Meta's New "Verified" Plans Could Cost You $1,000 a Month

[00:00:00] News Wednesday, May 8th, Today, Meta's new subscription plans are out and I sure hope you

[00:00:06] like being disappointed. Shopify stock plunges after a quarterly loss, Amazon extends an

[00:00:12] olive branch to sellers, and a soul-destroying look at the Google ad platform's bizarre

[00:00:18] discrepancies.

[00:00:19] And a quick programming note for those of you here on the free feed, our premium

[00:00:24] podcast which has no ads is on sale this week only, tap the link at the top of the

[00:00:27] show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash half off.

[00:00:34] Many years ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told everyone that Facebook would be free for everyone

[00:00:39] forever. No takesies-back-sees. Then a little while later, that position changed a little.

[00:00:45] It became, there will always be a free version of Facebook you can access, a subtle difference

[00:00:51] but one that opened the door to a subscription service. Meta cracked that door open last

[00:00:55] year by charging businesses for a blue check mark and some vague promises about better support

[00:01:00] in higher search rankings. Now that door is being flung wide open.

[00:01:05] The company this week announcing its Meta Verified subscription plan for brands will

[00:01:10] soon cost up to $1,000 a month depending on the tier you buy and how many accounts

[00:01:14] you want covered. For now they're priced with some introductory discounts and those

[00:01:18] tiers are standard. That's the original tier at $15 a month and then three new

[00:01:24] plans plus at $45 a month lets you add more addresses and profiles on your brand page as well as

[00:01:30] the ability to put external links in your reels. Though that package is limited to two links

[00:01:35] per month. It also claims to put you higher in search results.

[00:01:39] Premium at $120 a month adds two additional reels links plus some themes in your DMs

[00:01:45] with customers and some employee impersonation protection and max at $350 a month. Again,

[00:01:52] the introductory prices for that you get six links in reels per month plus they say

[00:01:57] they'll have a Meta Expert do a review of your profile twice a year to help you with

[00:02:02] your content strategy. To me that latter perk is actually the weakest of them all. Anyone

[00:02:08] who's had to sit through a call from a Meta Expert under the guise of helping them

[00:02:12] with their ad strategy knows that these people while probably well meaning really don't

[00:02:16] know anything about ad strategy, they probably know less about the ins and outs of

[00:02:20] the ads manager than you do and their advice is usually so simple as to be laughable like

[00:02:27] spend more or just do what the recommendations say. But as I mentioned those prices are listed

[00:02:34] as introductory offers. The non sale prices are considerably steeper $500 a month for the

[00:02:41] top package and presumably that's going to be the renewal price and this is per profile

[00:02:46] not per account. So those prices are for one Facebook page or one Instagram page. If you

[00:02:52] want both that'll be $1000 a month after this sign up offer. The Meta says if you buy both at the

[00:02:58] same time they'll take 20% off until now the paid check mark program has only been officially

[00:03:03] available to brands in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Some accounts in the US and other

[00:03:08] countries are part of a small test group starting today though businesses in Argentina,

[00:03:14] Mexico, Chile, Peru, France and Italy will also be in.

[00:03:23] Shopify shares dropped dramatically this morning by almost 20% after the e-commerce platform posted

[00:03:29] a net loss in the first quarter of this year. That took about $20 billion out of its market cap

[00:03:35] and canceled out all the gains it had made in the last year. In actual dollars the net loss

[00:03:40] was $273 million. Compare that to the same quarter the previous year where the company made $68 million

[00:03:47] in profit and you can see why investors got spooked especially given that overall revenue was

[00:03:52] actually up 23% in the last quarter to almost $2 billion. Quoting business insider, the losses

[00:03:59] marked a surprise fall for Shopify after last year reclaiming some of the gains it made during

[00:04:04] the pandemic online shopping after hitting a low around October of 2022. The company has also undergone

[00:04:10] a number of rounds of layoffs with a significant 20% cut made to its workforce in May last year.

[00:04:21] Every other Wednesday we check in with our Google ads correspondent Jill Saskin-Gales.

[00:04:26] Jill spent six years at Google ads and now runs the inside Google ads training program for

[00:04:32] practitioners. Jill I noticed Google is hiring an accelerated growth team in Canada for the first

[00:04:39] time. I feel like this is like the 30th different internal team name that I've heard from Google.

[00:04:45] You worked in sales there. Can you walk us through the different types of Google reps that we might

[00:04:50] encounter and the different sales teams? Yes, there are a lot of different sales teams

[00:04:56] all divided based on how much you spend as part of it but also how fast you're growing,

[00:05:01] what industry you're in, etc. So really I think the best way to think about the Google ads sales

[00:05:06] team is as of right now at least. I'm sure Riorgo will be imminent at any moment but as of right

[00:05:11] now there are two parts of the sales organization, the big spenders and everyone else. And so

[00:05:18] the big spenders is called large customer sales LCS that's where I worked and what

[00:05:23] classifies you as a big spender really varies by country like for example to be an LCS customer

[00:05:30] in the US you'd be spending a lot more than if you're an LCS customer in Canada. And then that

[00:05:36] everything else organization is called Google customer solutions or GCS and then within GCS

[00:05:44] there's tons of different teams so like the largest clients in GCS are in an organization called

[00:05:50] MMS, mid-market sales and the accelerated growth team is another part of GCS where they try to

[00:05:57] identify clients that have the potential to spend a lot more however Google's algorithms

[00:06:03] determine that and then they'll reach out to you to offer personalized support for three to six

[00:06:09] months to help you spend more but ideally also help you make more from Google ads. So these

[00:06:14] are just some of the many different sales teams that fall under that GCS umbrella.

[00:06:20] You know earlier today we talked about Meta's new verification plans that are coming out,

[00:06:25] the top tier of which includes something called a profile expert or a meta expert on profiles and

[00:06:32] you know in the past these meta experts have always been I don't know fairly junior they don't

[00:06:38] really understand the platform. Do we see those types of people on the Google side as well?

[00:06:45] Absolutely, you can go look at any of these job descriptions at Google they're all hiring

[00:06:49] right now depending what city you're in and you don't need to have Google ads experience

[00:06:55] to be a Google ads sales representative whether in large customer sales or in Google customer

[00:07:01] solutions. Some of these jobs like an account strategist in Google customer solutions you

[00:07:07] need two years of work experience maybe some marketing experience maybe some sales experience

[00:07:12] but the Google ads experience comes on the job and it's similar in large customer sales as

[00:07:16] well so I think it's a really important thing I knew people love to hate on their Google reps

[00:07:20] just like they like to hate on their meta reps but it's important to keep in mind these are sales

[00:07:24] people and what they're selling happens to be Google ads they're not Google ads experts who happen

[00:07:31] to be sale selling it to you. Yeah it's difficult because the wording they use is expert and then

[00:07:35] you get them on the phone and they're like well just just put more variations into the system

[00:07:40] and that should do it okay bye. Yeah I was just on the call with a Google ads coach and

[00:07:44] client and she got one of these emails you know hi I'm your new account strategist let's

[00:07:48] hop on a call and like lo and behold the guy told her spend more money and launch Pmax this is in a

[00:07:55] very small account they'll make one search and all kinds of stuff that was not relevant and you

[00:08:00] know I don't fault this particular rep for that it's just that's the system they're designed to

[00:08:04] sell you on stuff and it's really just the larger client you are and the more you spend if

[00:08:09] you're part of that MMS or maybe that LCS large customer sales team then you may be working

[00:08:15] with someone who knows your business in more detail and can help you with more customized solutions

[00:08:20] but it's a very small portion of all Google ads advertisers who will get that level of support.

[00:08:26] Before I let you go you had a great post on LinkedIn this morning about

[00:08:29] a bunch of crazy discrepancies in Google's ads manager like like headline length for instance

[00:08:34] is it like all over the map? It's crazy I am going through the Google ads help center

[00:08:39] and reading every article because that's what I do for fun and so today I was writing

[00:08:43] about how in Google ads there are five different character requirements for headlines depending

[00:08:50] where that headline is so for example in searcher and Pmax and headline can have up to 30 characters

[00:08:56] but in demand gen it can have up to 40 characters but if you're running the headline as an asset

[00:09:01] not within a specific campaign it can only have 25 characters but if it's in a certain kind of

[00:09:08] video campaign it can have 30 characters but in other kinds of video campaigns only 15 characters

[00:09:14] yeah I couldn't make the stuff up if I tried so the good news is I check descriptions are always

[00:09:20] up to 90 characters so those are consistent but headlines are all over the place so yeah if you

[00:09:26] find this stuff as entertaining as I do go ahead and follow me on LinkedIn I've got a

[00:09:30] lot more like this to share. For the masochistic among us Jill thanks. Thanks. As Jill's asking

[00:09:36] she is our Google ads correspondent she's here every second Wednesday you can learn more about

[00:09:40] her Google ads training program at our affiliate link at b.link slash gaitraining and you can

[00:09:47] watch our full unedited interview there is a link to it in today's newsletter which you can sign

[00:09:52] up to for free by tapping the link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash

[00:09:57] newsletter. Mita has started rolling out a new set of generative AI tools for advertisers

[00:10:06] expanding on the features introduced last October these new tools will for the first time

[00:10:10] let brands create full image variations including different backgrounds and angles and some enhanced

[00:10:17] AI generated ad copy the big news of course is the image gen in the past you've been able to

[00:10:22] add some backgrounds crop images to different dimensions have the AI play with the brightness

[00:10:28] that sort of thing all that was more polish AI than truly generative AI now though advertisers

[00:10:34] will be able to upload reference images of their products and get AI generated variations of their

[00:10:41] products not only in different scenery in the background but also adjustments to the products

[00:10:45] image itself and yes this definitely has the potential to be abused by advertisers looking

[00:10:51] to trick consumers Mita says it's got some guardrails in place to prevent this you'll

[00:10:56] also be able to add more flexible text overlays to AI images and new versions of

[00:11:01] ad headlines and primary texts these features have started to roll out Mita says it could take to the

[00:11:07] end of the year to get to all ad accounts Amazon is giving third party sellers a bit of a break

[00:11:16] in the form of a pushback of the launch of the new product supply fee quoting retail dive quote the

[00:11:23] fee applies to standard sized products with less than 28 days of inventory relative to historic

[00:11:29] demand while the fee is already in place Amazon started crediting sellers back in April if they

[00:11:36] incurred the charge as a way to help them adjust originally those credits were going to end April

[00:11:41] 30th but Amazon has extended the credit period to last until May 14th unquote this he was announced

[00:11:48] back in December Amazon said it needed the money to cover the costs of improving delivery

[00:11:52] speeds and in stock levels under its new regional fulfillment model as for sellers

[00:11:58] which have a little less control it might be a little hard for them to get around these things

[00:12:02] Amazon has a couple of olive branches first the fee will not apply to products that have sold

[00:12:06] fewer than 20 units in the previous week and any charges incurred because of excessive

[00:12:13] inbounding and processing times on Amazon's end will be refunded and Amazon will also provide

[00:12:20] a small exception window for products that get featured as lightning deals or best deals

[00:12:25] during the upcoming prime day in July and that fee pause will stick around for four weeks

[00:12:34] there are many marketers who aren't comfortable in full-size ads managers like the behemoths

[00:12:39] that meta and google offer those platforms have all tried to capture those people too

[00:12:44] meta with its post boosts google with its ironically named smart campaigns and now youtube

[00:12:50] is offering advertisers a quicker way to get into the ad game it's rolling out a promotions tab

[00:12:55] within youtube studio itself this has been around for a small test group for a while

[00:13:01] it is now getting out to more people you do not get a lot of options here campaign optimization is

[00:13:06] either more engagement or more views it should be available to you if your brand's channel has

[00:13:12] met the requirements for advanced features and you've got more than a thousand subscribers

[00:13:16] this is a pretty simple way to get a few dollars behind an organic video that was getting

[00:13:20] more eyeballs than usual it should be available now to all qualifying accounts on desktop and they

[00:13:26] are still working on the mobile app version two more days left in our sale of the premium podcast

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[00:13:52] want to try it out all right thanks for listening see you tomorrow America we are endowed by our creator

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