DIGITAL MEDIA DIGEST: OCT‘18
A monthly look at the world of digital from NORTH’s point of view
The Facebook Ad Archive
By Devon Brown, Performance Marketing Manager
In 2016, Facebook failed the American public. Echo chambers, teenagers in Macedonia and fake news dominated the headlines for months. Then, a series of data breaches landed Mark Zuckerburg in front of a congressional hearing.
As a response, Facebook decided to create a massive goodwill campaign to gain back public trust, with its top priorities being politics and security. They wanted to be more transparent about who is using Facebook and for what purposes, especially as it pertains to political elections. Thus, they built the Facebook Ad Archive to report on political advertising on Facebook, including messaging, financing, budgets, and creative. Within the platform, there are a few ways you can search for information:
The Search Bar
When first opening the tool, you’re confronted with a large search bar where you can enter a topic, an issue of national importance, or a candidate. A quick search for “climate change” reveals that some of the biggest spenders are Patagonia and The Alliance for Climate Education. The candidate spending the most on climate change issues is Jimmy Panetta of California. Each one of the ads are interactive, so a user can view how much money was spent, the impressions, and who it was targeted to.
Weekly Ad Archive Report
Scroll past the search bar on the home page and you’ll see a link for the Weekly Ad Archive Report. This is a great way to feel depressed very quickly. I mean . . . this report gives you a high-level snapshot of political spending on Facebook. At first glance, metrics are sorted by the highest spenders and include the amount they’ve spent, the number of ads, and the ad creative. You can also sort data by advertisers and search terms.
The project launched on May 7th, 2018 and vows to store archives for up to 7 years. So sadly, ads from the 2016 election are not available, but moving forward, hopefully, a precedent will be set surrounding election transparency.
From an advertising standpoint, it can serve as a rudimentary research tool to understand messaging and basic strategies. If you happen to be advertising a product that has ties to political issues, say, within the environment, medical, or technology industries, you may find particular usefulness within the tool.
I predict the name will be rattled off in the media more frequently, and frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t heard it referenced more in mudslinging political ads on TV. But, the midterms aren’t over for another week or so.
The CRM Potential of Shoppable Site Content
By Caroline Desmond, Director of Media Strategy
Avocados From Mexico just announced they will be launching ~700 shoppable recipes on their site. According to Digiday, the shoppable recipes are expected to go live today, and users will be able to click “Get Ingredients” under each recipe to pull up a list of participating retailers who will ship products directly to consumers based on their zip code.
Cleverly, this not only encourages online site visitors to buy more Avocados From Mexico; it also helps drive online sales for potential partner brands that Avocados From Mexico might join forces with to co-promote content. Partner brands would have an incentive to combine marketing budgets to drive more people to content to buy both their products and those of Avocados From Mexico.
However, as Digiday notes, the primary benefit of shoppable recipes on a brand site may not be so much about driving online product sales at all. And this may be particularly true for the grocery category where online shopping adoption has been slower despite the impulse-buy-nature of the grocery category.
In fact, Mintel recently reported that online grocery sales only represent a small proportion of total US grocery sales, around 3–4% (Mintel, Online Grocery Shopping — US, August 2018). This is primarily because people in the US still prefer to shop for groceries in a physical store or they are concerned about the quality or freshness of product ordered online.
In light of this, brands might instead want to use shoppable recipe content on their sites to collect useful information on a consumer audience. This could make more sense especially given the number of trackable elements that may be involved in shoppable content.
For example, the zip code a consumer enters and the retailer selected in a shoppable piece of content might reveal a trend in preferred retailers for a particular region. This could help a brand prioritize which retail relationships they want to foster in targeted areas. Or, maybe a brand would want to track trends in most viewed content for a given user to be able to identify which products to promote to that user elsewhere on the web. Similarly, a brand might also use content view data to bucket consumers into interest groups to inform audience segmentation research. Content view data may also be helpful in terms of prioritizing which products should receive the bulk of a seasonal marketing investment in the case of brands that have a diverse array of products in their portfolio.
And even if brick and mortar sales still account for the bulk of a brand’s revenue, there are enough consumers out there inclined to engage with shoppable content that the investment in such content for purposes of customer insights and customer relationship management (CRM) is worthwhile. Notably, Mintel reports that anywhere from a quarter to a third of consumers 18+ say that they like the idea of being able to make a purchase within ad content on social sites including YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr (Mintel, Digital Advertising — US, August 2018).
In short, shoppable branded content on a brand’s site has the potential to reveal valuable insights about consumers in a given category and should not be discounted even where it does not result in a large volume of sales itself.
The Seattle Interactive Conference Explained
By Izzy Kramer, Media Planner
The Seattle Interactive Conference (SIC) is an annual gathering of tech, media, and creative minds all shuffling in and out of 125+ panels to hear the thoughts and opinions of 150+ panelists. You know, your basic conference format.
I am a conference veteran having attended a variety in my professional career and personal life. (Ever heard of PAX?). However, with this being my first time attending SIC, I didn’t know what exactly they meant by “interactive.” The title was so vague that even after researching and planning out which panels to attend, I felt I still didn’t fully understand. So today I will tell you about Izzy Kramer’s journey to understanding the “interactive” in the Seattle Interactive Conference.
First off, let’s talk about a panel called “Why Do We Suck at Measurement?” I went to this panel because I work in numbers daily and provide reporting to clients regularly; it was an opportune time to build my understanding of the state of measurement now and the future of it. What I came away from the panel with was the importance of distinguishing between what the panel deemed “human and nonhuman metrics.” Prime examples are engagements vs ROAS, and basically, they distinguish between whether a metric relates directly to human behaviors or not.
In comparison, conversion-based (or “non-human”) metrics objectively translate performance in dollars and cents — this amount was spent on ads and gave this much back in product sales. However, as panelist Matt Wolfe of Null Unit spoke about, human metrics (albeit more subjective) are just as valuable even if they are trickier to track and to translate into benchmarks showing the impact on a brands’ business. Nevertheless, human metrics—engagement rate, ad recall, favorability, etc. —build brands.
We have access to an obscene amount of granular data thanks to the ever-evolving digital landscape and we have become gluttons for measurement. We gobble up data, consuming as many numbers, stats, and insights to better indicate the performance of our campaigns. This put us in a pattern of associating a number with success, though this may not always be the point of human-based metrics. So with all this data comes great responsibility. It is about understanding the power each tactic wields within a campaign and the best way to express how these metrics translate success.
Furthermore, as another panelist, Amanda Casaris of Google, mentioned, what is amazing is we are truly only skimming the surface of data. And as these panels are designed to do, this got me thinking: we may be able to track heaps of data but should we? And what is going too far? Human metrics build brands but there is an incredibly important and sensitive element to these metrics: people. As we continue to develop new ways to glean information about how people are engaging with a brand, how do we not infringe on rights and privacy?
It is that consideration of people I found translated through all of the panels I attended. It got me thinking that the idea of “interactive” transcends digital technology and speaks to the way we interact with each other. The Seattle Interactive Conference seemed to recognize this as well. During my time at the conference, I also attended panels that focused on the workplace culture, “How To (Actually) Support Women and Families In the Workplace” and “Actionable Ideas for Diversity, Inclusion, and Access in the #MeToo Era”.
I found myself drawn to these panels because I felt I need to shape my POV on topics relating to human rights in the workplace as it is elevated in public discourse. This especially rang true during “How To (Actually) Support Women and Families In the Workplace” when one of the panelists, Kristin Mehus-Roe of Girl Friday Productions, mentioned that in her late-twenties, when she was not married and did not have children, she was asked to be on a task force to determine parental leave in her office. She said at that time in her life she felt she knew nothing to help inform the group.
I took this as a lesson of how, as a young member of my office, I need to seek out opportunities to proactively develop opinions and have a voice on these kinds of topics that help shape workplace culture for women of all ages in the industry. I don’t want to be the 28-year-old that has nothing to say just because I don’t have children or a husband.
After a conference like this, I am inspired to contribute and get involved in the decisions that will influence myself and my future family down the line. Overall, we need to understand that policies and practices that fall under what we understand as corporate responsibility are not niche benefits for a niche group of people. It influences everyone in a workspace and is a major contributing factor in the culture of an office.
I am lucky enough to work at an agency that is a driving force in a supportive and understanding B Corp culture — promoting positive impact for both employees and the community. Between my appreciation of my office’s culture and my time at the Seattle Interactive Conference, it has inspired me to vocalize my thoughts and opinions in hopes they inspire others to follow suit.
With that all said, I came to SIC not truly understanding how broadly the term “interactive” applied. Interactive as in technology? Who and what would I interact with? But I came to find that the “interactive” in SIC is fluid. It is the study of the connective tissue between digital technologies and media as well as how I, as a professional person, interact with my office, with my coworkers, and the community.
