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consumer confidence fell unexpectedly mid-October

What could have caused that 🤔

Fall 2024: the vibe got weird #analysis

there’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s financial strains. The election is behind us, but there’s always a transition uncertainty that happens that gets people no matter who wins. And if it’s your side or not your side, that still gets people a little bit worried before the official transition happens next year. So I think consumers are coming from a place of I don’t want to say scared, but a little bit more cautious

People might just ease into 2025 at this point.

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Seth builds on this sentiment in this great podcast strategy walkthrough.

There are 4 decisions you make that determine the future of your business.

When you pick your:

  • Customers
  • Competitors
  • Distribution
  • Constraints
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Choose your customers, choose your future

-Seth Godin

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Apple continues its services push:

Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence across apps that customers use every day, including Apple Maps, Wallet, and Mail.

Now more than just a Google Business Profile clone, Business Connect adds:

  • Branded email: name and logo in Mail
  • Branded payments: logo in Tap to Pay
  • Branded incoming call screen with Business Caller ID (coming soon)

Apple is turning its hardware network into an integrated marketing platform.

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data shows consumers remember and engage with emotionally-resonant ads.
  • High-quality video should be emotional, not just technically sound
  • Consumers want to feel included
  • Remember social media is associated with negative emotions
  • Funny is memorable
  • Brands that make people feel happy get paid

Brands aren’t people, but they can act like people are behind them.

Are you not entertained?

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Google giving us more control?

With brand guidelines, you can control how your brand is represented in your Performance Max campaign automated assets or formats.

Your Performance Max campaigns use Google AI to infer key brand elements using your final URL. You’ll be able to review the brand information Google infers, then can fine-tune your brand guidelines based on your brand and campaign goals.

Guidelines help control generated videos and responsive display and include font, color, name, and logo(s).

Brand marketers rejoice!

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Bloomberg: Baidu Readies AI Smart Glasses to Rival Meta’s Ray-Bans

Meta’s are becoming computers (thanks AI!). And the true vision is in prototype.

Apple is joining in.

The VR players are pivoting. AR glasses are the path. Ambient computing.

Think Snap wants some credit? And maybe some commission?

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Turn On, Tune In, Dropout: Business Lessons from College(Humor)

Sam Reich, CEO of Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor), sat down with Fast Company to talk about the brand’s journey (video embedded below, podcast version here to the subscription-based niche media company it is today.

On growing Dropout:

Because we’re not in the meta-sport of growing this business, we can be very slow and responsible and reasonable about it.

It’s important to know what game you’re playing. Otherwise you won’t know the rules and you’ll be using the wrong game board.

Be honest—at least with yourself—about what your true goals are for your brand. The best goals are the ones not derived from the covers of business magazines, hustle bro tweets, or scale-worshipping podcasts.

There’s more discussion around this idea in this episode of Seth Godin’s podcast (specifically around the 13:30 mark if you want just the growth talk).

On focus:

We are really 90% focused on growing the platform. And that focus, so far, has paid off.

Or, as the modern philosopher Ron Swanson says: “never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.”

But! don’t lose sight of the parts that make up the one thing.

For Dropout, growing the platform means attracting new audience and keeping existing audience happy and subscribing. Those are accomplished in different ways—but can leverage a common core approach.

Know the north star goal. Develop strategies and metrics for the highest leverage inputs for that goal. The C-suite / leadership mostly just wants the north star info, everyone else needs to focus on the core inputs.

On zigging to other’s zag:

This era of hyper-premium content has created a reactionary market where folks are really interested in stuff that feels a little bit more garage band-y and authentic.

A small player can come in and be disruptive because a big player can’t adopt their business model without disrupting their existing business model.

Trying to do what the industry heavyweight(s) does but a bit better is not a viable plan. Finding the gap in their model—the unserved audience—is a winning plan.

Know the game you’re playing. Know the way you want to play it. Know the strengths and weaknesses of the other players. Know your style. Know the loophole.

The podcast version gets into a lot more of the strategy and approach.

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Pinterest Pushing Further Into Social Commerce

Talked with my Pinterest Ads rep today and got some more insight on a couple commerce features in beta.

ROAS Bidding
This is a tweak to Performance+ bidding to focus on conversion value, adjusting the bid based on the expected return.

It works best for those with a wide spread of price points. And, as always with algorithmic features, requires consistent signal of decent volume (current benchmark is 30 conversions a week).

Promotions
Mentioned this in the October platform updates roundup, but now have some more info.

It adds promos / offers to ads in campaigns geared to on-site actions using a selection of template options across 3 categories: discount, shipping, and conditional (spend $x, get $y off, etc).

Shopify integration available, including automatically applying promo codes at checkout. Not sure how it functions without Shopify, guessing there will be a Promotions section in the catalog area where you can manually add a template.

Bonus Best Practice
Pause ads that have been running for ~2 weeks with low/0% CTR and replace with a new one. The inflection point CTR is somewhere around 1% , I think.

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The Federal Reserve has dropped the fed rate target another 1/4 point (0.25%), putting it in the 4.5-4.75% range.

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CapCut has launched Commerce Pro, an AI-powered rapid asset creation studio.

  • Image and video (from a URL) generation
  • In-video product links
  • Voice and audio generation
  • Virtual try-on
  • Licensed templates

The TikTok ban still lingers. Is ByteDance diversifying or entrenching? Or just a cash grab?

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It seems Google is testing adding if there was a change to that score because of "competitive pressure" and might even list the competitor that is causing such pressure.

Might we be getting more helpful info from Google to help with ads management?

More context, more better.

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Now you can ignore everything I put in the big election spending post from yesterday.

We will pause ads relating to US elections from serving in the US after the last polls close on election day, November 5th, 2024. This will include US Election Ads as well as ads that refer to US elections, their processes or outcomes.
The restriction period for ads about social issues, elections or politics is being extended until later this week.

Pressure released.

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Apple Inc. is exploring a push into smart glasses with an internal study of products currently on the market, setting the stage for the company to follow Meta Platforms Inc. into an increasingly popular category.

I’ve long felt that glasses make the most sense as the next popular computing form factor. Augmented by headphones.

Both form factors are well established by now. They don’t require new behavior like VR.

Computational dispersal Ambient computing

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Election Campaign Spending Crowds Out Your Messaging

I’ve been harping about election campaign spending and its impact on marketing expectations this year for a bit now. So here’s an Election Day post running through it all again. Go vote!

2024 is projected to be a record-breaking year, surpassing $12 billion in political ad spend.

Seventy percent of that windfall will be spent after Labor Day

The Harris campaign has instead focused its digital spending on larger platforms like Google and Meta, where it has spent over $280mn this year. The vast amount of political spending on those platforms — already more than $1.5bn
For context, in the second half of October, political parties spent well over $2.5 million per day on YouTube. For Meta, it’s closer to $1 million per day.

Why won’t I shut up about this?

Because this level of spend puts intense pressure on the ad auctions and inventories of the utilized platforms. These are mostly net-new dollars flowing in at a rapid clip. For most brands this means higher ad costs and lower return reducing the efficiency of their spend.

Emarketer curated some reporting that includes:

  • brands reporting ad costs increasing 2-3x in the final weeks of the election
  • surging TV ad costs, especially in swing states

Of course, the impact on marketing budgets is just the beginning.

This messaging overload overwhelms consumers, raises anxiety levels, and increases ad fatigue (who else is sick of all the election messaging you get bombarded with?). Which can all lead to a “pre-election slump” in consumer spending. Of course, this theoretical slump is not universal—I bet alcohol sales and the like are doing just fine.

But the bigger the price tag, the bigger the impact.

In times of uncertainty, people sit on their cash. They purchase discount or off-brand. They hold off on large luxury purchases made in celebration or confidence.

Election Day itself is no exception, more the final culmination of the building gravitational pull. A black hole that will collapse into itself tomorrow (right? please?!).

the election is fraying the nerves of the electorate, with nearly 70% of US adults calling it a significant source of stress

According to a recent Ipsos poll of roughly 1,000 US adults, 47% said election stress is causing them to spend less and save more

Meanwhile, the scale of an Election Day productivity slowdown could be staggering. An analysis by Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that productivity losses could reach $3.5 billion per hour
Your marketing and messaging is like a fire, it needs a steady source of fuel to keep burning—to act as a beacon to the people it's for. The election is a vacuum, it sucks all the oxygen (and attention) out, making it all but impossible for that fire to keep burning without any changes.
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How the election outcome could impact how you make marketing decisions in the years to come. Because the context you market within matters.

This is as close as I’m going to get to being political.

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audio makes up 31% of media activity consumption in the U.S. in 2021, but only received 8.8% of the advertising spend

Opportunity!

When it comes to your marketing mix, audio always.

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But one day you’ll be the last person writing words on the web and wonder where everyone went.

I read this and think that a text resurgence is a good bet.

Yes short-form video is hot like Hansel and NotebookLLM turns text into audio for people who don’t want to read, but text is our oldest technology.

And in the age of AI, people may not read text, but is it not the building block input of these models?

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Perplexity (AI) is adding to its competition with Google (and most major tech platforms), trying to carve itself a slice of that sweet e-commerce pie.

The Pro Shop feature promises free shipping on items bought through Perplexity, enabling customers to complete transactions without leaving the platform. While browsing for products, users will notice a “Buy with Pro” option for eligible items. After selecting it, they will need to enter their billing and shipping details to finalize their purchase.

Perplexity will estimate taxes and purchase the product on behalf of the users on Pro Shop, and users can track purchase status on the platform.

If successful, I imagine this feature will evolve over time and become less manual/personal shopper style on the Perplexity side.

Or maybe it leans into that AI-as-assistant approach to create a new angle on a competitive feature set.

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My team is probably tired of hearing me talk about this stuff, but context is important. Especially when talking to clients.

For context, in the second half of October, political parties spent well over $2.5 million per day on YouTube. For Meta, it’s closer to $1 million per day.

November 6 will be a pressure release. In more ways than one.