The single most-cringey moment of my life happened on a May afternoon

I had started a new role at my job, one that didn’t exist before. It was an exciting, ground-breaking endeavor! So I felt queasy most days. This was also around the time when we all realized that this COVID thing was lasting more than a year (rip), AND I had given birth to my first child a few months before.

All those things came to a boiling point on that nice, May afternoon as I presented a report to my CEO.

The catastrophe

About ten minutes into the call my CEO kindly stopped me and said, “Hayley, it seems like you might be feeling overwhelmed.”

I fought a pathetic battle against emotion and lost. Luckily, my cry was limited to a single, glistening tear.

AN OBVIOUS LIE

Months of pent-up stress all came out, in the form of hard, ugly crying, on a call WITH MY CEO.

It didn’t get better

Once the tears were coming fast, I turned off my camera 💀. But then, but THEN, I didn’t want him to think I hung up on him. So I needed to slip in a few uh-huhs or rights. But at this point, I’m crying so hard I can’t actually talk.

So for 20 minutes, this man talked to a blank video call. And every five minutes he heard some sort of strangled something when I tried to say uh-huh.

At one point I honestly hoped I was hallucinating. Like, please universe, let this be a true psychotic break that I am having ALL ALONE, as long as I’m not crying in real life in front of someone I’ve never eaten lunch with.

Let’s laugh together

I’m probably the only one who has sobbed in front of their boss for 30+ minutes. But, please tell me that some of you have at least let the wrong ads go live or forgotten to mute yourself on a call or SOMETHING.

In fact, wouldn’t it be cool if you guys sent me your embarrassing work stories and then I share some? I think so.

I’ll send a $25 Amazon gift card to whoever has the most embarrassing story The single most-cringey moment of my life happened on a May afternoon

Hit ‘reply’ and send me an embarrassing work story of yours. If your story makes me laugh the hardest, I’ll send you a $25 gift card. Odds are very few people will reply, so you have good chance of getting that gift card if you just shoot your shot 😅.

And no worries, I won’t share your story unless you tell me it’s cool.

If you aren’t up for sending your story, at least tell me this:
​HAVE YOU EVER CRIED IN FRONT OF A COWORKER?

​👍​👎

THIS WEEK’S MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING NEWS  

​META’S 4TH QUARTER REPORT CAUSED THEIR STOCK TO DROP 20%​

Alt title: FB wins the drop challenge.

The report showed that Facebook (the app) isn’t getting new users and that less of their users are visiting the app daily. This is the first time FB’s Daily Active User (DUA) count has ever dropped from quarter to quarter. To us, this is number-proof of a feeling we’ve all had for a while: FB is no longer the cool place to hang.

These Chartr graphs below put this news in context of Meta’s whole company health.

Remember: this is worth knowing because many of us use FB as a marketing tool, so some of our strategies depend on the app’s health.

​
​AMAZON’S MAKING MORE MONEY FROM ADS THAN WE EXPECTED​

Again, Chartr showed this nicely.

We also found helpful context in this chart that Benedict Evans posted.

​
​A BILL ADVANCES THAT WOULD MAKE APP-STORE REQUIREMENTS LESS RESTRICTIVE

This bill is a step closer to becoming a law. If it becomes an actual law it would require app stores to allow:

• Apps to use payment systems other than the platform’s payment system
• Apps to offer their app other places for a different price, and
• Developers to contact users for a business purpose

The dangers of keyword blocklists

Ben Sarmiento Interview

We all agree that we want to spend our ad money on ads that will work. So we try to adjust a bunch of factors that impact our ads’ success. Where our ads are shown is one of those factors we work with. Besides simply choosing which platform to run your ads, certain ad spaces allow you to submit a keyword blocklist.

Keyword blocklists were created to prevent ads from running next to content the advertiser wanted to avoid. Many blocklists came to include topics like “politics,” “news,” or “transgender.”

But here’s the thing: an excessive blocklist can damage your company’s reach AND hurt minority content creators.

The Channel Factory helps advertisers align their YouTube ads with the best content for their brand. And they developed The Conscious Project to combat this issue. We had the pleasure of speaking with their VP of Sales, Ben Sarmiento. Here’s what we learned.

HOW BLOCKLISTS CAN DAMAGE YOUR REACH

A survey by CHEQ and Digiday says, “92% of marketers said that blocklists can damage the effectiveness of campaigns.” Let’s break down how.

Let’s say you include the term “shot” in your blocklist because you don’t want your ad running by violent content like guns being shot at people. Well, adding that term to your list would do that. But it would also block content related to sports, medicine, photography, film, and more.

If a company is selling athletic shoes, and “shot” is on their blocklist, these ads aren’t going to be advertised alongside basketball players who shoot during a game.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

Ben explained that his company noticed that many brands have blocklists that prevent their ads from being shown alongside LGBTQ+, Latino, and Black content creators. Those creators then lose out on ad revenue opportunities.

So many of us and so many of our companies discuss the desire to be more inclusive, and yet our ad spend is exclusive. Like how “73% of LGBTQ+ friendly channels are blocked by industry-standard blocklists,” according to a study by CHEQ.

Most businesses don’t realize how these lists are affecting these groups, not to mention how it’s stunting their ad reach.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT:

1. As always, awareness is the first step to change.
2. Join the Conscious Project Pledge, which invites advertisers to be more inclusive.
3. Review your company’s blocklist.
4. Bring this up when your company discusses how they can support diversity.

LET’S GET VISUAL