We hope you enjoyed the Easter holidays and are ready for the latest news from the digital marketing world. It’s time for Sunday Rundown #107 🙂
Google Podcasts is gone
Google Podcasts is dead. It has been dying for months since Google announced last fall that it was killing its dedicated podcast app in order to focus all its podcasting efforts on YouTube Music. This is a bad idea and a big downgrade, and I’d be more mad if only I were more surprised.Â
The Podcasts app is just the latest product to go through a process I’ve come to call The Google Cycle. It always goes the same way: the company launches a new service with grandiose language about how this fits its mission of organizing and making accessible the world’s information, quickly updates it with a couple of neat features, immediately seems to forget it exists, eventually launches a competitor out of some other part of the company, obviously begins to deprecate it and shift focus to the new competitor, and then, years later, finally shuts it down for real. The Google Graveyard is full of apps like Reader, Duo, Inbox, Allo, Wallet, and countless others that have been through The Google Cycle, and it feels just as bad every time.
Europe eyes LinkedIn’s use of data for ads in another DSA ask
Microsoft-owned professional social network, LinkedIn, is the latest to get a formal request for information (RFI) from the EU. The Commission, which oversees larger platforms’ compliance with a subset of risk management, transparency and algorithm accountability rules in its ecommerce rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA), is asking questions about LinkedIn’s use of user data for ad targeting. Of specific concern is whether LinkedIn is breaching the DSA’s prohibition on larger platforms’ use of sensitive data for ad targeting.
Sensitive data under EU law refers to categories of personal data such as health information, political, religious or philosophical views, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation and trade union membership. Profiling based on such data to target ads is banned under the law.
The regulation also requires larger platforms (aka VLOPs) to provide users with basic information about the nature and origins of an ad. They must also make an ads archive publicly available and searchable — in a further measure aimed at driving accountability around paid messaging on popular platforms.
LinkedIn has been given until April 5 to respond to the RFI.
LinkedIn introduces CTV ads for B2B campaigns
While we’re still on the topic, LinkedIn introduced CTV ads, allowing marketers to include ads on CTV platforms in their B2B campaigns. Advertisers can add CTV to their LinkedIn campaigns through a network of partners including Paramount, Roku and Samsung Ads. In addition to LinkedIn’s self-service Campaign Manager, the company also has a managed offering, LinkedIn Premiere via its partnership with NBCUniversal.
New Report Suggests X Usage Has Declined 30% Year-Over-Year
Another day, another third party report showing that X usage is in decline. Edison Research has published its annual Infinite Dial report, which provides a snapshot of media trends, based on a survey of over 1,000 people in the U.S. aged 12 and older. Which, of course, is only a small fraction of the total population, but the Infinite Dial report has long been a solid indicator of emerging trends, and a good resource for understanding key attention shifts. And clearly, based on this data at least, attention is shifting away from X (formerly Twitter).
Based on overall responses, X has seen a 30% decline in interest.
Bonus links
- 20 years of Gmail
- A 6-Step Guide to Social Media for Small Businesses [Infographic]
- PPC Survey:Â AI a top priority but causing concern, trust in Google Ads down
- X is giving blue checks to influential users (which is what blue checks should be)
- Snap expands perks for ‘leaned in’ agency partners with new program
Thank you for taking the time to read our Sunday Rundown #107. If you have a story that you want to see in this series, reply to us below or contact us.