šļø Headlines from 2023.01.27
The Shine Isnāt Lasting
About that whole luxury being up thingā¦
Luxury may be in with the youth, but it might be on the way out overall.
Some luxe brands and retailers saw earnings drop through the fourth quarter as staff sizes downsized as well.
But itās not all doom and gloom as the sector as a whole still instills confidence over the year ahead. The biggest hit will likely come on treat yoāself style purchases from consumers that might now be trying to stretch their dollars elsewhere.
The two groups most in danger of rocky roads are:
- The Retailer in the middle: brands and shoppers canāand willāgo direct
- Lower-end luxury brands:
very high-end luxury brands, which have remained extremely upscale, have performed better than lower-end brands or the so-called affordable luxury ones.
New entrants are a wildcard. Many expect them to get squeezed. But they could also prove more nimble and resilient as they arenāt constrained by tradition and expectations.
Visa and Mastercard both reported sluggish growth, saying consumer spending is slowing after transitioning to lower priced and store brand items.
Both sectors are pinning some hopes on Asia and/or China, which could be risky.
These moves suggest a dose of uncertainty as consumers wonder what this year will hold for the economy. Or it could just be a cool down between holiday shopping events. Year-end shopping started earlier and Iāve heard some things in the past couple weeeks about people waiting for February and Presidentsā Day to do ::gestures vaguely:: something (from listing homes to waiting for sales). Only time will tell if this is the start of a slump or simply a collective inhale.
The Real Reels
Instagram saying āwe pivoted too hard to videoā might be code for āwe pivoted too hard away from revenue.ā Reels Ads are the cheapest of the Meta lot at the moment, so competing with TikTok cost more than just cred.
Fun fact: Big Blue generates 2/3 of Metaās Zuck Bucksā¢ļø.
Reports were flowing after the holidays that Facebook performance was the gift that kept on giving. Sounds like Facebook expects that to be the norm and not the exception moving forward. Thanks in part to improving AI prediction machines for ad targeting and content (Reels) delivery. The money tanker may have finally finished adjusting course post-iOS privacy changes.
But if you only remember one nugget, remember this:
While Reels is often publicly associated with young users and Instagram, Facebook users appear to be the more avid consumers of the short videos.
Polish Up Your PPC
This Search Engine Land post on consent-based targeting is worth a read for any PPC manager. Nothing groundbreaking, but a great refresh and primer for the new year. Topics include:
- First-party vs. Native (platform) data
- How to use native data in your campaigns
- How to collect more 1st party data
- How to make your messaging relevant to these audiences
Performance Max Shopping Data
Itās easy to setup a Performance Max campaign in Google Ads, but it can still be a little difficult to figure out how itās really doing. Thankfully, Collin Schmelebeck has a handy Twitter thread to help shed some light on shopping performance. You have to wait for your follow request to be accepted before you can see the thread, but I donāt want to steal his thunder, so hereās a taste:
- Custom report
- Merchant Center ID (/ MC ID) row
- Metrics
- PMax filter
- Nerd out
Scrollend Cometh
No, the act of scrolling isnāt dying (that I know of). Scrollend is a browser event that fires when:
- The browser is no longer animating or translating scroll.
- The user's touch has been released.
- The user's pointer has released the scroll thumb.
- The user's keypress has been released.
- Scroll to fragment has completed.
- Scroll snap has completed.
- scrollTo() has completed.
- The user has scrolled the visual viewport.
Sounds like a useful event to track if youāre interested in how people engage with your content and where they lose interest.
Chrome joins Firefox in supporting Scrollend, which combine for ~68% of the browser market.
Just The Headlines
- Twitch is going to make pre-roll ads way less annoying / Twitch is also adding a bunch of features for streamers and sharing what itās working on for creators in 2023 and beyond. (the changes will de-emphasize ads and potentially make them easier to pause/skip, but that could make them less annoying to users and thus boost their value (looking for a new platform to test? Twitch is worth a look if it has your demo (not sure if it does? Steal this solid tip from Social Media Today, poke around the ads manager to see the estimated audience size for your target (and aspirational) audience)))
- Instagram Adds Lead Forms as CTA Button Option on Business Profiles (Iām a lead form fanboy)
- How Vimeo improved Video SEO for their customers (an official Google case study, so worth a read if relevant)
- Davidās Bridal launches wedding planning platform/marketplace (and the splintering continues)
- Plans in the House and Senate to push for a nationwide TikTok ban (šµ itās the same š š old song š¶)
- TikTok expands its DM settings to let users choose who can message them (yay, more DMs to slide into (as social platforms bolt on content features to compete with TikTok, The Trend Machine is bolting on social features))