MTM Ep#28: New podcast format & fresh digital marketing news

– Hey, everyone, welcome back to

[00:00:02.03] “More Than Marketing”, I’m
your host, Arsham Mirshah.

[00:00:04.08] And I’m switching up
the format a little bit.

[00:00:07.00] I used to have guests with me,

[00:00:08.08] now I’m gonna try a different format

[00:00:11.06] where I give you the
latest and most impactful

[00:00:15.03] digital marketing news
and tell you my opinion

[00:00:19.00] on it, what it means for you,
what you can do about it,

[00:00:21.07] and try that as an angle.

[00:00:24.00] Might have guests come on, might not.

[00:00:25.08] But for now, let’s get into it.

[00:00:27.07] So today, I wanna talk
about four different topics.

[00:00:30.08] The first of which being Microsoft,

[00:00:32.07] Microsoft advertising, Microsoft controls

[00:00:35.05] Bing and Yahoo search engines,

[00:00:38.02] they have their own ad
network for display as well,

[00:00:42.08] but Microsoft has just rolled out

[00:00:44.05] product audiences and similar audiences.

[00:00:49.07] And that’s now in open beta
as of September of 2019.

[00:00:54.04] And it’s exciting because
it’s new technology,

[00:00:59.06] it’s new features you can use.

[00:01:01.06] It’s kind of about
time, that’s my opinion.

[00:01:05.07] Facebook had look a like audiences

[00:01:09.07] from I can’t even remember when,

[00:01:12.02] ’cause it was so long ago
I can’t even remember,

[00:01:13.09] then Google came out
with similar audience,

[00:01:17.06] to expand your audience,
then LinkedIn came out,

[00:01:20.01] and now Microsoft has bought LinkedIn.

[00:01:23.08] So now Bing and Yahoo has that as well.

[00:01:28.04] So product audiences is similar
to like Google remarketing,

[00:01:34.03] where you do a search for a product

[00:01:37.03] and you don’t buy it and then you go

[00:01:40.02] about your way on the merry web

[00:01:42.02] and you see an ad for that product.

[00:01:44.09] And you’re like, whoa
someone was following me.

[00:01:46.08] Yeah, so that’s Google doing retargeting

[00:01:50.02] or remarketing specific to the
product you were looking at.

[00:01:54.07] So product audience is opening beta

[00:01:56.09] right in time for the holiday season,

[00:01:59.07] and then it’s triggered just
like Google by product ID.

[00:02:03.07] So it kinda takes a product
advertiser to set it up.

[00:02:08.07] There’s some technology
and some tech behind it.

[00:02:11.06] But, you know, it’s pretty
easy to set up, relatively,

[00:02:15.06] and it can be really impactful

[00:02:17.01] to get people to come back to your site

[00:02:19.01] and buy the product they
were looking at, right?

[00:02:22.05] Then there’s similar audiences.

[00:02:24.04] Similar audiences is like to expand

[00:02:26.08] your remarketing audience.

[00:02:28.07] So, let’s say you have, you know,

[00:02:30.09] 1000 people that come to your site,

[00:02:33.05] presumably those 1000 people
are relevant to your business.

[00:02:38.00] Well there are tens of thousands of people

[00:02:41.05] that are relevant to your business,

[00:02:43.03] only 1000 of them are coming to your site.

[00:02:45.09] Now what you can do is
you can tell Microsoft,

[00:02:48.06] Bing, and Yahoo to say hey now retarget

[00:02:51.07] to not only the 1000 people
that came to my site,

[00:02:54.02] but also help me expand that to people

[00:02:57.05] who haven’t come to my site but look like

[00:03:00.00] the audience that is coming
to my site, my visitors.

[00:03:04.00] Microsoft is using AI, machine learning,

[00:03:06.08] and looking at, you
know, tons of data points

[00:03:09.05] and variables to tell you who, or find

[00:03:13.08] these similar audiences, right?

[00:03:15.08] So similar leverages our
ability to take partner data

[00:03:18.09] and extrapolate it across
multiple Microsoft audiences

[00:03:21.05] to improve conversion rates in RY.

[00:03:24.02] There’s a quote in here
that similar audiences pilot

[00:03:27.04] advertisers saw 70% higher
conversions, says Microsoft.

[00:03:32.02] Exciting things, definitely
something to try out,

[00:03:36.00] you know, look Binging, you know,

[00:03:37.09] ads have been really
efficient for some audiences

[00:03:42.09] or some of the clients that we work with.

[00:03:45.04] Especially those targeting
maybe an older audience

[00:03:48.09] or maybe an audience in
BtB, or subcontractor,

[00:03:53.07] or government contractors, or just

[00:03:57.01] non-tech savvy folks, right?

[00:03:59.03] We’ve found very highly efficient cost

[00:04:03.00] reposition on Bing and Yahoo.

[00:04:06.00] So definitely something
to check out there.

[00:04:10.01] Moving on, next, big
announcement from Google,

[00:04:14.02] again back in September, they rolled out

[00:04:17.08] their biggest search
engine algorithm update

[00:04:23.04] since, they say, 10 years ago.

[00:04:26.05] So it’s the biggest since 10 years ago,

[00:04:28.00] they’ve had several algorithms come out.

[00:04:31.04] Penguin, Panda, it’s like
Google’s starting a zoo

[00:04:35.00] or something, they name
them all after animals.

[00:04:37.02] I don’t know why.

[00:04:38.00] This one was not named
after an animal though,

[00:04:40.05] this one, well actually, it
might be named after an animal.

[00:04:44.08] So, it’s named BERT, B-E-R-T.

[00:04:48.02] Sort of like BERT and
Ernie from Sesame Street.

[00:04:51.00] I don’t know if BERT is an
animal or not, no he’s not.

[00:04:54.02] I’m not up to my Sesame Street
but that doesn’t matter.

[00:04:56.09] BERT, if you are super
technical and you want to know

[00:05:00.03] what it stands for it’s
bidirectional encoder

[00:05:03.00] representations from transformers.

[00:05:07.07] Now, let me make that in
layman’s speak for you.

[00:05:11.05] So, a transformer is
a word like to or from

[00:05:19.00] or for or no, for example,
if you were to search google

[00:05:24.04] for parking on a hill with no curb,

[00:05:31.09] before BERT, before the algorithm update,

[00:05:34.02] you would get a search result,

[00:05:36.05] like the first result would be

[00:05:38.00] about parking on a hill
with a curb, right?

[00:05:42.04] So it would kind of ignore
the word no or otherwise

[00:05:44.09] not give it the treatment that it needs.

[00:05:48.01] Whereas now bidirectional
encoder representation

[00:05:51.08] of transformer takes that no word,

[00:05:54.03] that transformer, and sees
what’s around it, right?

[00:05:57.08] No curb, okay, curb is the next word,

[00:06:00.00] great, I’m going to show
you a different result,

[00:06:05.04] one that is about, you
know, parking on a curb

[00:06:09.00] without, parking on a hill without a curb.

[00:06:13.00] Another example, for
instance, would be like

[00:06:16.00] Brazil traveler to USA needs a visa.

[00:06:22.08] So before BERT, you would
see like US citizens

[00:06:26.04] can travel to Brazil without
the red tape of a visa.

[00:06:30.05] Well that’s US citizens going to Brazil,

[00:06:33.01] but if you read the query again

[00:06:34.06] it’s Brazil traveler to the USA.

[00:06:37.08] So now after BERT it’s saying,
you know, Google is taking

[00:06:42.00] that to and saying oh Brazil came after,

[00:06:45.07] Brazil came before the
to, the transformer,

[00:06:50.04] and then USA came after it,

[00:06:53.02] so now let me change my search result.

[00:06:54.09] The search result is US Embassy consulate

[00:06:59.03] in Brazil, so it’s
actually a better result.

[00:07:02.05] So what’s this all mean?

[00:07:03.05] Basically, look, Google’s
job is, Google’s mission

[00:07:06.02] is to organize the world’s
information, right?

[00:07:09.03] So when they release an
algorithm, it’s, you know,

[00:07:13.00] their aim is to make the
results for your queries better,

[00:07:17.09] more accurate, more precise, more specific

[00:07:21.03] to what you’re looking for.

[00:07:23.07] What can you do about this?

[00:07:27.08] Really what you’re gonna do is just

[00:07:30.02] continue to create awesome content.

[00:07:33.01] Specific content, content
that helps your users,

[00:07:36.00] not content for your search engines.

[00:07:38.03] Or to game the search engines, right?

[00:07:40.01] Gaming the search engine,
search engine optimization,

[00:07:43.00] you know, when search engine
optimization first started,

[00:07:45.04] I don’t know, 2004 maybe
or really before that,

[00:07:50.08] whenever Google came out, that was when

[00:07:52.00] the first search engine
optimization started, right?

[00:07:55.04] It was really easy to game the system.

[00:07:57.03] Right, you’d put white
texts on white backgrounds,

[00:07:59.06] stuff the key words, make a tag,

[00:08:01.04] and none of that stuff works anymore,

[00:08:03.02] in fact it penalizes you.

[00:08:05.02] Google’s really smart, so
let’s not game the system.

[00:08:09.00] Gaming it only is getting
harder and harder.

[00:08:12.02] But search traffic is growing.

[00:08:15.09] The number of people that are searching

[00:08:18.07] is growing, ’cause more
people come on the internet

[00:08:21.05] every day, they use it to
answer their questions,

[00:08:25.02] now there’s voice search, with things

[00:08:27.01] like Alexa and Google Home.

[00:08:29.00] So search traffic is only growing,

[00:08:31.07] queries are probably
becoming more specific,

[00:08:35.00] I don’t know that for a fact,

[00:08:36.01] but that doesn’t really matter.

[00:08:37.07] So you have to create awesome content,

[00:08:40.03] specific content, to help your
users and you’re gonna win.

[00:08:45.01] All right, moving on, the
online ad world is murky.

[00:08:50.02] I would agree with that, generally

[00:08:51.04] speaking, as an ad agency.

[00:08:54.08] And a group of companies wanna fix that.

[00:08:57.05] Good, 16 companies are coming together

[00:09:00.00] to bring more transparency to online ads.

[00:09:03.07] This is lead by the CEO of MediaMath.

[00:09:06.00] MediaMath is a leading, maybe the largest,

[00:09:09.01] I’m not sure, programmatic
ad platform out there.

[00:09:12.04] So this is advertising technology.

[00:09:14.08] You know, there’s a lot
of, kind of, blackbox

[00:09:20.03] when it comes to ad tech, specifically

[00:09:22.09] programmatic, display, realtime bidding,

[00:09:26.07] where you know you as an
advertiser don’t really

[00:09:32.08] know when you spend a dollar,

[00:09:34.05] how much of that dollar
is going to actually

[00:09:36.05] buying the media versus all the middlemen

[00:09:40.03] in between that, you know, purchase that

[00:09:44.05] media for you or place
it or what have you.

[00:09:48.05] So, not only that, there’s
also a lot of fraud out there.

[00:09:53.06] Fraud, you know, from
smaller ad tech platforms,

[00:09:59.01] they could be just, you know,

[00:10:01.03] boasting their impressions, just reporting

[00:10:03.04] numbers that are not real,
from reporting impressions

[00:10:09.05] as just impressions, not
viewable impressions, right?

[00:10:12.05] Like if a page, if a web
page loads but your device

[00:10:17.00] is only showing the top
of it, the above the fold

[00:10:20.01] we call it, well if there’s ads down here

[00:10:24.08] at the bottom of the
page that have loaded,

[00:10:27.00] the ad platform is gonna say
yeah, that was an impression.

[00:10:29.05] But if the user never scrolls
they never saw your ad.

[00:10:32.01] So that’s kind of like murky,
maybe borderline fraud,

[00:10:35.05] I’m not sure, there’s
even click farms out there

[00:10:38.06] where you can just hire, you know, people,

[00:10:42.05] usually overseas,
relatively low cost labor

[00:10:46.02] to do certain queries or
to go to certain sites,

[00:10:50.01] get the retargeting ads
and see the impressions

[00:10:52.01] and click on them.

[00:10:53.03] It’s just not, it’s not pretty, right?

[00:10:55.02] Especially, again, in
the programmatic space.

[00:10:58.06] So this kind of coalition
is brought together

[00:11:03.02] to add transparency so from the advertiser

[00:11:08.05] to the ad, to the ad
agency, to the ad platform.

[00:11:14.09] So basically, you possibly move money away

[00:11:18.06] from Google and Facebook, the two biggest

[00:11:20.04] ad platforms on planet Earth.

[00:11:23.00] I don’t know what’s happening on Mars.

[00:11:24.04] I haven’t checked, I’ll
ask Elon, he might know.

[00:11:27.03] But, yeah, Google and Facebook, they have

[00:11:29.00] the biggest inventory,
they have the biggest

[00:11:30.07] kind of beta set, they
have the largest audience,

[00:11:33.03] and so a lot of advertisers
go there first, right?

[00:11:36.04] But this is actually really good news.

[00:11:39.03] Really good news for advertisers.

[00:11:42.03] It’s good news for ad agencies, you know?

[00:11:46.05] We wanna know where our clients money

[00:11:49.07] is going so we can better
optimize undoubtedly.

[00:11:53.07] And it’s maybe not so good
news for ad platforms.

[00:11:57.05] But I think it is in the long term, right?

[00:11:59.04] Like I think more and
more dollars are gonna

[00:12:01.07] continue to come online into digital ads

[00:12:05.01] I think it will continue to grow.

[00:12:07.04] All the projections say that’s the case

[00:12:09.06] and, you know, it, we
don’t wanna place that

[00:12:13.05] we don’t know where the money’s going,

[00:12:16.01] ’cause that can only
hurt the growth, right?

[00:12:18.08] We know that there’s RY to be had,

[00:12:20.07] it’s just let’s optimize
that and let’s be fair.

[00:12:24.07] It’s basically what this group is saying.

[00:12:27.06] In the group is Oracle,
IBM Watson Advertising,

[00:12:31.08] I didn’t even know IBM Watson
Advertising was a thing,

[00:12:36.05] Bluekai was bought by Oracle,

[00:12:40.01] they were I think the
biggest data platforms

[00:12:44.01] so they would sell data
that you would wanna use

[00:12:48.04] for targeting on these
programmatic and display platforms.

[00:12:51.08] So good news, good news is the ad,

[00:12:58.01] this coalition is coming together to add

[00:12:59.09] transparency to the ad world and I think

[00:13:02.00] that’s a very good thing moving forwards.

[00:13:05.01] Last but not least,
possibly the most important

[00:13:08.03] as it pertains to your
website is page speed.

[00:13:13.05] BackLingo, a very popular
blog SCO blog actually

[00:13:18.07] but now it seems that they’re expanding,

[00:13:21.02] I think, to more digital marketing.

[00:13:23.04] They did a page speed
test where they tested

[00:13:25.05] 5.2 million web pages and
they found the following,

[00:13:31.02] that a fully load of a web
page is 10.3 seconds on average

[00:13:36.04] on the 5.2 million that
they tested on a desktop,

[00:13:39.00] 10.3 seconds on a desktop
and 27.3 seconds on mobile.

[00:13:46.03] Holy smokes, that’s almost three times

[00:13:50.00] longer to load on mobile.

[00:13:51.07] And that’s, you know,
likely due to bandwidth,

[00:13:54.06] mobile bandwidth being generally slower.

[00:13:58.03] But that is alarming, they
also found that page weight

[00:14:04.03] is the number one determinant
of the page speed.

[00:14:07.06] So page weight is kind of, you know,

[00:14:10.04] how much text is on the page,

[00:14:13.08] how much, more importantly,
how big the images

[00:14:17.06] are that are loading.

[00:14:19.00] There’s other things
such as the javascript

[00:14:20.07] and CSS files and other files that load

[00:14:23.03] to make the web page work
and look the way it looks,

[00:14:26.02] but the biggest weight
comes from images, right?

[00:14:29.02] So huge images that are uncompressed,

[00:14:31.03] they are the number one determinant

[00:14:33.03] for how fast or slow a
website is gonna load.

[00:14:38.02] They also found that third party scripts

[00:14:40.06] significantly slow down
page loading speed.

[00:14:43.08] Each third party script
can increase load time

[00:14:47.01] by and average of 34 milliseconds.

[00:14:50.06] I know what you’re thinking, milliseconds.

[00:14:52.08] All right Arsham, milliseconds
is no time, right?

[00:14:55.06] Like it, that’s, that
doesn’t matter, but it does.

[00:15:00.00] 10 years ago, and don’t worry
I’ll update that for you,

[00:15:02.07] 10 years ago Amazon did a
study and they found that

[00:15:05.09] for every hundred
millisecond delay in their,

[00:15:09.04] in Amazons ecommerce site,
every hundred second delay

[00:15:14.09] would cost them 1% of
revenue, that’s huge, right?

[00:15:19.09] So if it’s a whole second, right?

[00:15:22.08] One hundred milliseconds
times 10 is a whole second

[00:15:27.01] you would, no, yes, thousand
milliseconds is a second.

[00:15:30.02] They would see 10% drop in
revenue, that’s crazy, right?

[00:15:35.06] Now updated that now, in 2017 Octomine

[00:15:39.07] did a study that said
every hundred milliseconds

[00:15:42.02] delay in a website can
hurt commercial rates

[00:15:45.08] by and average of 7%,
so it got 6% worse now,

[00:15:50.06] Octomine is reporting,
and that makes sense

[00:15:52.03] to me because, now as of I think 2016,

[00:15:55.07] mobile connections and
searches are outdoing desktop.

[00:16:03.06] In 2016 mobile took over desktop

[00:16:05.05] as connections and searches on the web.

[00:16:08.03] So, more and more we’re
living in this culture of now,

[00:16:11.08] instant, quick, give me
my result, give me my,

[00:16:14.05] you know, my purchase or whatever, right?

[00:16:18.00] We, I don’t, maybe millennials of today

[00:16:24.00] and the future generations who’s gonna be

[00:16:25.08] making the purchases, they don’t remember

[00:16:27.03] a time with no internet,
let alone, or dial-up,

[00:16:31.00] let alone no internet, right?

[00:16:32.06] I mean, I remember
dial-up and I was thrilled

[00:16:35.00] when we got cable internet,
we could now game.

[00:16:37.08] It was awesome right but anyhow
let me read some other stats

[00:16:42.02] Google did, released an image that showed

[00:16:46.04] that the probability of a bounce increases

[00:16:50.06] by how many seconds
your pages load time is.

[00:16:55.01] So if it’s one to three
seconds your probability

[00:16:58.00] of a bounce is only 32%, not bad.

[00:17:00.09] If your page speed is one to
five seconds it becomes 90%,

[00:17:06.02] one to six seconds, only one second more,

[00:17:08.03] that 90 becomes a 106%,
and then up to 10 seconds,

[00:17:12.01] 123% probability of a bounce,
oh it increases by a 123%.

[00:17:19.04] So anyhow, page speed is really important.

[00:17:21.04] Now what can you do about it?

[00:17:23.00] Well, number one you can
test your page speed,

[00:17:26.02] there are tools out
there, Google has a tool,

[00:17:27.09] I’ll link to it in the show notes here,

[00:17:30.03] Pingdom has a tool, the
tools at pingdom.com

[00:17:33.05] I’ll link to these in the show notes so

[00:17:36.01] you can get to them
directly or you can just

[00:17:38.03] Google pingdom page speed test or Google

[00:17:40.08] page speed test and the number one result

[00:17:42.09] will be the one that you want.

[00:17:45.02] That will show you how long
your site or page takes to load

[00:17:50.00] and what you can do about it as well.

[00:17:52.09] Typically, you’re probably going to need

[00:17:54.05] a developer for this but there are tools

[00:17:55.07] to help you compress
your images and you know,

[00:17:59.06] remove external scripts
that you don’t need.

[00:18:02.05] So, you can look out for those.

[00:18:05.02] But yeah, this is very important,
it’s kind of a, you know,

[00:18:08.05] web developer, techy type
topic, this page speed thing,

[00:18:11.09] but it’s, the reason it’s
important for businesses

[00:18:14.09] is because it can directly
impact your conversion rate,

[00:18:17.04] therefore impacting your bottom line.

[00:18:21.02] So that’s it, covered four things today,

[00:18:24.02] and I hope you liked this format,

[00:18:26.04] we’ll put, in the show notes
we’ll put all the links

[00:18:29.00] to the different articles that I covered.

[00:18:31.07] Give us some feedback, let me know what

[00:18:33.00] you think about this, I want
to keep bringing the news

[00:18:36.01] to you because it helps me
stay on top of this industry

[00:18:39.00] that’s changing faster than our underwear,

[00:18:41.04] and hopefully it helps
you know what’s going on

[00:18:44.04] in our world and what you can do about it.

[00:18:47.09] So thank you so much for
tuning in, like, subscribe,

[00:18:50.09] share this with a friend
who’s in the digital marketing

[00:18:52.09] world and we’ll see you next
time on “More Than Marketing”.