It’s Friyay! My oldest kid is celebrating her last day in middle school while my youngest is taking a mental health day because end of year project overload is real. Meanwhile, I spent some time earlier this week assembling the various calendars I employ and discovered that my world will be chaotic and very “before times” through at least mid to late June. We’re back baby! Meanwhile, the news keeps happening, Google’s page experience, data privacy, and housing issues are still a thing and Microsoft really really, really, wants to stay in the advertising game. So here I am reporting on those goings on for this week before I sign off to spend my long summer kickoff weekend bundled up in layers, under a blanket, and possibly fireside, as weird weather patterns consume the mid-Atlantic.
IT’S NOT JUST A LUMBER SHORTAGE
Lumber gets a lot of ink in this space, but there are material shortages all around and at the top of the list is appliances. Yup, it’s true, appliances are super hard to come by. My neighbor redid her kitchen in November just before thanksgiving and her stove arrived in late April. I have another friend who put an addition on her home over last summer and has yet to receive her refrigerator. Seriously, the backlog is unreal and it’s taking a toll on builders as a whole. Which I know you know but the other items in short supply on this list aren’t helping the overall pace of building and sometimes it’s comforting to know that you’re not alone, these issues are affecting builders across the country.
ATT, UID 2.0, AND DATA PRIVACY TODAY
It’s been about 6 weeks since iOs 14.5 rolled out. iOs 14.6 has since been released and with it came some new emoji’s 😶🌫️😮💨🧔♀️❤️🩹. But have the people opted in or out of tracking with ATT? Interestingly enough, the bigger question is have they even been given the option? There’s two reasons this is the bigger question, one is because currently those that have adopted the new iOs are what is referred to as early adopters (I am enthusiastically a die hard member of this crowd) which accounts for about 20% of US users. Of those early adopters, many aren’t presented the option because they had previously opted out of even being asked the question in an earlier iOs iteration. I checked for myself and sure enough, I had opted out of opting out. I unchecked it and have started getting the pop ups when I open apps. For the record, I’m opting into the personalization.
And what has come of the various products that have sprung up to solve this gaping hole in the data collection world? Well UID 2.0 is officially open source and is available for all to collaborate on. It’s one of many proposed solutions and is worth keeping an eye on for now. However, based upon the above information, we’ve got a little time before everything goes sideways, if it ever does.
GOOGLE PAGE EXPERIENCE AKA CORE WEB VITALS
As if the data privacy conversation wasn’t enough to deal with, the impending Google Page Experience update is also top of mind for digital marketers. And along with data privacy, this update is also showcasing just how paramount it is to have a developer on staff or on retainer to help navigate these very technical waters. On the one hand Google says that this update isn’t a make or break update, but rather a tie breaker update. If all other factors are equal between two websites, the one with better CWV’s will win. Oh but also, all your third party apps need to get in gear because their poor performance will bring down your score. Unless of course, you have a developer on hand that can deploy mitigation strategies that are well above my pay grade.
MICROSOFT AS A SINGLE POINT FOR ALL DIGITAL AD CAMPAIGNS
Google holds 37.2% of digital ad share to Microsoft’s 3.8% as of 2019 and they’re doing everything they can to gain traction. This week they announced a new product called Unified Campaign in which you can run ads on Google, Facebook and Microsoft through one Microsoft interface. It will even help you create ads using an ai. Sounds dreamy except upon further reading, you’ll note that the whole thing runs as one campaign and the Unified Campaign system decides when and how to spend that one budget. That means that if you set a budget of $100 a day and run ads on all three networks, Unified Campaign will decide where to spend that $100 a day. Me no likey. I’m all for AI and I used campaign optimization on Facebook campaigns often, but that is a much more controlled and far less volatile space than deciding to let the machines tell you where to spend your money across three extremely different ecosystems. No thanks. But for small businesses with limited budgets it might be worth a try.
That’s all she wrote folks. Have you dug into your core web vitals? Are you worried about how your website handles data and if you’re breaking any rules? What about this new product from Microsoft, would you try it? What shortages are you encountering? Hope this gave you some insights and spurred a conversation or two in your office today. Enjoy the long weekend and remember to honor those who died for our freedoms.
