[Ep85] – 4 New Features In Google Ads Performance Planner

[Introduction] – 00:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 85 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 November 29, 2021.

[Update 1 – Shopify Shares BFCM Sales Figure] – 00:14

So today First off, we’re going to start off with some numbers from Shopify on their Black Friday/ Cyber Monday campaigns now. Before I share that, I want to ask you or you might be asking, right? Sajid, why are you sharing these numbers? Well, there is a kind of a. You know there is a lesson in these numbers. Number one. These numbers are going to show you the amount of the volume of transactions that happen. Again. Shopify is only one channel, but this should as a small business owner or someone who’s working in the small business world, you realize that you know direct to consumer from B2C. Is really picking up and it’s growing and it’s here to stay and it will give you some ideas on how to best plan your next campaign, whether it’s for Christmas. If you still haven’t figured out a good campaign strategy or if it’s for the next year, whether it’s you know Valentine’s Day or any other holiday season that’s going to come in, ahead of us. OK with that. So here the numbers on Friday they did about $2.9 billion and on the combined Black Friday Cyber Monday they did through $6.3 billion right? That’s impressive, right? And with about they did. Well, Shopify didn’t do, but purchasers bought from Shopify merchants and on Friday it went up to $3.1 million per minute. That’s the amount of transactions that happen. Like you know, 47 million consumers globally purchased from independent and direct-to-consumer brands powered by Shopify that Shopify wrote. And that’s powerful, right? And then, this is another great number thing you should know, and this should actually help you set the frame of where things are heading. 71% of Black Friday Cyber Monday sales were made on mobile devices and 29% on desktop. So if you haven’t built a mobile-first, you know strategy yet for your website you are lagging behind. You are losing a lot of the sales, right? That’s the other point. I wanted to make here and there is an update later today on Google we will cover that over on that in that section. But for now, I just want to focus on Shopify. And the other thing you need to know is under two other things that you need to know before I move away from this topic are number one. The average cart price was about $101.00, which is up from last year’s Black Friday, on which $90.00 roughly. So this again shows consumer confidence. And you know spending more online. And purchasing directly from Independence Mall. B2C brands. Lastly, what Shopify says that you know 15% of the orders, 15% of the orders globally where cross border right? And the highest most popular cross border routes being US to Canada, Canada to US, and United Kingdom to US. So these are some points that you should keep in mind as you plan your marketing campaigns, your business decisions, and hope this helps you.

[Update 2 – LinkedIn Adds Live Video & Newsletters To Creator Mode] – 03:34

With that. Let’s move on to the next update for this week. It’s LinkedIn. So LinkedIn now has beefed up their creator mode with a new features number one. It’s now creator’s can get do live videos. Previously it was only available to members and pages with 150 followers or more, or who met the criteria. So Linkedin’s are giving access to everyone. And they’re also giving everyone the creator mode. People who have creator mode turned on. They now have access to newsletter, which will also help you to keep in touch with your audience. Now what LinkedIn is saying this? Whenever you publish a new article in your newsletter, your subscribers are automatically notified via push in-app and email notification so that they stay up to date with your list content. To where is LinkedIn going with this? Number one, live we all know right? Facebook’s there is Facebook live. There’s Instagram live and LinkedIn had this kind of, you know, in a beta version logged on version, now it’s open to everyone. So I’m not going to get into that. What I want to talk about is this. On the newsletter mode, which is great. So for example, right now if I publish an article on LinkedIn or even a Medium or Substack, I would have to send an email an extra email to people saying, hey, I have an article not so much with the Sbstack, but on a blog or medium. I have to do that now I can publish it in LinkedIn and I could just basically LinkedIn is going to that. Or heavy lifting for me. I don’t have to worry about email composing and things like that, and I get to focus on what I do best, which is creating my content. I like this when LinkedIn is going. It’s actually something good that other platforms would not be able to kind of, you know copy or eventhough Facebook could, but I don’t think Facebook is too big to do that. So LinkedIn has found their niche and you’re staying on it and helping creators create content and LinkedIn people are more thought leaders on LinkedIn. So this is gonna be great for LinkedIn, so if you haven’t checked it out, make sure you do that. The other thing LinkedIn is also saying is improve their improving discovery for LinkedIn creators with creator mode turned on. You’ll be eligible to be featured as a suggested creator to follow. That could help you, or for your on-platform presence and following with looking with LinkedIn looking to highlight relevant creators based on topics and activity to interested users. So for example, if we had always tagging ourselves as Google ads hashtag Google ads, maybe we might get featured one day. Who knows, but I will not hold my breath to that breath on that. And let’s move on to the next one.

[Update 3 – LinkedIn Kick-Starts Privacy-Friendly Approaches to Data Collection and Ad Targeting] – 06:10

The other thing from LinkedIn for this week was LinkedIn has kickstarted the privacy-friendly approaches to data collection and add targeting. AKA in you know, first party data cookie tracking, which what happened was if you remember if you’ve been following us, show Apple with iOS 14.6 introduced this. Apple ATT, which is basically Apple’s privacy feature and that prevented platform, should track users while they were mobile and making transactions and doing things. So LinkedIn is, you know, basically coming out with a solution and you know this saying you know we have we’re going to use category-based data. We don’t have to worry about third-party Cookie data, it’s going to be first-party and you’re going to be all good. That’s a high-level task LinkedIn is doing. So for now, what you need to do is you need to enable first-party settings on your LinkedIn insight tag. That’s all you need to know. I don’t want to go into the technical details. All you need to know is whether you understand third-party and first-party data. Apple’s ATT and things like that. All you need to do is going to your LinkedIn Insight Tab and turn on first-party settings and everything should work for you and it will help you get the data that you need to go run your business on.

[Update 4 – Twitter Bans Sharing Sharing Images & Videos Of Private Persons Without Consent] – 07:33

Next Twitter this week came out and banned sharing of images and videos of private person without consent. Now it’s a double edge sword. It’s a good thing that you know people cannot share your private photos or if you’re seeing and people are posting and you don’t like it, you could actually take that out down. But it’s a slippery slope as well, but Twitter? Why is a slippery slope? Is that you know people are going to basically bombard Twitter with takedown request things like that, and they’re going to get busy, but I would like to be more on the safer side. OK, fine, you know if I don’t want my picture to be somewhere and someone’s posting it, I can ask someone to take it down. I can ask Twitter to take it down without feeling helpless. Now, I do want to point out and Twitter actually went ahead and said that if you are in a public space and with a group of people, then it’s not a private photo right. On the other hand, like you know, for example, and this is in May, I mean your Facebook also came out this week and talking about you know nonconsensual intimate images. NCII which is basically also known as revenge porn. Revenge porn where you know people posting other people’s you know not so intimate. Not saying, I should rephrase this, intimate images online as a revenge. But Facebook is also banning that. But I think Twitter is not going. They saying it as revenge porn but Twitter is saying hey you cannot take someone’s photo and that’s private and post online now. Public figures and celebrities are not do not. Do not fall under this policy and if you violate it, you might get you know, slap on the wrist, like a small ban to a permanent ban right? With that, let’s move on or before I move on. Why did I share it on our on our show is because you know you as a small business owner, you need to be very, very careful. Whose pictures and images you know share if you are in a restaurant. Make sure, and if you’re taking pictures, make sure of our guests enjoying your food. Make sure you ask them for the permission. That’s what’s important.

[Update 5 – Meta Loosens Restrictions On Cryptocurrency Ads] – 09:45

Next up, Meta AKA Facebook loosens restrictions on cryptocurrency ads because Facebook is saying, hey, we realized cryptocurrencies are gaining momentum in part of the broader Web 3.0 push. And again, if you’re not familiar with Web 3.0 currently, we are in Web 2.0. Word 3.0 is basically all. Decentralized web infrastructure in a future like Web 2.0 Facebook cannot actually ban you and even if they ban you they’re just gonna be one aspect and you will still be visiting other platforms. But that’s a discussion or that’s topic for another day. What I want to talk about is cryptocurrencies are based on web 3.0, which is this decentralized? No one country, no one individual can lock you out of the system because it’s all decentralized. If someones locks you out of their system, you just unknown or show up there but everywhere else. So Facebook aka Meta or Meta AKA Facebook is coming out and said, you know, we know this is going to be the future so we might as well slowly loosen up but you know you need to get. Permissions from your local regulatory authourity before you can actually put those cryptocurrency ads. I will stop right here. There will be a link on our show notes page. Check it out if you want to read more, but basically right now they have they accept licenses up to 20 from 27 different agencies. And they have different various countries have seen Singapore. I’ve seen you KFC in US. Obviously other countries that have allowed that are regulating cryptocurrencies. They can put ads on crypto, or they can make ads on cryptocurrencies, that’s all.

[Update 6 – TikTok Introduces Monetization Options Tips, Video Gifts] – 11:26

Next up on Tiktok, what we have is Tiktok introduces monetization options and tips and video gifts for creators through their Creator Next programs. So again, this is something nothing new. Is. Just that TikTok is bringing this expansion to a lot of more videos more reach. So initially it was again, that’s how all these platforms do when they roll out a new feature. They kind of give it their. You know, the most help the roll these features out to their users or creators who are using that platform the most, and then slowly roll it out to the. Other users and creators like we saw that with LinkedIn live right. First, it was only you know, in a beta mode where only certain creators got it, the big names and then slowly everyone else got it. So this is a good thing? What tikTok is doing allowing everyone or the creators in the creator next program to be able to get monetized their video and again they have lower the threshold as well. The threshold is now you need to have at least 1000 followers and you should must have generated at least 1000 video views in the previous 30 days. I will tell you this is a really low bar, a low threshold Twitter,  TikTok has set. I’m not sure why I’m saying Twitter, it should be TikTok. In addition to this, TikTok is also lowering the threshold for use for those who can list the profile in creator, Marketplace brand collaboration platform which enables businesses to find TikTok influences to partner with on in-app campaigns. Up until now, creators have required. 100K followers to qualify for these listings but now Tiktok is reducing that number to 10,000 followers which will further expand available opportunities for both users and brands. This is great. If you ask me, TikTok, again is going on and building new things that I think Instagram is going to copy and roll out in the next few weeks.

[Update 7 – Google’s Mobile-First Indexing Is On Hold] – 13:29

OK Next up, Google Mobile-first indexing is on hold. OK, we talked about a little bit about mobile-first websites when we covered a Shopify update. The Google kind of rolled out earlier this year that says hey, we wanna basically we actually last year they announced hey we want to basically start indexing mobile-first websites and we’re going to penalize you. And then they kind of push that date to March 2021 and now they have come out and they basically said you know what we’re going to put it on hold because we realized. The lot of websites out there that are not mobile-friendly yet or mobile-first yet and we cannot just start penalizing people. Now, what does that mean folks? If you are listening to this podcast, do not be one of those people who do not have a mobile-friendly website. You need to have mobile-friendly. In fact, you should develop a mobile site first and that’s how we built our last web website. That’s how we did our website.  built was the last time we revamped it, is basically built in a mobile format first, and then we see how does it look on desktop versus doing desktop and then sent as it look good in mobile. Don’t do that. This is very important right? But for now, even though it’s on hold from Google’s, but go ahead and make sure you make changes to your website as needed ’cause you don’t want to miss out from sales.

[Update 8 – 4 New Features In Google Ads Performance Planner] – 14:52

Last up, Google ads have updated our added new four new features in the performance planner. The new features are the ability to add previously ineligible campaigns by using past performance or adding manual forecast to plan across your entire account. The suggested changes column, which display budget and bid recommendations for a specific campaign. The ability to add second metrics to a performance plan which may help advertisers understand impacts on performance and beyond their most important metrics. For example, if you create a plan to maximize conversions, you can also now add a column that show that changes to clicks as well. 4th, they believed you select a specific time range for historical conversion rate. This enables advertisers to use our historical conversion rate that may be closer to what they’re expecting for the plans date range. Overall, these are these new features. Expand performance planners if flexibility. Making it to more useful for the advertisers in more situations. Now advertisers can ad campaigns that may have previously been ineligible, enabling them to generate forecast for those campaigns. Go ahead and check it out. I do plan to make a video showing you a detail. Walkthrough of how these features will workout. It is inappropriate and it’s actually quite time-consuming for me to explain this. All these features here. I just wanted you to know Google’s four new good features in performance planner.

[Closing] – 16:22

With that folks, that’s it for This Week In Marketing. Now you know everything to be in the know. If you’d like to read more, make sure you visit our show page where you would 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.