COMING AT YOU THE WEEK OF 5.17.22
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In case you missed it, I’m Hayley 👋. I started Highrise because I felt very frustrated as a new marketer. There were Google updates, social platform changes, and a bunch more.
I tried to stay in-the-know but
- Reading blog posts took too much time
- Newsletters were only giving me a one-line explanation, and didn’t help me understand the info
So, I decided to make my life easier add more work to myself for the benefit of humankind. Now I read through a ton of industry news to give you what I couldn’t find a few years ago—a relatively easy way to keep up with the marketing industry updates.
This week’s most important Marketing News
This is a conference Google hosts where they make announcements and show off the future of their products. I’ll cover the most important stuff from Google I/O below.
GOOGLE IS RELEASING A NEW TOOL FOR USERS TO MANAGE AD PREFERENCES
My Ad Center will allow people to say which brands they like or to opt out of certain ad categories, among other things. This tool will include transparency features that will tell people why they’re being served certain ads and who’s paying for them, those will replace the About this Ad feature.
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GOOGLE IS INTRODUCING THE MONK SKIN TONE (MST) SCALE TO HELP ITS IMAGE SEARCH SEE MORE SKIN TONES
Google images has used the Fitzpatrick scale to identify skin color in the past, which has six skin tone types. The MST scale uses ten shades, and will replace the Fitzpatrick scale. They’re also working to develop labels to identify skin tone and hair color and texture in images.
GOOGLE IS ADDING ‘NEAR ME’ FEATURES TO MULTISEARCH
I’ve mentioned before that Google supports multisearch—the ability to mesh image and text searches. So, you can upload a picture of a pair of shoes and add the text “pink” to it, to try and find that style of shoe in pink. Well, now they’re expanding multisearch to include Near Me capabilities. Google gave the example of taking a picture of stir fry and adding “near me” as the text portion of the multisearch, which populates results for restaurants serving stir-fry.
NETFLIX TOLD EMPLOYEES THAT AN AD-SUPPORTED TIER COULD BE RELEASED AS EARLY AS THIS YEAR
Netflix seemed set against ads on their streaming service, but they’ve changed their minds. (We all do from time to time 🤷♀️). Info from an employee says they’re gonna try and release ads by Q4 of this year, which is faster than we expected. Looks like people aren’t too upset by the prospect of ads though, when it means a cheaper subscription price.
ELON AND TWITTER’S DEAL IS ON HOLD
Elon wanted to wage war on bots and fake accounts on Twitter, and then Twitter came out to say that there were a lot less bots than people would have expected. Some feel that their numbers were miscalculated. So, while they check on those numbers, the deal is on hold.
INSTAGRAM IS TESTING COLLECTIBLES (AKA NFTS)
A few creators and collectors can share NFTs that they’ve made or that they own on Instagram. It looks like you can’t buy NFTs on their for now though.
PERFORMANCE MAX CAMPAIGN BEST PRACTICES HAVE BEEN UPDATED.
Here’s an overview of what was added, and here’s the whole best practices page.
RESOURCES
This very cool survey had intriguing insights on Americans’ preferences for ads. They talk about:
- what people think makes a good ad vs a bad one (relatability was the highest ranking aspect of a good ad)
- which platforms people think have the worst ads
- which demographics trust influencers
- and a bunch more
Morfternight — This weekly newsletter about focus, time management, and productivity has good reminders and unique takes!
INTERVIEW Rosetta L. Clay
When you think of diversity, what do you think of? The first thing that comes to mind for most people is race. Although race is a factor, other things contribute to creating a diverse group. We spoke to Rosetta L. Clay—a doctoral student of Diversity & Equity in Education—about diversity in ads and insecurities in the workplace. Here’s what we gathered.
Representation
Consumers will buy and engage more with a brand when they are being represented. Having diversity in an ad is critical nowadays, but it can be hard for companies to portray diversity in a way that doesn’t come off as being a token in a campaign. Rosetta said, “Be clear and intentional about what it is you’re trying to convey. Now, in this cancel culture, we have a lot of organizations that don’t have the budgets to miss the mark on these things.”
Ways not to “miss the mark” in an ad:
- Start by diversifying your team
- Once the ad is done, run it by another group that wasn’t part of making the ad
- Make it a safe place to voice an opinion
- Use focus groups
Insecurities in the workplace
Many insecurities arise at work when people feel their opinion or perspective doesn’t matter. Often that feeling comes when peers don’t accept their coworkers, or don’t show that acceptance. Rosetta said, “The concept of belonging for me is that everyone comes into the space knowing that they belong there. You don’t own it, I don’t own it. We all share it. We should always think about how we can be better by being a part of that together.”
In the workplace, it can be difficult to navigate co-worker relationships. Rosetta offers a solution by finding an ally. She stated that they aren’t there to speak for you, but they will help you navigate through certain situations because of seniority.
Diversity in the workplace is not just the right thing, but it also makes good business sense. Diversity will help us overcome our blind spots, make our advertising and marketing richer, and help maintain a vibrant workforce.
INTERESTING STUFF
LET’S GET VISUAL
