He Came In Like a Wrecking Ball

In Today’s Issue:

🔍 Google will start deleting inactive accounts tomorrow — is your brand’s grey account on the list?

🔗 Pinterest‘s Direct Links now expanded to more types of campaigns

🌍 Threads gets topic/brand search, and may soon launch in the EU

🎥 YouTube updates its Product Drops feature and adds new analytics cards

👋 Jerry Dischler steps down as head of Google Ads

🗣️ Elon Musk tells X’s advertisers to “Go fuck yourselves.” (No, he really did.)

DELETION DEADLINE
Google to Purge Inactive Accounts This Week

• Google starts wiping inactive accounts on December 1.

• Applies to consumer/free Gmail Google accounts only.

• You just need to sign in and do something to keep your account safe.

Tomorrow, Google will begin a large-scale effort to delete inactive Gmail accounts. They say inactive accounts are 10 times less likely to have two-factor authentication enabled.

This is of particular importance to marketers and brand managers — many of whom set up a free Gmail account to handle web site admin emails, or login accounts — accounts that are sometimes not checked for months or years.

If you are one of these marketers, it’s easy to get off the deletion list — you just need to sign in and do something — like read an email, send one, access Google Drive, use Google Search while signed in, or watch a YouTube video. Also, if you’ve ever used that account to upload a YouTube video, your account should be safe.

But if you haven’t done any of those in the last two years, your account might very well get deleted permanently tomorrow.

What’s not clear is what happens to those user names — will they be freed up so competitors or squatters can move in? Google hasn’t said.

Also, this applies only to the consumer-level Google accounts, not business accounts that use Google Workspace.

Incidentally, there was a small Gmail outage today that was delaying email sends, so if you noticed that, it wasn’t you.

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EU ENTRY
‘Threads’ Now Has Topic Search, and Will Soon Launch in EU

• Meta's text-based network Threads launching in EU soon.

• EU users may get view-only mode to comply with regulations.

• Threads app collects significant data, uses Instagram login.

This afternoon, Threads, Meta’s attempt at a Twitter killer, launched the ability to search for keywords in posts.

Keyword/Brand Search

To be clear, these are not hashtags — rather, you can search for a word like your brand name or a topic, and it will find posts that those words in them.

First, tap the search icon 🔍, then type a keyword or phrase into the search bar and you’ll see a prompt to “Search for” that topic. Tap on that prompt and you’ll land on a results page.

I should note that once you get a results page, it has a unique URL, which you could bookmark and check daily if you’re looking for people using your brand name out there. Also, there is nothing preventing you from engaging with posts you find in search.

This is not in the API because there is no Threads API yet, so this all has to happen on desktop or in the app.

Threads Heading to Europe

Also, The Wall Street Journal reporting this week that that Threads will soon be available in the EU. Until now, it’s stayed out, mostly for fear of getting on the bad side of the region’s heightened regulations.

The report says it’s likely the company would let people view content without an account, and only need one to post or engage.

So many people in the EU wanted to get in on Threads, that Meta apparently had to build in VPN blockers.

During Meta’s Q3 earnings call, the company said Threads has just under than 100 million monthly active users.

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LINKS LAUNCHED
Pinterest Upgrades Its ‘One-Tap-to-Website’ Ad Product

Pinterest is upgrading its Direct Links product.

With regular Pinterest ads, users need to click twice to navigate off to an advertiser’s web site. First tap, people see a close-up view of the ad, and then a second tap takes them off Pinterest to the landing page.

But the Direct Links product goes directly to the advertiser’s site.

The company first announced direct links at its advertiser summit back in September.

This week, they’ve extended the feature to include more campaign types. You can now use Direct Links for both consideration and conversion campaigns, across image and video formats.  

Pinterest says brands that started using Direct Links for consideration campaigns have seen an average of 96% more clicks to site with the links enabled, compared to their previous campaigns.

Direct Links have already been automatically enabled for consideration campaigns. For conversion and shopping campaigns, you’ll turn those on manually in the platform’s Ads Manager, within the Pin review screen for a specific campaign.

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UPGRADES
YouTube Updates: Product Drops, Text Updates, and More

YouTube is also upgrading some of its marketing tools — this week announcing a bunch of small updates.

Product Drops

First, they’re updating their Product Drops in live streams, making them available to more creators beyond those with Shopify or Google Merchant Center access.

You’ll also be able to launch Drops at any time during a live stream. This is a particularly welcome improvement from the previous version, which required you to schedule those in advance of going live.

Community Posts

They’re also updating the Community Posts creation flow — those are their text-only status updates that channels sometimes use to communicate with their subscribers.

Perhaps as a response to Twitter’s implosion, YouTube has been doubling down on the text posts lately, adding things like polls, quizzes, disappearing updates, and more.

Revenue Analytics

YouTube is also adding more data to the “Total Members” insights. You’ll find out where members joined from, and why users cancelled their memberships.

LOGGING OUT
The Head of Google Ads Has Left the Company

• Jerry Dischler has led Google Ads since 2020.

• Dischler's departure follows a 15-year tenure at Google.

• Vidhya Srinivasan to replace Dischler as head of Google Ads.

Jerry Dischler, who has run Google Ads since 2020, is leaving the company. Dischler was with the department for more than 15 years.

The company’s VP/GM of Advertising will take over.

A Google spokesperson took to social media to say “this was his decision and not related to the [anti-trust] trial.”

TWEET TANTRUM
Elon Literally Tells Advertisers to “Go Fuck Themselves.”

This is Elon Musk yesterday at a New York Times event, after having been asked his thoughts on the massive advertiser boycott at X:

Estimates show X may lose up to $75 million from the exodus of Earth’s largest advertisers.

Honestly, the best part of that whole thing came at the beginning, when Musk said “Jonathan, the only reason I am here is because you are a friend.”

To which the moderator replied, “I’m Andrew.”

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