The weekly Digital Download is out. Get all the Marketing hot news, quick tips, and highlights you need to get you through the week, rolled up into a five-minute read.

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In the News 

Hot Off the Press 

• Google Announces: Once Chrome No Longer Supports Third Party Cookies, There Will Be No Alternatives
  • In a blog post last Wednesday, Google announced that once third party cookies are phased out, it will no longer support alternative methods to track users online to create a more “privacy-first web.” This stance will have major implications for advertisers. It remains unclear whether this pledge not to use or support user-level identifiers will only apply to DV360, Google Campaign Manager and their demand partners, or also YouTube? We will continue to keep an eye on this developing topic in the coming months.
• More Google Ads Changes and SERP Fluctuations
  • It seems like Google has announced change after change these past few weeks, especially on the Ads side. Most PPC marketers understand the move is toward automation, but the constant updates can make it hard to keep up. The new Partner Program details were released this week. Google is getting rid of Showcase Shopping Ads. The political ad ban was lifted (including Shopping ads). RSAs are now the default. And, of course, the transition of BMM keywords to phrase-match. Plus, the Google Ads outage probably didn’t help anyone’s stress level. You get the picture.

• Google expands phrase match to include broad match modifier traffic
  • Changes are coming to Google’s phrase match and broad match modifier keyword match types, the company announced Phrase match will expand to include additional broad match modifier traffic and support for broad match modifier will end. The changes will start rolling out in two weeks.

• The Era of Audio Creators Has Arrived
  • Audio creators are a new kind of influencer, born of the meteoric rise of the audio-only chat app Clubhouse. Together, they are pulling in millions of weekly listeners and building online followings. Now, with Clubhouse booming and other social apps, like Twitter, taking cues from its success, they are banding together and working with big brands.

• Twitter is Testing a New ‘Undo’ Option for Sent Tweets
  • For years – basically for all of Twitter’s existence – Twitter users have called on the platform to add an ‘Edit’ option so that they can correct those annoying grammatical errors, which always seem to infiltrate your best tweets. Twitter has repeatedly said that it’s not going to happen, but there have been signs of a potential compromise, like, say, a short window of time after pressing ‘Tweet’ to recall your missive.

• TikTok’s New TV-Connection Option Comes to US Homes
  • Get ready to watch more TikTok, on a much bigger screen. Back in December, Samsung announced a new deal with TikTok to enable Samsung Smart TV owners in Europe to watch TikTok clips on their TV sets. Now, the company has confirmed that the same capacity is coming to the US, with most of its 2021 smart TVs able to access the TikTok-connected app.

• Could Dispo Make Social Media Fun Again?
  • What’s Dispo? Dispo is the buzzy, invite-only photo app that’s being called both the ‘new Instagram’ and the ‘anti-Instagram’ and is the now the fourth most-downloaded app on the App Store. Users can take as many photos as they like but the photos cannot be edited with filters, stickers, and text. The photos can be accessed the following morning at 9 a.m. The idea is that users will enjoy their experiences while fully in the moment and without receiving immediate gratification.

• The Explosive (and Inclusive) Potential of NFTs in the Creative World
  • Digital collectibles are having a very large moment. Marketplaces like Nifty Gateway and Zora are hot in the news. They are where people go to buy digital assets, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that live on the blockchain. Not sure what an NFT is? In this article, creators break down NFTs and share some insights on where they think the space is going, and its overall potential.

• The Future of Social Marketing: Trends to Track
  • Marketing today really boils down to one question: “How can we be heard?” And that’s getting increasingly difficult. Being relevant, interesting, timely, entertaining, and superior isn’t enough anymore. The central issue with content, now and into the future, is “How do we become the signal instead of the noise?” In this article, you’ll learn about the latest social marketing trends and how marketers should prepare for a changing world.

“Marketing today really boils down to one question: “How can we be heard?” And that’s getting increasingly difficult. Being relevant, interesting, timely, entertaining, and superior isn’t enough anymore.”

Creativity 

Out of the Box 

• TikTok Highlights Female Creators for Women’s History Month
  • TikTok has announced a range of events for Women’s History Month, which will celebrate both female creators and women-lead businesses on the platform. The program will look to encourage more participation in the TikTok community, while also highlighting important initiatives to support women on the platform. TikTok says that its programming will focus on different weekly themes around embracing and celebrating “the diverse and growing community of women on TikTok”.

• Here’s What Brands Are Doing for Women’s History Month 2021
  • The pandemic has revealed how deeply entrenched gender discrimination and inequities remain—despite the progress we’ve made. Some brands are using this month to directly address the disparities that have been exacerbated over the past year. That means finding ways to increase the wealth and power of the most vulnerable groups of women, rewriting stories of womanhood to prioritize inclusivity and upend stereotypes and committing to increasing diversity within their organizations and on their shelves, starting with HerSHEy’s.

• Burger King: Apparently Not a Place for Queens on International Women’s Day
  • The U.K. side of the businesses launched a tweet with no upfront context, leaving everyone dumbfounded. They followed the shocking one-liner with information about a scholarship program to help female Burger King employees pursue a culinary career. On one end, it’s powerful that the brand is helping to right size the disproportionate gender ratios in the restaurant industry. But on the other, it’s disappointing that a creative execution went out the door with, what seems to be, little remorse for the consequence.

• Munching on Lay’s Chips Can Now Switch on YouTube Subtitles
  • It’s an age-old problem: when you munch chips while watching something, you often can’t hear properly. But rather than having us reaching for the remote to turn up the volume, a new campaign from Lay’s has found another way to deal with it. Aware that many consumers snack while watching YouTube content, the brand has created a plug in for Google Chrome aimed at YouTube viewers, that detects the sounds of crunching chips and automatically turns subtitles on for the video.

• Intelligent Creativity Overhauls the Creative Process
  • Despite an ever-expanding universe of marketing channels and complexity, the creative process utilized by most marketers and agencies has remained unchanged for nearly a century. Creativity in today’s marketing and agency setting is reliant upon instincts. Yet an intuition approach alone to creativity produces outputs that interrupt, confuse or discourage consumers. Why? Consumers consider advertising irrelevant. Read more about the value of combining the accuracy of technology with the artistry of human creativity.

Tricks of the Trade 

 Tips and Tricks 

• Using Twitter Spaces to Grow Your Online Brand
  • The social media world is buzzing about Twitter Spaces. Twitter’s latest feature gives you the opportunity to go live and host audio-only discussions with your audience across the platform. It provides an amazing way to connect with your community and gain exposure for your brand. But how exactly is it helpful? And what should you be talking about when you go live? This post has some advice that will help you start using Twitter Spaces once it gets rolled out to your account.

• 21 Content Ideas to Break Your Creative Rut
  • Ever wrack your brain for content ideas and come up with… nothing? It’s a pretty common challenge for marketing pros. Creative blocks are more a part of the process than the exception. If a creative rut is simply a step in execution, how do you get to the next step of overcoming that block? It turns out that many marketers have go-to strategies for when they can’t come up with a topic. They don’t go it alone, and you don’t have to, either. Here’s 21 content ideas for your next marketing project to keep your creative process moving. Many of them involve methods that you can reuse over time, so you’ll have a technique to turn to when you run out of ideas.

“Creative blocks are more a part of the process than the exception. If a creative rut is simply a step in execution, how do you get to the next step of overcoming that block?”

• How People Search: Understanding User Intent
  • In Google’s earlier days, the search engine relied heavily on plain text data and backlinks to establish rankings through periodic monthly refreshes (known as the Google Dance). Since those days, Google search has become a sophisticated product with a plethora of algorithms designed to promote content and results that meet a user’s needs.

• What is Geofencing Marketing?
  • This has come up in a few brainstorms lately, so this timely. Geofencing lets businesses advertise to consumers within a specified geographic area. With technologies like GPS and radio frequency identifiers, marketers can specify a perimeter or boundary based on a real-world location. Then, they can create a virtual barrier or “geofence” in the area. As consumers enter the geofence, they’re sent location-based ads on their devices.

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