Rabbbits Weeekly: Snake Oil Not Included
It's all about trust. Plus, the usual headline roundup for ads, algorithms, audiences, attack vectors, and analytics (kind of).
Welcome to Rabbbits After Dark. Brought to you by the dreaded sick kid call from daycare.
Snake Oil Not Included
I’m outsourcing this week’s above the fold to Corey Haines and his post Marketing Is Earning Trust at Scale.
Why?
Because I wish I wrote it. And because it aligns with my tenants of marketing. And because he quotes Seth Godin. And because I think you should read it.
TL;DR: Earning trust is a key part of sales. Marketing is sales at scale. Therefore earning trust is a key part of marketing. Therefore marketing should be called earning trust at scale.
But you didn’t come here for me to recommend one article, you came here for me to recommend a whole bunch of articles! Let’s get to it.
Audiences
The newest pandemic is cabin fever and the cure is more Airbnb. At least that's what the app download trends look like, setting new daily highs recently. Oh, and the revenue growth (+70%).
So much for that e-commerce pull forward, things are cooling off and UPS is feeling it.
Up and to the right, that's the new trend line for federal interest rates as the central bank seeks to stave off inflation. There are a lot of factors in the mix that this change won't impact (Ford has ~53k vehicles waiting on chips), so we'll see what happens.
The housing market is so hot right now it's hard to afford a house. Mortgage rates are at their highest in over a decade and home prices are up too.
2/3 of links on the web are dead. A good reminder that things on the internet aren't forever (unless it's an NFT diamond, in which case it definitely, totally, 100% is) and you might want to give your site a looksie if you link out a lot. You know, for the sake of the users.
Attack Vectors
It’s hacks all the way down. The new attack vector is hacking law enforcement or government accounts to then send “urgent” “emergency” info requests to companies with user data. So be wary of anyone that says “I’m not a cop, but I play one on the internet.”’
Connecticut has joined the data privacy party, bringing the state total to 4. Seems somewhere in the middle of the others so if you’re set for one of them you might be set for this one.
Google is calling for privacy regulation at the national level. Which just makes sense. The ship has sailed at this point and it’s way easier for them (and everyone else) to comply with one standard than 50 different ones (although the strictest one will set the stakes).
And this is why people want data privacy laws. Location tracking details for Grindr users has been for sale for a while now (but isn’t anymore, the company says), what could go wrong? I think this data was used a while back to out a priest. People are great.
A small peek behind the content moderation curtain at ByteDance (aka the TikTok mothership).
Google banned a lot of sketchy apps and developers last year. Like, a lot a lot.
Don’t like a result in your Google search? File a DMCA takedown notice! Doesn’t matter if it’s relevant, or even believable, it’ll get gone.
Unfortunately, the saying “I saw it on the internet so it must be true” is still alive and well. A study by a UK regulatory body found that over 1/3 of people either believe everything they see online or don’t even think about it (or are unsure, but not really sure what that means in this context). Fun fact that I heard somewhere, roughly 1/3 of any population is probably pro-authoritarian. I’m sure it’s fine…
Passwords are so last year. Is a thing we might be able to say soon.
Algorithms
Meta goes Mr. Freeze on hiring for the rest of the year. Thanks Apple, Russia, dull FAANGs, and waning covid. Or so they say…
Have you heard of TikTok? It's a small social network that's starting to generate some buzz. To the tune of a projected 20% social market share this year.
Square is dead, long live squares. Meta is throwing in the towel and going full TikTok clone. Or at least they probably are, the full screen feed is just a test, for now… (I saw some of these new ones in my feed today. No opinion really, just an observation.)
TikTok isn’t the only target for Meta, they’re pulling an OpenAI too. They’ve made, essentially, their own version of GPT-3 for natural language generation. BUT! They’ve opened it up to any and all researchers that want to poke around. A rare good move from the company.
Buried in all this blah blah blah corporate speak is the little nugget that WPP, a marketing agency (I think?), has launched a Shopify competitor. Everything is D2C now. I mean, look at OnlyFans…
Remember that time we said Google My Business was going away? Jk lol nvm.
Google is adding some features and/or requirements to Merchant Center. They're all pretty in the weeds so, if you spend a lot of time there, check out their post. Otherwise, skip this one.
Snap's spectacles take to the sky with their new controller-free drone camera. Pick a pre-set flightpath, launch your Pixy, snag that epic shot, and find it automagically in your Snapchat app. Snap’s approach seems to be to turn out interesting, toy-like hardware that only tries to accomplish one thing, instead of trying to be a megatool / killer app like some of their competitors.
Ads
The 90’s had the Dream Team, the 20’s 2.0 has the Stream Team.
The big digital players might be hurting on the ad revenue front, but TV is doing just fine. Connected TV, that is. Streaming ad spend grew 57% last year, probably since everyone who owns the rights to a show or movie thinks they need their own service at this point.
But wait, there’s more! You can DIY product placement via Amazon! You can shop on your Roku!
I did not realize that BuzzFeed was still a big enough thing to have their own event pitching advertisers. But it is, apparently. And it announced new programming, an ad type, and a creator network. If any of those things mean something to you and you want to learn more: here you go.
TikTok is going for the trifecta with their new ad product: exclusive, contextual, and a revenue share with creators. Pulse places ads “next to” the Top 4% of content on the For You tab based on category and has a 50/50 revenue split. Advertisers get what they want with that sweet sweet reach, creators get an incentive to churn out that sweet sweet content, and TikTok gets to make money in a post-cookie way and use it to build a creator moat against competitors.
It’s also taking aim at Meta's ad business and (taking a page out of Zuck's Book of Thievery) building out their pixel functionality with a near copy-paste of Big Blue's.
TikTok can copy Meta's stuff like this pretty easily, Meta is going to have a much harder time copying the Trend Machine algorithm.
Customer matching for everyone!**
**Where everyone means smart bidding and/optimized targeting on Google Ads. But what does it mean?! More information for Google’s Army of AlgoBots to chew on in the never ending quest for moar performance.
Twitter ads, now in replies! (At least until Elon trashes ads, if he does (trash ads, or actually buy Twitter).)
Microsoft keeps the release train running, announcing auto-generated remarketing lists.
Finally, Meta announced some new stuff but the only one I really care about is being able to deliver more content / value in lead forms without having to direct to the website to do it.
Analytics
If you’re a Google Analytics user, make sure you have GA4 setup.