Would You Pay $56 to Talk to a Human at Meta?

[00:00:00] It is Thursday March 14th. Today, Meta is thinking of beefing up its paid checkmark program,

[00:00:08] but will it ever be worth it for marketers? Amazon will set your products up in one

[00:00:13] click where the money would go if TikTok disappeared from America and exploiting gap topics

[00:00:20] on the video apps for fun and profit. I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:29] After Elon Musk started selling the verified blue checkmarks, and after the shock wore off,

[00:00:34] Meta 2 decided they wanted some of that cash. It came out with Meta Verified, which for

[00:00:40] businesses costs $56 USD per month if you wanted both Facebook and Instagram verified.

[00:00:46] It offers a handful of mild perks though it's pretty clear the big benefit to the monthly

[00:00:50] subscription was getting that vanity checkmark. How's that program been going? Apparently

[00:00:56] not as well as Meta had hoped. Social media today estimates that less than 1% of its user

[00:01:01] base signed on, which is on par for similar programs out there like X's and Snapchat's.

[00:01:07] That might be why Meta is thinking about throwing more things into that subscription, a couple

[00:01:12] of which could be beneficial to marketers. The company is surveying some users asking

[00:01:17] what features they'd consider valuable included in that list. Faster review times for ad campaigns,

[00:01:24] the ability to add up to 8 links per month to your products or websites on Instagram

[00:01:30] Reels, and an actual support phone line with a real human being though they say those

[00:01:36] people could only help with common issues.

[00:01:40] One thing not on that list, better reach. That's a key selling point on X where the bigger

[00:01:46] a subscription package you buy, the more distribution your posts will get. Meta initially had

[00:01:51] that as a benefit of its plan, but backed away from it before it launched.

[00:01:56] ColorMe skeptical. These make great bullet points on a landing page, but we've seen

[00:02:00] that promises of better support from social media platforms even support you pay for often

[00:02:06] doesn't pan out. Over at X many people have said they still can't get support even

[00:02:11] though they have the premium subscription. Sometimes verification doesn't work at all. As

[00:02:16] a test when they launched that, we tried to get our podcasts Instagram account verified,

[00:02:21] paid the money, waited a day, then got an email saying we didn't qualify and Meta just

[00:02:27] kept the money anyway. Also whatever good will there was in the blue

[00:02:30] check mark has been withered away. If anyone can buy it, why is it special?

[00:02:36] Quoting social media today quote, the very act of selling check marks erodes their perceived

[00:02:41] value. So really the more subscriptions that met as sells, the less it's worth either

[00:02:46] way unless you're factoring in the other elements and those do have value, especially more direct

[00:02:51] access to meta support. But I'm not sure that it's worth the ongoing investment for most

[00:02:57] with the features only offering marginal periodic value even for brands unquote Amazon continues

[00:03:09] to push AI in its merchant offerings and soon will let sellers make product pages with

[00:03:13] a single URL. Basically you give it a link to your external product page like on Shopify

[00:03:20] or something and it will generate a product page on Amazon for that item. The AI will

[00:03:25] write its own description and lift images from your site. Of course, you'll want to review

[00:03:29] that text as AI has a nasty habit of just making things up though Amazon claims that

[00:03:35] nearly 80% of users accept the auto generated text. And if you're thinking, hey, that's

[00:03:41] going to make counterfeiting super easy, you're probably right. Amazon reminds you that

[00:03:46] that's against the rules but didn't spell out any specific guardrails they have in place

[00:03:50] to prevent that sort of thing. Amazon's other AI tools include photo generation for sellers

[00:03:56] and Rufus a chatbot for shoppers which has had its share of peculiar quirks. This new

[00:04:02] instant product page feature is rolling out now. It should be available to all sellers

[00:04:07] in the US in the coming weeks.

[00:04:11] Digital has a great piece up today about how a potential TikTok ban would affect marketers

[00:04:18] and what would happen to TikTok itself without those lucrative American ad dollars quoting

[00:04:25] the digital piece quote, let's say hypothetically the band does happen and marketers are forced

[00:04:31] to activate their contingency plans. A lot of money would suddenly be up for grabs

[00:04:35] in a hotly contested ad market. For now, it's hard to say with real confidence where

[00:04:40] that money would end up after all it's not like TikTok's growth has come at the expense

[00:04:44] of one corner of the market or a specific incumbent if anything the dollars pouring into

[00:04:50] that business have come from everywhere so it stands to reason that the same logic would

[00:04:54] apply if money started to flow out of the company.

[00:04:58] One place that money probably won't go to is TikTok in other markets. That's not really

[00:05:04] how marketers allocate their ad dollars. They do so at a country level, not a global

[00:05:08] one. That leaves the likes of Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and in other words anything with

[00:05:14] short form video ads business as potential places for all that money. There could be

[00:05:19] a lot of money up for grabs. Reports from sources like the information combined with analysis

[00:05:24] from media experts like Brian Weiser suggest that TikTok may have generated around $18

[00:05:30] billion in ad revenue last year. As far as specific numbers the piece suggests that

[00:05:36] many could capture about 25% of TikTok's US ad revenues in the event of a band, and

[00:05:42] remember that actually sounds a little low to me, and YouTube would be the second choice

[00:05:46] for media buyers. That said, for now did you take quoted agency executives as saying

[00:05:51] that they're not seeing any advertisers pull budget from TikTok for the time being? It

[00:05:55] is, as they say, wait and see. The whole piece is definitely worth a read. It's up at

[00:06:01] digitate.com. It's called TikTok's potential US band stirs marketers, spurs contingency

[00:06:07] planning, and we have a link to it in today's email newsletter which you can sign up to

[00:06:11] for free by tapping the link at the top of the show notes.

[00:06:19] Today's episode is sponsored by Nerdwallets Smart Money Podcast. Nerdwallets trusted financial

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[00:08:01] Part of what makes TikTok a compelling platform for marketing is its engaging content

[00:08:06] and a lot of that has to do with how sound is used in the app. TikTok says 73% of users will stop

[00:08:13] and look at an ad because of the audio used in it. As partly why the company's releasing a new

[00:08:18] audio feature called sounds for business voice clips. There are 18 voice over audio templates you can

[00:08:25] use in all your TikTok videos recorded by superstar TikTok creators like Devon Halbel,

[00:08:31] good children, satin sisters and very gay paint. These free tracks can add some of the platform's

[00:08:36] most recognizable voices to your brand's videos. They are of course pre-cleared in terms of rights.

[00:08:42] You can find all 18 templates in the commercial music library from the mobile app navigate to

[00:08:48] add sound and tap commercial sounds where you'll see discover favorites and playlists go into

[00:08:54] playlists to find sounds for business and select a track to get started. TikTok is also revealing

[00:09:05] some new analytics around what people are searching for on the app. They're calling it

[00:09:09] creator search insights and the idea is you'd be able to see what's trending and perhaps jump on

[00:09:14] board with your brand's own content. A screenshot from TikTok promoting the new feature shows three

[00:09:20] trending topics. The first one is a search for you left a pop print shaped hole in my heart,

[00:09:26] double glaze apple fritter and seawash denim. The items that it comes up with are pretty generic

[00:09:33] but luckily you can still drill down into specific topics closer to your brand's industry like sports

[00:09:38] or science. Quoting TikTok quote creators can see which topics are most popular based on a

[00:09:44] popularity score or the recommended topic label next to the search term. These topics have a

[00:09:50] high potential for engagement and creators can reference these labels as they shape their content

[00:09:55] strategies and chart their creative direction. Also, hopefully you can find so-called gap topics

[00:10:03] which are topics that are being searched for a lot but don't have many videos coming up as search

[00:10:08] results. This is something YouTube has offered since 2022. This is currently only available in

[00:10:14] some countries no word on when it will roll out globally. On the show tomorrow and new format for

[00:10:22] Reddit ads, some new sponsorship options on LinkedIn and big changes coming to Microsoft's ads manager.

[00:10:28] That's on the show tomorrow. I'm Todd Maffin, thanks for listening, see you then.