Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 00:00
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode 60 of This Week In Marketing show. I’m your host Sajid Islam, and today I’ll be going over the notable news and updates in the digital marketing space from the week of June 7, 2021.
[Update 1 – TikTok is Accepting Applications for the Next Cohort of Support Black Businesses] – 00:37
Today. First off, we’re gonna start off with TikTok. So very quickly, TikTok has announced that they are going to accept the next cohort for their support black business initiative. In this round, they’re going to select 40 black owned businesses. And you know. There is. It’s a free of charge and to apply to this program a business should have less than 100 employees public facing website representing the business offering a product or service and the. Business should not have to be present on TikTok, so that’s a plus point and they have to commit to attend at least 75% of the programming offered, just so that you know the application deadline is June 23rd. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go ahead and put the link to the application page in our show notes. So if you’re interested or if you know someone who’s interested. Going to check it out, and I’m sure they’re gonna thank you for, you know, giving them some leads into getting mentorships and guidance from Tiktok themselves. OK, let’s move on.
[Update 2 – Instagram Shared How the Algorithm Works & Shadowbanning] – 01:48
Next up we have updates from Instagram and actually this is a really great update because Instagram CEO himself wrote a blog post to clear up the air around. You know how the algorithm works and how shadowbanning works and things like that. This actually is a very valuable. Add must read for anyone who is on Instagram trying to grow up brand or Instagram and you should do it even if you have. They say even if you have someone else in managing an Instagram account ’cause this will help you to better understand you know how. If you do, if you have the right individual managing account or not, that’s what I meant. OK, so very quickly, what he talked about is, first of all, he talks about, you know, Adam. He is the CEO of Instagram again. And he talks about how feeds and stories work. Right. And that’s essentially allows you to even think about content ideas. Right. Because what he’s saying is feed and stories are places where people want to see content from their friends, family, and those their closest to so they know. So they show also and by their Instagram shows all the recent posts shared by the people we follow. Right. And it makes sense, right. That’s what we see. And you know, they kind of and then he goes deeper into it. In terms of, you know how they take different data points and Instagram calls them signals and they have thousands of signals, right, they take everything from what time of post was shared to work, whether we are using a phone or the web, how how fast or Internet is and depending on that they are going to show. You know things in our feeds and stories now from there he jumped in to explore. And what he says was explorer was designed to help us discover new things that greed is made out of, made up of recommendations, photos and videos that IG goes out and finds for us, which is very different from feed and stories with the vast majority of what we see is from the accounts we follow. Again, the first step hearing they take is is. Define first at the tech is to defining a set of poster rank to find photos and videos they think we might be interested in, and they look at signals like what post we have liked in the past, saved and commented on the in the past, right. And once they’ve found a group of photos and videos, we think we might be interested in Instagram then. Orders them by how interested they think we are in each one, much like how they ranked feed and stories. The best way to guess how interested we are in something is to predict how likely we are to do something with the post. Again, yeah, Instagram is a very predictive platform. They have all this algorithms behind the scenes using data to figure out. OK. Are we gonna? What are the chances of us liking this post versus that post now? That’s how even Google works. That’s how Facebook works. That’s how TikTok works. That’s how You Tube works. All these platforms are like in a predictive right. And you can see this if you don’t believe me. Go open up a. Browser tab and Incognito mode on Chrome or private mode in fear of Firefox and you know, go to YouTube and start browsing. So they they just say a certain genre of music. Let’s just suggest right and then go click around, do jazz, do some classical and then you’ll see more of jazz music ’cause then the algorithm thinks. That’s how what you’re gonna see. You’re interested in jazz. You’re gonna see more of jazz. So Explorer is working the same way. OK. Nothing. Lastly reels and with reels, he talks about reels, is designed to entertain us. Much like explode the majority of what we see is from accounts we usually don’t follow. IG goes through a similar process of where the first source reels. They think we might like and then ordered them for us based on how interesting they think the rules are to us. The most important predictions they make over here is how likely are we to watch a real all the way through like it and say if it was funny or entertaining and even go to the audio. Page a proxy for whether or not we might be that might be inspired us to make our own drill. So these were very interesting topics in terms of, you know, real because now you see the themes are emerging. The reels are supposed to be more for entertainment, something similar to what TikTok is right entertainment. So I myself didn’t know this about reels and hopefully if you’re following our show, you kind of know how to position things in real. Real should be more funny. And you know, whereas Explorer could be something more like, you know, you going out to a new city, trying out a new restaurant, things like that. And then obviously, you know, it’s like feeds and stories are going to be daily status updates. Now lastly. The CEO of IG, Adam, I already forgot his name to look up and see. Your Adam talked about shadow meaning and they said Shadowrunning. It’s a broad term that people have started talking about it and needed. They recognize that this this has been their fault because they haven’t really always, you know, been very transparent about it. And they feel like, you know, people start saying, oh, they have been shadowbanned just because their post hasn’t gotten to the reach the same amount of they haven’t reached the same amount of people every time. Right. But then he says the truth is most for most, they cannot promise that we will constantly reach the same amount of people every time we post. The truth is, most of our followers on see what? We share because most look at less than half of their feet and this is something I’ve told my Instagram team again and again like guys, if we think we’re gonna post once and we’ll be done and our content is gonna be shared, no, that or should be seen that’s incorrect because. People are following like hundreds of channels, hundreds of accounts, and this is the time when Adam is like, you know, really validated what I’ve been telling my team for the longest period of time that if you post once a day and you think you’re gonna make it rich, that’s wrong. ’cause Instagram is about a numbers game you gotta keep on posting multiple times a day because that’s the. The only way you can assure that you know people are seeing you’re getting the most bang for the buck right now. At that same time, I’m not telling, you know, post the same thing and be spamming it or just post for the sake of posting. But it has to be valuable content because again, when someone sees something valuable, they’re going to come back and they’re gonna say oh, wow, let me check what are the continents there? They will find all these other content that they have missed out, and they’re gonna that will force them to like an account. OK. Now. So where this is all going is that you know, there Adam says they realize they could be more transparent. And if they do take out and taken action on this, they should be able to announce it to the account. And they are working on a transparent. App notification not transparent. They’re developing a better in app notifications so people know in the moment. For instance, why their post was taken down and exploring ways to let them know. When the post goes against the recommendation guidelines, well, Adam, you don’t have to go explore ways. All you have to do is look at YouTube ’cause. I am gonna focus cover about what YouTube is doing. Adam, all you have to do is hire smarter people. Learn. Maybe you don’t have the smart people ’cause they’re all like, you know. Yes, man. But all you need to do is look at YouTube, you look at. How word Pinterest is doing and you will get some ideas of what you need to do. All you have to do is when people are posting something, you have an algorithm. Massive team. Just tell them, hey, you’re posting this. This probably violates section 123 or Section 6 and seven of our, you know, recommendation guidelines or something. Do you really wanna do this right? Or would you like a manual review? How simple is that, Adam? You don’t have to go, you know. Bring in the cannons to kill the rabbit. OK, let’s move on the next update.
[Update 3 – FB/IG Introduce New Ways for Creators to Make a Living] – 09:45
The next update is our Facebook/Instagram is introducing new ways for creators to make money. What this is all coming down to Zuckerberg and companies realizing that she’ll look guys. The ad industry is dead and like folks stay with me ’cause you wanna get to the end of this show ’cause, there’s gonna be a lot of interesting things coming out. They realize with apples ATT, which is a app transparency, a tracking transparency like they really gotta hit third party cookies are going away. So they’re realizing we gotta figure out some other ways to keep creators in our platform as well as may help them make money ’cause if they make money on the platform, that means they are going to stay on the platform. And if you’ve been following a show I’ve been telling you like, you know, Instagram is going into the ecommerce play, it’s going to be competing with Google and Amazon. So that’s what it is. Add Shopify, right? And knows TikTok, right, and Pinterest and slept. So with this, with this week, what they did was they. Announced athlete and new shop features on Instagram word. Basically it allows is becoming. It’s giving everyone the opportunity to be an athlete for someone else, so the way it works down is, say, if I if I’m a micro influencer, I have thousands of people following me. What I could do is I could, like, you know, go and check out. Athlete products where they say you know, there could be a brand called, let’s just say my son, right, a brand called my Son. And I just happen to use my son. By the way, my zone is my fitness tracking app tracker. But let’s just say my John decided that they came up with a new product and they want to give affiliate commissions. I can go check it out. And I said, huh. I can. I can basically share this thing my zone with my followers, and maybe if they buy, I’ll get a Commission. So similar to Word affiliate marketing is all about like if you look at Best Buy, Amazon they have, that’s how they build the whole company businesses where affiliate people would like, right blogs drive traffic to Amazon and if they by using their link they would get a cut of the Commission, things like that. The other very great example of this is the IT was the wired wirecutter.com which is now bought out by New York Times a few years ago. For some, I think 30 or $42 million. But anyway coming back and while Carter was basically right review about products and they would. Send you to Amazon and if you buy from Amazon through their link, they would get a cut. So Instagram is realizing, hey, we have so many features people on Instagram, why not help them make money right? And I think that’s a great idea, right? So they’re basically professionalizing this whole thing. There’s no longer of me having to find influencers or influencer having to find. My friend, so it just makes it becomes a marketplace and I think that’s a great move. It also allows you to there saying you can also create your own shops on Instagram. It’s gonna make it easy and also the third thing they’re saying is that there are many ways to create badges and stars, so people are paying using badges and stars as the creators are using badges and stars and people are using those to give. Badges and stars to their creators as a way to engage as a way to say thank you. So now they’re creating a kind of a monetizing policy that says, oh, if you reach a certain milestone, you can get an eligible payout, which is basically again encouraging and nudging creators to create more content. And stay more on lives, engage more with other, you know, creators with their followers. As a result, you know the community goes, grows. You know, it’s a classic, you know, growth strategy from Instagram at a time when they’re realizing they’re losing people from engagement and you know, going to YouTube, Pinterest and things like that. OK. And TikTok, don’t forget that. So that’s all the updates are from Instagram/Facebook on how they want creators to make more money from the platform. How much that will be successful I do not know because specially on the affiliate thing, because big brands may not want certain individuals, certain people with certain viewpoints to be able to hawk their products or promote their products ’cause that would actually have a backlash. But I will let Instagram and Mark Zuckerberg and Co to figure it all out. ’cause, that’s not what I get paid for. OK, let’s move on.
[Update 4 – YouTube Now Detects Copyright Violations During the Upload Process] – 14:12
Next up, we have YouTube. YouTube has now updated and rolled out a new option where you know if you are trying to upload a copyrighted content. They will stop you. Hello, Like a couple of slides back or updates back I told, you know, maybe there is a thing or two that Instagram, Adam, Adam from Instagram could learn this is one of those things. It’s very simple yet it’s basically YouTube is gonna stop you just so that you know it prevents multiple like you know you put it up the content owner claims again and again they take it down. Let’s just hold back and forth. They’re gonna stop you right at the get go. And I think that’s a great move. OK, let’s move on to the next one.
[Update 5 – YouTube Now Allows Creators To Add Midrolls, End Screens, and Captions While Their Video Is Processing] – 14:55
It’s like now You Tube has also rolled out a new option or new update where you know you can And they allows the creators to add mid-rolls in screen captions. While the video is still processing and you know it used to be very annoying where you could upload a video and you would have to wait until the processing is done to Add all these things. And I think it just makes it a better and faster workflow. And really I could get it all done and move on to other stuff that I have to do. OK.
[Update 6 – YouTube Shorts, TikTok’s Rival Launches in 3 New Countries] – 15:23
The last update from YouTube is that YouTube shorts are now launching in three new countries. So basically. This is in addition to you, India and US. Now they’re going to UK, Canada and Latin America and then you know, they’re gonna also very soon go to the Cayman Islands, Aruba and Bolivia. What this basically means is that YouTube is not giving up on charts. And if you are new to YouTube and you want exposure, best make sure you do shorts. With that. Something on YouTube ads.
[Update 7 – YouTube Ads is Replacing TrueView with Video Action Campaigns] – 15:52
YouTube ads is changing true view campaigns with video action campaigns. Uh, it’s just an evolution really. We cannot do anything about it. It’s something you should know about. Is all I can tell you about. This is a big study on how Trueview campaign works and what they’re replacing with video action campaigns. And but YouTube is claiming that, you know, video action campaigns are 20% more conversions per dollar compared to Trueview action. I think and the sunset or the basically the last day you can use to view action campaigns are on. September 20, September 2021 and starting early 2022, all cute, true, true, True View campaign actions. I wanna automatically get And upgraded or video action campaigns. I’m going to stop right here. I don’t want to talk too much about it because if you’re interested, see it. You gotta show notes or, you know, heat us up and we will give you additional details, OK.
[Update 8 – Related Video Extensions Now Available Globally] – 16:59
The last update from YouTube is that related video extensions are now available globally what they basically It means that you can show your ad to. You can show a list of two to five related videos below your video ad on YouTube mobile app right? So if someone sees your video app, you can also say these are related videos and they can show it’s just an extension that they’re adding into it and it’s available globally and nothing more than that. Next up, I have a quick update from Pinterest.
[Update 9 – Pinterest Rolls-Out Shopping List & Other Features] – 17:28
Pinterest rolls out a shopping list similar to. What we have in Facebook saves, but I think it’s going to be better, right? And by the way, I want to add, if you’ve been following the show, I’ve always said Pinterest is going to be the. Next platform where you know it’s really gonna make a big dent, a couple of shows back. I talked about how Pinterest Hits 5 billion searches a month, why I’m sharing all this is that, you know, I am so, you know, gung ho, I believe so strongly on Pinterest is that this week I ended up actually purchasing Pinterest Stock just so that you know, Full disclosure. I really, really believe this is the platform to go, but anyway coming back to is this, you know they have basically they realize pienaars go look at things. So the save feature is gonna allow them to save things. Shopping list. Now one of the great things about this is that when you have saved something at the price drops. Pinterest is gonna notify you. I think that’s a great, brilliant idea. Anyone can do like, you know, safe stuff. But the price drop is just gonna be a nudge to me saying, hey, go and buy this ’cause now, this is on drop on sale or something like that. So that’s one thing. It’s available available in the US, UK and it’s going to come to Australia, Canada, France and Germany later this year. They also have some a few bunch of you know merchant tools such as Verified Merchant program. Shopped up profile. And they’re also doing this in EU, S and UK and Canada. They’re doing this thing goods by Pinterest Program a two week shopping spotlight that will give pinners access to limited edition products exclusively sold through Pinterest from Emerging Brands. Wow, another way to engage users and cleaners and basically keep them on the platform. OK, let’s move on to the last update of this week which is a big one.
[Update 10 – Apple Announces New Privacy Features That Will Upend Digital Marketing] – 19:25
This week, Apple announced that it’s going to bring out Three features that’s gonna really open the whole digital marketing world. Number one is they’re going to stop. Marketeers from tracking email opens and from where it is opening, right, they’re gonna hide all these things. They realize that your marketeers and brands and businesses are tracking users left, right and center. They don’t like that. So Apple is going to block the pixel that through which all this email opens attract. It’s gonna change email marketing forever. That’s one. Next, in Safari, which is Apple’s browser on iPhone, iPad, Mac OS launch this feature called private relay. When private relay is turned on, nobody can track our browsing history. So as a result we will not really know who is visiting our site. You know it will work to a point where we will know. That they’re coming from, let’s just say Washington DC Metro area, but that’s about it. But we would not know whether they’re coming from this particular neighborhood the, you know, the downtown neighborhood and who they are. What is it called who the ISP’s and things like that? As a result, it’s gonna affect our Facebook campaigns and Google Ads campaign to a certain point. But Google is very search based, so it’s not gonna be so effective. But Facebook is going to be affected. And the third feature that they’re announcing is hide my email. It lets you generate random email addresses, so when you sign up to a newsletter or when you create an account on a website, you don’t have to give out your real email address. I don’t know about you, man. Every time if I were to, it’s gonna. If I was using random email addresses and I have. Sometimes you know it’s multiple email addresses having a custom domain basically allows you to do that. It’s gonna be very hard for people to track you. So it’s again. Other thing where is where is this is gonna get featured which is gonna make. It’s gonna hurt is if. Imagine if there was a custom conversions, right. If their businesses that upload your conversions data back to Facebook or Google so that you know they can match customer purchase history and things like that, that’s going to take a hit. All in all, it’s gonna really change the way digital marketing works. World works, I mean. Apple already did that with ATT, which was in iOS 14.5. Now Apple is announcing all these changes are going to come in iOS 15, which is right around the corner, folks. Be ready for a new dawn or new way of doing digital marketing. OK, less tracking and we have to figure out how can we get more actionable data from the less tracking we’re going to have, OK.
[Closing] – 22:20
Alrighty, folks. That’s it for this week in marketing. Now you know everything that you need to know. If you’d like to read more, make sure you visit our show page, where you will find the links to the articles. Once again, this is your host Sajid Islam signing off until next week. Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you for tuning in this week. It was a pleasure to serve you all. Hit the subscribe button so that you remember to sign on next week. Same place, same time for another round of This Week In Marketing.
1. TikTok is Accepting Applications for the Next Cohort of Support Black Businesses (0:37) – On June 7th, TikTok announced that they are accepting the next cohort of Support Black Businesses! In partnership with Vimeo, Support Black Businesses aims to give Black small business owners critical skills and resources to help them not only rebuild but grow stronger. The second round of Support Black Businesses builds on the program that TikTok launched last year and gives participants tools and resources to better advertise on digital platforms and drive sales.
Here’s what to know about the program:
- They’re selecting 40 black-owned businesses for the cohort
- The program will run from July 2021 to December 2021; there will be at least one event to attend a month.
- Participating in this program is free of charge.
- The events and programming will be held virtually and will be a mix of educational content, thought leadership, mentorship, and culture + community.
To apply to be part of this program, your business must have the following:
- Less than 100 employees
- Public-facing website representing their business
- Offering a product or service
- Current social media presence (does NOT need to have a TikTok account)
- Commit to attending at least 75% of the programming offered
The deadline to apply is June 23rd at 11:59 pm. You can find the application here.
2. Instagram Shared How the Algorithm Works & Shadowbanning (1:48) – This week, Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri wrote a blog post to clear up one of the main misconceptions about the Algorithm. According to his post, IG uses a variety of algorithms, classifies, and processes, each with its own purposes. The main goal of these algorithms is to make the most of our time by personalizing our experience. Thus each part of the app – Feed, Explore, Reels – uses its own algorithm tailored to how we use it.
Feed and Stories are places where people want to see content from their friends, family, and those closest to them to show all the recent posts shared by the people we follow. Next, they take all the information they have about what was posted, the people who made those posts, and our preferences. IG calls these “signals”, and there are thousands of them. They include everything from what time a post was shared to whether we’re using a phone or the web to how often we like videos.
Explore – was designed to help us discover new things. The grid is made up of recommendations – photos and videos that IG goes out and find for us – which is very different from Feed and Stories, where the vast majority of what we see is from the accounts we follow. Again, the first step they take is defining a set of posts to rank. To find photos and videos we might be interested in, they look at signals like what posts we’ve liked, saved, and commented on in the past. Once they’ve found a group of photos and videos we might be interested in, IG then orders them by how interested they think we are in each one, much like how they rank Feed and Stories. The best way to guess how interested we are in something is to predict how likely we are to do something with the post. The most important actions they predict in Explore include likes, saves, and shares.
Reels – is designed to entertain us. Much like Explore, the majority of what we see is from accounts we don’t follow. So IG goes through a very similar process where they first source reels they think we might like, and then order them based on how interesting they think the reels are to us. The most important predictions they make are how likely we are to watch a reel all the way through, like it, say it was entertaining or funny, and go to the audio page (a proxy for whether or not we might be inspired to make our own reel.)
“Shadowbanning” – is a broad term that people use to describe many different experiences they have on Instagram and people consider their posts getting fewer likes or comments as a form of “shadowbanning”. They can’t promise us that we’ll consistently reach the same amount of people when we post. The truth is most of our followers won’t see what we share because most look at less than half of their Feed. But they realized that they can be more transparent about why IG takes things down when they do, work to make fewer mistakes, fix them quickly when we do, and better explain how their systems work. So now they are developing better in-app notifications so people know at the moment why, for instance, their post was taken down, and exploring ways to let people know when what we post goes against their Recommendations Guidelines.
3. FB/IG Introduce New Ways for Creators to Make a Living (9:45) – Zuckerberg & co want Instagram and Facebook to serve as a home base for creators to tell their story, grow and make a living. Whether they are just starting or are further along in building their business – they want to support creators and give the creators ways to accomplish their goals. So On June 8th, they announced new ways to help creators make a living as they build their personal brands across the platforms.
Affiliate & New Shops Features on Instagram – a native affiliate tool that will allow creators to discover new products available on checkout, share them with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app. When people come across an affiliate post from a creator featuring a tagged product, they will see “eligible for commission” at the top of the post, so it’s clear that their purchases help support that creator.
This will make it easier for people to shop directly from the creators they love and give brands a new way to partner with and reward creators who share their products.
For creators who want to sell their own merchandise, they’re making it easier to add an existing shop or open a new shop on their Instagram profile.
Stay up to date on new shopping features for creators here.
More ways to earn from Badges and Stars – Badges on Instagram Live and Stars on Facebook give creators ways to earn from their supporters. As they see more and more creators use these tools to engage directly with their fans, they want to reward the creators for the impact they’re bringing to FB & IG communities. That’s why they’re launching ways for creators to make extra money for hitting certain milestones with badges and Stars.
Starting June 8, 2021, creators on Instagram are eligible to earn an extra payout when they meet certain milestones while using badges in Live, such as going Live with another account.
Also, Facebook launched the Stars Challenges. Creators in the program can earn payouts from Facebook in the form of free Stars if they meet certain milestones, such as broadcasting a certain number of hours or earning a set number of Stars within a designated time period.
4. YouTube Now Detects Copyright Violations During the Upload Process (14:12) – YouTube has rolled out some new options to give users more capacity to stop copyright violations in uploads, and detect potential IP infringements within the app. First off, YouTube added a new element in the copyright claim process which will enable creators to tick a new box when reporting a copyright violation in order to prevent copies of these videos from appearing on YouTube going forward’ in the detection/removal options.
When this box is checked on a successful copyright claim, YouTube will then work to stop any other users from uploading the same video, using its Copyright ID detection and video matching tech. The same process will also enable YouTube to alert creators when any similar content is uploaded if this box is ticked, with these additional, potential violations then displayed in the ‘Copyright Match’ tab within YouTube Studio.
You can read more about the new copyright detection and removal processes here.
5. YouTube Now Allows Creators To Add Midrolls, End Screens, and Captions While Their Video Is Processing (14:55) – YouTube has rolled out a new update that will enable creators to place add-on features – like midroll ad breaks, end screens, info cards, etc. – while their video is processing, The new process will save creators time by enabling them to incorporate these processes into their upload flow, rather than having to wait till the video is fully available before adding in these features.
6. YouTube Shorts, TikTok’s Rival Launches in 3 New Countries (15:23) – Shorts will soon be available to users in the UK, Canada, and Latin America, in addition to India and the US. The full list for the expanded rollout also includes the Cayman Islands, Aruba, and Bolivia – you can check all the nations in which Shorts is now available here.
7. YouTube Ads is Replacing TrueView with Video Action Campaigns (15:52) – People are turning to YouTube to help them learn new skills, connect with others, and discover their next purchases with 70% of YouTube viewers saying they bought a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube. A few years ago, they began to see YouTube’s role shift from being a singular entertainment destination to a prominent knowledge hub that inspired action. This insight led them to build TrueView for action, their direct response video solution that helps brands engage with prospective customers on the watch page.
As customer journeys become more complex, it’s important to reach customers in moments of exploration and evaluation. That’s why they have evolved TrueView for action and scaling its best features to more places on and off YouTube with Video action campaigns. Per YouTube, Video action campaigns drive 20% more conversions per dollar compared to TrueView for action.
Starting early 2022, all existing TrueView for action campaigns will automatically upgrade to Video action campaigns. To get ahead of this change and start driving conversions immediately, they recommend creating new Video action campaigns by using the responsive ad group type during campaign set-up. If you’d like to continue creating TrueView for action ads, you can do so until September 30, 2021, and any existing TrueView for action ads will continue to run until early next year. To make this process easier for you, they will also launch a copy and paste feature in Google Ads over the next few weeks, which allows you to copy existing TrueView for action ads and paste them as Video action campaign ads.
8. Related Video Extensions Now Available Globally (16:59) – Related video extensions are now globally available to all advertisers who use Google Ads. With related video extensions, you can show a list of 2 to 5 related videos below your video ad on YouTube mobile app. Related video extensions extend your message beyond your primary video ad, keeping viewers engaged with your creatives (including other videos on your YouTube channel).
Learn how to implement related video extensions here.
9. Pinterest Rolls-Out Shopping List & Other Features (17:28) – People are already saving ideas and products they love on Pinterest, and Pinterest knows that Pinners are over 7x more likely to purchase products they’ve saved (Pinterest Internal Data, May 2021). This is why they have launched Shopping List, a way for Pinners to have their product Pins automatically saved in one place, making it easier for them to come back and shop the items they’ve been eyeing when they’re ready to buy, just like they would in their favorite local shops. Pinners will also be notified when they can get a good deal on products they’ve saved with price drop notifications. Available first in the US and UK, Shopping List will be coming to Australia, Canada, France, and Germany later this year.
Pinterest is also expanding its newest suite of merchant tools to help retailers of all sizes, with the launch of the Verified Merchant Program in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany, as well as of shop tab on profile, and product tagging in Australia, Canada, France, and Germany.
In the US, UK, and Canada, they will reveal “The Goods by Pinterest”, a two-week Shopping Spotlight that will give Pinners access to limited edition products exclusively sold through Pinterest from emerging brands such as Outdoor Voices (US), Olive & June (US), Lucy and Yak (UK), Charlotte Tilbury (UK) or Park and Fifth (CA).
10. Apple Announces New Privacy Features That Will Upend Digital Marketing (19:25) – This week at the WWDC Conference Apple announced that it will be bringing out new features for its Mail and Safari applications to ensure that their users are not tracked online.
According to Apple, many advertisers use pixels online to track when a user opens their email and determine their IP address through all this information. All this can be used to help advertisers with targeted advertisements as well as track when you opened the email. So now Apple will block this pixel so that it hides the IP address, location and when the email was opened.
In Safari, Apple is going to launch a new privacy feature called Private Relay. When Private Relay is turned on, nobody can track your browsing history — not your internet service provider, anyone standing in the middle of your request between your device and the server you’re requesting information from.
The third feature you should know is ‘Hide my email.’ It lets you generate random email addresses when you sign up for a newsletter or when you create an account on a website. If you’ve used ‘Sign in with Apple,’ you know that Apple offers you the option to use fake iCloud email addresses. This works similarly, but for any app.
