Canada Is Going To Compel YouTube TikTok And The Other Streamers To Boost Their Domestic Content.
Canada is going to compel YouTube, TikTok and the other streamers to boost their domestic content in a bid to bring in their own regulations off the back of the EU legislation. Their government says that there are measures needed to foster growth in the domestic culture sector and to make Canadian content more accessible.
This sets a precedent for other countries. Perhaps the US will be next to follow along with other leading countries outside of the EU and Canada. The YouTube channel for one of our clients started ranking on the first page of Google for many targeted terms and following this, their Maps listing then actually improved positions as well. Google may be treating the YouTube subscribers as high authority backlinks because you are getting a high quantity of new subscribers, engagement and traffic. Both Google and YouTube know the subscriber is likely real, so there is little risk of the traffic being spam compared to say a directory link. At the same time as this improvement in Map ranks, there was no improvement in the ratings, nor the number of reviews on Google Maps when their Google Maps listings started to improve. The only major change was the focus on their YouTube strategy.
This legislation affects Netflix and Hulu as well, so it is also the streaming channels that the Canadians are also looking to regulate.
Facebook's Parent Meta Agrees To End Alleged Discriminatory Practices In Housing Ads
Facebook’s parent, Meta, has agrees to end alleged discriminatory practices in housing ads. The US government has claimed that Facebook Ads discriminated against Facebook users based on their race, religion, gender, and other factors.
Why Is This An Issue?
Because they are federally protected attributes, you cannot discriminate against people at all. Based on the allegations made, Facebook was being investigated for discriminating against people based on their race, religion, gender, etc.
How Would You Do That As An Advertiser?
Facebook’s algorithm is trying to show the most suitable Ads to users that are most likely to convert. However, it has ended up being inadvertently discriminatory by race, religion, etc.
We believe that the financial outcome for Facebook is an increase in their advertising revenues. Users will be shown less relevant ads. In my opinion, it’s a lose-lose situation for society despite the best of intentions.
Is There Anything Advertisers Can Do About This To Protect Themselves?
If Facebook decides they are going to remove the targeting from ads, you are going to serve more ‘generic ads’ to more ‘generic people’, because that way, advertisers will obviously sell less, and spend more. You will still be able to add audiences and targeting to reduce the number of irrelevant people, but it might become more difficult to really personalize.
What About Advertisers Increasing the Uploading Of Goal-Driven Offline Conversions?
Jobs and homes that this legislation targets are not going to usually complete online. However, you can bet Facebook have so many data points that they could remove contentious demographic markers and still get to the same conclusion of whether a person is going to convert better than someone else.
It should be highlighted that there is no actual ad demographic specifically targeting for race or religion. Therefore you would have to be stereotyping and employing audiences that include such groups.
Who Are Going To Be The Winners And Losers In This Action?
Advertisers will lose as you cannot target as effectively, and you will be charged at least as much, or more for poorer targeting. Facebook will likely make more money.
What Will Happen To Performance Max On Google Shopping?
This leads us to more questions than answers when it comes to how these government actions may affect other platforms. Are regulators saying that jobs and housing are special areas in terms of discrimination with algorithms allowed to discriminate generally in other areas?
How is Google going to deal with this? We have also not seen anything on this issue affecting LinkedIn. That will be an obvious place for this same issue given how focused LinkedIn is on jobs.
In terms of the Department of Justice, we do not see any mention of other social networks being targeted. Many retailers have far less Caucasian models than previously seen, yet how reflective are models to individual customers? Some argue that many websites are now unrepresentative of the demographic split in the UK.
Let’s say you are trying to match an ad for clothing or makeup to the typical user. Are governments going to say “Well, actually, we don’t care if it’s relevant? What about products that are not appropriate for your skin type? There have been a few startups that have focused on makeup for non-Caucasians because commonly makeup shades are not effectively catering for non-white, fair skin.
Similarly, if you cannot afford to buy a great big, luxury home somewhere, aren’t you going to be miffed that you are being served ads for such a residence rather than ones that are relevant?
Also, if you live in an area where you are known to have big houses, and they are serving smaller properties to you, again, you are going to have a lack of relevance there and the user experience is going to be poor.
We seem to be returning towards the old world of three TV channels of generic content!
YouTube Shorts Is A Huge Hit In India, And Now It's Going After Tik Tok In The US.
YouTube shorts is now competing with TikTok in terms of the total number of views
According to the WSJ: “Social media users create full-screen videos that often make use of clips from popular songs and incorporate dazzling video effects like filters that can digitally apply makeup or put a user’s face on the body of a panda. YouTube said this week that shorts that allow users to post videos for up to 60 seconds are reaching 1.5 billion monthly users.”
We have tried this with some of our gym videos where you might get 50 views and we’re regularly seeing 1600 to 2000 view on shorts by comparison. The number of views you get with Short video content is extremely impressive! These short videos are also showing on google search, so it’s a very effective way to drive organic traffic to your business.
Who Is YouTube Shorts Good For? Just People With Short Attention Spans?
With YouTube shorts let’s say you’re posting educational content and there’s an obvious under 1-minute hook section, that makes them want to see more and subscribe to your channel. This is what YouTube Shorts are really for.
Does YouTube Shorts Cost Anything?
YouTube Shorts is mostly free, although ads started rolling out last month. Reels are now the fastest growing content of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, so it’s just tremendous growth across all these short-form videos regardless of the platform in question.