Wait, They're Actually Listening?!

[00:00:00] It is Friday, December 15th. Today changes to Metas lead forms and collection ads. How will they shake up your Q5 plans? That myth about our phones listening to our conversations and serving us ads may actually not be a myth after all.

[00:00:16] And the policy reversal that is pissing off a lot of teenage boys. I'm Tod Maffin. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Someone who can be your wish and experience the most beautiful adventure of your life? The shopping platform Shopify revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide.

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[00:01:22] Every Friday at this time you usually hear me plug our meta ads columnist and tell you that it's over on the premium feed. We're trying something new that we'd like to get your feedback for,

[00:01:31] and that is moving it here to the free feed so that you don't need to pay to get it. That said, because it's pretty packed with detailed information about that specific ad platform, it does usually make the show a little longer than it usually runs.

[00:01:45] At the end of this segment I'm going to ask you to participate in a one-question quick survey to see if you prefer this option. But for now we check in with our meta ads correspondent Andrew Foxwell.

[00:01:56] Andrew's agency manages millions of dollars of meta ad spend for his clients. Andrew, hello. Hello. So lead forms, lead generation forms I see have got an upgrade. Can you walk us through those? Yeah, definitely. There's three new things that have come up within lead forms.

[00:02:12] I mean, I think this has been a priority of meta. They know that Google has a ton of lead generation business. And so this is something that meta hasn't done a great job with and they're upgrading this significantly.

[00:02:24] So number one, there's some new ad tools to generate leads. You can have ads that click to WhatsApp for lead generation also available on Instagram and Messenger. You have coupon offers for completing a Q&A where you can display the business information on there once they've submitted that.

[00:02:46] And there's multi advertiser ads for lead generation instant form, meaning you can have... There's going to be more of these running for lead gen if you're in a specific area.

[00:02:56] So there's going to be more inventory I think is a big part of it and it makes it a lot easier. The second one is there's more AI capabilities. So you're going to have the ability to pull in information from website forms

[00:03:12] if they've started filling it out potentially. Meta and the CAPI platform will be able to pull that in to make filling out the form a little bit easier. And then there's some more partner integrations too.

[00:03:21] So it's clear that they're making an effort into this and I think is... Will be impactful in terms of the business in the bottom line in the next quarter, next six months for meta.

[00:03:34] But if you do lead generation, this is good news because it's going to hopefully make your life a lot easier and allow you to diversify back potentially in the meta if you have diversified away from it. You mentioned multi advertiser ads. Are these the ones that we've seen?

[00:03:46] I see them once in a while on Reels, I think, where it's sort of like four different advertisers occupying one space and you can kind of swipe through that. Is that what we're talking about here? Yeah, yeah. It's like a curisome? Yeah, so this is like...

[00:04:00] If you've ever seen on Google where you can put in your information, then they'll go out and look for leads for you. This is sort of like a service named Thumbtack that famously did this and was like a unicorn that raised a bunch of money.

[00:04:12] You'd submit one thing and then a lot of people could get back to you. That's the same thing here. It's allowing you to fill it out and it's got... You're able to send it to multiple places. So yes, it looks like that.

[00:04:22] I don't know exactly what it's going to look like in practice, but they're making more inventory available for this. I mean, just haven't seen as much lead gen stuff out there and I think it's because the quality hasn't been great.

[00:04:34] So the more that we can utilize this, the better off it's going to be. This is especially a good thing for emerging markets as it ties into WhatsApp, honestly. So overall I think good for the ecosystem. Obviously remains to be seen if it'll be great,

[00:04:50] but I do like that the AI piece is going to be helpful too, hopefully making that whole process a lot easier of less manual entry for folks. And those leads, of course, go now into... I mean they have since lead ads started,

[00:05:03] but when lead ads first came on the scene, it was a fairly complicated process to get them into your CRM through Zapier or some other middleware. They've simplified that. I think they have a new partnership. They're starting to do more direct connections, HubSpot for one.

[00:05:19] Definitely, which is great. And that'll just make it easier on everybody else because then you don't have to do as many manual imports. So that's a good priority. I'm glad to see that change that's taking place. Some changes to Instagram feed collection ads. What's happening there?

[00:05:35] Yeah, you know, I don't know if you've seen these thus far, but one of the things is, you know, we had forever dynamic product ads which you could scroll through and that's really... That ad unit hasn't changed a ton.

[00:05:48] And one that always worked well was a collections ad unit. And that had some catalog images. It had didn't have a ton and had a big kind of video or image at the top. So this is up to... You can customize up to, I think it's 10 images now

[00:06:02] from your collection that will be in a collections ad. So it's scrolling products on that particular IG feed ad that allow you to scroll through different products horizontally. So if they scroll past the three original thumbnails, they can look at, you know, more products at once.

[00:06:22] So it just is... It's a great ad unit because it allows you to show off more things. Again, making your product catalog even more important. But it's nice it's going to be on Instagram stories. It'll be on the IG feed as well.

[00:06:37] So we talked about the feed but it will be on the stories and it will be in the explore tab. So more places for people to click around and click into things and hopefully be interested in your products

[00:06:46] and it certainly helps feed the algorithm that they're clicking into it and they're engaging which gives signal to the algorithm. If I understand it then this is sort of an automated carousel ad format in that it's pulling stuff directly out of your product catalog.

[00:07:01] Do I have that right? Yeah, you can customize it or do automatically pull them. So it depends on how you want to go about it but the neat thing for me particularly with this is you know the collections ad unit always was sort of a secret tool

[00:07:15] of a lot of e-commerce retailers that did really well and the fact that this has a really easily scrollable products below. I mean I saw one yesterday and I was like, that looks great. Like it's just so nice and that was already something I was looking at anyway

[00:07:30] and it just brought it right there for me. So I think it's a good ad unit and I think it'll continue to be helpful for people in the e-commerce space especially. Meta of course you know like all platforms these days

[00:07:44] spending a ton of effort, time and money on AI Meta has rebranded it, Advantage Plus on their end what do you see Meta doing with AI in 2024? Put on your fortune teller hat. Yeah I mean I think interesting one that I'll just point out is

[00:08:01] we've talked a lot about before in previous episodes about AI and the things that they're doing within Advantage Plus shopping campaigns within the buying side of it within ads I think what's interesting we don't talk about

[00:08:11] and what we haven't focused on as much is the amount that AI is being utilized in let's just talk about the Instagram product and yesterday I uploaded a photo of my daughter and it automatically cut it out

[00:08:25] and it asked me where do you want the background to be and I said put her in Santa's workshop and it created an image of her in Santa's workshop in like 10 seconds and so that kind of stickiness I think is absolutely incredible

[00:08:38] and to translate that into the ads world which soon will be able to do no problem within their ads product that has huge implications because it's going to allow us to do more creative testing at an iterative scale even more than we already are

[00:08:52] so I think from the organic standpoint there's going to be more that we're going to be able to do to be creative with the things that are being created which is good I think from an ad buying standpoint of course when AI are going to be continued automation

[00:09:08] I talked to a company yesterday they're spending 300 grand a month US on ads and every single one of their dollars is going into Advanced Plus Shopping campaigns and they have two Advanced Plus Shopping campaigns running and that's it really so that kind of utilization of AI

[00:09:28] where they're having all the options turned on they have everything in their product catalog automated and they're saying run with it is working incredibly well for them so I think over time what's in store for folks, what people are going to be utilizing is

[00:09:41] where are these pieces that in the platform itself can make it more engaging for users in terms of imagery and video that's going to make it easier for you to cut the second most downloaded app in the US and this year was CapCut

[00:09:55] so Meta can build a lot of those tools and already is so that's going to be it's going to have a really hardcore editing suite that's going to allow you to integrate AI whether it's changing imagery or backgrounds

[00:10:07] or colors or text or whatever you want it to be and then it's going to be in the ad buying standpoint a simplification role that we continue to walk down making it a lot easier for folks and letting AI basically do its work

[00:10:21] what a sea change that we've experienced even in the last four years say I remember when setting up a Meta ad campaign was 15 different campaigns and 10 ad sets and 10 ads inside those ad sets and you were constantly tweaking and refining audiences and now it's just basically like

[00:10:37] push start and with one campaign that kind of does everything it seems to be performing better on the Google side we're seeing performance max kind of similar yeah definitely it's really interesting so yeah I think the more things that we can do are

[00:10:53] thinking about landing pages we can be testing it's really thinking about the whole ecosystem I do think that creative is still the number one thing that you can do even with the AI enhancements but I think the actual buying

[00:11:04] is going to continue to make it simpler over time but it's interesting you know one thing I'll just note here at the end that I find fascinating is there's a member of ours in our community that wrote and said look we've had a huge amount of overlap

[00:11:18] in our campaigns Meta tells us that 90% of our impressions are being shown to people that have already seen it before what are my options what are the things that I can do and predominantly the they were running in a lot of advanced plus shopping containers

[00:11:33] and predominantly the feedback from the community was you need to go in and actually force placements so show ads only on Instagram stories show ads only on feed because that's where you're going to get incremental wins so Meta is still not perfect at this

[00:11:47] right and you're still seeing manual forcing still having to take place which I thought was interesting basically the anecdote to AI so it's kind of it's still rolling but you know I think we still have to know that we're in control and there's going to be levers

[00:12:02] we're still going to have to pull Andrew thank you see you next week thanks Andrew Foxwell is our Meta ads correspondent you can learn more about Andrews digital ads training at b.link slash Foxwell or his Slack community of senior Meta ad buyers at B.link slash

[00:12:17] founders both of those are affiliate links and you can find those at the bottom of our show notes okay so now it's your turn we are about 11 and a half minutes in which option do you prefer these weekly ad platform deep dives in your feed

[00:12:32] at the expense of those episodes being about twice as long as a usual episode that's option A or do you prefer that we keep these ad platform columns on a paid feed and stick to our usual show length of about nine minutes

[00:12:45] that's option B here's how to vote swipe over to the show notes and tap your preference or you can vote on the web if you prefer option A that's with the weekly ad platform columns go to B.link slash option A

[00:12:58] if you prefer option B that's without the columns but also keeps the show links shorter go to B.link slash option B thanks very much back to the show I can't get through a month without someone once they learn what I do for a living

[00:13:16] pulling me aside lowering their voice and saying is it true? does Facebook's app listen in on our conversation so they can deliver ads about what we're saying? and every time I have to explain that no, they're not for one thing the amount of bandwidth you'd consume

[00:13:32] sending a 24 hour stream of good enough quality audio to their services would exceed anyone's cellular plan also they've said they're not doing it and for them to just straight up lie about it would get them into very hot water with every trade stock, privacy and consumer regulator

[00:13:48] on the planet so no Uncle Dave Facebook is not listening to what you're saying but apparently another system is and this system is owned by the American media giant Cox Media Group 404 Media reporting today that CMG is promoting a new ad platform powered by the conversations

[00:14:08] people are saying near smart speakers smart TVs and other unnamed devices 404 Media says they've seen promotional materials for the system on CMG's website part of which reads quote what would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need

[00:14:26] for your services in their day to day conversations no, it's not a black mirror episode it's voice data and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage so how does it work? well advertisers buy a geographic radius of about 10 to 20 miles

[00:14:43] then tells it what conversations it wants to listen to some examples provided by the company the car lease ends in a month we need a plan or a minivan would be perfect for us or hey do you see that mold on the ceiling

[00:14:58] or we need a better mortgage rate then people who've said that are placed in a targeting bucket which can connect to all sorts of programmatic and other ad platforms including according to the site YouTube and Google the tracking pixel on the advertisers website

[00:15:14] can monitor ROI again quoting CMG's website the result unprecedented understanding of consumer behavior so we can deliver personalized ads that make your target think wow they must be a mind reader unquote obviously the company understands how sensitive this is and has a section saying

[00:15:34] they believe it's perfectly legal to eavesdrop on someone's device because quote consumers usually give consent when accepting terms and conditions of software updates or app uploads unquote CMG did not respond to media requests for comment the commercial platform shop if I revolutionized millions of companies worldwide

[00:16:11] with shop if I reached the new then online shop I'm ganz ohne programmier oder design Kent Nisse dank der effecienten Einrichtung und intuitiven social media und online marketplace integration kannst du über Instagram ebay und co werben und verkaufen Neue Zielgruppen zu erreichen war noch nie

[00:16:29] so einfach shop if I beat it auf einer einzigen sicheren Plattform alle tools um dein online business aufzubauen kostenlos testen und ein Business der Welt präsentieren shop if I punk de e-stich try besuchen einfach shop if I punk de e-stich try eingeben und loslegen made for Germany

[00:16:49] powered by shop if I 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 design next steps and make it all a fun safe space

[00:17:04] where teammates want to participate 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

[00:17:22] 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 whether you work on the marketing side

[00:17:37] 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 M-I-R-O.com Brands on Instagram have a new engagement tool

[00:17:56] some of the app calls add yours templates users let users create their own interactive story prompts complete with gifs, images and text which others can then add to and share this is similar to the existing add yours sticker where users respond to prompts set by others

[00:18:11] but these new templates let users take the reins and build their own memeable content followers can't alter the core elements of the template but they can add their own creative flair Instagram's been putting out a number of engagement focused tools lately

[00:18:27] like the new browser for reels introduced in July this new add yours templates rollout is happening worldwide today always striving to bring you the latest marketing trends you can exploit for fun and profit and mostly profit we present Pink Ribbons

[00:18:47] they are all the rage right now on TikTok where creators are tying them around well everything houseplants, pickles, orders from fast rude restaurants no I don't understand either the trend is apparently so big and I say apparently because it hasn't shown up on my FYP

[00:19:04] but apparently it's so big that the New York Times this morning devoted a full piece to the trend which it says comes from the recent popularity of bows in fashion and pop culture one creator 22 year old nanny posted an 8 second video of 3 ice cubes tied with pink bows

[00:19:22] 11 million views and counting like many of these trends on TikTok and it says nobody really thinks bows are actually in rather she said it's more of a quote large scale inside joke unquote a joke maybe but some people are posting shots of themselves

[00:19:39] getting pink bows as real tattoos so there you go maybe market to a younger demographic maybe in and around the fashion and beauty space go find a stapler or something and put a bow on it well this strange industry we're in

[00:19:57] HubSpot announced a bunch of updates to its CRM platform here are the highlights first new deal pipeline rules that prevent users from skipping stages and limiting the deal creation to one deal stage you can now include up to 10 additional attendees when booking time on a scheduling page calendar

[00:20:13] there's a new product history card in the middle panel of the contact or company record so now you don't have to open a bunch of other tabs to see that data there is a new call analytics page so you can see all that without relying on custom reports

[00:20:26] or third party tools and you can now tag Instagram profiles in photos and reels and mention LinkedIn personal profiles when scheduling social media posts in HubSpot twitch the live streaming site popular among advertisers trying to reach gamers this week announced changes to its policy on sexual content

[00:20:51] the platform said yeah they're gonna allow nudity now as long as it's you know tasteful artistic you can now write things on boobs or butts you can draw nude people you can do strip teases on stream and you no longer need to warn people

[00:21:08] with a special stream label that you'll be twerking, grinding or pole dancing yes this is a gaming live stream site but it's also popular among streamers who wear revealing clothes flirt a little with viewers sort of play games a little here and there but this morning

[00:21:28] it all went to hell twitch posting on social media that it's changed its mind and nudity is back on Santa's naughty list no matter how artistic it is the issue it seems is all about AI generated imagery

[00:21:43] and that the text to image tools are so convincing these days that anyone could generate what are essentially pornographic images and stream them then claim it falls under the new artistic nudity policy and with what might be the most awkward segue

[00:21:57] I'll take this moment to tell you about my twitch channel on which I stream gameplay my account name is low effort dad I promise no nudity meanwhile over at Elon musks ex lots of people sharing a screenshot of an ad running on that platform it's for an app

[00:22:14] which lets you upload a photo of any woman you know and it will digitally remove their clothes the ad reads undress any girl using AI earlier ex's CEO assured advertisers their platform was perfectly brand safe and a strange bug happening with google business profiles this week

[00:22:41] specifically with the agency dashboard the bug is that owners and managers cannot accept new invites this is said to have started a couple of days ago but google is working on it but has no ETA for it to be fixed so this episode just crossed the 20 minute mark

[00:23:06] and of course it's because we've put the meta ad platform column in so again, love to know your thoughts on this if you like hearing these deep dive columns weekly even if it does make the episodes run a little longer that's option A

[00:23:20] but if you'd rather keep the episodes at the regular length of about 9 or 10 minutes then it means not hearing those columns that's option B just swipe over to the show notes to tap your preference or you can vote on the web b.link slash option A

[00:23:34] if you're voting for hearing the weekly columns or b.link slash option B if you do not want to hear the weekly columns so what do I stream on twitch? well my wife and I actually play fortnite together I'm in my 50s she's in her 40s

[00:23:51] we have no business being on fortnite but we won a game the other day we're just in the house in a month and usually I stream fortnite's new lego creative mode and rainbow six siege if you're here for multiplayer shooters

[00:24:06] or watching an entire team yell at a middle aged guy and that'll do it for the week today in digital marketing is produced by engageq digital on the traditional territories of this unemic first nation on vancouver island our production coordinator is sarah gild

[00:24:22] the theme is by mark blevis music licensing by source audio ad coordination by red circle I'm Todd mappen have a restful weekend friends I'll see you next week

[00:25:41] shopify free of charge and bring your business forward shopify dot dot dot dot visit shopify dot dot dot try made for germany powered by shopify