[Ep119] - YouTube Answers Common Questions On YT Shorts

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

1. Shopify Lays Off 10% Of Workforce - Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify, announced that it is letting go of ten percent of its workforce. He blamed himself for misjudging trends, resulting in too many employees. What was anticipated at Shopify was that the rapid Covid-era increase in E-commerce shopping would continue as a trend, hastening a greater adoption of online shopping.

Unfortunately, the forecasted boom in post-Covid shopping failed to materialize. The CEO said that he decided to scale up hiring to meet the increased demand and that now that the projections are falling short, he was forced to make a difficult decision. Shopify employees face a layoff in recruiting, support roles, and sales.

2. Instagram Backtracks And Rethinking Instagram Forward Strategy - In a new interview with Casey Newton, Adam Mosseri explained that Instagram will actually take a step back from recommended content, as well as its experiment with a full-screen, TikTok-like viewing experience.

“For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn’t great. So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward. When you discover something in your field that you didn’t follow before, there should be a high bar - it should just be great. You should be delighted to see it, and I don’t think that’s happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then - if and when we do - we can start to grow again.”

3. Revenue Roundup: Microsoft, Google & Meta - Here are some key takeaways:

1. Microsoft ad revenue decreased by about $100 million due to reductions in advertising spend
2. LinkedIn revenue increased 26%, while user sessions grew 22%.
3. Total Alphabet revenue 13% increase YoY to $69.7 billion (from $61.9 billion by the end of Q2 in 2021)
4. Google Ad revenue $56.3 billion (up from $50.4 in 2021)
5. YouTube revenue $7.3 billion (up 5% from $7 billion in 2021), which missed analysts’ predictions of $7.5 billion
6. Meta’s ad revenue dropped one percent in Q2 2022 compared to last year’s period.
7. They brought in $28.82 billion from ads, though it expected to earn $28.94 billion. One positive trend to note is Facebook’s daily active users are up three percent. There are now 1.97 billion people logging in every day.
8. Meta’s apps aren’t declining in popularity by any means. The audience is there. The problem is that advertisers have smaller budgets, and they’re not getting the same value from ads as they used to. To remedy the issue of declining ad revenue, Meta has plans to offer new types of monetization. More specifically, the company is working on ways to make money from Reels.

4. LinkedIn Launches Native Carousel Posts - LinkedIn users have been posting makeshift carousel posts for some time, using its PDF attachment option to create individual frames. And now, LinkedIn has decided to make it a fully-fledged functionality, with a new ‘Carousel’ post option being added to your update tools.

5. Pinterest Launches Real-Time Analytics - Pinterest has now officially launched real-time analytics elements within Pin Analytics on mobile, which will provide more data on exactly how your Pins are performing at any given time. Real-time insights are also available in the web Analytics platform, but now, you’ll also be able to access much of the same data on the go, which is likely where many more people are looking to check in.

Real-time insights are not available for audience metrics, like ‘Total Engaged Monthly Audience’ and age and gender filters. But you will be able to see overall data on response to your Pins, whenever you check in, which could be a helpful guide for your Pin strategy.

6. Google Extends Deadline For Third-Party (Tracking) Cookies To 2024 - Google is now expanding the testing window for its Privacy Sandbox APIs before it moves to disable third-party cookies in Chrome. They announced that it’s expanding the testing period for its Privacy Sandbox, and its alternative tracking tools, in order to give the industry more time to provide feedback and adjust to the coming shift.

“The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome. This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions. This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.

We now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024. As always, you can find up-to-date timelines and milestones on the Privacy Sandbox website.”

7. The Reason Why The Search Console CWV Report & PageSpeed Insights Differ - Google's John Mueller explained that the two scores are different because the method for calculations is different.

“... there’s a difference between so-called field data and the lab data. Field data is what users have actually seen when they go to your website. And this is what we use in Search Console. That’s what we use for search as well. Whereas lab data is kind of a theoretical view of your website, like where our systems have certain assumptions where they think, well the average user is probably like this, using this kind of device and with this kind of a connection perhaps. And based on those assumptions, we will estimate what those numbers might be for an average user. And obviously you can imagine those estimations will never be a hundred percent correct.”

So what Mueller is saying then is that Search Console scores reflect what actual site visitors saw. The way Google measures those actual numbers is through visitors who have opted in to allowing Chrome to provide anonymized core web vitals data.

Google doesn’t measure every site visitor, only those who have opted in to sending that data to Google.

Contrasting with Search Console’s field data, PageSpeed Insights is creating a simulation of what a user might experience. The purpose of Search Console data is to show what real site visitors are experiencing. The purpose of PageSpeed Insights data is to provide an estimate of what’s going on in order to provide diagnostic feedback on what may be causing poor webpage speed performance.

“And similarly, the data that users have seen, that will change over time as well, where some users might have a really fast connection or a fast device and everything goes really fast on their website, or when they visit your website. And others might not have that. And because of that, this variation can always result in different numbers. Our recommendation is generally to use the field data, the data you would see in Search Console, as a way of understanding what is kind of the current situation for a website. And then to use the lab data, namely the individual tests that you can run directly yourself, to optimize your website and try to improve things. And when you are pretty happy with the lab data that you’re getting with you...