We’re All Doing a Terrible Job with Diversity in Ads

Hi friends, everyone (regardless of tier) is getting today’s episode, in lieu of today’s podcast. 

On Monday, my wife and I said goodbye to a cherished family pet, and we’re taking a couple of slower-than-usual days to give ourselves a bit of grace. 

I expect to be back with the podcast tomorrow or Thursday.

Thanks for your understanding. ❤️

CMOs Reflect on How COVID Reshaped Marketing

MarketingDive.com has an excellent piece up about how CMOs would have done things differently, now that they’ve got a year of pandemic experience under their belt.

The full piece is definitely worth a read. Here are some highlights:

"Lockdowns churned up stress, anxiety, and so much more… Those emotions are now a lasting part of the landscape — not just for marketing, but for all forms of communications, and most importantly, for people. Empathy and compassion are a permanent part of marketing's new tool box.”— Amy Fuller, CMO, Accenture

"The pandemic has put marketing more squarely back in the middle of a company's operations. Any talk about not needing a CMO or marketing anymore has quieted down a little all around the industry."— Ivan Pollard, Global CMO, General Mills

"Everything you thought you knew or had in your toolbox had to be re-evaluated and flexed to meet the new, and rapidly changing, conditions. From new ways to creating assets during COVID restrictions to accelerating our online business growth, our team had to pivot with speed and agility. You had to be relevant to the consumer mindset and that was constantly shifting as the pandemic, the economy, and the impacts on families evolved.”— Mary Alderete, CMO, The Gap

"The pandemic reinforced how important it is for brands to be committed to their mission through action and not just messaging alone. Throughout the pandemic, we saw that the Bumble community was struggling with feelings of loneliness as social distancing measures and lockdowns continued. This motivated our team to double down on Bumble's mission to create a world where all relationships are healthy and equitable." — Dominic Gallello, CMO, Bumble

Online Advertisers are Doing a Terrible Job Reflecting the Diversity of the Market

A study released by Facebook found 54% of people polled don’t feel represented in online ads.

As part of the study, they found:

• Women are 14.1 times more likely than men to be shown in revealing clothing and are 6.9 times more likely to be visually or verbally objectified;

• Men are 2.4 times more likely than women to be presented as angry and 1.4 times less likely to be shown as happy.

• People with disabilities were severely underrepresented in online ads (present in only 1.1% of the ads examined) as were members of the LGBTQ+ community (0.3%).

• Most people polled (71%) said they expect brands to promote diversity and inclusion in their online advertising.

The full study is definitely worth your time, as you plan your next campaigns.

The study was done was in partnership with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media . It polled 1,200 people, reviewed more than 1,200 brand life studies, and analyzed 1,022 global Facebook video ads.

More than 1 in 4 Internet Users are Blocking Your Ads

Yes, Apple’s upcoming IDFA changes will prevent you from getting valuable ad tracking data.

But already, more than a quarter of Internet users are blocking your ads and tracking cookies.

eMarketer’s latest data found:

• Use of ad blockers is fairly evenly split between males and females.

• Highest usage is in the 18-to-24-year-old age range

• Usage decreases for people less than 12 or 65 and older.

From a per-capita point of view, Europe has the highest ad blocker search volume:

In fact, nine of the 10 countries that searched the most for ad blocking tools are in Europe — with Canada (#9) being the only non-European country to make the top ten. (Some countries were not included in the study, notably China and Hong Kong.)

Data from GlobalWebIndex, found these are the top reasons people use ad blockers (in order):

• Too many ads

• Ads that are annoying or irrelevant.

• Ads that are too intrusive.

• Concerns that ads contain viruses.

• Dislike for personalized ads.

Facebook Platform Updates

A Way to Pause Your Marketplace Ads

Facebook has added a new 'Holiday Mode' to Marketplace. Which lets you pause your brand’s Marketplace listings for a period of time.

Buyers won't be able to place orders or start new conversations with you. If you have pending orders that need to be fulfilled, turning on holiday mode does not cancel or pause these orders.

800 million people browse Facebook's market listings each month.

You should be able to find this toggle in your Marketplace settings.

Facebook Tests Sharing Instagram Reels to Facebook

In case you were wondering whether Facebook is in full-panic mode over the successes TikTok are seeing, here’s some evidence: They’re close to letting people share their “Reels” to Facebook.

Reels are Instagram’s version of TikTok videos, and they’re testing a quick way to cross-post these short videos to the Facebook News Feed.

From SocialMediaToday.com: 

Honestly, I feel like TikTok has too much of a headstart here — and a much stronger interests recommendation algorithm. 

(Then again, I once went on CBC Radio and said blogs were going to be a passing fad. So, there’s that. 😉)

Instagram Adds New Auto-Captions Option

Another idea lifted from TikTok, Instagram is rolling out a new 'Closed Captions' functionality for Stories.

You apply it like a sticker, then it will generate captions for your clips.

This kind of function was added to Threads last year, and it’s been amusing to watch TikTok creators use the Instagram Threads app to generate captions, then take the video and post on TikTok.

If you don’t have that sticker yet, it should get to your account in the coming days.

Twitter Platform Updates

Twitter Gets TAG Certification

Twitter has earned the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) Brand Safety Certified Seal.

This program program sets global brand safety standards that apply to:

• digital advertising agreements

• monetized content takedown practices

• the use of inclusion/exclusion lists

• the documentation of specific policies and procedures used to minimize the risk of ad misplacement

Twitter said, in an announcement:

In December, Twitter said it was working on accreditation from the Media Ratings Council (which, by the way, might have one of the world’s ugliest web sites) to certify viewability and audience measurement. They are still working on that.

Some industry context from SocialMediaToday.com:

Twitter Will Now Enable Advertisers to Control Who Can Reply to Their Promoted Tweets

Some great news for brands that run Twitter ads: They’ll soon let advertisers limit who can reply to tweet ads.

Yes, this is essentially the same functionality they gave to organic tweets a few months ago.

As with Twitter's regular conversation controls, advertisers will be able to leave it as the default, which will mean that anyone can reply, or they'll be able to select “People you follow” or “Only people you mention”, restricting who can respond.

This would be an especially welcome addition for brands that tend to get a lot of troll replies.

Twitter says 11 million people so far have restricted tweet replies in some way since the function launched.

Google’s Link Ads are Leaving Tomorrow

Finally, don’t forget that Google is retiring Link Ads tomorrow, as part of their move to “modernize” available ad formats.

What does this mean? 

Starting tomorrow (March 10): 

• You will no longer be able to create link ad units.

• Your link ad units will be renamed with [previously link ad unit] added to the end of the ad unit name. This will apply to both responsive and fixed-size link ad units.

• Responsive link ads will begin to serve display ad units on your site(s).

• Fixed-size link ads will stop serving on your site(s).We will collapse each ad unit where possible. In other cases we will show a blank ad.

Google says responsive display ads perform as well as link ads, in most cases.

The company recommends that you remove the fixed-size link ad units from your site and try out the following ad formats instead:

• You can let Auto ads scan your site and automatically place ads where they’re likely to perform well. Learn more about how to get started with Auto ads.

• Display ads work well anywhere on your site. Learn more about how to create a display ad unit.

• For a customized ad experience, you could try native ads. Learn more about how to create a native ad unit.

• If your site is eligible for Matched content, you can replace your link ad units with a customizable Matched content ad unit. Learn more about customizing Matched content.