Click Through Reads #40: 2021 Challenges, Telegram, and Turtledove

Hello Click-Through-Readers! We are Springing-forward into the news this week starting with an article outlining the biggest challenges digital marketers are facing in 2021. Can you guess what might be on that list based on your own pain points? Next we will dig into the growing messaging / social-media app, Telegram. Finally we will cover some product updates including new analytics data from YouTube, Facebook’s global campaign for COVID-19 vaccines, and TURTLEDOVE (aka Google’s answer to a cookie-less internet). 

The biggest challenges facing digital marketers in 2021

2020 proved to be a challenging year for everyone. Since the start of the pandemic, countless people had to move their businesses to virtual platforms. This has transformed the atmosphere for digital marketers, presenting them with some new challenges in 2021. 

1. Learning about your customers
• SEO and paid advertising are getting more competitive; can’t always waste time on poorly targeted or broad keywords/content. You can better target the right audience through buyer persona tools.
2. Creating engaging content 
• Consumers are hungry for fresh content that educates and points in the direction of solutions; embracing content that's interactive and gives the opportunity to express their opinions.
• Short-form videos, live-streaming content like webinars, podcasts and IG and FB stories will be popular in 2021.
3. Making websites accessible
• Accessibility is another fast-growing issue that all website owners need to understand: 71% of users with disabilities will leave a website that's not accessible.
• Accessible websites can be used by people with visual, hearing and other impairments. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides comprehensive information on web accessibility

The pandemic has led to more virtual usage and motion, increasing the competition and demand for awareness. You can read more here on the challenges that marketers face and explore the statistics supporting these claims. 

Telegram App is booming but Needs Advertisers

Telegram App keeps growing in popularity, but the messaging service and social-media platform owes creditors roughly $700 million by the end of April, on top of rising equipment and bandwidth expenses because of its rapid growth.

The owner has announced plans to start selling ads in public Telegram channels as soon as later this year, as well as offering other premium services for businesses and users. Telegram offers public-facing channels, which are something like a cross between Twitter and chat rooms/messenger apps.

The company’s ad strategy is likely to focus initially on Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East to start and expand into other markets. Telegram has a working relationship with Apple and Google for content moderation.

Rather than sell ads itself, Telegram said it is likely initially to use an agency model by which it would strike deals with outside companies in different regions to handle sales on commission.

The messaging app has long been considered a viable Facebook competitor. Over the past year, it added tens of millions of users.

Youtube Adds More Analytics Data, Updates Studio Mobile App

Youtube is providing additional access into new video view metrics for creators, including granular info on video view sources.

New analytics data in Youtube Studio will include Living Room Impressions which will appear later this month and provide an insight into TV and video game consoles.

There should be no change to metrics like views, watch time and revenue, but there may be changes to how CTR is reported. 

New and returning viewers are an additional new metric added to the audience tab. This will be helpful in informing future content strategies. 

Updates to the studio mobile app include changes to the real time card: thumbnails, sorting, amount of videos and changes to tabs.

Mariya

Facebook Launches a Global Campaign For Covid-19 Vaccines

On March 15, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he wanted to use Facebook to help 50 million more people get vaccinated for COVID. Facebook is launching a tool on where, when and how to get a vaccination. There will even be a link to set an appointment up. All this information  will be located on the Covid Information Center which is located on the Facebook News Feed and will also be available on Instagram. Facebook is also working with health authorities and governments to help people register for vaccines via WhatsApp chatbots.

TURTLEDOVE - Google’s Answer to Retargeting in a Cookie-Less Internet

As Google gets ready to roll out FLoC to advertisers, marketers are anticipating the challenges and the preparations that will need to be made to succeed in a cookie-less Internet. One thing advertisers may be concerned about is retargeting.

Enter TURTLEDOVE, which stands for, “Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory,” is Google’s answer. The idea is advertisers will be able to retarget users in a privacy-compliant way based on cohorts, which is similar to how FLoC will operate.

Here’s an example:

• A user visits a website and shows interests in a particular interest in mountain bikes.
• The website adds this user to a “mountain bike” interest group.

• The user’s browser notices the user is visiting websites that host ad network ads on it often, so the browser sends a request to the ad network for a mountain bike specific ad since it knows this is someone in the mountain bike interest group.
• The ad network sends a mountain bike ad and decision logic of when to show that ad back to the browser, and the browser stores this information. It does not show the ad to the user yet. The decision logic will come into play once it’s time to enter the auction.

• The user visits a website that is displaying ads from the ad network. The browser sends a request for a contextually-targeted ad, which can include information such as page URL, ad location, or ad size. An on-device auction then occurs between the contextual ad and the interest-group based ad, if one is available.

• Depending on what the website that is displaying ads requested, one of the ads will win and be shown to the user.

In summary: A website that is displaying ads from the ad network will send a request for a contextual ad, and if an interest-based group ad is available, the two will enter an auction. The website will show the most relevant ad using JavaScript code provided by the advertiser.