66: [Ep66/19Jul21] – Google’s Ads New 3-Strike Policy & Other Digital Marketing Updates from the Week of Jul 19, 2021

[Introduction] – 00:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Episode 66 of the TWIMshow. This is 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 July 19 through 24 2021.

[Update 1 -Twitter Earnings Highlights] – 00:40

Today, First off, we have earnings report from Twitter and you know if you’ve been following a show, you know, I like to cover the inner platform, social media platform earnings report in our show just because it gives us a lot of insight in terms of which direction the platform is moving, what they’re gonna do, whether the platform is growing and what’s happening. ’cause at the end of the day, we as a market here, we want to see what are some of the platforms that are gaining tractions and what are the platforms that are losing tractions and you know kind of take our client customers businesses in that direction with that. A couple of things from the Twitter’s report. Number one is that Twitter has actually. Grande resume, not resume. I’ve grown grown their revenue, but first we’re going to talk about the monthly monitoring table, daily active user that’s the number the metric, that’s all this platform look at, which is in short called MDAU Monthly or sorry monetizable daily active user. OK, so right now that count is at 206 million, that’s an increase of 11% year over year and additional 7 million on his Q1 figure, so. That’s how much they grew in just between Q1 and Q2. And in terms of revenue. Create post a strong result of 1.19 billion with a B in Q2 and that’s a 74% increase in year over year, right? So if you compare these numbers, you will see Twitter absolutely crushed it, right, they have a 74% increase in revenue. They’re increasing the daily active user. Any active user, all it all is looking grow good. Seems like you know the one thing is like Japan is a very big market for Twitter, which I didn’t know until I read the report. And I’m glad I do this thing because this gives me insight into things that I would not have otherwise known. And the other thing I want to talk about is the Twitter blue. It’s a subscription. Program that Twitter has launched, and we also covered a platform and we were I kind of shared my two cents in there like you know why I wish Twitter had launched in US, why Australia, Canada? But anyway, Twitter came out and did not give us the real numbers, but they say that they have been really encouraged by the initial response and looking forward to further innovating and growing this new revenue stream. So which basically means. This might actually become a real product from Twitter right folks? So All in all, Twitter is growing. Keep an eye on it. And with that, let’s jump into the next earnings report. In the last one for this week is Snapchat.

[Update 2 – Snapchat Earnings Highlights] – 03:22

For Snapchat would have done is they’ve added 13 million. More daily active users in Q2 than right now. Their total user account is at 293 million, which presents a 23% increase year over year and on the revenue front, SNAP posted a huge 116% year over year increase to 982 million for the period now. Revenue number wise, very close snap is very close to you know Twitter some 928 million, 982 million to 1.19 billion. You know obviously if you are a few $100 million here and there but you know at this on paper it looks like very close by. But you know, Twitter is a bigger platform, the snap, but at the same time SNAP has a few good things working for it and I think SNAP is going to continue to grow. And just for disclaimer, I do own the snap stocks just because you know, I’ve been covering this thing and I kind of see the trend and I’ve ended up buying stocks for Snapchat as well as Pinterest. But for now this is Snapchat. I am exactly. Having it where Snapchat is going and this is a really good alternative to Facebook, which I think if you’re hearing the show, you know, I’m kind of not a big fan of it just because. You know Facebook can be a little bit wonky and like you can ban your account and do all sorts of crazy things without, you know, any really new course. Anyway. With that, let’s hop on to the next part, which is a NEWS UPDATE from LinkedIn.

[Update 3 – LinkedIn Offers Free Marketing Certification Program to Help Showcase Your LinkedIn Marketing Knowledge] – 04:55

LinkedIn is now offering free marketing certification program to anyone who wants to take it over and then help you showcase your LinkedIn marketing knowledge. Folks, if you’re listening to this and you want to become LinkedIn marketing expert, this is it. Go get it done. It seems like pretty simple. They have two courses fundamental. Basics and marketing strategy, which is for intermediate. I am gonna go ahead and put the link to the LinkedIn certifications page in the show knows, shake it out right what you will do is get it. I don’t wanna really dig dig deeper. But you know sometimes. The only other person, the one who ends up making a whole lot of fame and money. So please go check it out. You’ll be glad you did. OK.
[Update 4 – YouTube Introduces Super Thanks for Fans to Support Creators of Uploaded Videos] – 05:44
On the YouTube front, YouTube has introduced super thanks for fans to support What creators of uploaded video, which is basically a way for fans to? Hey there, in a family favorite artist creator, whoever they’re following, it’s just something, you know, that’s YouTube and created back in 2017. It’s called Super Chat and then they created a sticker called Super Stickers in 2019. And they just going along this whole thing all super thanks. It’s just a way to say thank you to your you know. Making favorite artist in them some money? That’s all. OK, the next update I have is again from YouTube

[Update 5 – 4 Additional YouTube Updates You Need To Know] – 06:19

Actually so it’s 4 new updates that you need to know about. Our number one is on YouTube has a sorry YouTube has this thing called comment translation. What YouTube came out and said you know hey we have people from 120 different languages comes and comments on, you know, videos, sometimes they’re not English. Well, obviously, some 120 languages, you know, 119 of them are non-English. So what they’re saying is now they you can go to the YouTube main app and you could be able to see like I say a comment that’s in Chinese and you’d be able to click on it and it’s gonna translate that in English which is great. For now, this is only available in YouTube main app and they’re planning to bring it in. YouTube Studio Mobile and you know You Tube desktop, but it’s nevertheless and they try to do it as soon as it was nevertheless a it’s a it’s a step in the right direction and they want people to engage, they want people to, you know, read the comments. They want people to reply to the comments because Add as engagement grows, people stay owners. People stay on. You know, they make more money. That’s how we all expect from. So folks. OK, the next update from YouTube is live polls, which can be used. Boost during alive to ask your audience is opening opinion and current topic of discussion. Things like that right? It’s just a simple poll. Then there is a subscriber only chat option which is the third one. Yeah, it just allows you to kind of say, you know, people who have been a subscriber to my channel for so and so many days or so and so many months, they will be able to chat with me, things like that again, giving people incentive to, you know, subscribe to channel and engaging. And I think these are all going. Towards the direction of engagement and creating new content because hey, if you’re following a show and you wanna chat with me, I could just say, you know, only people who are subscribed to our marketing grow channel can be able to like, you know, chat with me. And then obviously you have to subscribe the last fourth update which is the last update is an expansion of Cliffs future. Clips is basically a way for you to take a, you know, five to 60 seconds segment of a content with a video or audio and then be able to initiate with our YouTube or other third party platforms. And now they’re rolling it out to everyone. In the past it was just testing phase so. I know You Tube is not breaking any new ground with this feature. It’s catching up to what other standard platforms are doing, but nevertheless it’s a good step in the right directions where YouTube is like, you know, realizing if we don’t do this, we are going to be basically outdated. Yeah, there’s only so much people are gonna do with watching videos ’cause if they’re gonna come, they’re gonna leave. Then that’s about it. OK. With that, let’s jump into the next one, which is TikTok.

[Update 6 – TikTok Adds New Features to Live-Stream, Including Live Guests and Q&A Panels] – 09:00

Tiktok added a new a few features into their live stream. One of them is now you can schedule events on Tiktok. Can you believe that right? You can create an event card for your upcoming stream which can then share or you can share it on Tiktok. Across other platforms, you just can tap the register, call to action button for an in app reminder, which provides another way to increase awareness and interest for your upcoming streams, which would be great for brands considering the option. The next step is live guests, which like other platforms will display you and your guest and slips split screen mode. In the live broadcast window, which is actually not really new all Tuesday, Tiktok users with more than 1000 followers over the age of 16 were able to live stream with while those with more than 5000 followers have been able to stream with guests in this mode for some time. But it seems that Tiktok is reducing this requirement with all the users that are able to stream that is. Close with 1000, followers are now able to add guests and you know in about a few months, six to nine months time you will see anyone even ask with five followers, which we don’t even have ’cause we don’t have an account on Tiktok would be able to like you know do a live stream guest ’cause Tiktok once people on the platform they last update is the Q&A overlay on screen. Which provides another way to engage with streamers in the app live viewers or have always been able to post questions via the comments. While the Q&A option has been available on selected create created profiles since January of this year, this new option combines the two, adding another engagement option for streamers which will improve the context for viewers and giving. Add those posting questions more individual focus, so that’s all it is. Again, Tiktok is more focused towards user engagement, user experience you know, creator experience, things like that. Hat software, Tiktok for doing things the right directions. Again, I’m not a fan of Tiktok, but I mean I’m a fan of Tiktok, but I don’t get paid from by Tiktok to and at all good about them. Just ’cause. I like you know what Tiktok is doing? OK.

[Update 7 – TikTok Launches New ‘Spark’ Ads Which Enabled Brands to Tap into Trending Organic Content] – 11:04

Other thing that Tiktok did this week which I am absolutely in love with is that they launched this thing called Spark ads, right? So spark ads are basically enabling brands tap into trending organic content. Allow me to unpack this for you in a second, which allow me to unpack this for you, which is what basically means is. See you see a video that’s trending organically and you want as a brand to take this right. Maybe that person is using something that your brand stands for, or maybe they’re using your brands, you know, colors or maybe your brands T shirt, right, you cannot contact that creator and kind of set up a agreement. And then you could like you know. Use that video to promote it, right? So this is absolutely, I think, a game changer in terms of how Tiktok is gonna allow creators to get. How dictate absolutely game changer how Tiktok is enabling creators to get be found and make creators can make money. Previously it was a little like you know. A lot of it wasn’t smooth, you know, you could have to. You know, you would have to sign up. Things like that. Now imagine I you as a creator. I as a creator I could go. And you know where my Under Armour T shirt or a Nike T shirt. And I can do a lot of different funny stuff. And then if something gets picked up goes viral. The brand can come and get it like remember that this thing, that guy from ocean spray, I think you know he went viral because he was drinking the ocean spray juice while riding on the back of a pickup truck or something like that and it went viral last year, something like that. But it’s going to enable more people to create more content because now they’re realizing, hey, it’s not about song and that it’s not gonna be like. It’s gonna be like, let me get this content viral. And if I do it, I know Perry is coming. Great for you, Tiktok. Great thinking. Meanwhile, on the other side of the, you know, on the fences is

[Update 8 – Instagram Announces Sensitive Content Control for Its Explore Feed] – 13:04

Instagram announced this thing this week where they say they have this feature called sensitive Control for its explore feed, right? So what this basically do is is doing it. Thing is now they’ve given us an option where, you know, we could say. You know how much sensitive content do you want to see in or explore fit because explore feed is a place where we go to explore things, things that we are not regularly are things or people or accounts we are not regularly following, but Instagram things we might be interested in and Instagram feels like sometimes we end up seeing offensive content. And we, the adults, are thoroughly like upset and going to going to depression mode or anxiety more because we ended up seeing something like really upsetting. So now Instagram is giving us this switch where we have three options. One is allowed, the other one is limit, which is the default. And the third one is the limit. Even more So what these options are going to do is going to tell us, you know, how much of the, you know, offensive content or sensitive content should be filtered or allow means it’s gonna show you. Everything, photos and videos that could be upsetting or offensive limit is going to be like it’s gonna show me some photos or videos that could be upsetting or offensive. And the third is limit. Even more is gonna be basically clean up everything, remove all the upsetting offensive video and just show me the videos that are gonna make me happy, joyful and. Make me excited. Well, Instagram and you know I will tell you. So Instagram CEO Adam Kind of posted this. I just happen to be on Instagram right at that minute and actually a minute after he posted, I was on Instagram, he showed up on my feet. So I asked him, hey, I mean, are you guys doing this because you have some data that says, you know, if you do this, people are gonna be ending up using Instagram or it’s just something like, you know. You guys had to cut feeling. Oh, if we do this, it’s gonna be cool. Let’s just go do it. ’cause, I think this is a waste of their, you know. Resources what they could have just is like, you know, an Instagram instead of Instagram going and doing this, filtration and category categorizing all these continents is this is offensive. This is semi offensive. This is super offensive. This is non offensive. Just show it to me, man. We’re all adults. If we don’t like something, we could just swipe to the left and move on and we’ll tell it. Don’t show me this container or anything like this anymore. I mean nudity, I mean. I don’t know, man. And if I as a parent have a way to control it from a child’s account, then yes, I think this is good ’cause. I wouldn’t want my child to see something, you know, offensive or nudity at this point. But again, I don’t even know how this is work, but I think you know they’re spending too much time focused on cleaning up the feed when policing there. Platform. It’s feels like that we’re Facebook and Instagram is like the police platform. They should be focused more on what are the tools can we give to our creators so that they can be more happy on the platforms and let nature take its course. It’s left like Erica doesn’t come and says, you know what we are going to clean up the Internet. China, China does actually I take it back. But Europe doesn’t comments we’re going to clean up their Internet and we’re gonna remove all the porn. I mean, yeah, child born. I can agree to it. But you know, you don’t want police. This ’cause you have like 2 plus billion users. It’s user generated content. You’re just fighting a game where you’re gonna end up spending a lot of money. You’re gonna basically catching a lot of people accidentally, and you’re gonna penalize them. And it’s just gonna go down South from them. And that’s just my opinion. But that’s how I feel. OK. With that, let’s move on to Google’s world with Google World.

[Update 9 – Google Launches Free Deals Listings in Search Results] – 16:36

What we have is Google has this option now basically, if you are free, if you have, you know if you have a product on Google in the shopping tab that shows up for any commerce product and you have loaded up your Your products are on Google to Google Merchant Center, and if you do deals, your products are gonna get shown up higher on the shopping tab. So this is you don’t even have to run any ads. Google is doing this because I think holiday seasons are coming in. Google wants to be the dominant platform where people go to folks. If you’re listening to this, go ahead and take advantage of it. You will be glad you did just because you know you’re getting free. Exposure free traffic. You’d be crazy to not do that. OK with that,

[Update 10 – Google Adds ‘About This Result’ Which Explains Why You’re Seeing Each Result] – 17:22

The next thing I have from Google is that Google now have thing about this result, which explains why you’re seeing each result on your search in search base, which is great. I mean, you know why it’s great. I mean, first of all, it’s great for us as a market here as well as a business owner is because now we could actually do a search, see for computers we’ve set pops up. If so, we can ask Google. Hey. Why is this showing up? Give me some idea and this is gonna really help boost our SEO planning is your things. So it’s a great move from Google in the right directions that you know, we’re gonna basically be able to like kind of look at some why is this such showing up or the ranking for and what the tools like Arabs and Moors shows us versus what Google is telling me we could actually triangle it and get a lot of data out of it. So I love. Just update with that.

[Update 11 – Google Launches New Way to Optimize Videos For Search] – 18:11

The next thing is Google launches a new way to optimize videos for search and what this basically means means is that now you can embed your YouTube video to your website and you know put some tags in your page and I’m and when you do that your videos are going to get picked up by Google search engine during and be able to. If your video has answer to a question that someone is searching for, your video is gonna be shown. This is again a great feature from Google. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna put the link to the developers help docs in my shoulders. Check it out. This is rather a little bit tricky. ’cause you gotta set up the schema and everything, but nevertheless if you can get someone to set it up for you once, you’re golden, there is nothing like free traffic. It’s like. People coming to your in your business doorstep and asking you asking to buy your product and without you doing it, a whole lot of you know, marketing spend is amazing. So great move from Google on this one.

[Update 12 – Google’s Ads New 3-Strike Policy – What Counts As a Strike?] – 19:16

The third thing. Oh anyway, I forgot if it’s the third or the fourth thing. But anyway the last thing this week is a Google basically announced their three there new 3-strike policy and what this basically says is that, you know, hey, Google is gonna give you warnings and you know there the categories are basically if you are enabling dishonest behavior under. If you’re setting under proof substances or dangerous products or services, then you know you are gonna get also including deceptive behavior hacking sellings hacking services by where drugs, weapons, everything like that. Google is gonna first not gonna come out and ban your account. Like some other platforms do like Facebook. What they gonna do is they’re going to send you a warning, right? And if you still do that I send your second warning if you still do that, they’re going to send your third warning in your account. It’s going to be bad, but before, between all these things, they’re gonna basically do after the first strike, your account is going to be placed on a temporary hold for three days. After a second warning, you know the account is gonna, you know, put on a second seventy temporary. Hold your gonna have 90 days. So there’s a lot of room for you to figure out. Hey, if I made a mistake, let me go fix it and things like that. And if sometimes you get, you know, you get dinged by Google and you can appeal it. And if that Apple reverses the decision, then obviously that strike is written off of your record. The strike resets every 90 days. All in all, it’s. Fabulous move from Google to explain how you can get banned and you don’t kind of come and say, oh, I don’t know, I got banned. I didn’t do anything. Google didn’t tell me that. I just woke up and my accounts bad like with this Google is gonna be like hey, we have given you warnings after warnings your account was temporarily blocked for three days then it was seven day temporary blocked. And you didn’t make any changes, you’re still doing what you were doing. Good luck to you. Right. And this also basically means. If your accounts banned your accounts banned for life anywhere that that Google does that already right now, so you don’t wanna be banned by Google

[Closing] – 21:13

With that, folks, that’s it for this week in marketing. Hope you enjoyed the show until next week. Take care. You check out the show, show notes page if you wanna check out some of these articles at the links that I’ve mentioned. OK, 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.