JB’s Digital Update 6th Dec 2022

This is an interesting survey from the IAB. You have to be slight careful with the stats, but nonetheless, it’s useful.

Basically, 20% of marketers are using the Metaverse, while another 36% are thinking about it. Of course, that does mean that 44% said “Huh?What?”. Mostly it’s used for slightly nebulous brand awareness, perception and engagement reasons, with some 34% using it as an ecommerce channel. 

Now, the Metaverse is a thing, honestly. It’s not just Zuck’s imaginary playground. It’s the new buzz phrase after AI, Machine Learning, Voice Search and Mobile. It’s good that there are trail-blazers in there spending budget to find out if it works, but like the fax machine, it still has a way to go to reach critical mass, mass appeal and ultimately utility. 

Take a look at the Metaverse and see for yourself. Contact me if you want to chat about it.

Oh hooray. The ongoing beta test which is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has released two “new” metrics which are old favourites from Universal Analytics: namely Views per Session and Average Session Duration. These are available under the Reporting Customisation (which can create new reports and tweak existing ones) and Explorations. It’s not known if they will revert to being part of the standard set of data points. 

This is a good thing and a bad thing. For a long time Google said we didn’t need these metrics as GA4 was a new way of looking at and measuring things, but lo and behold they are back. I haven’t yet checked, but you may be able to tag events and conversions to these, like old. It’s great that you can still measure them, (and that Google appears to have listened) but if it truly is a new world, then I don’t think it’s good to take a step backwards. 

I would definitely implement these into my reports as I see them as useful guiding metrics that give flavour and background to performance, but I wouldn’t hang KPIs or too much importance to them.

If you haven’t migrated to and implemented GA4 yet, you need to talk to me as soon as possible.

John Mueller has come right out and said it (or not really, as the case may be): your homepage is the most important page on your site. He said it from an SEO perspective, but really it matters for all things. 

In general, a good homepage is like a good first impression, it sets everything up from there. Make the homepage a dire experience and bounce rates are sky high, users gets lost or waylaid, people don’t link to it and all sorts of terrible things happen.

NB – a great homepage does not have to be a thing of beauty and awe. It needs to match what the user expects and give them a reasonable match level of information and enticement. Like mine. 

Have you looked at your homepage recently? Do so with a critical eye (and me!) and let’s see what you / we can uncover in terms of conversions and performance upgrades. 

Surprising as this may be, if Microsoft doubles its ad revenue to $20 billion, that would only make it the sixth largest network (after Amazon., Apple, TikTok, Google & Meta). That’s what their plan is anyway, as they work new partnership deals with Netflix and bring ad gaming online with Xbox, Mincecraft and Activision. You’d have to say that it may not be the biggest, but it is probably the most diverse in terms of traffic sources. 

The good thing with diversity of traffic sources is you can be seen across many different audiences and if tracking works well then your ads can also follow consumers across those various platforms.

Talk to me if you want to get found through online advertising, whether with Microsoft, Google, Meta, or others. 

Despite reports of advertisers leaving Twitter in droves and new social networks being set up on the fly, Twitter has released three new advertising solutions, all of which I must admit I thought they had already. 

• Website Conversion Optimisation – you can track ecommerce sales as a conversion goal (gasp, wonders will never cease).
• Dynamic Product Ads – essentially a mix of retargeting and advertising your products to similar cohorts (ditto). 
• Collection ads – advertise a product with a hero image and scrollable secondary images. 

These are not ground-breaking ad types, but perhaps they do explain why Twitter’s revenue, even pre-Elon was in the doldrums. Most of these ad types have been around for a very long time, so it’s a surprise Twitter wasn’t running them already. 

The jury is still very much out on Twitter. A lot of hoohah has died down recently, whether because the media has moved on, or things have become more stable is unclear. A lot of advertisers pulled budget over brand concerns, but they also have been tempted back into the fold with (allegedly) very sweet deals. And, of course, Elon and Tim had their walk around Apple’s duck pond. So there you go. Even in this world, nothing beats a bit of face time. 

Talk to me if you want to advertise on Twitter or any of the other social networks.