On Our Radar | February 2023

NATIVE ADS ARE HITTING THE MARK | LINKEDIN’S NEW EMAIL NEWSLETTER SHOWCASE | HI, IT‘S ME BARD, GOOGLE’S RESPONSE TO CHATGPT | WHAT’S THE “MANAGE GA4 MIGRATION” BANNER ALL ABOUT? | TIKTOK (MAYBE) TAKING AWAY MUSIC OPTIONS | PINTEREST TIPS, TRICKS, & TACTICS

To combat the world of ever-changing digital marketing –  the TwoSix team is here to give you what’s On Our Radar for the month. This month, we discuss Native Ads, GA4 Migration, TikTok, and more! Keep reading to find out what we’re keeping On Our Radar for February 2023.

NATIVE ADS ARE HITTING THE MARK!

Native ads – which are ad units that match the look, feel, user path, and quality standards of the editorial content to which it’s adjacent – are one of the most effective ways to build brand favorability, according to a study by Kantar, a data and insights consulting company.

The study determined that those brands running native ads had results that surpassed many industry averages. The brand lift was more than 4x higher, consideration lift was 1.5x higher and message association was an impressive 8x higher than the advertising industry average.

Native ads have grown in popularity recently, and the targeting options have become much more accurate and easier to do through many programmatic platforms. If you haven’t considered them in a recent campaign, it may be time to add them to your mix.

Click the button below to read the complete study!

Dave Serino Founder & Chief Strategist

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LINKEDIN’S NEW EMAIL NEWSLETTER SHOWCASE

Newsletters have always been a powerful tool in nurturing sales leads. Typically, this has required the use of third-party platforms to achieve. This also usually made it necessary to bring in multiple members of the CVB team to get the job done. Now, this can be facilitated directly from a LinkedIn Company Page or a user’s personal profile. All you have to do is turn on your Creator Tools.

We’ve talked about how LinkedIn is the perfect platform for B2B communications and sales. The benefits of maintaining an active feed from both an organizational level and a personal brand level can include more brand awareness and top-of-mind presence among your connections. Couple this with LinkedIn’s Employee Advocacy tools and the amplification can really take things to another level. Now, with LinkedIn’s “on network” newsletter tools, we have yet another opportunity to tie some of our marketing pieces together from both a company and personal perspective. The fact that these tools live on-network, make them especially easy to use and deploy.

Once you activate the tools, you can now get “one-click” subscriptions within LinkedIn itself. That’s huge! No more embedded forms or clumsy ads that drive to a trashy landing page. This helps to avoid the high costs of running lead generation campaigns and will likely help you build a healthy, engaged following. You can also feature newsletters within your personal profile or share them on other social media channels! The messages you create can also be embedded and distributed though websites. This can give a huge boost to both your company and personal brand authority within the industry by making you the messenger of the latest trends and activities that you or your organization is involved in.

I highly encourage you to look into both the Creator Tools and the Newsletter tools

These are some awesome opportunities to connect, engage, and lead the way!

Brian MatsonSenior Director of Strategy and Education

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HI, IT‘S ME BARD, GOOGLE’S RESPONSE TO CHATGPT

ChatGPT has been the talk of the town for a couple months now and recently has rolled out a new paid subscription service. For $20 ChatGPT Plus offers faster response times and priority access to new features. Soon ChatGPT won’t be the only AI chatbot that’s sweeping the nation. Insert Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT. In the coming weeks, Bard will be unveiled and is already available to some quote “trusted testers.” The ability of ChatGPT to answer complex questions like to summarize a particular web page or give tired copy a refresh is something that Google search could only dream about. But Google isn’t about to let ChatGPT take over. Bard is their new solution that could reinvent the classic internet search. A Google goes through the testing stages with Bard, getting feedback from users and improving along the way, we will have to wait and see just what Bard can do and how quickly they can get a competitive bot out to AI thirsty consumers.

Ashley MaddixDigital Advertising Strategist

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WHAT’S THE “MANAGE GA4 MIGRATION” BANNER ALL ABOUT?

If you’ve logged into an old, Universal Analytics property in Google Analytics account recently, you’ve probably seen the banner telling you to “Manage GA4 Migration”. So, what’s this mean and what do you have to do about it?

What does migrate mean?

It will certainly help to clarify what the word “migrate” means here! In this case, Google means “migrate settings and setup” such as privacy settings, users, conversions, audiences, and linked ad accounts. It does not mean “move data from Universal Analytics to GA4” because that is not possible.

What’s up with this banner?

Well, this “manage migration banner” is appearing because all active UA properties are going to automatically have a GA4 property created for them — unless you opt out by February 28, 2023. Google is going to copy settings and configurations from your UA property to the new or existing linked GA4 property unless you complete setup for the GA4 property first.

What do I have to do about this?

First, if you haven’t already, you should really install GA4. Once installed, go through the GA4 Setup Assistant. Mark everything as complete that’s completed. If you’ve got GA4 set up how you want it and you don’t want to mess with it, you should opt out of this “GA4 migration”.

It’s a learning curve for sure, but we’re here to help! Please reach out to us if you need any help or just want to double check everything’s set up properly.

Nick DanowskiLead Content Strategist

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TIKTOK (MAYBE) TAKING AWAY MUSIC OPTIONS

TikTok is currently testing a limited music selection library among some users in Australia in order to determine how the platform might best tackle usage rights. While the app hasn’t said anything about expanding this test or implementing any permanent restrictions, this is a move that advertisers need to keep a close eye on.

Right now, TikTok Business Accounts in the US only have access to a limited library of royalty free music and sounds. So far, this has protected the platform from any major recourse from audio rights owners, putting the liability on the businesses who chose to use copyrighted sounds by not registering as a business profile. The news of this test in Australia suggests that this restriction may become more widespread.

This is important to keep in mind when getting in the groove creating content. It’s not guaranteed that businesses will be able to capitalize on trending copyrighted sounds forever, so learning to use royalty-free sounds in high-quality content now is a must.

Scout DelicatoDigital Advertising Strategist

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PINTEREST TIPS, TRICKS, & TACTICS

While Pinterest doesn’t get the same hype as competing social media apps, at 445 million users, Pinterest is a powerful tool to promote your destination’s best assets. Pinterest has distanced itself from the mainstream social media platforms by calling itself a “discovery app”; which is how you should approach it! Prioritizing SEO and considering visual search in your Pinterest posts will contribute to expanding your posts’ potential. Additionally, researching what others within your niche are posting and what works, is a great way to find effective keywords to maximize your SEO approach.

An important part of Pinterest is the aspect of visual search. Visual search allows users to see pins that are similar to the ones they have previously interacted with. Each destination has its own unique differentials, making visual search difficult to optimize for. Although, there are still ways to give your pins a better chance of being seen by users. According to Pinterest you should: “Use high-quality, vertical images that will stand out in people’s feeds. We recommend a 2:3 aspect ratio (ex: 1000 x 1500 pixels). Other ratios may cause your Pin to truncate, or may negatively impact performance.”

For more Pinterest tips, tricks, and tactics, click the button below to keep reading!

Makenna SchmitzDigital & Social Media Director

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With the ever-changing digital marketing world, we are here to keep you informed of new digital trends and what we are keeping on our radar for February 2023. Have any questions? Contact us! We’re here to help.

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