Weekly Training

Weekly Marketing Rundown - February 23rd, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about a GA4 update improving advertising analytics, dynamic tracking parameters on LinkedIn ads, and more. Let's dive in.  Google Analytics Revamps Advertising Section for Enhanced Reporting and Insights Google Analytics is introducing significant updates to its Advertising section, aiming to optimize reporting processes for both advertisers and publishers. The update includes quite a bit of reorganization, requiring account linking for access and relocating the Publisher ads report into the Advertising section. This restructuring is designed to deliver more personalized insights by integrating behavioral data with advertising and publisher metrics. The changes, effective from today, involve the centralization of various reports and features into the Advertising section of GA4. This section will now require a linked account from one of Google's platforms such as Google Ads, AdSense, AdMob, Google Ad Manager, or Google Marketing Platform. This change is being designed to hopefully simplify access but also create a unified hub for monitoring and analyzing campaigns.  For more on this, click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7166493468138135552/ LinkedIn Introduces Campaign-Level URL Tracking Parameters LinkedIn has introduced a significant update by adding a dedicated field for URL Tracking Parameters at the campaign level, a feature long-awaited by advertisers. It allows for the application of any chosen UTM parameters to all creatives within a campaign, simplifying tracking. Advertisers can also now use dynamic parameters, such as creative ID, to enable LinkedIn to automatically apply specific IDs to each creative, thus eliminating the need for different UTM parameters for each creative. This enhancement streamlines the tracking process, making it more efficient and insightful for LinkedIn ad campaigns. For more on this, click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7166444436506292225/ Meta Tests Cross-Posting Feature to Boost Content on Threads Meta is exploring new ways to enhance content creation by testing a cross-posting feature that would allow Facebook users to post simultaneously to both Facebook and Threads. This feature, previously available for cross-posting from Facebook to Instagram, aims to simplify the content-sharing process for users. Currently, the test is limited to iOS users outside the EU and enables the sharing of both text and link posts from Facebook to Threads. This development could significantly benefit content creators who frequently share media and text updates, as it reduces the need to post on multiple platforms separately. By integrating Threads more closely with Meta’s broader app ecosystem, this feature has the potential to increase the user base and activity on Threads, particularly given Meta's extensive reach of 3.98 billion users across its family of apps. Even a small percentage of Facebook users adopting this cross-posting feature could lead to a substantial increase in content on Threads. For more on this, click the link below: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/meta-tests-cross-posting-from-facebook-to-its-twitter-x-competitor-threads/ Signal Rolls Out Usernames Signal, in its latest beta release, has launched a feature called "phone number privacy," aimed at enhancing user privacy and security. This feature allows users to communicate on the app without revealing their phone numbers, instead opting to use a username. This approach provides a less sensitive method for users to connect on Signal. Users now have the option to be discoverable through a chosen handle, offering greater control over their identity and contact information within the app. Additionally, the feature includes the ability to prevent anyone, even those who have a user's phone number, from finding them on Signal, further strengthening privacy and personal security for its users. For more on this, click the link below: https://www.wired.com/story/signal-launches-usersnames-phone-number-privacy/ Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: February 23rd, 2024

In this episode, Jon will be sharing several ethical considerations that need to be thought through when you are doing any form of digital evangelism. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/odMFMb1IoXc

Weekly Marketing Rundown - February 16th, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about a new tool in GA4 to help implement consent mode, an increase in costs for boosted posts on Meta iOS apps, and more. Let's dive in. New Tool in Google Analytics 4 to Help Implement Consent Mode v2 Google is beginning to roll out a new tool in GA4 that shows whether or not you have properly set up your tracking for consent mode. To find this, navigate to Admin, click Property Settings, then Data Collection and modification, then Data Streams, click your data stream, and lastly expand Consent Settings. You should see green check marks if everything is set up properly.  For more on this, click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/milesmcnair_new-you-can-now-verify-if-consent-mode-v2-activity-7163585996545081345-yWCS/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios New 30% Fee on Boosted Posts Purchased in Meta iOS Apps Meta announced that it will begin charging a 30% fee for advertisers who pay to boost the visibility of their posts on Facebook and Instagram through iOS apps. This decision is a response to Apple's 2022 App Store update, which demands a 30% cut of digital purchases, including boosted posts, on its platform. This update particularly affects Meta and similar social media platforms where users can pay to increase the reach of their content.  It's important to note that this 30% upcharge is only on boosted posts purchased through iOS apps. Meta mentioned that users can circumvent the Apple fee by purchasing boosts directly from Facebook’s and Instagram's websites on desktop or mobile platforms. So if you're boosting posts through your computer, this shouldn't affect you.  For those of you who boost posts in the apps - Meta says those who want to boost posts through its iOS apps will now need to add prepaid funds and pay for them before their boosted posts are published. Meta will charge an extra 30 percent to cover Apple’s transaction fee for preloading funds in iOS. For more on this, click to read the link below: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/15/24073228/meta-apple-tax-facebook-instagram-boosted-posts Advertisers on X Will Soon be Able to Run Ads Next to Specific Creators Content  Earlier this week, X announced that advertisers will soon be able to run ads alongside content from creators of their choice. This new placement was much needed, as many brands have pulled their ads from X after their ads appeared next to questionable content. While this is mostly an attempt to lure advertisers back to the platform, it is also quite attractive for creators, as X shares a percentage of ad revenue with creators who have ads appearing with their posts.  For more on this, click the link below: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/12/x-will-soon-let-advertisers-run-ads-next-to-a-curated-list-of-creators/ OpenAI Drops First Look at Sora, Their New Text-to-Video AI Model After months of rumors, OpenAI has dropped the first official look at their new text-to-video AI model called Sora. Access is currently limited to red teamers (for harm/risk assessment), as well as a handful of artists, designers, and filmmakers.  For example footage and more information, click the link below: https://openai.com/sora Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: February 16th, 2024

In this episode, Jon will be sharing some questions to think through that can help you personally, and on a ministry level, stay spiritually grounded in a digital world. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/rFnGNomFwM0

Weekly Marketing Rundown - February 9th, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about Meta ads updates, Pinterest's partnership with Google Ads, and more. Let's dive in.  Meta Ads Updates From the Week As usual, Meta made some updates to their ad platform this last week. Here are a few of the most notable: - 'Join group requests' and 'cost per join group request' are now available metrics for group membership ads - Events Manager may now show a notice about data restrictions in the settings of your data source. If you are seeing this, Meta may be restricting some of your custom parameters.  - Clarification on Engaged View attribution: "Engaged-view can be counted in ads measurement reporting when someone plays your video ads for a minimum of 10 seconds (or watches 97% of the video length if it’s less than 10 seconds) and converts within a 1-day window." For more on this, click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bramvanderhallen_facebookads-digitalmarketing-digitaladvertising-activity-7161256840989716480-cCWS/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios Pinterest Announces Partnership with Google Ads Pinterest has announced a new partnership that will allow advertisers to place ads on Pinterest via the Google Ads platform. Early testing started just a few weeks ago, and Pinterest is reporting positive results so far. Pinterest has close to 500 million monthly active users on the platform, with 80% of those users coming from outside the United States. There hasn't been an exact date stated for when this will go live to all advertisers, but it is expected to be very soon.  For more on this, click the link below: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/09/pinterest-announces-a-new-ad-deal-with-google-as-it-approaches-500m-maus/?guccounter=1 Instagram Adding Feature to Use Sections of Video as a Sticker Instagram has added another feature to stories, this time allowing users to cut out sections of video to use as a sticker. Use of this will be available to everyone in the regular stories creation section of the app. It's not a huge update, however, this could be a fun new creative tool to use in your organic strategy.  For more on this, click the link below: https://twitter.com/jonah_manzano/status/1755925466551357476?s=46 Meta is Changing the Name 'Meta Business Account' to 'Business Portfolio' Meta business accounts will soon be referred to as business portfolios across all accounts. This update changes nothing in terms of functionality, verification, etc, it is simply a change in terminology.  For more on this, click the link below: https://twitter.com/ahmedghanem/status/1755896158658891864 Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: February 9th, 2024  

In this episode, Jon will be demonstrating the advanced metrics and analysis tools available within the Meta Business Ads Accounts. He will also share briefly about other tools used to visualize the data. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/Beb9E9ygBjk

Weekly Marketing Rundown - February 2nd, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about changes to Google responsive search ads, updates to conversion tracking for Reddit ads, and more. Let's dive in.  Google Announces Updates to Responsive Search Ads Google announced a few updates on Thursday to responsive search ads.  - After positive results in early testing, Google will roll out an update that allows Google Ads to move your second headline to the first description slot if it is predicted to improve performance. Pinning assets will prevent this from happening.  - You can now have 3 headlines and 2 descriptions set at the campaign level. These assets can be scheduled or pinned to specific positions.  - When opted into account-level automated assets, dynamic assets can be shown alongside or in place of manually created assets when it's predicted to improve performance.  For more on this, click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ginnymarvin_drive-more-performance-from-ai-powered-search-activity-7158851996626681856-JQA_/ Reddit Announces Tealium as 1st Conversions API Partner With its IPO coming soon, Reddit has partnered with Tealium to improve its analytics capabilities. Reddit has been working hard to increase its ad offerings to advertisers over the past few years. This combination of Tealium's data management capabilities with the conversions API should improve advertisers' abilities to track effectively while remaining in compliance with data laws around the world.  For more on this, click the link below: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/reddit-announces-first-conversions-api-partner/706247/ Google is showing TikTok Videos in Featured Snippets TikTok videos have recently been spotted in two new high-profile areas - Google's search featured snippets and search generative engine (SGE) previews. If this becomes more common, it would mean an increased importance on TikTok videos in terms of an organic marketing strategy across other platforms. Though new platforms/sites like TikTok are becoming important SEO tools, the fundamentals of creating solid, SEO-optimized content are the same. Create high-quality content that answers your audience's questions.  For more on this, click on the link below: https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-tiktok-videos-in-sge-featured-snippets-437074 Study: American Social Media Use (Pew Research) Pew Research released a report this week detailing the social media use of the American population. The report includes great information on platform usage, demographics, and more. Some significant findings: - 83% of adults report using YouTube - 68% report using Facebook, 47% reported using Instagram - 78% of 18 to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram To access the full report, click the link below: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-social-media-use/ Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: February 2nd, 2024

Social Proof is a powerful tool in Christian Media marketing. In Today's episode, Jon will share what it is and how to use it in your digital engagement efforts. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/i3rft-iMcug

Weekly Marketing Rundown - January 19th, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about auto-applied recommendations with Meta ads accounts, Google Ads' new conversational AI experience, and more. Let's dive in.  Meta Now Allows Advertisers to View and Edit Auto-Applied Recommendation Settings Meta is now allowing advertisers to view and edit auto-applied recommendations on their ad accounts. Navigate to 'Account Overview' in Business Manager. From there, you can choose to enable or disable recommendations related to audience, creative format, and more.  For more on this, click to read the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7156179662790893568/ Google Ads Unveils New Conversational Ad Experience Google's AI model "Gemini" is being rolled into the Google Ads interface globally. This new update will allow advertisers to chat with an AI to create ad campaigns in conversational language. Gemini will help advertisers craft both text and images with excellent ad strength - advertisers will see and approve any assets before a campaign goes live. This is a massive update that will hopefully accomplish two things - increase the speed of campaign creation for advertisers without a drop in quality and lower the barrier of entry for those new to the platform.  For more on this, click to read the links below: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/put-google-ai-to-work-with-search-ads/ Meta's Advantage Detailed Targeting is Now Available for All Campaign Objectives Meta has officially opened the option to use Advantage Detailed Targeting on all campaign types. Campaign types that can now use this feature are campaigns that are optimized for Impressions, Video views, Reach, Engagement, Ad Recall lift, Leads, Link clicks, or Landing page views. As always, it's important to note that using this feature will result in you giving up some control over who sees your ads. If you're targeting conversions more on the bottom end of the funnel, this probably doesn't matter. On ads designed for the top of the funnel, however, you may want to continue using tighter audience controls.  For more on this, click the link below: https://searchengineland.com/meta-advantage-detailed-targeting-ai-436912 Fun: New Emojis Coming to iOS 17.4  Apple is testing a slew of new emojis, which are expected to be available to the public as soon as March. 118 additional emojis are expected. For a list of the coming emojis, including a few previews, click the link below: https://blog.emojipedia.org/first-look-new-emojis-in-ios-17-4/ Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: January 26th, 2024

In this episode, Jon will be sharing the biblical power and mission behind digital engagement and the discipleship process. The reason and the results will be shared. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/XsrX9UFu368

Weekly Marketing Rundown - January 19th, 2024 Hi everyone, In this week's edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown, we'll talk about updates to Meta Ads, changes with Google Ads support, and more. Let's dive in.  New Meta Ads Updates Meta has released multiple ad updates over the last week. Below are some of the most notable: - 'Expand image', a new generative AI feature for Meta Ads is appearing in more ad accounts. You can find it as an Advantage+ creative enhancement. When turned on, Meta may automatically expand your image to fit more placements. - Meta is renaming 'Meta Business Accounts' into 'Business Portfolios'. The functionality is expected to remain the same for now.  - You can now connect multiple WhatsApp numbers to your Facebook Page. - Facebook profile feed is now a placement for ad targeting For more on this, click on the links below: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bramvanderhallen_facebookads-ai-digitalmarketing-activity-7153010022459842562-0uXm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bramvanderhallen_facebookads-digitalmarketing-digitaladvertising-activity-7152649825123991552-A30z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bramvanderhallen_facebookads-digitalmarketing-digitaladvertising-activity-7153782306225229824-ZMqD/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Google is Firing Hundreds of Ad Sales Employees This week, Google announced plans to let hundreds of employees from their ad sales team go.  Reaching support to resolve issues with Google Ads has always been a struggle, but in the long term, this change might not make it worse. According to Google Ads Liaison Officer Ginny Marvin, “I do think Support is an area where LLMs/Google AI will be able to make big strides in improving experiences. That’s not happening yet, but work is underway.” It's not known at this moment exactly when the changes will be going into effect.  For more on this, click the link below: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-lays-off-staff-support-crisis-436589 Google Releases New Information to Help Advertisers Prepare for Consent Mode Updates If you are an advertiser who currently advertises in Europe or one who plans to in the future, you need to ensure you have your consent mode settings up to date. If you're already using consent mode and a Google-certified CMP, you may be good to go already. If not, you'll need to act before March to stay in compliance with EU regulations and collect data from your ad campaigns.  For more on this, click the links below: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14505993 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ginnymarvin_today-weve-shared-an-important-update-on-activity-7153797062625521664-rswN/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios Chat GPT Working Towards A Video Feature OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated on a podcast with Bill Gates that ChatGPT will soon have video capabilities. He didn't give a timeline on when the video feature would roll out to the public but did say GPT-5 should be released within the year.  For more on this, click the link below: https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-video-features-plus-gpt-5-this-year Thanks for reading this edition of Kavanah Media's Weekly Marketing Rundown! For more up-to-date insights in digital marketing, make sure to follow us on our social media channels using the link below.  https://linktr.ee/kavanahmedia Author: Sean Ralls Article Published: January 19th, 2024

In this episode, Jon will be sharing multiple barriers that people may have to following Jesus, and how media can help a person know, like, and trust in the Savior. To watch this training, go here: https://youtu.be/JFQKA45Hv1M