🐇Rabbbits Weeekly: Google Going Gone?

Microsoft and Meta are making moves for 2023 and France is fining everybody.

Hey, it’s Kyle. The guy who decided to change up the format over the weekend. Let me know what you think.

This weeek: Tech Bros vs Congresscritters (& Concerned Adults), Social Signals & Shifting Screens, Microsoft’s Window Just Opening?, plus retail and a few quick headlines. And is Google going gone?

⚖️ Tech Bros vs Congresscritters (& Concerned Adults)

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2022 was rough for Big Tech. Layoffs, privacy changes, regulatory attention, the rise of TikTok, bad press, etc etc. So far 2023 is less fresh start and more 2022 extended director’s cut.

Seattle School District #1 is suing the tech giants because (and yes, I pulled this from the first paragraph of a 92 page document, sorry, not sorry):

Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms. These techniques are both particularly effective and harmful to the youth audience Defendants have intentionally cultivated, creating a mental health crisis among America’s youth.

I’m sure it’s unrelated, but Meta is further restricting how ads can be targeted to teens. Now “age and location will be the only information about a teen that we’ll use to show them ads.” Interests and activities were previously removed as options, now previous engagements across apps and gender join the list. Zuck’s Bucks Generator is also giving teens more control over what types of ads they see and information about their privacy options.

Speaking of privacy-friendly Meta moves, the successor to Special Ad Audiences for Housing is here. Enter the Variance Reduction System (VRS). It’s supposed to ensure the audience that sees the ad matches the targeting without discriminating. Consider me firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp.

Switching tech giants, W3C (a web standards group) said Google’s Topics idea for post-cookie advertising just continues the surveilling status quo and asked they retool it. Google said “nah, we good.” The cookie continues to crumble but the crumbs haven’t taken a new shape yet. (Gated article, podcast recap)

New Jersey and Ohio have joined the ranks of states banning TikTok on government devices.

And Joe Biden has asked Democrats and Republicans to unite in legislation against a common adversary: big tech. Both sides of the aisle have issues with the big players (though those issues are usually also on opposite sides of an aisle), which could make 2023 the year of privacy on The Hill. And could mean cookiepocalypse 2.0 for platforms and marketers.

On The Continent, Germany wants Google to stop sharing so much user data between its services (for those sweet advertising profiles) and France has fined TikTok, Facebook, Google, and Amazon for cookie banners. And Apple for improperly collecting user data for ad targeting (while limiting/spoofing the data it sends to others (not part of this case, just an intriguing coincidence)).

🧵 connective thread: Meta changes

🪩 Social Signals

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In 2022, social media became synonymous with short-form video—the TikTok-ification of the internet.

Despite what headlines about "what Gen Z is doing" would have you believe, social media is still plenty popular. Global time spent on social apps rose 17% year-over-year last year (on Android devices).

Under the Influence®️

While people are sick of influencers flaunting/flogging luxury (turns out celebrities aren't just like us when times are tough (and, yes, this is from the UK, which has a much different energy situation than the US currently)), influencers are sick of Instagram. Or at least not banking on it making them bank.

Unsurprisingly, TikTok is the cool kid and YouTube is the popular clique that doesn't play super well with others. On the other hand, Instaglam is becoming the quiet loner that only speaks in quotes.

The agency HigherVisibility did some research on creators and its Top 20 list includes only 2 that use The 'Gram as their main platform. And only 1 of those started on IG (shout out, Vine! We see you). It doesn't get better:

Instagram places last with the lowest amount of average followers among the top 10 creators on the app

But here's the real kicker:

Organic reach for brands on TikTok is reported to be 118%, and when compared to the likes of Instagram which is reported at 13.51% the difference is astronomical.

🤯

Since Instagram "accounted for 94% of influencer marketing campaigns as of 2022," the opportunity in 2023 may lie literally anywhere else.

Big Blue Elephant in the Room

Insert an "I'm not dead yet!" GIF here because the Facebook app still gets downloaded. Mostly in India, but the US clocked 30M+ downloads last year. It may not be popular with the youths†, but it's popular with someone. (†This may be an overblown take, they may just use less feed and more groups. The slow growth of dark forests should continue to be a trend.)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before (you can’t because you haven’t), Meta ads got cheaper. Prices dropped 12% week-over-week to end 2022 (with some saying CPMs were down 28% year-over-year), and performance improved (for some). A marketer’s dream scenario: spend less to get more. It’s unlikely Zuck instituted a price drop, so this could mean advertisers are taking their dollars elsewhere. Could Meta Ads become an opportunity in 2023?

What other crazy things might happen in Meta’s ‘verse this year? Messenger is going back in app.

I expect Meta (and other platforms) to prioritize revenue and earnings this year, that means fewer moonshots and more focus on the money making basics. For Meta that means giving more people more reasons to spend time in the flagship apps: Big Blue and The ‘Gram. The former has easier levers to pull on that front than the latter. And both share a lever: Reels.

All signs point to Facebook being an interesting play to start the year. To that end, you’ll want to make sure you beat ad fatigue and maybe do a little community building.

It’s More Than Meta

Turns out turmoil may be good for LinkedIn. The Professional Platform has been on an upswing since early in the pandemic. First the mass shift to remote work and less face-to-face, then That Twitter Thing, and now the mass layoffs in tech and media sectors (I feel for them, good luck in your job searches). Through it all, LinkedIn has been growing—revenue, users, and engagement. If you’re wondering where your audience is, it might be on LinkedIn.

YouTubers get some new analytics (or at least new, more visible locations for old analytics) and other toys. Surprise surprise, Shorts get the spotlight. And some other new features, plus monetization.

📺 Shifting Screens

Television has long been the go-to example for the bundling-unbundling cycle. With the rise of short form and streaming, we’re nearing peak unbundling in this current phase. Throw in inflation and a quasi-recession-thing and linear TV is feeling the heat.

S&P Global is predicting an 8.2% drop in TV advertising this year, with local taking the biggest hit. Why?

S&P says: “Recession increases vulnerability of linear TV with higher cord cutting, declining audience ratings, and weakened advertising.”

But Netflix's ad tier is doing just fine, thank you very much (at least that's what it says). CPMs might be coming down though, which means it could become another ad channel option for more advertisers (and the splintering continues). The format options could become more robust as well, as it "aims to do a bit more than just running typical ads, including things like dynamic insertion of ads near moments that are relevant to marketers, single-show sponsorships, and more. It will also later allow marketers to target ads by age and gender."

…
Back to the S&P predictions, what is this chart trying to communicate?

🧵 connective thread: LinkedIn Growth

🪟 Microsoft's Window Just Opening?

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Microsoft is betting big on OpenAI, thanks to ChatGPT. $10 billion big. It could be a 2-for-1 approach to supercharge The Former Windows Company’s future as a cloud computing and AI-powered software and services provider with dashes of AI in anything they can add it to (Bing, Office, Azure, etc). (ChatGPT runs on Microsoft servers, 🎶the circle of life 🎵)

About that AI-powered future, Microsoft’s new VALL-E model can reliably generate audio that sounds like someone using only 3 seconds of source audio. The podcast and indie cartoon explosion cometh? (We’re getting closer to Ron Jeremy’s future.)

But it's more than just AI. It looks like King 'Softie is getting serious about shopping. BigCommerce sellers can now integrate their store with Merchant Center to deliver ads and listings across Bing, Edge, partners like Yahoo! and AOL, and more.

But that's just the amuse-bouche of their aspirations. It's adding features to its PromoteIQ platform to take it omnichannel: onsite, offsite, and in-store. The big play in onsite is the newly announced Microsoft Retail Advertising Network. Now retailers don't have to roll-their-own solution to become a retail media revenue generator, they can just tap Microsoft (and soon a bunch of AI-powered features, presumably).

Does all this have you wondering if you should consider Microsoft Ads (if you aren't running them already)? A good rule of thumb (according to Marketing Max) is:

If you spend more than $15,000 a month on Google ads, you should consider a small test investment in Bing ads.

The logic being (I'm guessing here), if Bing generates 900 million searches a day and Microsoft ads deliver on other search engines (like DuckDuckGo) and a test budget is 10% of spend, would you get more from tossing another $1,500 on your existing Google spend or putting it on a new channel with a (potentially) new audience? Plus, you can import your Google campaigns to Microsoft with a few clicks, so where's the downside of testing?

...

It's not outlandish to think that Microsoft has forgotten more about enterprise sales and partnerships than Google knows about them. And with its history and track record in the field it has IBM status, no one gets fired for choosing Microsoft.

Moderately Hot Take?

Of the tech giants, it is the one that most closely resembles a decentralized or federated structure, which could become very handy in this evolving landscape of privacy and sentiment. It used to just build software that got installed on devices owned and operated by others. You didn't have to visit one URL to use its products. You didn't have to buy a piece of hardware it controlled the manufacturing process for. And now (I haven't checked earnings reports so this could be dead wrong) it doesn’t live or die by ad revenue or device sales or consumers clicking on a buy button. And if a bunch of Fortune 500 companies stop paying for it or start going out of business we probably have much bigger things to worry about then if Microsoft can survive.

This past meets present ambitions in this bit from the BigCommerce announcement:

Without leaving the BigCommerce Control Panel, merchants can see campaign performance with a snapshot view or run detailed reporting on a wide or granular scope, with specific key elements or side-by-side comparisons across various ad campaigns. Changes can be made in real time to status, budgets and bids while having access to a personalized tips dashboard and customer support to get better results.

Microsoft doesn't care about getting you back to a platform or page it controls to do what you want, it just wants you to use its stuff wherever is "convenient" for you.

All of these threads braided together with LinkedIn's growth gives Microsoft an intriguing foundation as Google's appears shaky. Is Google going gone?

🧵 connective thread: BigCommerce

🛒 retail.tea.leaves

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Let’s Get Digital

Sell with Amazon from the comfort of your own site. The Everything Store is expanding the Buy with Prime program to all US merchants at the end of the month. And Reviews from Amazon will let Buy with Prime merchants show reviews from Amazon on their site.

Another nail in social commerce’s coffin? Instagram is removing the Shop tab from the main nav. The Once-Upon-A-Photo app will “continue to invest in shopping experiences that provide the most value for people and businesses across feed, stories, reels, ads and more,” but I don’t think Amazon 2.0 is in the cards.

Better ecomm measurement is coming to Google Analytics 4. Big G has added 12 dimensions and metrics and renamed another 7. Each shopping action is now tracked at the item and event level, “enabling you to analyze information about your products or services and separately analyze important ecommerce interactions.” For example, items added to carts and add to cart events.

Now you can (better) put your business on the Apple map.

Retail By The Numbers

Retail job growth bounced back in December.

Holiday spending was up 7% year-over-year, but inflation is likely inflating that. Volumes were flat or down. Good news is inflation deflated a bit in December.

Less good news, a wave of returns may soon be rolling in. Salesforce is predicting 1.4 billion orders will be returned. Since retailers’ inventory finally caught up to consumer demand…after that demand started to dwindle, this “tsunami” should help the glut.

📉 out of left field trend

🔎 Google Going Gone?

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Search is splintering across apps and platforms—by niche and purpose—and the rise of AI is only going to accelerate this. Some people already see ChatGPT as a functional information search replacement (last I heard, the data collected for training stopped in 2021, so you may not want to use it for current events).

Big G has issued a code red over the chatbot and we covered plenty of competitive and regulatory concerns for the search giant above.

Google needs traffic to live. Because that traffic drives ad clicks which drives revenue. It also survives on a healthy diet of cookies and cross-service data sharing to build robust user profiles. All of those things are in jeopardy because of items listed above and elsewhere.

Google isn't going to disappear over night, but its continued dominance and duopolist status is certainly less certain than it used to be.

🗞️ Quick Hits

• On Thursday, Google Ads' automatic recommendations for removing redundant keywords is changing. The main point to know is that now the changes will default to keeping the broadest match type in the ad group. If that's not your cup of tea just make sure you're opted out by Wednesday night.

• Automattic got a little Tumblr in its WordPress, it’s expanding the Blaze advertising tool to its other blogging platforms. Turn your content into ads that deliver across those same platforms.

• Apple finally remembered they have a Maps app that businesses would love to control their info in, so it created Business Connect, which sounds a lot like Google My Business. But wait, there’s more! The info can also appear in Wallet, Messages, and searches via Apple tools (Siri and Spotlight).

• Medium is launching its own Mastodon server for users. (The beginning of Brandodon?)

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Thanks for reading! This was a big one, don’t know how you made it this far.

-Kyle