices going higher than the US's

[00:03:53] inflation target of 2%.

[00:03:55] The push to sell and sell has actually spawned a new kind of influencer, the de-influencer,

[00:04:02] a group of creators who tell their users to stop buying.

[00:04:05] Again, quoting from the Business Insider piece, quote,

[00:04:08] Samantha Zink, the founder and CEO of the talent management agency Zink Talent told Business

[00:04:13] Influencer the influencer industry has changed massively since it began in the early 2000s.

[00:04:19] Back then it was more about passion and profit, she said while now content creator is a

[00:04:24] fully fledged career with commissions and subscriptions.

[00:04:28] Quote, this shift has made influencer engagements seem less special because what was once

[00:04:34] a hobby or passion project is now a necessity to earn a living.

[00:04:38] Influencers, some of whom are supporting families, must engage in brand collaborations to sustain

[00:04:45] themselves, unquote.

[00:04:51] And finally, see I told you it was a short episode today, a strange bug or hack or sabotage

[00:04:57] or something affected Microsoft's corporate email servers last week in the funniest way

[00:05:02] possible.

[00:05:03] Microsoft's VP for Bing, Michael Schechter said he checked his email one morning last

[00:05:07] week and found a huge number of them waiting for him.

[00:05:11] His first thought, oh god, something bad has happened.

[00:05:15] And who'd blame him for thinking that?

[00:05:17] Hundreds of people in the company were also copied on the email threads.

[00:05:21] Turns out someone accidentally managed to add everyone named Mike or Michael across

[00:05:27] the entire company to a group email thread.

[00:05:31] So this being the world of AI, Michael Schechter ran all the threads in that group alias through

[00:05:36] Microsoft's co-pilot AI and it summarized it like this.

[00:05:41] Many Michaels and Mike's introduced themselves, made jokes and expressed amusement at being

[00:05:45] part of the group.

[00:05:47] Some members suggested renaming it to Mike Roesoft.

[00:05:51] The purpose of the group remains unclear but members are enjoying the opportunity

[00:05:54] to connect with each other.

[00:05:56] Some members expressed concerns that the group might be a trap or that they might be

[00:06:03] hunted for sport.

[00:06:06] Unquote.

[00:06:12] Ken reminds me back in, I don't know, the early 2000s I was the national tech columnist

[00:06:16] for CBC which was Canada's public broadcaster.

[00:06:19] And at the time CBC used GroupWise which if you've never heard of it, I don't

[00:06:25] blame you it was invented in the 1700s basically.

[00:06:27] It was like a group calendar and email system but one of the things that they had in this

[00:06:32] GroupWise was you could create groups that lived in your email folder.

[00:06:38] So basically you would create a group and share it with a bunch of your colleagues

[00:06:42] and it was a shared email folder that people could, you know, kind of like a use net

[00:06:45] group back in the day.

[00:06:46] Anyway so I created one right because I was the tech columnist.

[00:06:49] I was comfortable with technology.

[00:06:51] I saw that it was possible so I created a thing called the buy and sell for everyone

[00:06:55] in BC, everyone in my province.

[00:06:56] I thought you know why go to Facebook marketplace or whatever?

[00:07:00] Why don't we just sell and buy things among trusted colleagues?

[00:07:03] The problem with GroupWise is at the time it would send out whenever you created a

[00:07:08] group like this it would send a separate email to everyone in the group saying Todd

[00:07:13] Maffin has created a folder in your email account.

[00:07:16] It wasn't very descriptive or accurate in its terminology.

[00:07:22] So needless to say a whole bunch of people thought that I was in their email somehow

[00:07:26] because most of the people there to be charitable were not particularly technologically savvy.

[00:07:34] So I thought okay I'm just going to buy and IT even called and said why are you

[00:07:38] doing like I actually got in trouble for this like why are you creating folders

[00:07:41] I'm like well dude's like just disable the ability if you don't want us doing

[00:07:44] that I guess they thought no one would so they said could you just delete it please

[00:07:48] like take it out so I did so I deleted the fault but guess what GroupWise does

[00:07:52] when you delete a full a shared folder is it sends an even more vague email out

[00:07:59] to everybody who was attached to that said and all it says is something

[00:08:03] like Todd Maffin has deleted a folder from your email.

[00:08:08] So my office was underground most of the studios in the Vancouver CBC building

[00:08:13] were at the time were underground and I could hear footsteps like a few dozen people

[00:08:21] it sounded like they're coming down the stairs why are you deleting my emails

[00:08:26] what anyway that was the week that I learned that you could buy from subway sandwiches

[00:08:32] you could buy like a 12 foot sandwich like an enormous thing maybe it was six feet

[00:08:36] or eight feet or something like that. Anyway I know that because I bought that for the IT people

[00:08:41] because they had to deal with all of that stuff I felt really bad. Anyway you may notice that today

[00:08:46] is a short episode and last week and for the last couple of weeks on Mondays we've been experimenting

[00:08:50] with interviews with marketing scientists that's probably the direction we're going we did a bit

[00:08:55] of a poll to see whether or not people liked it it was I think it was unanimous everyone seemed

[00:08:59] to like on Mondays having those interviews with marketing scientists their briefs they're

[00:09:04] short they're punchy the reason we don't have one this week is that I we just simply

[00:09:08] didn't have an interesting enough study like we get probably a dozen pitches a day from people

[00:09:14] that want us to interview their agency CEO about how to 10x their sales and just bullshit like that

[00:09:20] right so you will not hear that on on the Monday episode that is a promise

[00:09:25] for me to you um and you can you know if you want to hear those guys and they're almost all guys

[00:09:30] they're on every other marketing podcast in the world you listen to us because we're different

[00:09:34] than what you get elsewhere so sometimes hopefully we are always asking marketing scientists to come on

[00:09:40] the show and talk to us about about their findings for instance this one study that just came out

[00:09:46] that found whether you square buttons or round buttons convert better like that's the stuff that

[00:09:50] really interests me sometimes scientists are a little hesitant for whatever reason to be on a

[00:09:57] podcast they're awfully busy this time of year they get pitched by a lot of spammy journal

[00:10:02] stuff like it's tough reaching them and I would say probably out of every 10 scientists we reach out

[00:10:07] to about their studies maybe two reply and maybe one comes on the show so rest assured we're trying

[00:10:14] and if you know someone or or you have a topic that you think would be interesting and that would

[00:10:18] fit there on Mondays as sort of a long form interview that lasts about I don't know eight or nine

[00:10:22] minutes by all means reach out to us there's a contact link at the top of the show notes

[00:10:27] but that is why we are as they would say on the breaking news shows we are efforting to get more

[00:10:32] of these people on the show um but our quality bar is pretty high so that's why today's episode

[00:10:39] was a regular one that's why it was shorter than usual because Mondays is just a lot of news

[00:10:43] for whatever reason all right thanks for listening to for today I'll see you tomorrow

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