Google announces Privacy Sandbox on Android
After Apple announced App Tracking Transparency (ATT), we’ve all been wondering when Google would follow suit. Well, we have some good news and some bad news…
The bad news: Google has announced plans to eliminate cross-site identifiers (such as advertising IDs) on Android.
The good news: Unlike Apple, Google plans to provide a privacy-friendly alternative once this is rolled out. Although they haven’t provided specifics on the alternative, they have definitely indicated their intent to do it, indirectly calling Apple a “blatantly restricting existing technology”. Way to be subtle, Google…
What this means for you: Tracking individual users on Android will become impossible in the near future. Unlike Apple, Google does not intend to eliminate tracking; they just plan to replace it with more privacy-friendly alternatives, which is good news for us marketers.
E-COMMERCE
Shopify’s earnings report tells us something about the future of e-commerce
Shopify just released their quarterly earnings report. Similarly to the Google update above, we got some good news and some bad news.
Shopify is doing great now: For Q4, the company made $1.38 billion in revenue. This was a 41% increase over the quarter the previous year.
Things won’t stay the same: Despite this, Shopify’s stock dropped 18% after the earnings report. The reason? Slower expected growth in the near future.
Staying at home is old-school: According to Shopify, the e-commerce boom induced by the pandemic may soon be over. People are getting back to the real world, and they’re shopping offline more and more.
The other reasons for the expected slower growth include the removal of government stimulus and concerns about slower spending due to the rising inflation.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
13 social media growth tips Morning Brew’s co-founder used to gain 200k followers
After getting to 200,000 followers on Twitter, Alex Lieberman created a thread sharing his Twitter “growth playbook”.
While Alex talks about it as a “Twitter playbook”, we think many of these tips can be applied to any social media platform.
Find your personal monopoly: Don’t be all things. Choose 2 or 3 topics you want to share about and stick to them. Alex Lieberman for instance picked media, startups, and mental health.
Share threads and original ideas: This thread for instance, helped Alex Lieberman get 5k followers. This means that longer format posts can work on social media.
Interact: Smart replies to tweets work wonders to get on the radar of people you want to connect with. And opens up your content to the audience of the author of the post you’re replying to.
Surfing viral trends can lead to viral tweets: Alex Lieberman’s trendiest tweet was built on the back of Robinhood PR fiasco.
Getting recommended: When someone publicly recommends your account or one of your posts on social media, you’re gaining authority and visibility at the same time.
The recipe to get recommended is 1-part content and 1-part network. And as Alex advises, don’t be afraid to shamelessly promote yourself to your network.
Cross platform arbitrage: Find great ideas on other platforms that haven’t yet spread on Twitter. Or vice versa. You can do LinkedIn-Twitter arbitrage. Or Reddit-Facebook. It will mostly depend on the niche you’re in.
Even though your content is great, they won’t follow you automatically. That’s why you should always include a clear CTA. Make it dummy-proof and super simple for them to follow you or click on a specific link.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
TikTok style UGC you should use
User generated content is the name of the creative game on TikTok. As you’ve heard a million times, classic ads do not work on this platform. And you must entertain.
UGC does a great job at educating customers, entertaining them, and selling the product. That’s why they’re successful and these are three types of UGC ads you can create:
Voice over review: This creative shared by Alex Cooper is a great example. It’s basically a creator showing the product and using it, with the TikTok’s voiceover effect describing the product and its benefits.
Unboxing: Easy one. A big role is played by the package of your product and the quality of the recording. You can try to add some effects to interrupt the pattern and stop the scroll.
“How to”: The classical testimonial video might not work well on TikTok. What can help you be successful is to have an “educational testimonial” video, like this one.
You have two options:
- Have your customer or a creator explain how they use your product.
- “How to video” testimonials: For instance, this video starts with “how to stay hydrated” and shows the testimonial using a product to help her staying hydrated.
Some extra tips for any ad type:
- Use the text design TikTok offers.
- Use trending sounds where you can (whether songs or other sounds).
- Using the text-to-voice feature from TikTok can also help, it feels “native” to the platform.
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PPC: Expect Performance Max campaigns to be added to the Google Ads editor in the near future. That sounds like some rather good news, doesn’t it?
ADVERTISING: Will we soon see ads in WhatsApp? Some preliminary screenshots suggest so. We can’t say we’re shocked, why else did Meta pay $19 billion for an app that had no monetization in place?
BUSINESS: Retail sales have been on the up-and-up in the US in January, rising 3.8% from the month before. This was higher than the expected 2% according to economists surveyed by Refinitiv.
PPC: In more Google Ads news, there are plans to soon support negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. But no keyword tab in Performance Max.
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BRAIN TEASER
Two girls were born to the same mother, on the same day, at the same time, in the same month and year and yet they’re not twins. How can this be?
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.
Zuckerberg to Meta employees: “You’ll now be called Metamates”
And you can’t do anything about it.
Meta has updated its company values and decided to go all-in on the metaverse. So much so that employees have a new nickname, the “metamates.” Yes, we’re serious…
It didn’t take long for Meta employees (and the internet) to start mocking this name. Here are some of our favorite jokes:
- “Metamates sound like a dating app from the metaverse.”
- “Metamates report to the Metatorium for a Metameeting.”
If you’re from the UK and chuckled once you heard “Metamates”, we can’t blame you. If you’re outside the UK, “Mates” is a popular condom brand in the country.