TikTok SEO in 5 Steps: How To Make Sure Your Videos Show Up in Search
It’s time to venture beyond your FYP. We’ll show you how to search on TikTok to find accounts, sounds, effects, and more.
Microsoft Makes 3 Predictions For PPC Trends In The New Year via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Microsoft makes three predictions for product categories that will increase ad clicks in the new year and advises how to optimize campaigns accordingly.
According to a global study run by Opeepl, peoples’ number one most popular New Year’s is to get healthier, which they plan to accomplish through diet and exercise.
Looking at upcoming health trends, Microsoft Advertising shares ways to optimize campaigns for the three most significant product categories.
1. ‘Organic Food’ Up 20%
Microsoft Advertising predicts clicks on ads for organic food will spike during the week of January 14, resulting in 20% growth from the same week in December.
To capitalize on this trend, Microsoft Advertising suggests the following:
“Target users searching for healthy, nutritious food options in January with In-market Audiences. Our internal forecasting data suggests that clicks will peak during the winter on January 14, so although you should ramp up your budget after the holidays end, make sure you don’t run out midway through the month.”
2. ‘Sports Apparel’ Up In Early December Through January
Microsoft Advertising predicts searches for sports apparel will begin to rise in early December and continue through January.
In a blog post, Microsoft Advertising shares the following advice:
“Use Shopping campaigns to showcase your sports and fitness apparel products late November and early December during holiday shopping sales. Microsoft internal data estimates that consumers will be most heavily searching for gear between the weeks of and November 26 and December 3, but activity will remain high until January.”
3. ‘Fitness & Nutrition’ Searches Come In Waves
Unsurprisingly, searches for fitness and nutrition are expected to rise in the new year.
However, Microsoft Advertising advises an “always-on” approach to targeting this category, as search interest will spike several times throughout the year.
“Using 2021 data as a comparison for what to expect activity wise over the next year, we can assume clicks for nutrition and fitness will peak in January, May, July, and October. Consider an always-on approach since Audience Ads are shown to drive users down the funnel to search tactics.”
Source: Microsoft Advertising
Featured Image: SeaStudio/Shutterstock
Biggest Challenges Facing SEO In 2023 [Survey Results] via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
When you’re preparing your strategy for next year, it’s vital to plan for potential upsets and challenges ahead.
This year, SEO practitioners overcame challenges posed by a lack of resources, issues with strategy, and the ability to scale processes.
Looking ahead to 2023 and beyond, our State of SEO report finds practitioners anticipate machine learning and AI, Google updates, and the deprecation of third-party cookies to lead the way as the greatest shifts in SEO.
In this article, we’ll summarize key data points from our report, highlight three major challenges in particular, and look at relevant SEO trends that can aid in your strategy development.
Lastly, we’ll discuss the implications advancements in machine learning and AI has on search marketing. Will this new search technology pose a challenge for you and your business? Continue reading to learn what our experts say.
All of the insights here are driven by our first-party survey data in the annual State Of SEO Report.
Summary Of Report Findings
When asked what were the biggest SEO challenges over the last 12 months, respondents stated:
- Lack of resources (14.9%).
- Strategy issues (12.3%).
- Scaling processes (11.9%).
- Pandemic-related issues (11.2%).
- Alignment with other departments (10.7%).
Budget cuts fell from the number one challenge SEO professionals faced in 2021 to number six this year.
However, the fact that lack of resources and scaling processes were top challenges in 2022 suggests that 2021’s budget cuts had a lasting impact.
Looking ahead to potential threats in 2023, we asked respondents to select up to three “biggest shifts” and industry changes in SEO. Here are their top responses:
- Machine learning and AI (18.7%).
- Google updates (18.0%).
- Third-party cookie deprecation (13.9%).
- Google zero-click pages (12.9%).
- Competition for talent (11.5%).
Factors SEO professionals are watching as emergent factors are:
- Machine learning and AI (11.3%).
- Core Web Vitals (10.8%).
- EAT & trusted sources (10.2%).
- Mobile SEO (9.8%).
- SERP features (8.3%).
SEO Pros Often Work With Limited Resources
Lack of resources came in as the top challenge faced by SEOs in 2022.
There’s little doubt that the industry is feeling the effects of budget cuts incurred in 2021, though another reason for the limited resources is that many SEOs aren’t working with large teams.
Over 40% of respondents report working with a team of 10 or fewer members, while roughly 5% said they work by themselves.
Adding new team members may prove difficult in the next year or two.
The State Of SEO Report goes into deeper detail about the challenges facing SEO professionals and what they’re worried about next year.
Recent And Continuing Growth May Prove Challenging
Several of the SEO shifts predicted for 2023 and beyond are potential impediments to growth.
Recent and continuing growth may prove challenging without the ability to scale as a team, and competition for talent is expected to be a major cause for concern over the next two years.
Deprecation of third-party cookies makes it difficult for SEO pros and marketers to sustain recent growth, as they’ll be expected to deliver the same or better results with fewer data.
Strategy Is A Concern For Many SEO Pros
SEOs listed strategy issues as one of their greatest challenges over the last 12 months.
Strategy issues may indicate that SEO professionals are struggling to prove their ROI (return on investment).
While over half of SEO practitioners (58.0%) we surveyed reported an increase in the ROI for their work, many struggled to prove ROI, and 29% of SEO professionals reported feeling ambivalent about their ROI.
In our chapter on Winning Strategies And Measuring SEO Success, we discuss how ROI problems are often the result of a disconnect between a brand’s target goals and the data being tracked.
SEO Pros Expect Machine Learning And AI To Have A Big Impact
Topping the list of biggest shifts over the next two years, as anticipated by SEO pros, is machine learning and AI.
Additionally, machine learning and AI were the top responses when SEO pros were asked to rank what they think will be the most important emergent factors in 2023.
To understand better why machine learning and AI are at the top of everyone’s minds, we turned to our in-house experts to get more context.
Shelley Walsh, the SEO content strategist at SEJ, doesn’t see AI and machine learning being able to replace human decision-making any time soon. Further, she doesn’t advise relying too heavily on AI-powered tools for creating content:
“As a disruptor, I can’t yet see AI being able to replace critical decisions and choices where there are several routes to take, and you have to make a choice based on expertise. The tool is only as good as the person driving it. At the moment, there is a flood of tools powered by GPT-3.
These are great for low-end volume content, such as product descriptions, but they widen the divide and elevate well-researched thought leadership quality content. As niches online become saturated by AI-spun content, the quality will be the only way to stand out. Ultimately, overuse will only have a detrimental effect.”
To see all of the first-party survey data and read more insights, download the State Of SEO Report.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Yoast SEO 19.11: Upgrading your SEO data
At Yoast HQ, we’re doing our part to make your websites run like clockwork. One of the things we’re working on is optimizing our Yoast SEO plugin to use fewer resources. This helps make your site faster and more efficient. In Yoast SEO 19.11, we’re doing this by streamlining your database.
Improved SEO data optimization
We ask you to let Yoast SEO index your website data so we can get to work immediately. The data we index ends up in a special table in your database, which stores all the information we might need from an SEO perspective. We use this to understand your site and make our behind-the-scenes processes run faster.
In this release, we are improving the database and the underlying process determining how we fill the special table. In some cases, the table could contain things that shouldn’t end up in the database. This could cause the database to be more extensive than it should be, leading to slower server responses. We’ve now sped this up.
In Yoast SEO 19.11, we put a lot of effort into ensuring that only things that need to end up in the database will end up in the database. We’re also cleaning up the database and deleting stray additions.
To help you manage your database, we’ve added a WP-CLI command to clean up unused data from our custom database tables: wp yoast cleanup. Plus, we’ve added the wpseo_indexable_excluded_taxonomies filter to allow manually excluding taxonomies from being indexed.
Update now to Yoast SEO 19.11!
Yoast SEO 19.11 is ready for download. In this release, we’ve mainly worked on improving our database usage and finetuning how we handle the SEO data we index. Your database should now be leaner — making it faster and more efficient. Happy updating!
Coming up next!
12 Powerful Email Marketing Tips You Need To Know via @sejournal, @IngridPAdames
There is no doubt that email marketing is effective. But how many times have you sat down to begin an email marketing project and immediately felt overwhelmed?
Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to start, especially when working with a newer brand.
The good thing is that email marketing has never been easier, thanks to automation tools and innovative ways to deliver emails directly into subscribers’ inboxes.
If you don’t know where to begin or want to improve your current workflow, this article is for you.
So now, let’s look at some simple steps you can follow to ensure you’re using email marketing wisely.
Where To Begin With Email Marketing
So, you’re planning your email marketing strategy for your client. Where do you begin? Here are some helpful tips to get you started:
- Keep your emails short and sweet. People get tired of reading long emails, so keep yours between 60 to 200 words.
- People love visuals, especially in email marketing, so include images of your products or services.
- Social proof helps convince readers that your offer is legitimate and worth their time. This includes sharing links or information in your emails from experts in the industry, positive testimonials, or influencers using the brand.
- People want to know where to go next after reading your content. And since emails are usually opened on mobile devices, you need to provide a clear CTA at the end of each email. Whether it’s to a product page or recent content produced on the website.
- Email marketing works best when you send regular emails. But even once a week isn’t enough. Studies show that people respond better to frequent emails than infrequent ones.
Now, let’s discuss the top 12 email marketing components for your strategy:
1. Create Optimized Lead Magnets
So, how do you get people to actually subscribe to your email listing? An effective lead magnet.
A lead magnet is usually the first thing visitors see when they land on a brand’s website. It gets them to click through and read more about a brand, so it needs to be eye-catching and compelling.
And if you don’t optimize your lead magnets for conversion, a brand could lose out on potential leads.
So, how do you make sure your lead magnets convert?
Your lead magnet should grab visitors’ attention right away. That means making it interesting, unique, and relevant to the business.
For example, you can use an incentive like a freebie or discount code to entice people to take action. You could also give away a free report or ebook in exchange for their name and email address.
Your lead magnet could also be the first email they receive, which can be a part of your welcome series (which I’ll talk about briefly).
It entices the users to keep receiving emails, so they don’t immediately unsubscribe after they receive a discount code or something similar.
2. Segment Your Subscribers
You’ve probably heard the term “subscriber segmentation.” It refers to a way of grouping your subscribers into groups based on their interests and behavior so that you can send them more relevant content, offers, and other messages.
This is an integral part of email marketing because it allows you to target your audience with personalized emails.
You can also use this technique to create multiple versions of your emails, such as a welcome email, a thank you email, and a follow-up email.
Segmenting your subscribers can help build trust and long-term interest for a brand because it presents them with information or offers they actually want to receive.
3. Craft A Welcome Series
Welcome emails are usually sent automatically to new subscribers when they sign up, purchase a product, or make an account.
When creating a welcome series, you need to consider where the customer is in their journey with a brand. So, it’s beneficial to space the emails out over a set period of time and create each one with a specific intention.
A welcome series is a great way to keep potential customers engaged after they sign up. Especially since they receive emails from companies almost daily.
Some examples include: “Welcome! We hope you like our product” or “Your account has been activated.”
You can also send welcome emails to existing customers who haven’t logged in for a while.
For example, if someone signs up and doesn’t use the service for three months, you could send an email saying, “Hey, we noticed that you signed up recently. Would you be interested in using our service?”
This type of marketing is very effective because it’s personalized and targeted. It shows that you’re not sending out mass emails but rather ones specifically tailored to specific customers.
These emails are also a great way to help build trust with your customers and get them used to receiving emails from you.
4. Implement Automation
So now, you’ve done the work to craft an email series. Next, it’s time to automate their delivery, so you don’t have to send them out each time you need to, according to your schedule.
Automation in email marketing is easy to do using tools like MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, and Convertkit.
These types of programs allow you to create automated emails based on triggers, such as when someone opens your email, clicks on a link, or purchases something from you.
This way, you no longer need to manually send out those emails, which can alleviate some stress when you’re dealing with a multitude of different subscribers.
5. Design Mobile-Friendly Emails
As I mentioned earlier, most people use their phones to check their emails, so making them mobile-friendly is crucial.
The email should be optimized for mobile phones if it promotes sales or discounts. For example, any sales information or product pictures should be easily viewed on their mobile device.
And users should be able to click on the promotion, link, or image and give them the option to view the brand’s site in their preferred browser on their phone.
The key elements to consider when designing mobile-friendly emails include:
- Placing important links at the top of the page rather than down below.
- Keeping graphics small.
- Using text only where appropriate.
- Optimizing images.
- And testing different sizes of fonts and margins.
6. Personalize Your Emails
Even though the average person receives numerous unsolicited emails daily, sending personalized messages to potential leads is proven to boost response rates.
Personalizing your emails makes them feel less like spam. Plus, it gives your subscribers a sense of connection to you.
The key to successful email marketing is knowing exactly who you want to send emails and which messages resonate best with each group of recipients.
Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you can tailor your messages specifically to your audience and keep them coming back for more.
First, choose a subject line that clearly states what you will say in your email. This will help readers decide whether or not to click through your email.
Next, include a call to action, such as asking subscribers to check out a new product or sign up for a free trial.
Finally, customize each individual message by adding links to pages on your site where interested parties can read more information.
Get creative and do your research for the industry. For example, does adding emojis help to personalize the email, or is that a no-no for that specific industry?
7. A/B Test Email Content
The A/B testing of email content is a great way to improve your open rate. It’s also an excellent way to get more people on board with a product or service.
But it can be challenging to figure out what works best for you and your audience.
A/B testing helps marketers decide what works best for their business. For example, when designing email campaigns, it’s often necessary to split-test different versions of emails to determine which one performs better.
You can also test different subject lines. Subject lines are one of the most important parts of any email. They’ll help determine whether someone opens your message or not. It’s what hooks the subscriber to learn more.
The best way to test different variations of emails is to use A/B email testing software. This allows you to compare two versions side by side while showing only one version to half of your users at any given moment so that they don’t realize they’re receiving two different messages.
Most email automation platforms can also conduct A/B testing for your emails. And A/B testing isn’t just beneficial for email. For example, it’s important to test copy and content on a brand’s website, so A/B testing will come in handy in more ways than one.
8. Find The Best Timing
The best time to send emails to customers depends on several factors – such as when they last visited your website, what action they took while on your site, whether they completed any transactions, and more.
One way to determine which times work best for email campaigns is by using Google Analytics. You can use the Goal conversion section to view bounce rate, exit pages, and other data related to goal completion.
You should also consider other factors and incorporate them when you send emails based on people’s schedules. For example, you can see lower open rates on holidays, late into the evening, as well as Monday morning and Friday evenings.
9. Scrub Your List Of Non-Opens
It’s essential to manage your subscriber list. When you click “send” on your newsletter, your list contains all subscribers who did not open the email. If you see that certain people are ignoring all your emails, you might want to delete them from your list.
To delete them from your list, you need to go to the unsubscribe page, then select remove and confirm. This process may be repeated until all your non-opens are removed.
You don’t want to overload people who have already purchased or are no longer interested in the brand, so you don’t create a negative relationship with them.
Incorporating one of the email management tools to help you eliminate the consistent non-opens can help you manage your subscribers and decrease time spent on this repetitive task.
10. Include A Real Reply Email Address
This is one of the best ways to keep customers coming back for more. Users may want to send any follow-up emails directly to their spam folder if you don’t include an actual reply address.
But when you put your email address in the footer, they know exactly where to go. If a person has questions, they can email the brand’s team.
Again, this also helps build trust with the brand. They know they are communicating with real people who selected these emails for them versus being spammed with nonrelevant or generic content for the masses.
11. Experiment With Lead Generation Ads
The goal of lead generation ads is to reach people who may be interested in buying from the brand.
They usually appear at the top of the page, where they are visible for longer periods of time than other types of ads.
This means people tend to click on them more often than ads below the fold. So, as long as you don’t use these ads too frequently, you should be able to generate leads.
12. Utilize Email Analytics To Improve Campaigns
One way to utilize email analytics to improve campaigns is to check the bounce rate, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes for your emails. Then use that information to enhance your current efforts.
This includes sending emails at different times throughout the week, testing subject lines, changing up the call to action, and testing creative variations.
If you’re still struggling, try experimenting with lead magnets, such as free ebooks, white papers, and webinars.
These allow you to capture leads from those interested in learning about new topics. In addition, measuring results lets you know which emails work and which ones don’t.
You should also compare these variables (such as open rates) to industry metrics. For example, what’s the percentage of bounce rates for the industry you’re working with?
If you aren’t measuring results, you won’t have much data to base future decisions for your next email marketing campaign.
Final Takeaways
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to promote your online store, build relationships with customers, and generate sales.
The final step in this process is to put all these pieces together into an effective strategy. This means coming up with creative and effective ways to construct emails and email series.
It also means being able to measure the results of each tactic so that you can continue to improve your efforts going forward.
Leveraging email metrics and incorporating A/B testing can help build relationships with subscribers by presenting them with the information they want to read.
With a little bit of effort and creativity, you can use email marketing to increase a brand’s sales and help create long-term customers.
More Resources:
Featured Image: 13_Phunkod/Shutterstock
10 Remarketing Lists To Boost PPC Performance via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson
Remarketing lists are a powerful tool for all Google Ads campaign types – but specifically for Google Search ads.
With the looming, inevitable privacy updates coming to advertising, remarketing lists are a vital part of any PPC strategy.
Remarketing allows you to hyper-target specific audiences who are already familiar with your brand to help maximize return on ad spend (ROAS).
A consumer journey can have countless touchpoints before making a purchase.
Below you’ll learn 10 creative and actionable use cases of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs) to capture potential customers earlier in their purchase journey.
With so many opportunities to use remarketing lists, let’s break down strategies based on where they’re at in the funnel.
Top-Of-Funnel & Awareness Remarketing Strategies
These three remarketing strategies cover the basics of top-of-funnel marketing and utilize different campaign types to help leverage your RLSAs.
1. Target Users Who Have Engaged With A Video Campaign And Encourage Them To Take Action
If you’ve tried YouTube Ads in any form and have struggled to determine or quantify success, then this strategy might be for you.
YouTube ads are a great way to gain awareness of a product, service, or brand – but how do you get a new user to take action from that first touchpoint?
Enter in remarketing lists.
Google Ads allows you to create different types of remarketing lists based on your Youtube videos. There are two key requirements for using this list type:
- These lists can only be used in other YouTube or Search campaigns – not Display.
- Your YouTube channel must be linked to your Google Ads account.
To set up YouTube remarketing lists, navigate to Tools & Settings > Shared Library > Audience Manager.
In Audience Manager, hit the “+” button to start segmenting your YouTube remarketing lists.
Screenshot by author, October 2022From there, Google gives a multitude of options to start leveraging your YouTube video engagement for remarketing. These options include engagement from:
- Views to videos.
- Subscribes to the channel.
- Visits to the channel.
- Likes on videos.
- Add videos to playlist.
- Shares of videos.
Further, you’re able to segment further to make your remarketing lists as specific as possible:
Screenshot by author, October 2022To leverage these newly created YouTube remarketing lists, try adding them to your existing Search campaigns as “Observation Only” at first to understand if these users are more likely to interact with your campaigns versus someone who hasn’t seen your YouTube videos.
Taking it a step further, you can create new Search campaigns that specifically target these users.
The benefit is that you can provide different messaging to these users who have already interacted with your brand.
2. Exclude Low Quality Or Irrelevant Website Traffic From Search Campaigns
If you’ve run any type of awareness campaign, you’ve likely seen a boost in traffic overall, including irrelevant webpages or low-quality visitors.
What do we constitute as low-quality or irrelevant webpages?
- Any page that wouldn’t result in a purchase, such as:
- Careers page.
- Investors page.
- Advertise with us page.
- Customer Service page.
- Users who stayed on the website for less than one second.
Excluding these types of website visitors from the get-go can help make your remarketing efforts more cost-efficient in the long run.
3. Create Lookalike Audiences From Your Own First-Party Data
Using Google’s affinity audiences or attributes that consider someone at the top of funnel for your product or service can be daunting, especially if you’re a small business or have a limited budget.
It may feel that you don’t have a lot of options to reach new users without paying dearly for it.
But, have you ever thought about using your most valuable assets to build awareness?
Leveraging your own first-party data to create Lookalike audiences gives you more leverage than third-party data, such as Google’s affinity audiences, to reach like-minded people of users who already love your brand.
To create an audience like this, there are a few options to consider:
- Create a remarketing list of past purchasers using Google Ads or Google Analytics.
- Upload a list of past purchasers to Google Ads.
Depending on the size of these lists, you’ll have the option to create a Lookalike audience and use it for either YouTube, Display, or Search.
The example below shows what a remarketing list based on a completed purchase URL looks like when created in Google Ads:
Screenshot by author, October 2022I personally like to use Google Analytics when creating remarketing lists because you have many more segmentation or filtering options to be as specific as you need to be.
As a reminder, your site must be tagged and linked with either your Google Analytics property or Google Ads tag.
Consideration Stage Remarketing Strategies
These four remarketing strategies help move the user from the consideration to the purchase phase quicker using different bidding strategies and offers.
4. Increase Bids For Qualified Visitors Of Your Site Who Haven’t Made A Purchase
An easy way to leverage qualified users in your existing Search campaigns is to increase the bid on those users simply.
You don’t need to create separate campaigns for these users if you don’t want to. Segmenting these users and manipulating the bids on them keeps your account management under control.
To use this strategy, you’ll first need to create a remarketing list of users who haven’t made a purchase yet. You can use qualifications only to include people who:
- Have made it to the cart checkout.
- Visited a certain amount of pages.
- Spent a certain amount of time on site.
- Visited certain categories/high-value product pages.
Once you have created those, it’s time to add them to an existing Search campaign and increase the bid.
What this means is that you’re willing to pay more for their click because they’ve already interacted with your brand in some way.
In your Search campaign, navigate to “Audiences” on the left-hand side.
In this example, I’m setting the audience at the campaign level, but you can set them at the ad group level as well.
Make sure to choose “Observation” so you’re still able to capture other new users who are researching your brand.
Screenshot by author, October 2022Once you’ve added your qualified remarketing list, it’s time to increase your bid adjustment.
Still, in the Audiences tab, you’ll see your remarketing list added.
In the columns, you’ll see “Bid Adjustment.” Choose the “pencil” icon to change the bid as you see fit. In this example, I’m going to increase the bid by 15%.
Screenshot by author, October 2022Once you’ve implemented this change, be sure to continuously check back on the audience performance and determine if bids need to be changed based on performance.
5. Increase Bids For Users Who Have Completed A Micro-Conversion
This strategy is similar to the example above, except for the type of user you want to target.
If a user has completed a micro-conversion of any sort, they’re likely a high-qualified user to make a purchase.
What are examples of a micro-conversion? Depending on your product or service, these could include:
- Signing up for emails or newsletters.
- Downloading an ebook.
- Signing up for a webinar.
- Requesting a free sample.
These types of conversions show a user is active in research mode and seriously considering your brand.
By increasing the bid in your search campaigns for these users, you’re saying you’re willing to pay more for their clicks because they’re that much more likely to convert.
The process of setting this strategy up is the same as above, with the exception of creating a remarketing list based on the success of these micro-conversions.
6. Test Maximize Conversion Value With Cart Abandoners
This remarketing strategy would require you to create a separate campaign targeting only cart abandoners.
You may be asking, “Why not just use Maximize Conversion Value for everyone?”
If you’ve ever tested out the Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy in Google Ads, you’ll know exactly why.
The reasons I don’t recommend using this for all campaigns include:
- You can’t set any maximum ceiling values.
- Not all users are ready to purchase.
By segmenting a search campaign specifically for cart abandoners, you can test this bidding strategy at a lower threshold – and with the most qualified users who are most likely to make a purchase.
Similar to the above examples, this strategy tells Google that you’re willing to be more flexible in how much you pay for someone to make a purchase.
And what better way to test this than with users who were almost ready to make that purchase?
To set this strategy into motion, you first need to create a remarketing list of “Cart Abandoners.”
This will look different for everyone, but it will likely be URL-based and able to be created in either Google Analytics or Google Ads.
After that list has been created, it’s time to set up your new search campaign.
This campaign can be a duplicate of any other search campaign. Just make sure to exclude your Cart Abandoner list from that existing campaign. We don’t want any cross-over here!
When creating the new campaign, this is where you’ll set the bid strategy to “Maximize Conversion Value” in the settings.
Screenshot by author, October 2022Google Ads does give you the option to set a target return on ad spend, giving you somewhat control over campaign performance.
Depending on how much flexibility you have in your marketing budget, you can either leave that blank or set a target.
If you do set a target ROAS, make sure not to set it too high right away. Otherwise, the campaign won’t be able to effectively learn.
7. Create Offers Based On The User’s Interaction Timeline
Did you know you can create the same remarketing list of users but segment them by the number of days?
Say you had a cart abandoner and wanted to move them toward purchase ASAP. You may be willing to give them a higher discount since the purchase was still new in their mind.
If they still haven’t purchased within three days, you may choose to still give them a discount, but not as high as the first offer.
After seven days, you still want them to keep your product top-of-mind, but that discount or offer may change again because they’ve waited so long.
So, how do you go about setting up this strategy?
First, you’ll want to create three different remarketing lists (for this example only).
Create cart abandoner audiences separated out by one day, three days, and seven days.
In Google Ads, you simply change the “membership duration” for each list. An example of where to change that during list creation is below:
Screenshot by author, October 2022Once these lists are created, I recommend setting up different ad groups for each list. You’ll want different ad groups because the offer will be different for each list.
The last crucial piece of targeting cart abandoners is to exclude purchasers from your campaign. You will do this in the “Audiences” tab of your campaign and add your “Purchasers” remarketing list as an exclusion.
Post-Purchase Journey Remarketing Strategies
Once a user has made a purchase, that’s not necessarily the end of their journey!
These remarketing strategies enable past purchasers to become your most valuable asset and opportunities for repeat purchasers to become brand advocates.
8. Cross Promote Other Products Based On A User’s Purchase Behavior
One of the best ways to create a repeat purchaser is to recommend complementing products based on a user’s purchase.
For example, say you’re a makeup brand, and a user just purchased their first tube of lipstick and mascara from you.
An effective remarketing strategy would include creating lists of past purchasers segmented by product category. This enables you to cross-promote other products and exclude product types they’ve just purchased.
In this example, you may create a remarketing list of users who have bought lipstick or mascara. You can then use that list to remarket products like foundation or eye shadow to encourage a repeat purchase.
These lists and strategies would work well in Dynamic Remarketing Ads or Google Shopping Ads. Because these products are much more visible, you’d want to use those campaign types to your advantage.
9. Exclude Past Purchasers To Maximize Spend Efficiency
As mentioned in strategy no. 7, you’ll want to exclude past purchasers from current acquisition campaigns to maximize spending efficiency.
An example of lazy remarketing is for a user to see an ad for a product they have already purchased.
Not only does that create a bad taste for the user, but that means you’re wasting valuable marketing money on people who have already purchased.
Now, there are certainly times when you’d not want to exclude past purchasers, especially if your product is a repeat purchase.
But, in these examples, your search campaigns are likely going after new users.
To exclude past purchasers, go to Audiences on the left-hand side of your campaign, then find the “Exclusions” table.
Screenshot by author, October 202210. Create Brand Advocates From Your Existing High-Value Customers
It’s true when they say that your customers are your best advocates. They have put their trust in you to deliver a high-value product or service that they have come to know and trust.
So, how do you turn them into advocates?
This remarketing strategy still includes utilizing that same past purchaser list. A few different options you could potentially offer past purchasers:
- Create a referral program and give discounts for each person who purchases.
- Offer discounts based on providing a positive public review.
Just because someone has purchased from you once does not mean they become a loyal customer. Sometimes it takes additional motivation to want to purchase again.
Loyalty or referral discounts are a great way to keep your existing customers coming back to you, as well as utilizing their own referral vehicles to generate new customers.
Creating referral programs is a low-cost and efficient multi-channel awareness strategy that is mutually beneficial for you – the brand and the customer.
Summary
Remarketing is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. In today’s age, it requires thoughtfulness, tactfulness, and segmentation to be successful.
Thinking outside the box on your remarketing strategies can result in more cost-effective advertising, higher ROAS, and faster growth if you utilize them correctly.
Sometimes, the power of remarketing lies within the list setup and campaign segmentation.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Andrii Yalanskyi/Shutterstock
Marketing To Gen Z: How To Do It The Right Way via @sejournal, @macuraa
For the longest time, the most frequent question I was asked was, “How do we reach millennials with marketing?”
Now, the wheels are turning, and the primary goal of many marketers is to reach a new, content-hungry generation of consumers. And the question is: how do we target our marketing to Gen Z?
Gen Z, or “Zoomers,” is a pretty unique group of young adults and teens.
For one, they have never known life without the internet.
For another, they bring tremendous spending power to the table.
Interested now?
Let’s take a look at how we can use available research, surveys, and data to improve our marketing strategies and campaigns in order to resonate with the next biggest generation: Gen Z.
Is Gen Z Hard To Market?
Typically, businesses want to reach the largest audience for the best return, right?
Well, Millennials might be the current largest group of consumers, and Baby Boomers have the most money to spend, but Gen Z’s power is growing.
A recent Bloomberg report shows that these young students and working professionals have $360 billion in disposable income.
This figure is only going to increase.
Marketers are wrestling with the best ways to market to Gen Z so that they can get them to buy, as traditional marketing methods aren’t working.
However, this is proving tricky, as Gen Z gives attention and spends money differently from previous generations.
What Is Generation Z?
Gen Z is the collective of people born between 1997 to 2012. That makes the oldest in this generation in their mid-twenties and the youngest about to become a tween this year.
The next generation after Gen Z is called Generation Alpha.
Zoomers are truly digitally native. They’ve been online since childhood, using the internet, mobile phones, social networks, and even shopping from a young age.
Super comfortable with research and data collection, they have no problem switching from online to offline universes.
They are also the most educated generation yet.
How Is Marketing To Gen Z Different Than Other Generations?
Well, they differ quite a bit, actually.
First, we need to understand what matters most to each generation.
This is often formed by the big events that happened in their formative years.
For example, while status is the most important for Gen Xers (born 1960–79), Millennials (born 1980–94) are all about authentic experiences.
So, what matters most for Generation Z?
According to research from McKinsey, the main driver for this generation is the search for truth.
Once marketers understand that Gen Z is very comfortable searching for information and cross-referencing data sources in their quest for truth, they will understand what content to produce to reach them.
A Few Extra Insights Into Gen Z’ers
Zoomers Are Loyal
That’s right! They are not as fickle and easily swayed as we first thought.
In fact, a report by the IBM Institute for Business Value and the National Retail Federation revealed some interesting trends around Gen Z and brand affinity.
- 59% of respondents say they trust the brands they’ve grown up with.
- 46% of Zoomers cited having “a strong connection or loyalty” to a brand.
- 66% stick to buying from a favorite brand for a long time.
This shows that they want to – and can quite capably – build and keep relationships with the brands they connect with.
For this reason, it is so important for brands to foster their Gen Z customer base.
Zoomers Influence The Whole Family
This is true simply because the majority of Gen Z’ers are not yet fully independent adults and still live with their parents.
However, they do generate an income and influence how the family spends, particularly food and beverages (77%), furniture (76%), household goods (73%), travel (66%), and eating out (63%).
11 Strategies To Market To Gen Z
No matter what generation you are marketing to, you need to understand who your ideal customer is.
You can’t simply say, “We market to Generation Z,” and that is that.
You need to do the work to deeply understand who your target audience is: what their challenges are, what they enjoy doing, what they like, what repulses them, and, more importantly, what they expect of you.
So, this is the first step in marketing to Gen Z: Get to know your audience.
However, that is true for all generations, and not just Gen Z marketing strategies, which is not what this piece is about. We want to explore how brands can reach Gen Z in particular.
The best way to reach them is on social media and to align yourself with their progressive approach to life. Here’s how.
1. Create Channel-Specific Content
By this, I mean there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to multi-channel marketing.
Marketers often replicate one campaign and burst it across multiple channels.
But there is a better way.
Create content that you share on TikTok with the TikTok audience in mind. The same for LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, TV, etc.
These audiences are not even remotely the same.
In fact, Generation Z prefers brands that know how to use each social media platform uniquely, just as they do.
For example:
- Instagram for aspirational posts.
- Snapchat for everyday moments.
- TikTok for fun and trending challenges.
- Twitter for news.
- LinkedIn for career-focused content.
You need to fit in with the online social community you are posting on if you want your paid or organic content to be a success.
2. Keep It Short
Tailor content that caters to a brief attention span.
Generation Z enjoys platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram that favor short videos.
Also, remember to make content that is mobile-optimized.
3. Use Video – A Lot
This point follows from the previous one.
This mobile-first generation devours video on their smartphones.
While this is no secret, it is tremendously effective for reaching this generation that grew up on YouTube and now TikTok.
4. Champion Authenticity
It is of vital importance that your brand tone, voice, and personality exude authenticity and credibility.
Show the people and values behind the brand.
Invest in building long-lasting relationships.
Why? Generation Z prefers brands that are authentic. Also fun.
Use bloopers, behind-the-scenes videos, interviews with staff, and anything that can help foster a human connection.
Consider how most TikTok videos are filmed on personal devices rather than expensive gear or carefully produced videos.
Even if your budget is huge, you still need to keep it real.
5. Be Transparent And Accountable
This is because Zoomers are after the truth, remember?
So, your brand’s credibility is really important to this generation of consumers.
The great news is that if you do make a mistake, they have open arms for you when you take responsibility, are transparent, and are accountable to change.
6. Go To The Influencer
I know you know this.
But I want to suggest a slightly different approach.
Rather than just paying the influencer as a distributor of your goods, position the influencer as the center of a strategy all on its own.
The influencer still holds sway in this generation.
A recent report shows that 24% of Gen-Z women and 16% of men are guided by influencers when it comes to purchasing decisions.
This is done commercially with great success with live-stream shopping, particularly in China.
Influencers are a must-have in your marketing budget. They bring the community you want to reach.
No scripts, just authentic, transparent, and fun.
7. Invite Gen Z To Participate In Your Marketing
Novel, right? Just don’t send your PR team to ask.
As long as it’s genuine, real, and fun, you can ask if they will be interviewed on camera.
You can ask if you can share their tweets or comments about your product.
Get your best Gen-Z customers or Gen-Z employees to reach out to them for this.
Whether good or bad, this kind of transparency creates real and lasting bonds.
8. Get Everyone To Create
Take advantage of platforms like TikTok that encourage content creation, engagement, and interaction.
If you can start a hashtag, a trend, or a challenge, like the Coca-Cola challenge, you get incredible exposure.
Or, join an existing hashtag and ride the wave.
9. Be Fun And Adventurous
Keep it fun.
I know that Zoomers are very in touch with socioeconomic and environmental challenges, but the escape afforded by social platforms means they are drawn to fun content.
Don’t avoid creating content that is adventurous and fun-spirited.
10. Leverage User-Generated Content
Given their quest for truth, I find that user-generated content (UGC) often gets the best results with a Generation Z target audience.
What does this look like in your campaign?
Use pictures of real people and real customers rather than a photoshopped stock image.
Why is this good for business? Well, a recent survey shows that close to 80% of people cite UGC as a reason to buy.
When prompted to pick between a user-generated travel photo vs. stock travel, 70% of Gen Z say they’re most likely to trust a company more when it uses photos of real customers in its advertising.
11. Don’t Abandon Omni-Channel Marketing
Yes, we know that Gen Z loves their phones.
However, they also love brick-and-mortar stores.
In fact, three times as many Gen Z’ers say they shop in a real retail store compared to online.
So, you need to reach Zoomers at all their watering holes: social media, YouTube, email, streaming, etc.
Need more proof?
According to a report from Pitney Bowes and the CMO Council, 88% of Zoomers actually prefer a blend of digital and physical marketing.
Final Thoughts
The most important takeaway from all of this data is that Generation Z is not some secretive entity. There is a vast amount of data that reveals what they prefer when it comes to marketing and spending.
The best way to reach them is to use platforms and tools wisely, with thought, and with clear intent
Regardless of how you do it, you need to consider your strategy for marketing to Gen Z consumers.
Their number, influence, and spending power is growing by the day.
Members of Generation Z are loyal and want to build relationships with authentic brands that stand for something.
Here’s to successfully marketing to Gen Z when you make use of the insights that are readily available to you to guide your strategies.
More resources:
Featured Image: Nadia Snopek/Shutterstock
How To Choose The Best Rank Tracker For Your SEO Needs via @sejournal, @seomonitor
7 Key Questions To Ask When Assessing Your SEO Business Needs
To make your SEO tool search even more practical, here are some more guiding questions to ask your SEO team.
These additional questions will help you pinpoint SEO tool pain points and more:
- Does your current SEO solution give you enough data?
- Does your SEO tool provide the right data?
- Does it provide data with the frequency you need to do your work?
- Is your tool stack scalable for the mid/long term?
- Is the quality of support on par with your expectations?
- Is the pricing right for your business?
- Do you need a more specialized SEO tool for specific parts of your work?
In the end, for Journey Further, their needs boiled down to:
- Pricing – “Reducing cost. We were spending a significant amount of money and believed the value for money was low.”
- Data accuracy – “The previous tool served us incorrect ranking data. The ranking data wasn’t trustworthy, and we had multiple complaints from the team.
- Lack of proper customer support – “The answering time was very slow. Took more than a week to reply.”
- Usability – “The need for a better user interface was another important factor. The old provider hadn’t updated their UI for at least 10 years.”
-
Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
6 Key SEO Tool Selection Criteria For Stakeholders
Once you’ve gained clarity on the types of issues you want to solve and what your main non-negotiables are, it’s time to build the shortlist of possible rank tracking tools and start testing.
When you’re assessing a rank tracker, you’ll need to look into:
- Desktop and mobile data availability.
- Multiple user seats.
- Collaborative features.
- The Visibility metric and other key performance metrics.
- Data access – exports, integrations, API.
- The data migration process.
-
Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
And, of course, you’ll need to decide who is joining the decision-making process and when.
Let’s take a closer look at what Walker and his team did:
“We’ve used nearly all enterprise ranking tools on the market across the team and had a good idea which ones we wanted to set up trial accounts with. So, the first stage was for me to get access to a trial with each of these tools. Based on our experience, we had a good grasp of what features we needed.
Then, I extended the trial and included two other senior stakeholders – the Head of SEO and our Organic Director. There were a few concerns as some of the team were very attached to the old provider, but they saw the positives and were quickly won around. We also had to consider our historical data and reporting dashboards to ensure we were able to retain existing reporting methods.
In the end, I had to ensure we had buy-in from senior staff members and double-check that the entire team also preferred the new tool over the existing provider.”
From Journey Further’s story, you can add another set of critical factors to your decision-making framework:
- How will the new SEO tool influence your team’s day-to-day?
- How do your processes look with the new tool in place?
- Do they offer support during the trial and make the buy-in process easier for you?
Best Features & Benefits To Consider When Looking For A New SEO Tool
By now, two weeks or more have passed, and your trials are reaching their end. It’s time to draw the line and see which of the tested tools ticked the most important features for you.
- Are the non-negotiables fully solved?
- Did you discover new power features that will improve your SEO processes?
- Is the pricing in accordance with your current status and growth plans?
For Journey Further, together with accuracy and pricing, the following were relevant benefits and features that convinced them they reached the right choice with their rank tracking solution:
- User interface.
- Speed of collecting ranking data.
- Free ranking data for pitching purposes.
- Cannibalization monitoring.
-
Image by SEOmonitor, November 2022
As Walker highlights, the reasons why these were so important had to do with efficiency – both in terms of time and resources.
“Due to ease of use, we can now collect data and insights far quicker. The speed of ranking data collection saves us huge amounts of time, and we can react to new business opportunities faster.
Then there’s the free ranking data for pitching. We used to spend a significant amount of money on collecting data for pitches. Now we’re saving resources, and this has allowed us to make the organic team more profitable.
As for cannibalization monitoring, it saves a lot of time that we’re able to do this directly with our ranking tool. We used to have to go to another tool to collect this data.”
If you can find a rank tracker that solves multiple needs, raising your organic team’s productivity, instead of switching between multiple tools for different types of rank data, then you’ll save for the long term, as Journey Further shows.
SEOmonitor Has Everything You Need In A Rank Tracking Tool
When you choose a core SEO tool for your team, it’s critical to evaluate where you are and what you want to improve.
You can think in terms of:
- Data accuracy.
- Key metrics.
- Frameworks and learning curves.
- Support and training.
- Pricing and cost-efficiency when scaling.
It’s important to stay in control of the decision-making process and involve all the necessary stakeholders from the start. In the end, a tool will influence how you work and how you get to the targeted results.
For a rank tracker specifically, it’s crucial to deliver accurate, fresh data that you can easily access.
At SEOmonitor, we’re constantly developing our rank tracker, so it helps SEO professionals:
- Get the data granularity you need with desktop and mobile daily ranks included in the same price.
- Own the data – there’s unlimited API access, exports, and integrations with Google Data Studio or Google Sheets.
- Onboard the full team and even clients – you get unlimited users.
- Scale – with the dynamic pricing policy, you only pay for the resources you use.
Join us, and agencies like Journey Further, in our quest to create more transparency and accountability in the SEO industry.
What’s next in cybersecurity
This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series, where we look across industries, trends, and technologies to let you know what to expect in the coming year.
In the world of cybersecurity, there is always one certainty: more hacks. That is the unavoidable constant in an industry that will spend an estimated $150 billion worldwide this year without being able, yet again, to actually stop hackers.
This past year has seen Russian government hacks aimed at Ukraine; more ransomware against hospitals and schools—and against whole governments too; a seemingly endless series of costly crypto hacks; and high-profile hacks of companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games, the last hack allegedly carried out by teenagers.
All these types of hacks will continue next year and in the near future, according to cybersecurity experts who spoke to MIT Tech Review. Here’s what we expect to see more of in the coming year:
Russia continues its online operations against Ukraine
Ukraine was the big story of the year in cybersecurity as in other news. The industry turned its attention to the embattled country, which suffered several attacks by Russian government groups. One of the first ones hit Viasat, a US satellite communications company that was being used by civilians and troops in Ukraine. The hack caused “a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war,” according to Victor Zhora, the head of Ukraine’s defensive cybersecurity agency.
There have also been as many as six attacks against Ukrainian targets involving wiper malware, malicious computer code designed to destroy data.
These were all in support of military operations, not acts of war per se, which could still mean that “cyberwarfare is a very misleading term and the cyberwar, as such, will not really happen,” says Stefano Zanero, an associate professor at the computer engineering department of Politecnico di Milano.
According to Lesley Carhart, a researcher at industrial cybersecurity company Dragos and a US Air Force veteran, these attacks show that “[cyber] is just a piece of warfare,” which can still play an important role and will continue to do so.
“I used to say that nearly everything that people just described as cyber war is actually cyber espionage,” says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “And I would say that over the last several years, that is increasingly not the case.”
Initial expectations were that Russian hacks might lead directly to physical damage. But that has not panned out.
One of the reasons cyber hasn’t played a bigger role in the war, according to Carhart, is because “in the whole conflict, we saw Russia being underprepared for things and not having a good game plan. So it’s not really surprising that we see that as well in the cyber domain.”
Moreover, Ukraine, under the leadership of Zhora and his cybersecurity agency, has been working on its cyber defenses for years, and it has received support from the international community since the war started, according to experts. Finally, an interesting twist in the conflict on the internet between Russia and Ukraine was the rise of the decentralized, international cyber coalition known as the IT Army, which scored some significant hacks, showing that war in the future can also be fought by hacktivists.
Ransomware runs rampant again
This year, other than the usual corporations, hospitals, and schools, government agencies in Costa Rica, Montenegro, and Albania all suffered damaging ransomware attacks too. In Costa Rica, the government declared a national emergency, a first after a ransomware attack. And in Albania, the government expelled Iranian diplomats from the country—a first in the history of cybersecurity—following a destructive cyberattack.
These types of attacks were at an all-time high in 2022, a trend that will likely continue next year, according to Allan Liska, a researcher who focuses on ransomware at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
“[Ransomware is] not just a technical problem like an information stealer or other commodity malware. There are real-world, geopolitical implications,” he says. In the past, for example, a North Korean ransomware called WannaCry caused severe disruption to the UK’s National Health System and hit an estimated 230,000 computers worldwide.
Luckily, it’s not all bad news on the ransomware front. According to Liska, there are some early signs that point to “the death of the ransomware-as-a-service model,” in which ransomware gangs lease out hacking tools. The main reason, he said, is that whenever a gang gets too big, “something bad happens to them.”
For example, the ransomware groups REvil and DarkSide/BlackMatter were hit by governments; Conti, a Russian ransomware gang, unraveled internally when a Ukrainian researcher appalled by Conti’s public support of the war leaked internal chats; and the LockBit crew also suffered the leak of its code.
“We are seeing a lot of the affiliates deciding that maybe I don’t want to be part of a big ransomware group, because they all have targets on their back, which means that I might have a target on my back, and I just want to carry out my cybercrime,” Liska says.
“Adversaries are starting to realize that they don’t want to be under a specific name that brings the attention of the US government or other international partners,” says Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at Red Canary.
Also, both Liska and Brett Callow, a security researcher at Emsisoft who specializes in ransomware, stress that law enforcement action, including international cooperation among governments, was more frequent and effective this year, hinting that perhaps governments are starting to make inroads against ransomware.
Yet the war in Ukraine may make international cooperation more difficult. In January of this year, the Russian government said it was cooperating with the US when it announced the arrests of 14 members of REvil, as well as the seizure of computers, luxury cars, and more than $5 million. But this unprecedented cooperation wouldn’t last. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, there could be no more cooperation with Vladimir Putin’s government.
“When it comes to really cutting off ransomware from the source, I think we took a step back, unfortunately,” said Christine Bejerasco, the chief technology officer at cybersecurity company WithSecure.
Crypto is still going to crypto, baby
The crypto didn’t just flow from ransomware victims to hackers; in 2022 it also flowed straight out of crypto projects and Web3 companies. This was the year cryptocurrency hacks, which have been occurring since cryptocurrencies were invented, became mainstream, with hackers stealing at least $3 billion in crypto during the year, according to blockchain tracking company Chainalysis. (Elliptic, another crypto tracking company, estimated the theft total at $2.7 billion.)
There were more than 100 large-scale victims in the world of crypto; there are now websites and Twitter accounts specifically dedicated to tracking these hacks, which seemed to happen almost daily. Perhaps the most significant of them all was the hack on the Nomad protocol, where a hacker found a vulnerability and started draining funds. Because the hacker’s transactions were public, others noticed and just copy-pasted the exploit, leading to “the first decentralized robbery” in history. Just a few weeks ago, hackers accessed the server where the crypto exchange Deribit held its wallets, draining $28 million from them.
There was some good news in crypto too. Stephen Tong, a cofounder of blockchain security company Zellic, said that a “big new wave” of cybersecurity pros will keep coming to the crypto industry and create “the infrastructure, tooling, and practices needed to do things in a secure way.”
Tal Be’ery, a cybersecurity veteran who now works as CTO of the crypto wallet app ZenGo, says there are “building blocks” in place to make cybersecurity solutions specific to crypto and blockchains, which “hint that the future would be safer.”
“I think that we will start to see some hints of solutions in 2023,” Be’ery says. “But the advantage will still be with the attackers.”
One cohort of attackers that had an outsized success this year was the group known as Lapsus$. The hackers targeted software supply chain providers such as Okta, a company that provides identity and access management to other companies. That allowed the hackers to infiltrate big-name companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Rockstar Games.
“Attackers look for the path of least resistance, and some infrastructure suppliers are one of these paths,” Zanero says, stressing that supply chain attacks are both the present and the future, because some suppliers—especially cybersecurity companies—have a large footprint across several industries.
“Adversaries continue to be able to make a significant impact,” Nickels says, “without necessarily having to use advanced capabilities.”
The Download: cybersecurity’s next act, and mass protests in China
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
In the world of cybersecurity, there is always one certainty: more hacks. That is the unavoidable constant in an industry that will spend an estimated $150 billion worldwide this year without being able, yet again, to actually stop hackers.
This past year has seen Russian government hacks aimed at Ukraine; more ransomware against hospitals and schools—and against whole governments too; a seemingly endless series of costly crypto hacks; and high-profile hacks of companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games, the last hack allegedly carried out by teenagers.
But while all these types of hacks will continue next year and in the near future, cybersecurity experts don’t believe next year will be all doom and gloom for cybersecurity. Read the full story to find out why.
—Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Take a look back over some of this year’s most thought-provoking cyber security stories:
+ Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true. MIT Technology Review obtained Prince’s investor presentation for the “RedPill Phone” back in August, which promised more than it could possibly deliver. Read the full story.
+ Hackers linked to China have been targeting human rights groups for years. A hacking group linked to China has spent the last three years targeting human rights organizations, think tanks, news media, and agencies of multiple foreign governments. Read the full story.+ The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth. Open-source code runs on every computer on the planet—and keeps America’s critical infrastructure going. DARPA is worried about whether it can be trusted. Read the full story.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Chinese protestors are rejecting zero covid
It’s the widest demonstration of dissent that President Xi Jinping has ever faced. (Economist $)
+ News of the protests on Twitter has been deliberately obscured by pornography. (WP $)
+ Why demonstrators have been holding up blank sheets of paper. (BBC)
+ The protests are nationwide and multi-faceted. (FT $)
+ The protests have dealt Xi’s reputation a hammer blow. (Nikkei Asia)
2 Elon Musk has gone to war with Twitter’s advertisers
It seems a risky way to convince them that the platform is a safe and secure place to spend their money. (FT $)
+ Twitter users who criticize Elon Musk claim they’re being censored. (Insider $)
+ Musk is backing the fact-checking feature that’s corrected his own assertions. (WSJ $)
+ Republicans are gaining a lot of new followers. (WP $)
3 Bitcoin ATMs aren’t getting much use these days
Convenience store owners are increasingly unconvinced they’re worth the hassle. (Bloomberg $)
+ The Bahamian authorities are still investigating FTX. (Reuters)
+ Meet the crypto traders who actually benefited from FTX’s collapse. (The Information $)
+ It’s okay to opt out of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Encouraging self-harm online could be criminalized in the UK
It currently falls into the gray area of ‘legal but harmful.’ (TechCrunch)
5 Cybercrime is sweeping across Africa
The rapid growth in internet connectivity has gifted criminals ample opportunities to scam new victims. (The Guardian)
+ There are plenty of scam emails circulating in the US, too. (Vox)
+ Fake reviews are (still) a huge problem too. (Fast Company $)
6 The high cost of Chinese electric vehicles
Nickel extraction is wreaking havoc on Indonesia’s environment. (Rest of World)
+ Chinese electric cars are becoming easier to buy in the US. (WP $)
+ China is betting big on another gas engine alternative. (MIT Technology Review)
7 What do DALL-E 2 and drug development projects have in common?
They’re both using generative AI. (Fast Company $)
8 It’s getting harder to hear what’s happening on TV
Sound mixing is often made for giant theaters. (WSJ $)
9 Singers are deepfaking their voices
Your favorite new artist could, in fact, be a vocal clone. (Wired $)
+ Inside the strange new world of being a deepfake actor. (MIT Technology Review)
+ A new AI is rendering computer graphics at impressive speeds. (IEEE Spectrum)
10 Deleting your entire inbox isn’t as traumatic as you’d imagine
Some might even recommend it. (The Atlantic $)
Quote of the day
“These kids who came from nowhere have more influence than Mickey Mouse.”
—Eyal Baumel, a strategist for YouTube personalities, explains how the Vashketov family became mega-famous on that platform to the Wall Street Journal.
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The big story
Technology can help us feed the world, if we look beyond profit
December 2020
We won’t easily forget how we worried about food in the first days of the pandemic: empty shelves, scarce products, and widespread hoarding became an alarming reality around the world.
The shock of the virus’s first wave exposed the inner workings of our interconnected system of food creation and delivery—and its weak spots—to many of us who’d never given it a second thought. There may yet be more unpleasant surprises in store. But it’s worth examining how we got to this point, and how to change things for the better. Read the full story.
—Fabio Parasecoli
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ This fun Twitter account documents the best and worst food available at football (or, if you prefer, soccer) matches around the world.
+ I think it’s high time I tried out the Pomodoro technique.
+ They weren’t kidding when they called it a giant goldfish.
+ Imagine the tunes this bone flute could have played hundreds of years ago.
+ Jumping on a trampoline covered in powder paint is every bit as messy as you’d imagine it’d be.