Meet "MER": Your Next Favourite Marketing Metric

FRIDAY QUIZ: When Does Google Give Up on Redirects?

If you need to change the URL of a web page, that's easy to do from a technical point of view, but may have a significant and negative effect on that page's Google listing. After all, if it's not at the old address, Google assumes you've deleted it.

So most of us will use a 301 redirect. This is a way to tell Google: "Hey, we've moved this page permanently, so here's the new address and we don't plan to move it back."

But how long is Google's memory?

On the Friday quiz: How long will Google retry old, redirected URLs?

• Will it only check once, make a note of it, then never visit the old URL again?

• Will it check once a year?

• Will it try potentially for years, but at a slower frequency of checking?

• Does it remain on the same schedule as it always was forever, just in case it comes back?

The answer to the Friday quiz, later in today's issue.

GOOGLE ADS: Change Your Conversion Values Automatically

One of the strongest metrics we have in the various social ad platforms is Conversion Value. This lets us put a dollar figure on what a Conversion is worth to us. If we're advertising a $20 book and we get a conversion, we can tell the platform to report that as $20 in value so we can calculate our ROAS.

But it's not always that simple.

Think about B2B prospects. That's not a sale with a dollar amount, that's a lead. So we've had to estimate what we think the value of that lead is. Most people use a calculation like this: "Well, average customer lifetime value is $1000, and we turn 10% of those leads into customers, so that lead is worth $100."

It's imperfect, of course, and ignores a lot of the smaller signals that might indicate a higher quality lead. Is a lead worth more when the customer is local? Maybe.

This week, Google gave us digital marketers a way to change that conversion or lead value on the fly using the same kind of rules that automate delivery of our campaigns.

Quoting SearchEngineJournal.com:

This obviously is a great new tool for us, especially in this world where it's getting harder to track ROI.

You can set these rules up in the conversions settings of your Google Ads account and select Value Rules on the left-hand side.

THE ADPOCALYPSE: Andrew Foxwell on the New Measurement Regime

Much of the data we're all seeing in Facebook's ads manager is, well, made up: Educated guesses based on machine learning. It's guessing because lots of people have opted out of ad tracking on Apple devices. Not as many as we all thought would, but enough that it's having a pretty big impact on our ability to measure ROAS — Return on Ad Spend.

This measurement gap is causing some marketers to develop new ways of measuring results, and one that's gaining some traction is MER: the Marketing Efficiency Ratio.

Andrew Foxwell, a Facebook ads veteran of more than 10 years, and I had a lengthy chat this morning about MER, the new Conversions API, which Facebook metrics just can’t be trusted any more, and lots more.

Premium Newsletter subscribers will get a link to this full interview in their email tomorrow.

Not a Premium subscriber yet? Go to todayindigital.com/newsletter for a free seven-day trial (yes, this will get you the full interview with Andrew).

Andrew, by the way, has a number of fantastic courses into everything from scaling a campaign the right way, to optimizing your ad account, and he just launched a membership program with lots of great value — check it all out at FoxwellDigital.com.

READ MORE: What is MER and why is it important?

CROSS-PROMOTIONS: The World's First All-TikTok Radio Station

A new radio station launched today, but there was something unique about it.

The SiriusXM satellite and streaming network this morning launched TikTok Radio — a 24/7 station devoted to the trending music on the platform. And it's a real radio station, if not terrestrial, with real DJs, TikTok influencers, popular musicians, and they say some of the most popular creators on the app — including Bella Poarch and Dixie D'Amelio — will pop in occasionally and do takeovers.

Shows will include the "TikTok Radio Trending Ten," a weekly countdown of the top 10 songs trending in the TikTok community, and "For You" — with live DJs remixing popular songs.

This isn't the first crossover — the Sirius-owned Pandora music platform put out a limited-run series and playlist devoted to TikTok.

TWITTER: Changes to DMs Coming

Some changes coming to Twitter DMs.

First, you'll soon be able to share a tweet across multiple DM chats at once — up to 20.

And they're changing the way DMs are shown — they'll now be grouped by date so a little less timestamp clutter in the threads, and a couple of smaller UI tweaks as well.

These changes start rolling out today on their mobile apps.

SNAPCHAT: Picks Up Another Facebook Executive

Another significant loss in the ranks of Facebook's senior executives — this time, their head of platform partnerships, is taking on a similar role at Snapchat.

He is (and I'm sorry for the butchering of this) Konstantinos Papamiltiadis and he's been tapped to oversee the app's augmented reality efforts.

He spent nine years at Facebook.

One last Facebook note, the company's head of security policy today said they had launched new tools for its users in Afghanistan, including the ability to hide “friends” lists and quickly lock down accounts.

QUIZ ANSWER:

As for the quiz: How long will Google retry old, redirected URLs?

Google search engineer John Mueller answered this in a tweet this week, saying:

So not to panic if you're checking your logs and see Google still smacking its head up against these old filenames — this is as planned.

By the way, Google's official advice is to keep redirects in place indefinitely, if you can — or at least for a full year:

Sponsor the Friday quiz for a whole month for less than $100. Visit TodayInDigital.com/ads or tap the link in today's episode notes.

And finally…

My wife is gone for a full week — this might be the longest we've been apart in 10 years. So you know what means: Chinese food every night!

She hates it. I love it. Until I eat some, then I hate it again. But then the next night I love it — you know how it is.

Today in Digital Marketing is produced on beautiful Vancouver Island by engageQ digital. Production support and fact checking by Sarah Guild. Podcast theme composer Mark Blevis is the smell of fresh rain hitting hot pavement. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Tod Maffin, have a restful weekend friends, and I'll talk to you on Monday.