[Ep77/04Oct21] - YouTube Ads Available on Connected Television (CTV) Platforms & Other Digital Marketing Updates from the Week of Oct 04, 2021

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

1. Microsoft Advertising Sunsetting ETAs Too & Auto-Generate Remarketing List - Following Google Ads footsteps, Microsoft Advertising announced that beginning June 30, 2022, responsive search ads (RSAs) will be the only search ad type that can be created or edited in standard search campaigns. introducing a new product that can automatically generate remarketing lists for advertisers. The three types of auto-generated remarketing lists are:

1. All Visitors list: A list of users who visited the advertiser’s website in the past 30 days.
2. All Converters list: A list of users who converted within the past 180 days.
3. Smart Remarketing list: A list of users likely to convert, powered by Microsoft Advertising’s audience intelligence and designed to deliver a higher conversion rate.

Advertisers can use one, two or all three lists simultaneously, along with their existing remarketing and audience targeting lists. Universal Event Tracking and active conversion goals will need to be configured to leverage the All Converters and Smart Remarketing list options.

2. Pinterest Adds New Shopping Features, Including Brand Profile Details and Sponsored Idea Pins - Andrew @ Socialmediatoday.com writes - Pinterest is adding a new ‘Slideshow for Collections’ promotion option, which will source products from your uploaded catalog “into an automatically generated, attention-grabbing collections ad”. The new Slideshow for Collections ad unit will appear in-stream in relevant searches, helping to reach people that have already shown interest in similar products. When tapped, the unit then expands into a more focused collection of your products, again, all automatically generated based on your inventory.

Pinterest is also adding new merchant details to brand profiles, which will enable businesses to showcase their values in the app. This provides another way to facilitate stronger brand connection, especially among more socially-conscious, younger shoppers who are increasingly looking to buy from brands that align with their values.

Pinterest is also expanding its Verified Merchant Program, which highlights businesses that meet Pinterest’s customer service and brand connection guidelines with a verified checkmark in the app. Launched last year in the US, Pinterest’s Verified Merchant program ensures that more businesses are linking their product catalog into the app, while also adhering to Pinterest’s customer response standards.

And finally, Pinterest is also testing a new sponsored content option for Idea Pins, which is Pinterest’s take on the Stories format. Sponsored Idea Pins are displayed with a profile image of the creator, along with a “Paid Partnership” tag to disclose the brand relationship. Sponsored Idea Pins will also, importantly, provide Pinterest with another means to help creators earn money, and get paid for their efforts, which will ensure more, higher quality Idea Pins keep flowing.

3. Snapchat Rolls Out Run for Office Mini - From socialmediatoday, over the past few years, Snapchat has been working to get its young user base more involved in the political process, through voting awareness stickers, polling location tracking, voter registration pushes, Discover programming and more. And now, Snap’s looking to take the next step in civic engagement, by prompting its users to actually become politicians, and directly influence political shifts.

The ‘Run for Office’ mini provides a range of key insights into local political positions, as well as explainers on the steps that people need to take in order to nominate themselves for relevant local ballots and positions. The mini will also include info on filing deadlines and signature requirements, and provide contact information for local election offices.

Snapchatters in the US can access the new ‘Run for Office’ mini by opening Snapchat and swiping down on the camera screen to access Snap’s in-app games, where the mini will be listed, or you can search ‘Run for Office’ within Snapchat.

4. Snapchat Announces New Creator Monetization Tools as it Seeks to Maximize In-App Engagement - From SocialMediaToday.com, Snapchat’s launching new ‘Spotlight Challenges’ (payment program for its TikTok-like Spotlight feed), which will provide cash prizes for users who post the best videos on a specific theme. The new Spotlight Challenges will outline the specifics of each trend, as well as the prizes on offer for the best performing clips in each category.

It’s a fairly straightforward process, and it could provide a means for Snapchat to fuel rising content trends, which is one of the key ways that users engage on TikTok. It could also provide a new revenue opportunity for the app, with brands eventually able to sponsor specific Spotlight trends relative to their promotions.

“The total prize amount for individual Spotlight Challenges will typically range from $1k to $25k, although occasionally we may make available a larger sum for a particular Challenge, and the minimum prize a Snapchatter can win in a Spotlight Challenge is $250.”

At launch, in November last year, Snapchat announced that it would pay out $1 million per day, to be shared among the top-performing Spotlight clips, as means to incentivize engagement, and kick-start the offering. Which worked – by the end of Q1, Spotlight had jumped to 125 million monthly active users (out of Snapchat’s 280m total actives), but by that stage, Snap had already paid out $90 million in creator payments, with more to come, and the cost-to-benefit ratio was starting to look a little out of whack.

Hindsight aside, with the costs continuing to mount up, in June, Snap announced an update to its Spotlight payment process, shifting from daily payments of $1 million for Spotlight clips to a more vague 'millions per month'. That’s caused various problems for Snap creators, who had already raised concerns about delayed payments and other issues with the program. Maybe, then, this will be a more logical, and sustainable means of funding Spotlight clips, which could also entice a broader range of creators into the program, as opposed to the top creators taking the lion’s share of the funding.

5. Mailchimp Helps SMBs Optimize Email Campaigns - Mailchimp, the email marketing platform, has announced new functionality to help optimize email campaigns. Content Optimizer will recommend specific improvements to email campaigns based on an AI-driven comparison of the content with best content practices gleaned from Mailchimp’s billions of marketing data-sets.

Content Optimizer will make recommendations relating to readability, typography, CTA placements and compliance with brand standards.

This is Mailchimp’s latest attempt to level the playing field between small and larger businesses by providing affordable automation of an important marketing process

6. Twitter Professional Profiles Available to More Businesses - After an initial rollout to a small test group, Twitter is now opening up applications for professional profiles to all interested businesses. All businesses can now apply for a professional profile on Twitter, which grants access to exclusive features.

A professional profile is a free upgrade to standard profiles, which is available as an option to those with professional accounts. You can use a professional profile to display information you’re not able to showcase on a standard profile.

Businesses, publishers, developers, and creators can display the follow...