Meta's Poison Pill Will Block Your Ability to Run Ads

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[00:00:56] It is Friday, November 17th and I'm back from emergency eye surgery, which I'll tell you all about at the end of the episode. But for now, today be careful what box you tick. Metas' new subscription will cancel your ability to run ads.

[00:01:10] Also, TikTok's youth number is ticked downward. Google's knew if you can dream it we'd probably sell it system. Threads is about to reinvent the hashtag, how that might affect your brand's campaigns.

[00:01:23] And on the ad-free premium podcast, which you can learn all about by tapping go premium in the show notes. All the tiny details you need to understand these new Amazon ads within Metas apps and details on Metas' new cost per results goal objective.

[00:01:40] I'm Todd Maffin, that's ahead today in digital marketing. TikTok's grip on the teen market is showing signs of leveling off. The latest data from Forrester's 2023 youth survey reveals a slight decline in weekly TikTok usage among teens dropping from 69% in 2022 to 68% this year.

[00:02:03] Sure, that's not much, but it's the first real sign of saturation we've seen on the platform. TikTok remains just ahead of its main competitor, YouTube, which saw its teen usage fall to 66%. Platforms like Instagram's Reels and YouTube's Shorts are gaining ground.

[00:02:21] Reels weekly usage among teens has risen to 30%. Shorts has reached 15%. TikTok videos get an average of one and a half hours of daily viewing from its users. The platform is expected to capture a big portion of linear TV budgets targeted at Gen Z in 2024.

[00:02:40] Despite its current lead, TikTok faces growing competition in the ad market from Reels and Shorts, both of which are integrating more seamlessly into their parent apps, Instagram and YouTube. By the way, we are on TikTok. Our account name is at today in digital,

[00:02:58] or you can follow me for cat memes and shitposting at Todd Maffin. If you can dream it, Google wants to find it for you. The company this week unveiling a new feature, part of Google's search generative experience,

[00:03:15] lets users create a product image using AI and then search for real-world equivalents. For example, if you're looking for a winter coat, Google's AI will create an image based on your description. You can then keep modifying that image with additional prompts like more colorful or shiny metallic fabric.

[00:03:34] The system will then try to find the closest real-world match. It's all part of Google's mad rush to add AI into, well, everything. Other use of AI in shopping tools include gift suggestions based on search terms

[00:03:47] and a virtual try-on feature, which Google has now expanded to include men's tops. We've reported on Meta's new paid subscription plan in the EU, which will remove ads from subscribers' feeds, but here's something that wasn't made particularly clear.

[00:04:07] It will also remove your ability to run ad campaigns or even boost posts. Specifically, here are the limitations direct from Meta's fine print on the plan. Quote, If you subscribe, the following are no longer available to you because it would require using your information for ads.

[00:04:26] Running ads and boosting posts for an Instagram account. Running ads and boosting posts for your Facebook profile, for example, boosting your own marketplace listings. Running ads for a Facebook page, if the page is linked to an Instagram account that has a subscription to use Meta products without ads,

[00:04:44] participating in partnership ads on Instagram or Facebook and monetizing with ads on Reels and in-stream ads, unquote. And honestly, this seems more punitive than anything. To say that they're just not able to let you run ads because you're not seeing them on their feed

[00:05:01] would really only be possible in a world where, you know, software engineers who could fix that don't exist, which they do and can. There does seem to be a loophole though, quoting socialmedia-today.com, quote. You'll be able to run ads for a linked Facebook page that you manage

[00:05:19] as long as you don't also have an Instagram account that's signed up for the ad-free option connected to both. So you can avoid personalized entirely and pay for your Facebook and Instagram experience, but if you also want to run ads, you'll probably need to cancel your subscription,

[00:05:36] which is probably how Meta wants it, as it can likely make more money over time by showing people ads as opposed to what it can rake in from subscription payments, unquote. Elon Musk, owner of X, the platform formerly known as Relevant, is back at it again

[00:05:57] earlier this week. He endorsed a post that somehow managed to be both anti-semitic and racist. As you can imagine, advertisers aren't happy. Again, ex-employees are said to be receiving calls from media buyers demanding details about how close their ads are appearing next to pro-Nazi and pro-white nationalist content.

[00:06:18] Despite the platform's claims of brand safety, researchers say those running ad campaigns have found their brand sitting right beside hate content, graphically violent videos and the likes. IBM, which until this week was one of the few still hanging in,

[00:06:32] has now suspended advertising on the platform after the nonprofit group Media Matters found IBM ads appearing right next to pro-Nazi content. IBM says it has withdrawn from a deal to spend $1 million on advertising on the platform by the end of 2023.

[00:06:50] Ex-CEO responded by claiming the company has a commitment to combating anti-semitism and discrimination. How's that going? The Center for Countering Digital Hate audited the platform this week and reported 200 posts that went against ex's own terms.

[00:07:06] Some of those posts included statements that, quote, Hitler saw Jews for what they were, unquote. That Muslims are, quote, smelly rats, unquote, and referred to Palestinians in Gaza as animals. Of those 200 reported, 196 were left up. Let's be honest, retros can be boring.

[00:07:34] 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, design next steps and make it all a fun safe space where teammates want to participate.

[00:07:47] 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-vents.

[00:08:01] 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.

[00:08:14] 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.

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[00:09:45] And unlike hashtags which can be added in bulk, threads topic tags limit users to adding only one tag per post. This is designed to reduce spam and misuse by scammers who often exploit trending hashtags.

[00:10:01] From a marketers point of view, this probably means that branded hashtags won't be a thing anymore, as they likely wouldn't make it into the pre-selected pool of topics. Or maybe they will, but only if you buy them as an ad campaign.

[00:10:15] Even if you do manage to get a branded topic tag in, that means you'll only be able to use that one tag and not other discovery-focused tags like we've been used to doing. Either way, it does make the posts look much more clean.

[00:10:28] Hopefully an API is next up on the feature list. Hey, you, you over there with your eyes wide up. Alright, here is the story of my emergency eye surgery.

[00:10:40] So, over the weekend my wife and I went away for a little stacation up island and had a great time. I noticed, like I've always had floaters in my eyes, you know those little, but they've been mild. And I noticed my right eye, they were getting worse.

[00:10:53] And I started getting black dots. I actually thought they were flies in the room. And then I realized, oh no this is part of my eyes. So, I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm just dehydrated or something. So anyway, did nothing about it of course.

[00:11:06] And then came back home and decided that I would call the ophthalmologist. I was in for some glaucoma prevention laser stuff earlier in the year. And I described it to my ophthalmologist and the receptionist said, come in immediately.

[00:11:20] It's always a little bit of a scary thing to hear from your ophthalmologist. So I did. They diluted, they numbed, they poked around and the guy said, you my friend have a retinal tear. And we have to get you into surgery right away.

[00:11:35] So kudos to the Canadian health system though. I got to say that was in the afternoon by, I got in like right away. That evening I had two different retina specialist offices call me to book an appointment for first thing in the morning.

[00:11:47] I picked the one that was closest to me. And the way the surgery works, don't worry it's not gory or anything. She just leaned me back and then a laser kind of like, and apparently now I only found out this afterwards.

[00:12:00] I refused to see what the treatment was until after it was done for obvious reasons. Because I'm a coward. And it turns out what they do is they burn essentially a series of scars around where the tear is and hope that that will kind of hold it on.

[00:12:17] So no heavy lifting. I was supposed to kind of relax my eyes for a couple of days, which I've done. You would have learned about this right away if you had been following us on social media, which you're still not doing by the way.

[00:12:28] Today in digital.com slash social or tap the link in the show notes. That will do it for the week. Today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tuneimic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn.

[00:12:45] Thank you Steph for jumping in and filling in for a little bit of extra work while you're on Matt Leave. Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Levis, music licensing by Source Audio, ad coordination by Red Circle.

[00:12:58] I'm Todd Maffin and provided my eyeball doesn't fall out. I will see you on Monday.

[00:14:02] Thank you.