Hey, it’s Kyle, the guy that burned out on reading earnings-related news but decided to try writing about it anyway.

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Earnings Bonanza

The reports are in, so how did everyone’s favorite tech giants fare in their recent earnings calls?

Last year, a round of these calls foreshadowed tech’s fall from grace. This year, with economic uncertainty in high supply, results were mixed with a dash of hope.

We’ll go roughly in order of their release.

Microsoft grew in some respects, but too slow for analysts’ liking. Overall, the consumer and business markets for Classic Microsoft offerings weakened, and cloud services didn’t grow enough to offset the blows. A rocky start for earnings szn, but the hope for The Former Windows company has to be its AI future (a common refrain, as you will see).

Snap: users, subscribers, and revenue up, revenue per user down.

The mismatch comes from reliance on North America for revenue but Rest of World (especially India) for user growth. The Ghost also hasn’t fully rebounded from Apple’s tracking changes with iOS 14.5.

One plan to help boost revenue? Let users buy back Snapstreaks for $0.99.

It’s earnings week, so we’ll soon know what trend Snap is kicking off this time.

Meta sang the same old song for most platforms these days: users up, revenue down, and growth in established markets was pretty much non-existent.

So what does a revenue drop get you these days? A 20% stock price increase!

Wait...what?

Zuck+Co just barely beat most of Wall Street's expectations, but that's more than most of its competitors can say these days. So aggressive cost cutting + the bottom not dropping out + increasing engagement = happy traders. Oh, and its use of AI is a big plus.

But here's the gem for marketers:

In the fourth quarter of 2022, ad impressions delivered across our Family of Apps increased by 23% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 22% year-over-year. For the full year 2022, ad impressions increased by 18% year-over-year and the average price per ad decreased by 16% year-over-year.

Really feeling like Meta (and specifically Facebook) is the play this year.

Apple kept the lack of good news rolling. Revenue dropped for the first time in years thanks to a hindered ability to sell high-end iPhones. Aka it’s China’s Fault! (Put a pin in this.) The services end of the business grew though, so the focus on increasing this part of the pie should heat up this year (hello more Apple Ads!).

Not to be left out, Amazon capped off the biggest annual loss in its history. In part due to things like taking an L on Rivian and paying to let a lot of people go. But also because of things like Amazon Web Services no longer being the money minting machine it once was. Ads were the belle of the ball, which should mean a bigger push there this year to grow revenue (which isn’t necessarily great for sellers or shoppers).

Google (/Alphabet (+YouTube)) was more Snap than Meta. Ad revenue was down for the second time in a row (new record!), but that’s ok because AI will save the day! (Cloud did well, put a pin in that too.)

If Goog wants revenue badly enough, could ad costs drop to sweeten the deal?

Finally, Pinterest capped things off on a high note (aside from the announced layoffs). Both users and revenue are up, thanks to Idea Pins (TikTok in Pinterest) and Gen Z. There is plenty of room for improvement in its ads products too, it’ll be an interesting platform to watch this year.

Closing the loop on a casual mention from a while back:

you can’t post video as a native pin anymore, only in Idea Pins (or paid ads)

On the general ad ecosystem front:

But as Andy Taylor, Tinuiti’s vp of research explained, any digital channel that leans toward the performance side of marketing had a bit more reason to be upbeat. “Those channels and platforms that have really been proven drivers of performance — really tried and true campaign types in terms of driving that return on ad spend — those still grew pretty meaningfully,” said Taylor. “And I think we’re probably going to continue to see that focus in the early months of 2023, where a lot of marketers are focusing on channels and platforms that they feel confident will deliver them results.”

Sounds like the opportunities early this year are in:

Streaming video ads
Meta ads (notably Reels)
Pinterest?
Sponsored product ads on marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart

(Google Ads will likely be ol’ faithful, if unremarkable. (Not mentioned in that piece: Microsoft Ads could be huge if the ChatGPT fervor draws enough interest in testing out BingGPT.))

Follow the money

Podcasts might be losing their shine, but they’re not losing ad revenue. In fact, the medium has been immune to slowing spend so far.

This means two things: 1) podcasts are now just another boring channel to advertisers, which is good & 2) if budgets aren’t getting cut here there must be a reason, are you missing out on something?

TikTok may be feeling the heat from various and assorted regulators, but advertisers are all good. As are users.

At this point for most advertisers, the audience on TikTok is just too good to resist.

Northbeam @northbeam

Media Buying YoY Changes (Jan 22 vs. Jan 23): % of budget by channel: • Meta: -10% (67% to 60%) • Google: +17% (20% to 24%) • TikTok: +32% (3% to 4%) • YouTube: +2% (3.1% to 3.2%) • MSFT Ads: +113% (.4% to .9%) • Pinterest: +501% (.07% to .4%) • Snap: -56% (.6% to .27%)

The New New

No cookies? No problem. At least for advertising on Disney. The Most Magical Ad Platform on Earth’s post-cookie clean room collaboration with The Trade Desk (Unified ID 2.0) is getting its first workout.

The partnership allows the new identity solution to tap into Disney’s audience graph for all the data goodness. Expect this partnership to be the first of many.

And it’s not just cookies. Disney is making moves to level up purchase intent and reach & frequency measurement and reporting.

Due to the cachet of The Mouse, these decisions could create front runners in the race to replace Nielsen.

Also, robots.

In summary, as AdExchanger says:

the entertainment giant is focused on building out its own in-house ad tech stack to improve targeting, measurement and programmatic automation.

Oops, Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing just leaked. For a brief moment the next era of search was live and the example in the screen shot hinted at an experience superior to the current 10 blue links paradigm. (The example was a system suggestion and some inference, so not sure what % of BingGPT searches will be superior.) (Update: the limited initial version is live for real now.)

Microsoft must be capitalizing on all the OpenAI / ChatGPT headlines because they're making more "performance improving" changes to ads.

Moving forward, you will no longer see the audience ad bid modifier in your campaign settings. Instead of using positive or negative bid modifiers to manually adjust participation in the audience network, all you need to do is define your goals, and Microsoft Advertising will fully optimize your campaigns across channels.

To reward advertisers for their loyalty (probably not, but the narrative potential is too good), TikTok has unveiled video insights.

With Video Insights, you can:

Compare your ad performance against industry benchmarks.
Dive deeper into the specific video elements that are making your ads perform.
Inspire new videos and optimize your production workflow through an informed content strategy.

The Trend Machine also wants to find out how important music really is to the user experience. Surely it has nothing to do with labels wanting a bigger cut. Spoiler alert: the test isn’t going great. In fact, it’s going badly enough that some creators might leave all together. The dangers of a poorly implemented test.

The Clock’s newest trend? De-influencing; or, being more authentic by posting “what not to buy” content.

Mo’ Meta

I missed a noteworthy bit in the piece about Reels and Facebook performance the last weeek:

Data gathered in the middle of the fourth quarter showed that time spent on [Facebook] was up worldwide, including in developed markets, over the course of a year.

Instagram Notes are going (more) global, which means the feature must be working. Some people are reporting way higher response rates when asking questions compared to asking via Stories.

Your phone’s battery life seem lackluster? Might be Meta’s fault. A document provided in a court case by a former employee details a negative testing program that intentionally drained batteries in order to monitor app and feature performance. (Remember, TikTok uses your battery state and performance in its algorithm.) (Fortune article, PDF of the document)

From the Today in Digital Marketing podcast:

RIP Instant Articles (in mid-April)
bug alert: newsfeed ad images appear to be getting randomly and weirdly cropped, no matter what you set during ad creation (as a whole, the Meta ad platform and manager seem buggy lately)
Want to get past someone’s two factor authentication to hack their account? Turns out all you needed was their email or phone number. This “bug” should now be fixed.

Do The Goog

Remember the pin we put in Google Cloud? Well, Big G pulled a Microsoft and invested in an AI company (one that just so happens to have a solid ChatGPT competitor) with the funds invested being used to buy cloud computing from the source of the money.

Doesn’t sound like Claude (said competitor) will find its way into Google products as part of this deal. Until it does, of course.

That's a nice analytics set up you have there, shame if anything were to happen to it. Is what someone at Google probably said. But they worded it like this:

For any customer who does not set up a GA4 property with basic settings, starting in March, we will configure one with a few basic settings consistent with the existing Universal Analytics property; this includes certain conversion events, Google Ads links, and existing website tags.

Sounds like Google is getting pickier about UTM parameters in GA4. When in doubt, reference the help doc.

Google ready to kick the cookie habit by Q3 2024, for real this time
Google will once again apply Gmail spam detection to political campaign emails
Improved search for properties and accounts in Google Analytics 4 (you can now use that search bar I ignore in GA4 to access details about the current property's data stream(s) and settings or navigate to other GA4 properties (It's always fun when Big G remembers they're a search giant and might want to leverage that knowledge in their other products))

Stolen playbooks

If you’re serious about SEO, get on this. The Russian search engine Yandex (a top 5 player globally) had its source code leaked.

It’s designed to be as close to a Google clone as it can get, which means there are plenty of Big G tricks in there. Here is the list of ranking factors if you want to skip straight to digging in.

People love correcting other people on the internet. You can use that to your advantage.

Intentionally make a mistake in your post or post a comment with the wrong answer from a burner account and wait for the comments to roll in.

Another thing to consider on TikTok (according to Jorden Souza of The TikTok Lab) is “comment campaigns.”

It’s an easy way to get brand awareness, and usually the creator will make a video responding to the comment in shock, further propelling the brand. It also “humanizes” the brand and gives it some personality!

I like this advice from the DTC Daily newsletter so I'm just going to paste it here:

The advice I keep seeing for 2023 is you really need to find your unique value proposition. What makes your brand different? What values do you have? All these brands have something that sets them apart. Study them and think about what a write-up for your own brand would look like in a list like this.

From this Twitter thread by Alex Garcia:

Clarity - communicate only one idea (which is stated in the headline)
Context - how will you deliver on that idea? (subhead)
Creative - further clarify with more context
Call to Action - be specific and reiterate the value prop
(Bonus) Social Proof - support your claims with the word(s) of others

The Logic of Liquid Death:

We realize that 98% of people actually hate marketing. If you can make people laugh, they will have a deeper connection with your brand, regardless of the functional differences of your liquid.”

(I have quibbles with the wording at the start of the quote, but I think the lesson holds: be real. (but not necessarily BeReal))

And:

I’ve used this analogy a ton lately — we think about our marketing team more like “Saturday Night Live.” Like, we’re an entertainment machine and we’re constantly trying to put what we put out on the level of an SNL sketch.

Modern Retail has a piece up on how a DTC brand is using QVC (yes, it still exists!) to grow its audience. The approach could prove useful on other livestream shopping platforms, or really just content in general.

The episodes themselves follow QVC’s The Total Experience format rather than a direct selling approach and are up to about three minutes long. The format allows Agrawal to share more of her background, the brand’s story and the community behind the brand Sonder Club. For example, in one episode, Agrawal explained how customers can connect with Silk + Sonder users and gain access to Sonder Socials, which are special events and classes led by the company’s trained facilitators.
…
consumers also aren’t as easily influenced to buy items just based on static images. “We’re smarter than that now,” she said. “We want to see things in action. We don’t necessarily want to get in our car and drive to the store but we want the next best thing.”

And then there’s this:

According to a 2021 McKinsey report, livestream shopping generates conversion rates approaching 30% — up to 10 times higher than conventional e-commerce.

When you launch a new Google Ads campaign—no matter how long your account or conversion tracking has been running—start with manual bidding.

This gives you more control while giving the algorithms their requisite time to learn. Once you hit at least 30 conversions you can return to the sweet embrace of automation.

How to evaluate the incremental cost per conversion of your Google Ads campaigns (using the performance planner tool, so grain of salt).

And let ChatGPT write your ads for you.

Inside Heyday’s marketing playbook for franchisees
SEO v Social Media: The 9 Big Differences & What Works Where [Infographic]
Should your influencers be human - or virtual? / Virtual influencers make your brand stand out and make your products seem more innovative. (“Pro tip: related research found that virtual influencers are great at grabbing attention for your brand, but not so good at direct conversions to sales, because people struggle to relate with them.” (Probably applies beyond just avatars when it comes to AI))

Psych-snacks

Via the Chase Diamond newsletter:

Emotion is how you’ll get your prospect to buy. Logic is how you’ll get your prospect to defend their buying decision to their friends and family — which becomes your word-of-mouth messaging, leading to indirect sales for you.

How Apple brilliantly used a 100‑year‑old persuasion strategy (hint: it's the labor illusion)

retail.tea.leaves

Another week reading the tea leaves: Ecomm passes the trillion mark as mobile carves out a bigger piece of the purchase pie, Can you buy love this Valentine's Day? & a couple headlines. (Also covered some earnings news and the QVC livestream stuff already mentioned here)

Supply chains

Remember back when semiconductor supplies got squeezed and all hell broke loose? Now we have the opposite, but some hell might still break loose.

DRAM (the thing we call ‘memory’ in computers) is in overwhelming supply (maybe the flip side of those other chips being the bottleneck) and manufacturers are hurting because of it. And suppliers will hurt, etc.

To help with that whole “our bad revenue is China’s fault” thing, Apple is further splintering its supply chain. This time by moving some parts of the AirPods chain to India.

Mr TikTok Goes to Washington

TikTok CEO to Appear Before US Congress, as Pressure Mounts on the Chinese-Owned App

Chasing Rabbbits

🐇 Rabbbit Spottting: 🔭 Earnings SZN