Facebook To Remove Audience Insights. Please. Stop.

Facebook Adds Story Scheduling

Facebook has filled a long-standing gap that should please social media community managers.

They announced an upgrade to Business Suite today that included the ability to schedule Stories for both Facebook and Instagram.

It’s always seemed odd that this wasn’t possible, but it is now — except for one catch: Many people still don’t even have access to Business Suite.

And here’s where things get complicated.

We’re talking Business Suite on Desktop here, not their app called Business Suite, which contains some, but not all of the features of desktop, and also have some features the desktop version does not have.

Then, there’s Creator Studio, which does everything that Business Suite Desktop does, except for the parts where it doesn’t.

And then, there’s Creative Hub, which has some parts of each, and is missing big chunks of both.

So yeah, situation normal.

Anyway, if you have Business Suite, consider yourself lucky, and now you can schedule your Stories. 

Hopefully soon Facebook will roll out the part of this we all actually want — scheduling ability in the API, so that our preferred third-party tools can do this, and we don’t have to rely on the confusing dog’s breakfast of apps, sites, and platforms that Facebook offers. Or doesn’t, depending on your account.

At least they’re not taking away another analytics tool.

Facebook to Remove Audience Insights

In related news, Facebook today announced it would be taking away another analytics tool — this time, Audience Insights.

As usual, Facebook’s communications strategy for this was to run a banner on the screen of exactly six users and rely on those users to screenshot it and put it on Twitter.

That banner reads: “Audience Insights Is Going Away Soon. Starting July 1, 2021, access to Audience Insights won't be available. You can use Facebook Business Suite Insights to filter and save your audiences.”

But again, per our earlier story, not everybody has Business Suite on Desktop. We don’t, and we’re an agency with a dozen clients. 

There is an Insights page on Business Suite — the mobile app — but it’s pretty barebones. The only audience information it gives you is age, gender, cities, and countries.

Whereas the Audience Insights they’re killing off gives you:

• relationship status

• education level

• job titles

• top page categories

• most popular pages (which you could sort by affinity or relevance)

• languages

• device usage

• how likely any particular audience was to engage with Facebook pages, compared to any other audience group — a stat you could even drill-down by comments, shares, and how likely they are to click ads.

But hey — what do digital marketers need with THAT data, amirte?

Behind the Scenes at Pepsi’s Digital Transformation

An interesting piece in MarketingDive today reveals some of the ways that Pepsi is trying to reinvent itself as a digital-first brand.

A couple of years ago, they quietly launched a venture arm called PepsiCo Labs. The idea was to attract startups they could partner with or buy out — with a phased approach: opportunity, discovery, pilot and scale. 

Quoting from MarketingDive:

The piece also talks about their alignment with a firm called Mirriad that applies computer vision technology to insert products and messages into existing content. 

It really is a great read, if you’re looking for some ideas on how to expand your brand’s digital vision as well. You’ll find it on MarketingDive.com — the headline is “How PepsiCo leverages startup expertise to keep pace with digital tech trends”.

Are Your Digital Experiences Costing You Young Customers?

A shocking falloff of brand loyalty — in the one demographic many marketers obsess over: Generation Z.

A new study from Sitecore found that 80% of Gen Zers said they're more willing to try new brands online than before the pandemic. 80%!

Fifty-seven percent admitted they've become less loyal to their favourite brands than before the pandemic.

The survey was of more than 1,000 American consumers aged 18-24. It was conducted in the first week of this month.

And it gets worse.

• More than a third say they now allow a brand just one second chance to fix a mistake before they switch to a rival. 

• About three quarters (74%) said if an online store is out of stock, they will not wait for it to get back in stock — they’ll just find another seller.

• 37% have either abandoned a purchase or posted a negative review because of a poor — no, not customer service, a poor digital shopping experience.

• And the big one — almost two-thirds (64%) said they want to keep buying almost everything online.

Photo credit: Samantha Jade Royds via Flickr

Google Ads Dynamic Exclusion Lists Coming Soon

A tiny nerdy update for you PPC people — Google today said it would be rolling out dynamic exclusion lists within Google Ads in the next couple of weeks.

These let you automate the process of blocking your ads from showing on specific web pages or websites.

You can create these yourself, or use a third-party’s list, and you can also schedule automatic updates as new web pages or domains are added to Santa’s naughty list.

Also, starting next month Google Ads will be setting a first-party cookie with a new identifier through the Global site tag, so if you’re not using that site-wide tag in Google Tag Manager, it’s time to do that. Since it’s a first-party cookie, it will be limited to users of your site.

TikTok Moderation Changes

Looks like TikTok is working on some changes to its moderation toolset — specifically, being able to manage multiple comments at the same time, so you can take a bulk-action on them all like delete, report, or block.