Shiny New Ad Toys

Walmart

it is opening up Walmart Connect to brands that have not traditionally sold their products in its stores, such as automotive and financial marketers – known as “no-endemic” marketers.

Another page from the Amazon ad playbook?

Plus:

  • Brand search terms (yours or competitors)
  • More offline sales tracking
  • More self-serve options, including in-store placements like the TV wall
  • Taking the partner program (Roku, TikTok) wider

Retail media could be a big winner of the cookiepocalypse if its reach can extend beyond classic retail use cases (like advertising a car to someone shopping for a car battery instead of just more parts sold via the retailer).

via Search Engine Land

Microsoft

This month’s top story: Maximize conversion value bid strategy is now available for search and shopping search campaigns

Plus:

  • Microsoft Click ID (is this really new?)
  • something something AI
  • A new hotel tool means the old hotel tool is getting the hook

via Microsoft

LinkedIn

Advertisers can add CTV to their LinkedIn campaigns through a network of partners that includes Paramount, Roku and Samsung Ads.

In addition to LinkedIn’s self-service Campaign Manager, the company also has a managed offering, LinkedIn Premiere via its partnership with NBCUniversal

Ad surprise of the year so far? Benefits of being part of the Microsoft ecosystem.

via MarTech

Google

Google is testing a new format for search ads, the ads go in a slider or carousel that let you swipe through various ads, instead of scrolling past them.

The carousel looks a lot like the new Arc Search look for links from summary pages. Imagine it’s top 1.5 slots or bust for clickthrough and performance with this layout.

via Search Engine Roundtable

Chase (?(!))

This week, JPMorgan Chase launched Chase Media Solutions, its new digital media business. It’s the first bank-led media platform, allowing advertisers to send relevant promotions to some 80 million financial customers.

Any aggregator with first-party data in the post-cookie world could become a media network, Chase’s performance may open the floodgates.

Chase’s advantage is transactional first-party data, which allows brands and agencies to target based on purchase history… Chase customers have purchase histories across retailers and other businesses they buy from.

The immediate winners will be those closest to purchase. With time this could become the new paradigm (along with AI-powered contextual advertising).

via MarTech

Finished reading: The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers 📚

AI and the Complexity of Loss - blog.rinesi.com

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the more technical side of AI.

And a quote that extends beyond AI:

not aggressive enough — you use tame optimization algorithms in contexts where you could learn radically new processes through wildly more creative ones with nothing more at risk that a short-term drop in a dashboard only you and your manager care about.

Doing things “the way they’ve always been done” or “the way everyone else is doing them” usually means results a little less than before or others.

Take (acceptable) risks.

Facebook will play videos in full-screen vertical by default. Plus some UI updates. Think TikTok meets YouTube.

via Meta

Apple Car is dead, meet Apple Robot?

With robotics, Apple could gain a bigger foothold in consumers’ homes and capitalize on advances in artificial intelligence. But it’s not yet clear what approach it might take. Though the robotic smart display is much further along than the mobile bot, it has been added and removed from the company’s product road map over the years, according to the people.

This makes more sense than the car project. And suggests confidence in their AI progress and plan. But feels theoretical at this point.

via Bloomberg

March’s job numbers are in:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 303,000 in March, and the unemployment rate changed little at 3.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, government, and construction.

via BLS

Sounds like Google is kicking the tires on an acquisition of HubSpot.

This is a really interesting listen on how it fits into their plans:

Audio. Always.

Podcasting deserves a larger role in media plans as opposed to “test and learn” experimental buys. 135 million Americans, 47% of persons 12+, are reached monthly.

Adopt agency media legend Arnie Semsky’s “5% solution” to podcasts: Allocate 5% of digital ad budgets to podcasts.

Why?

Among 18-34s, podcast reach is now as big as TV

&

Podcast 18-49 weekly reach is 80% of linear TV

&

Podcast female audience growth has been explosive

&

via Westwood One

Table showing podcastings steady growth since 2017 across familiarity, listening, and frequency. Including a 127% increase in weekly listening.

retail media networks could be a driver for programmatic audio as the next essential advertising channel

A Million Ads global CRO Paul Kelly says audio enables retailers to deliver an audience-centric experience, focusing not just on who the audience is but also where they are in the life cycle of the purchase.

One of my rules for the year: audio always.

via Sounds Profitable

Good reminder: Ads Optimization is Literal

When you select a performance goal in the ad set, the algorithm’s entire focus is getting you as many of that thing as possible.

It’s not trying to get you a certain type of link click or landing page view or ThruPlay. The only goal is to get you that thing and make you happy.

Because Meta is literal, and when you optimize for those things, the assumption is that you are satisfied with that surface-level action.

This is how algorithms work. They don’t make qualitative judgements. It’s a binary “did the action occur?” switch. Yes = success.

🚨 Meta Is Broken

For the second time in just over a month, Meta’s apps, including WhatsApp, and to some extent, Messenger and Instagram, faced outages and intermittent issues.

Meta’s status page detailed disruptions to key business services, including its Ads Manager, Messenger Platform, WhatsApp Business API and others.

via TechCrunch

&

There has been a lot of talk on Twitter/X about Meta Ads being “broken”. This has happened before, but it’s never lasted longer than a few weeks. This time, many brands have seen soft performance for all of Q1.

there is no obvious cause/effect relationship between poor performance and a specific code push or platform outage on Meta’s side.

only some brands are seeing poor performance.

via No Best Practices (a must read for Meta advertisers)

Something is fundamentally broken at Meta (more than usual). Which means it’s a time to experiment freely, on and off the platform.

Anyone trying to garner attention these days is essentially a media entity. This means owned media channels are important (and I think will only become more important over the next few years).

One way to grow this capability is to Acquire media assets to grow your brand.

The marketing function of a company today demands the same or more of a media company.

Editorial blogs, professional-grade podcasts, YouTube channels, curated newsletters, pop culture social media.

Marketing today demands brand.

Build your brand on assets you control, distribute it via channels you don’t.

The AI search engine Perplexity is going to start testing ads

Related questions, which include links to sources, account for 40% of Perplexity’s queries. So Perplexity plans to add relevant, related brand-sponsored questions along with organic questions.

Since ads in AI engines hasn’t been cracked yet, it’ll be interesting to see how these fare. 🔮?

Plus it gives me an excuse to share this quote from the founder:

Ads are not evil. When ads are done right it’s amazing, and generative AI is going to help us build even better targeting.

Make better ads.

via Search Engine Land

A Brand is Empty, then Full

A new brand is an empty vessel.

The meaning doesn’t come from the name or the logo, but from what you fill it up with.

Your drive. Your reason for existing. Your core belief. Your brand experience.

“Just Do It” means more than the strict definition those words when Nike is attached. Red Bull doesn’t literally give you wings. Buying an Apple doesn’t magically make you Think Different.

When we bring a brand to the world, it’s rare indeed that people are okay with it having nothing inside. The wrapper matters, but so does the experience within.

-Seth Godin

Your brand may be hollow when it lives only as a final design file, but it better not be when you launch. Just make sure to leave room for what your fans want to fill it with too.

Looking forward to playing with this new reporting feature from Meta (because I’m a data nerd).

With the Engaged Customers Audience Segment, you can define your engaged customers using custom audiences, which provides reporting breakdowns specifically for this audience.

Meta now offers a new segment to analyze results in Ads Manager. Just go to the Breakdown menu and choose “Demographics by Audience Segments.” From there, you’ll see separate rows for New Customers, Existing Customers, and Engaged Customers

Cracking open the lid of the black box ever so slightly.

I’m a believer in the AI/algorithm-driven targeting but learning more about what audiences it finds success with can be helpful to fold back into other efforts.

via Search Engine Land

The premise is that creators make content for a brand, but instead of living solely on social media channels, that content lives in 15- and 30-second spots on ad-supported streaming platforms.

Interesting concept. Creators scale up their reach, brands scale down their production.

Creators and AI (and their ethos) will increasingly become studios.

Ad meets word of mouth meets social proof meets celebrity endorsement.

And social media eats the world.

via Digiday

Social media is a major gatekeeper at this point—the other one is search—so if you’re building a strategy that would be reliant on social media, I would just ask that publisher “why?” given the fact that the rules of engagement can change on you immediately.

Don’t confuse channels of amplification and distribution for your foundation and infrastructure.

via The Daily podcast from eMarketer

Finished reading: The Wager by David Grann 📚

via the Future Forecast podcast:

Nowstalgia: hyperfast way of looking at nostalgia of things that didn’t happen decades ago but years or even months.

The nostalgia cycle is spinning so fast that the look back period is shortening to hypermodern history.

Or; the half life of attention (but not attention spans) is so short that the idea generation period has to compress to a point where sequels and building off the previous effort is the only viable option. It is impossible to both stay relevant and create from a blank slate each time.

Friday Bits & Bytes | 032924

Why Marketers need to embrace the funny when it comes to podcasting

While there’s no sure-fire formula to being funny, brands that lean into comedic ads find the effort has a good success rate.

A funny ad is a sticky ad

Marketing (and business) doesn’t have to be that serious, have some fun. It may even make your work better.

If only there were a “holiday” coming up that would let you safely try humor for your brand…

How consumers find new brands and products on social media, marketplaces, and brick-and-mortar retail in 5 charts

Here are 2:

Ways in Which US Internet Users Are Informed About a Product or Service, by Age, Nov 2023 (% of respondents) Channels Where US Internet Users Start Their Online Shopping Journeys, 2022 & 2023 (% of respondents)

Over two-thirds (67%) of US 16-to 24-year-olds say they’ve learned about a product or service through a social media video that organically entered their feed

But

Social media is just one part of the discovery mix. Online marketplaces or search engines are the top places where US consumers start their shopping journey

Outside of impulse purchases, discovery and shopping are two different phases.

Are Lookalikes Still Relevant?

I get that lookalikes are technically a bit more specific, in theory. You could find people similar to your paying customers, for example. I wonder if advertisers simply don’t trust the newer options as much as the tried and true lookalikes.

I’m just not convinced that lookalikes are any better than these other methods. I’ve mostly abandoned them completely as a result.

I am now very interested in this question. Mostly because I’m interested in what’s working on Meta.

And because I just made a bunch of lookalikes earlier today for an upcoming campaign. Wonder if that was time wasted…