The Strange New World of "Phygital" Ad Campaigns

MEDIA BUYING:So, How Are Your CPMs Doing?

I was poking around a client's Facebook page yesterday. You know that section under organic posts where it's trying to talk you into boosting it? It usually says something like "Boost this post for $X to reach X more people."

This particular post read:

I thought — $25, and I only get 1,100 people? That's a nearly $23 CPM. For a boosted post. A general-audience, weakly-targeted, no-customization reach campaign.

It does seem like CPMs have been spiking lately, doesn't it? The great tracking site at within.co/marketing-pulse/ does show a spike at the end of the June, then it came back a little, but it's still much higher than most of June was:

I asked people in this podcast's Slack community what they're seeing:

• Omar: iOS 14 is costing us a lot of missed data and it’s driving the cost of all our discovery metrics up.

• Eva: For those Facebook AdSets where we target a broad audience... we've seen an increase in CPM for sure! These have performed very well for us before...

• But Frazer reports: We've seen our 14 day average CPM fall by around 15% on Facebook.

• And Gabriela says: The last 2-3 weeks they’ve been stable (across the whole funnel) and slightly declining!

Remember, social platforms are an auction, so your prices are dependent on who you're targeting and how many other brands want those eyeballs too.

If you're not in our Slack community, you're missing out. More than 450 fellow digital marketers are there, waiting to help and lend advice. There's a channel for job postings, for newbie questions, and sometimes even exclusive content you'll only get to hear by being in there.

Just go to TodayInDigital.com/slackIf Discord is more your jam, TodayInDigital.com/discord

AUGMENTED REALITY:Shopping Malls Now Selling "Phygital" Spaces

What do you do if you're a struggling mall, hurt by the pandemic restrictions, and you're trying to build some revenue up. Sure, you can sell spaces on your signage and your social media accounts, but those deals are usually signed annually. What if you need cash now?

Well, you could sell space that doesn't technically exist.

That's what the Brookfield Properties mall ownership group is doing. They're selling what they call "phygital" spaces — that's a combination between physical and digital. Essentially, they're spaces in augmented reality.

They're doing it through a partnership with The Aria Network, which will create AR locations in malls: Like virtual directories, immersive retail displays, and so on — spaces that only exist when shoppers are pointing their smartphone camera forward.

Quoting MarketingDive.com:

THE MARKET:What the Post-Pandemic Economy Looks Like for Retailers

So what does the future hold for retail in a post-COVID world?

New findings from Snapchat suggests 35% of US consumers would go out of their way to visit a store if there was some kind of interactive virtual service tied to the experience.

Let's state the obvious here — Snapchat has huge investments in the augmented reality space, so this finding they reached through a Foresight Factory study shouldn't come as a surprise.

Among the primary discoveries:

• A third of U.S. consumers say mobile is their preferred way to shop. 60% of millennials won’t ever go shopping without their phones. (Side note here: Only 6 out of 10? I won't leave the house without my phone.)

• 40% of shoppers said they're more likely to purchase if there's some kind of way to virtually try on a product

• Half say they missed the social part of in-store shopping, and one-in-five said they'd visit a store if there were product experts on the floor to offer personalized advice.

PODCASTING:Latest Numbers Show Change in Listening Behaviour

An interesting shift may be underway in the way people listen to podcasts.

Stitcher's second-annual Podcasting Report has found that the top listening hours have shifted. Used to be, people mostly listened to podcasts the same times they'd listen to the radio: in peak commuting times. Now, more listening is happening at lunchtime and early afternoon. 

Also, friends' recommendations remain a huge driver of listenership.

The top-searched genres are True Crime, Comedy, Sleep, History, and News. 

Not surprisingly people under 35 skewed towards comedy and narration; those older, toward news and politics.

LIVE AUDIO:Twitter Signs NFL; Will Broadcast in Twitter Spaces

We may be beginning to see Twitter's long-term strategy for its live-audio product, which it calls Spaces. Until now, Spaces have really only matched what's offered on Clubhouse — chat between chatty people.

This week, the NFL signed a deal to broadcast play-by-play football via Spaces. They have plans to do at least 20 broadcasts like this in the upcoming season, including special event streams for the Super Bowl and the Draft.

Twitter's had various deals with the NFL since 2013, but this is the first time Spaces has been included. It should be noted that the NFL also has a deal with Clubhouse — on which Twitter's Spaces was cloned — so perhaps the NFL is hedging its bets a bit.

Also, Twitter is working on a discovery part of Spaces so you can go searching for interesting live audio to listen to.

Right now, you have to be following someone and hope they do a Space.

REGULATION:Twitter Agrees to Demands from Indian Government

In the standoff between Twitter and the government of India — one party has now blinked first. That party: Twitter.

The company this week has agreed to comply with new Indian regulations on content removals and censorship. India had threatened to remove the protection Twitter enjoys over content posted by its users. In fact this past Tuesday, the Indian Government announced Twitter would no longer be granted liability protection against user-generated content.

Twitter now says it will uphold the new regulations. They also agreed to appoint a chief compliance officer and open an office in India.

India has, in the past, demanded the platform remove certain content, and reports say those demands have increased dramatically in the past year — including threats to inprison local Twitter employees. For instance, last year it demanded Twitter block accounts linked to protests by local farmers. First Twitter did indeed block those accounts, then they reversed that decision, citing free speech concerns.

Most of the takedown requests from the Indian government were against accounts that had been critical of the country’s prime minister.

Twitter has some big goals for global user growth — goals that, if unmet, could very well cost Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey his job. Last year, shareholders threatened to oust him.  So making sure India is on board is an important key to that.

BRAND SAFETY:Instagram Rolling Out Tools to Prevent Brigading

So this was awkward. Earlier this week, a young woman applied to be an affiliate for a fashion brand. The brand's vice-president replied internally telling his staff the woman wasn't a fit and wasn't even all that cute. At least he thought he was replying internally. Unfortunately, the sorry bastard hit Reply All and included said young woman in the thread.

She did what you'd expect: she posted it on TikTok. That's all it took to sink the brand's Google review ratings. People also stormed their Instagram channel, posting comments on their products like "It's a terrible colour — and it's not even all that cute!"

This is one of the downsides to being a big brand on social media: you're a big target when things go wrong. And that could open you up to brigading attacks like that one — hundreds, maybe thousands, of people storming your channels to comment.

To help combat that kind of brigading, Instagram is rolling out a kind of brand safety tool to help keep those masses at bay.

Some Instagram accounts now have a section within their Privacy settings called 'Limits' that will let you temporarily limit certain people from posting comments or sending DMs.

For instance, you can prevent accounts that don't follow you from posting. And I know, you're thinking — well, people will just follow, post something, then unfollow. For that, Instagram will also let you block people who've only followed you in the last week.

This isn't a set-it-and-forget-it (sadly) — your settings go back to normal after a period of time, which you can choose... Looks like the options range from 1 day to 4 weeks.

So, right now, this is just a test. No word when or if they'll roll this out to us all.

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