The great blip
Yesterday, the world stopped suddenly for many Instagram users.
If you were among them, you probably saw a notification that “your account is suspended”—seemingly for breaking the rules—as you tried to enter the app.
How many were affected: There’s no official number, but some publications estimated it could be millions due to the drop in followers on certain popular accounts.
For instance, The Verge noticed 3M followers were missing from Cristiano Ronaldo’s profile, while Instagram’s official account was also a million short.
No Thanos’ Insta-finger-snap: There’s no indication this was intentional. Instagram said they were aware of the issue, and Adam Mosseri promised users they were working on the solution.
The problem has since been resolved and according to Instagram, affected users can now log in to their accounts again. Umm…yay?
Why we care: While it’s good to know your account wasn’t suspended, this outage doesn’t look good on Meta.
Let’s hope that this was just a blip…
ADVERTISING
Google’s privacy-first measurement tool, Microsoft’s Performance Max support
Who says competing ad platforms can’t work in harmony?
While Google is launching new features, Microsoft is helping you import some of Google’s campaigns to their Merchant Center. Nice.
Google introduced the Ads Data Hub, a new measurement solution that helps you do custom campaign analysis while protecting user privacy. The feature is intended for two user types:
- Ads Data Hub for Marketers helps advertisers get access to insights and analyze data so they make better media buying decisions.
- Ads Data Hub for Measurement Partners gives partners the ability to reveal YouTube insights and measurement services on behalf of marketers, agencies, and publishers.
Also, Google announced plans to implement Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR), helping you to access your first party data securely and hopefully more easily.
… And Microsoft launched their Performance Max import solution, allowing you to duplicate Performance Max campaigns across platforms through their Google Import tool.
These campaigns will be imported as Smart Shopping Campaigns and Local Inventory Ads.
Microsoft is also launching a program to import Performance Max campaigns without a Merchant Center. These campaigns will be imported as Search Campaigns and create Dynamic Search Ads.
Microsoft includes best practices for importing, so make sure you read the linked article.
Why we care: Google’s privacy-first measurement tool could protect user data while providing in-depth insights, especially when it comes to YouTube and CTV advertising.
And you can now easily import Google Performance Max campaigns into Microsoft even if you don’t have a Merchant Center account.
Life suddenly got just a little bit easier…
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This is the time of the year when you add a looootttta email addresses to your list, and send email marketing campaigns crucial for your business.
Are you making sure those new emails or the old emails on your list which became invalid aren’t ruining your deliverability?
Because here’s what happens when you don’t regularly verify your lists and new emails, especially before high volume campaigns:
- Every time you send an email to an invalid address, your message gets bounced, which threatens your reputation.
- Mistyped, invalid email addresses or a spamtraps on your list mean you lose valuable customers and prospects forever.
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And for the entire month of November, you can verify your list for a huge discount.
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SEO
Make sure you understand Search Console’s hidden data
If you want to handle your Search Console dashboard like a true professional, you need to understand every detail, including the stuff that isn’t obvious.
… Like how Google “hides” particular data, and why.
Google recently published a guide to how it limits and filters data which you can apply to your analysis and make your website more visible. So let’s dig in.
First, the basics: Every performance report has four key metrics to show how your organic traffic changes over time, including clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and position.
And you can analyze these metrics for different dimensions, such as queries, devices, countries, and more.
Why does Search Console limit data? There are two answers to this:
- First, to protect user privacy.
- Second, to assist with logistic purposes such as preserving latency, storage, resources, and more.
Let’s unpack this a little more…
#1 – Privacy filtering. If a query is coming from just one user, for example, the data for that user’s other parameters can become vulnerable, like country, device, etc.
So Google hides some of the queries to make them anonymized—and that can distort your reports a bit. For example,
- You may have 450 clicks for visible queries in your report, while the total number of clicks is 550. That’s because 100 clicks are anonymized to protect user privacy.
- You may notice that when you apply filters, some clicks “disappear.” That’s because Search Console won’t display anonymized clicks.
#2 – Daily data row limit. To preserve resources, the maximum number of data rows you can export is 1,000. But if you’re using Search Analytics API, the number is 50,000.
So if you’re running a large website, or a website with diverse traffic coming from many queries, you should know that some data could be lost during exportation.
Why hidden data matters: Because when you’re building reports, your clients or higher-ups may notice the discrepancies—and you should be able to explain them.
Plus, knowing this gives you a better understanding of your own website and can help you scale traffic. And that’s always a good thing, isn’t it?
SPONSORED BY CLICKUP
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
The 20 master plotlines in storytelling, and why they matter for marketers
Like every art form, storytelling is incredibly diverse.
There are short essays about ethics. Million-word epics about dragons and sorcery. Fairy tales about murderous, grandma-eating wolves. Historical fiction about the Roman Empire.
You get the idea.
But, for all their diversity, did you know there are really only about twenty master plotlines that your favorite stories follow?
The three plotlines below are the ones we find most interesting for marketers:
- Ascension. This is your classic rags-to-riches story framework. The character, either internally or externally (or both) begins in a terrible place and works their way up to glory. If you can help people visualize their own ascension story using your product, you’ll probably make more sales.
- Transformation. A transformation plot leads to a change in someone or something, often because of an unexpected event. These are compelling stories, and they’re valuable when marketers tell them. It’s often a good idea to use your product as the “unexpected event” in your customers’ positive transformation story.
- Forbidden Love. Didn’t expect to see this one here, did you? Think again: marketing your product as something people “aren’t supposed to have” can make the product more appealing. If you’ve ever read advertising that says “This isn’t for…” or “You probably shouldn’t buy this…” then you’ve seen Forbidden Love in action.
It would take too many words to write out all the plotlines in this newsletter, but you can read about the rest here if you’re interested.
The next time you sit down to brainstorm, try thinking of your campaign as a story using a plotline. It just might spark some of your best ideas yet.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SMS MARKETING: Gary Vaynerchuk has a site called WineText. And according to him, his SMS list of 9,000 customers consistently outperforms Wine Library’s email list of 400,000 by 9x. You can learn how to do that too. Go from SMS noob to pro in one sitting.*
TWITTER: Being a blue check is about to get pricey. One of Elon Musk’s first moves as Twitter CEO is to “upgrade” premium Twitter Blue subscription with a more expensive $20 membership that also verifies users. Interesting move…
SEO: No, stuffing keywords in local reviews probably won’t affect your overall rankings. One study put keywords like “fresh cut Christmas trees” into a bunch of company reviews, but rankings stayed the same. Good to know.
BUSINESS: New York City’s new law requires private sector employers to list proposed salaries in all posted job ads as a way to “promote salary transparency.” Does this mean we’ll see more transparent marketing job postings in the future?
TIKTOK: Why record your voice when a text-to-speech tool can sing for you instead? TikTok’s powerful feature is becoming available for more users, so see if it appears for you. You won’t regret it, pinky promise.
*This is a sponsored post
BRAIN TEASER
Two girls ate dinner together. They both ordered iced tea. One girl drank them very fast and had finished five in the time it took the other to drink just one. The girl who drank one iced tea died while the other survived. All of the drinks were poisoned.
How did the girl who drank the most survive?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Tuk-tuks! Run!
Which vehicle would you drive to fight crime?
- A regular squad car.
- A batmobile.
- A tuk-tuk.
Tuk-tuk? Yeah, that’s the sound of criminals’ rapid heartbeat as they run from these terrifying motorized rickshaws. It’s also the official name of these three-wheeled police cars.
Thanks to tuk-tuks, officers can patrol parks and city streets while people sleep soundly at night.
Seriously, just imagine being chased by those things. Chills.