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YouTube—the unofficial king of podcasts—is coming for the crown.
If you’re a podcast creator, you can use YouTube Studio to upload your podcasts to YouTube through an RSS feed.
via Google
The arc of clarity bends toward simplicity.
Hike Picasso’s Hill
Write like you’re human
Be comfortable with “I don’t know”
This: US credit card balances hit a new record as delinquencies rise in the background
+
The potential for more Fed rate hikes (could overconfidence in coming cuts actually cause the need for hikes?)
+
An election year
Could be a formula for economic performance based on ~vibes~
A still-in-progress big list of digital ad specs to maximize your creative’s usefulness, minimize your work.
Or; how to repurpose your ad assets across digital platforms without having to resize.
It’s either part of your strategy or you’re paying for your mistake.
Great customer service is expensive, but it’s also free. It’s free because delighting a customer who has an issue is the single cheapest way to not only keep that customer, but also have them spread the word.
Everything is customer service
Big List of Digital Ad Specs
As AI continues to takeover many of the tasks that marketers thought made up their "secret sauce," our creative increasingly becomes our most impactful lever for success (remember, a computer vision breakthrough sparked the current AI wave).
Problem is, every platform has their own aspect ratios, recommendations, and minimum sizes. But! That doesn't mean assets can't be used across platforms.
Here is a list of the sizes you'll get the most cross-platform mileage from.
Note: this post is a work-in-progress. It will be expanded with more platforms and recommendations over time.
IMAGES
1200x1200
- Google Ads
- Meta
- Pinterest Shopping Collection pin hero
- Spotify
1080x1350
1200x628
- Google Ads
- Meta - search and right column placements
900x1600
- Google Ads
- Meta - any messaging/context must be included in the asset (Story placements do not display any text fields from Ads Manager if the asset is fullscreen)
960x1200
- Google Ads
1000x1500
- Pinterest - with CTA and any messaging/context included in the asset (direct link clicks mean users will not see any of the Pin text)
300x60
- Companion banner asset for YouTube ads
VIDEOS
1200x1200
- Meta (can be gif or video file format. An animated gif uploaded as an image won't animate.)
- Pinterest max width video
1080x1920
- YouTube Shorts
- Meta vertical placements
- TikTok
- Spotify Video Takeover
This lesson from Inside Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen: “You can change either the taste or the form… but you can’t change the taste and the form.”
Customers need an anchor point in familiarity.
Vice on the trendy Stanley Tumblers
responsible for a $676 million increase in revenue, from 2019 to 2023, for the brand
dropping exclusives, like their Stanley X Starbucks collab, which led people to literally camp out outside stores.
Their most recent drop – a limited edition Valentine’s Day cup, in a fairly normal pink and a fairly normal red – has people performing citizen’s arrests in Target in an effort to cop.
A dash of (not untrue) snark:
following the rule-book of forced hyper-exclusivity typically only seen in hype bro fashion brands
The power of drops
From Exploding Topics:
Immersive dining is part of the Immersive Experiences meta trend.
Searches for “immersive experiences” have grown by 144% over the past 24 months.
Immersive experiences have become more accessible, thanks to technologies like AR, VR, and projection mapping.
Videos about immersive experiences have over 515 million views on TikTok.
The further we get from pandemic-era lockdowns, the more the consumer pendulum swings from goods to experiences.
When I started doing things just for growth’s sake and didn’t let the product simmer within the industry, I started making a lot of mistakes. With the products, with the customers, with the positioning.
About that Google kicking cookies to the curb thing…
Google is phasing out third-party cookies this fall, but some sites will be able to temporarily re-enable them until the year end.
via MarTech
It’s GA4 all over again
🍪 ☠️
The day has come, with Google activating the first stage of its cookie-removal strategy today [January 4]
via SocialMediaToday
From FedEx to airlines, companies are starting to lose their pricing power
Consumers may be regaining power in the marketplace
It’s a shift from the recent years when consumers spent at a breakneck pace — and at high prices — lifting corporate revenues to new records. But faced with weakening demand, more price-sensitive consumers, easing inflation and better supply, some sectors are now forced to find profit growth without the tailwind of price hikes.
Societal gradient descent toward that long-rumored “new normal”
The current state of shipping & returns:
Returns totaled $743B in 2023; reach 14.5% of sales
Online sales have a higher return rate, with 17.6% or $247 billion of merchandise purchased online returned
&
about 81% of merchants are now charging their customers a fee for at least some form of returns.
&
Free shipping is more important to shoppers than same-day delivery
Three-fourths of U.S. online consumers said free shipping is among the most important criteria they consider when deciding where to shop online
Beware viral trends:
It seems people spent the last few days of 2023 encouraging their followers to get to know them better. Or, according to one cyber-security expert, helping potential hackers access their information.
_via Business Insider
Black Sheep Thinking: Aim For "No"
My goal for you this year is to hear “no” more.
Sounds weird, right?
Here’s why…
If your aren’t getting reeled back in a bit, you’re not pushing far enough.
If you aren’t getting told “no,” you're not pushing far enough.
Our job (whether we’re agency or an internal marketer) is not just to give the client what they want, but to give them the version they didn’t know they wanted. To elevate their wants to a higher level of execution.
If we are being curious marketers then we have a vision for where things are going. What direction platforms are evolving in. What users are expecting and engaging with. And we need to pull our clients down those paths.
Brands have comfort zones. We need to find the edges and stretch them.
We need to aim for “no.”
The other TikTok Shop shoe drops
From The Information:
The company on Wednesday told sellers it will start taking a bigger cut of the sales they make on its app, by raising the commission it charges on most items to 8% over the next few months from 2% plus 30 cents per transaction currently. At the same time, TikTok Shop has started reducing some subsidies for merchants that sell on the app, according to a person familiar with the changes, limiting the offers to top-selling items as the company slashes its spending on the service.
On a list of behavioral science tips from Social Media Examiner:
Simplify Complexity: The Cognitive Fluency Principle
People gravitate toward information that takes less effort to process mentally. Simple and easy-to-digest messages feel more truthful and inspire greater confidence.
optimizing for cognitive fluency wins more positive reception and boosts response from your audience.
Picasso’s Hill anyone?
Elon/X (unsurprisingly) can’t make up his/its mind about link titles in feed previews.
It’s obvious why (it’s not because it “looks cleaner”), it makes links look images.
Which means:
- look less clickable
- stay in feed
- see more ads
- collect more pennies as revenue vanishes
