MARKETING
Time for a Content Reboot? Here’s How To Tell [Rose-Colored Glasses]
A great content strategy doesn’t apply only to what you’re going to say. It also should shape and change what you’ve said in the past.
In The 4 C’s Formula: Your Building Blocks of Growth, entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan talks about acquiring new capabilities (one of the titular 4 C’s). He wrote that a “new capability creates confidence ahead of it, but it also rearranges everything behind it,” and any jump in capability “automatically transforms both the past and the future.”
I love his idea that new capabilities give us new insights into how we acquired our existing capabilities. Essentially, he’s saying these new perspectives let us change the past.
They let us reboot our origin story – and all the other stories we tell.
New capabilities give you a new perspective on existing #Content. Use it to reboot your brand’s origin story, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
For example, I’ve worked to refine my ability to take visionary yet esoteric ideas and help people break them down into workable, pragmatic plans. As I’ve improved at that capability, I’ve developed a new understanding of my past self. And that lets me reevaluate (and rewrite the stories of) the good and bad decisions I’ve made.
Applying these new perspectives to the past is easier than projecting them to the future. Research shows that people feel disassociated from who they believe they’ll become in the future.
They even discount their existing capabilities when looking through the lens of their future selves. It’s as if we see our future selves as someone else.
You can reshape content for the future – and from the past
One of the most productive things you can do for your brand is to review the content your brand leaves in its wake. As you acquire new content capabilities, advance your story, and change your points of view, you’ll naturally evolve what your brand will say.
Take the opportunity to evolve what you’ve already said, too.
Does it sound like I’m suggesting you need a content audit? Well, you probably do.
Whenever I suggest an audit to a content or marketing team, exactly zero people volunteer to take it on. “Yay, let’s do another content audit!” said no one ever.
That’s understandable. A content audit requires a manual review of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of assets to find ROTted (redundant, outdated, or trivial) content.
Someone must decide which assets to keep, which to change, and which to delete. Concerns over duplication, SEO, and old branding or outdated designs typically drive the decisions.
Inspiring? Not particularly.
But reviewing past content through the lens of your new capabilities makes this tedious task much more interesting.
Reviewing past #content through the lens of your new capabilities makes content audits much more inspiring, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
That outdated white paper? How might you reimagine it knowing what you know now?
What about those amazing articles someone created years ago that were never promoted and thus never got traction? Why not reproduce them in your new template and promote them?
That series of webinars you did with a partner that later became a competitor? Feel free to delete them all.
In other words, what insight do you have now that changes how you see the content you created?
Don’t only reshape your future. Change the context of the past.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
How to decide what to reboot
I once had the privilege of talking with an extraordinary woman who handles investment strategy for consumer and entertainment media brands. She shared something the head of Marvel Studios told her about how they balance origin stories with the need to reboot popular hero arcs. (How many times have we seen the Spiderman origin story told in slightly different ways?)
Marvel sees new origin stories as a critical factor in keeping a story “alive” and relevant to new and different audiences. Audiences sometimes interpret these new stories as playing to the cultural zeitgeist (Black Panther and Ms. Marvel come to mind).
But the Marvel team doesn’t think of them or design them that way, she said.
Instead, Marvel considers rebooting origin stories as a form of co-creation with fans. They look at (and solicit, when possible) feedback from their most passionate audiences to understand when and how a reboot might be necessary or timely.
This is a great lesson.
Before you attempt that content audit, look to your fans to help you understand how to reshape your brand story.
Look to your brand’s fans to understand how to reshape your #content, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
Think about who will co-create with you. Who are your passionate fans? Who knows your mythology –your journey – so well that they’d know when, how, and where a reboot would be appropriate? Who knows Rey stole the Jedi texts and put them on the Millennium Falcon? Find the people who know the equivalent of that detail from your brand stories.
Gather with them. Listen to them. You don’t have to act on everything. They’re still your brand’s stories, after all.
But fans can help you reboot your stories at the right time.
In the past, old content wouldn’t survive. The physical space needed to store it and the time and effort required to reprint, reshoot, or otherwise recreate it meant that most old content got destroyed or became inaccessible.
Digital content changed all that. Now, it’s possible to keep everything. And it’s sometimes more expensive to address it at all. That’s why websites are bloated, blogs go back decades, and document repositories remain unorganized.
But that doesn’t mean they should stay that way.
As content practitioners, you’re creating the artifacts of your future every day. Treat them with the respect future treasures deserve.
But don’t forget to seize the opportunity to reshape past stories, too.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
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