Snapchat Mini Apps & This Week’s Digital Marketing News [PODCAST]

Jess Budde, Greg Finn, and Christine “Shep” Zirnheld are talking about Google’s leadership changes, mini Snapchat apps, and Facebook News.

Plus, Amazon wants to scan you for your body type, the worst fonts for a Data Studio report, and Google details their spam-fighting efforts (we’re not talking about canned swine).

Introducing Snap Minis

At their Partner Summit event, Snap announced a lineup of lightweight apps that will live inside the Snapchat app for users to enjoy with their friends.

Users will be able to reserve movie tickets, identify dog breeds, meditate, study for exams, or compare class schedules without downloading any additional apps.

Snap also announced that Bitmoji will now integrate with in-app games, allowing players to use their Bitmoji avatar as their game player.

Facebook News

The News tab officially rolled out on mobile to all U.S. users.

This new dedicated news section of Facebook curates general interest stories and local news stories.

From this tab, users will be able to react to and share articles (but not comment on them) and hide topics, articles, or specific publishers that they don’t want to see.

Answer business questions with Facebook Messenger

Facebook Business Page owners will be able to reply to messages from customers in the Facebook Messenger app.

Page owners will be able to toggle so they can send messages from both their personal Facebook account and their Business Page account within the app.

The head of Google Ads is now the head of Google Search

Google announced that Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Google Ads, will now be overseeing the organic search side of the business as well.

Google has historically kept these two product teams separate and many in the SEO community fear that this could mean changes to increase ad revenue.

This week’s take of the week about the sad state of close variant matching comes from Sam Ruchlewicz.

We’re inclined to agree, but maybe he should stop giving Google ideas.

Next change: negatives can be ignored when Google thinks it's OK.

— Sam (@DigitalSamIAm) June 8, 2020

This week’s ICYMI involves those promised Google Ads credits for SMBs.

Has anyone gotten theirs yet? No?

Queen of Spice Pamela Lund can’t find hers either.

Got an email from @GoogleAds that some of my managed accounts got the Covid-19 credit with instructions for how to see which ones. Log into my MCC, followed the instruction to see which ones, and none of my accounts show credits. Anyone else? #ppcchat

— Pamela Lund (@Pamela_Lund) June 4, 2020

Then, we answer your burning digital marketing questions during our lightning round segment.

• Who might soon be able to get verified on Twitter?
• What is Amazon doing to help shoppers virtually try on outfits?
• When will Facebook start flagging posts that are under the influence of government?
• Where might you start seeing ads for non-medical face masks?
• Why does Google’s close variant matching seem to be getting worse?
• How is Google trying to prevent accidental ad clicks on spammy ads?

If you enjoyed the show, head over to the Marketing O’Clock website to subscribe wherever you consume your podcasts.

Thank you to our sponsors!

• Ahrefs – An all-in-one SEO toolset that gives you the tools you need to rank your website in Google and get tons of search traffic.
• Opteo – Helps Google Ads managers automate time-consuming manual tasks so they can spend more time on high-level strategy and creative work.

Featured Image Credit: Cypress North