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Intro: We know what you want. You want to reach more customers and grow your business.

But the marketing and PR landscape is murky and confusing.

Now, you can gain clarity with straight talk on the latest marketing and fundraising trends in technology from two agency pros.

Bryan earnest and Mark Mathis from Amperage Marketing and Fundraising.

Now, amp up your marketing with the Amp Up Podcast.

Mark Mathis: Hello, I'm Mark Mathis and I'm with...

Bryan Earnest: Bryan Earnest.

Mark Mathis: And our topic today on the Amp Up Podcast is digital marketing and some of the new changes that are coming in the digital landscape. Bryan, I'm glad we have a guest today, because we're talking about digital media. It's ever changing. Every day, it seems like there's something new coming out about digital media. And now, we have some big changes coming. So it's nice to have a real expert on our Amp Up Podcast today.

Bryan Earnest: That always helps us when we have an expert. That's for sure.

Mark Mathis: Yeah. So, you know, someone knows what they're talking about today. We want to welcome Margaret Whitson. She's the Amperage digital media manager and a great Patriots fan.

Bryan Earnest: We won't hold that against her today.

Margaret Whitson: Oh, boy.

Mark Mathis: We sometimes get along on that. So, Margaret, go Chiefs! And everyone might not be as up to date on the cookie-less future that's coming and this new move to privacy. So talk to us about what is the iOS 14 update, Google's changes with Chrome and how that all impacts digital marketing and maybe a little bit about our privacy going forward.

Margaret Whitson: Okay. Well, first one thing you need to know is cookies as it relates to digital marketing and the internet way back in the day used to just make me giggle because I thought it was the most funniest thing ever. But nowadays, cookies is really referring to the privacy of folks that are on the internet and the advertisers who try to track those folks.

So when Apple announced earlier this year the iOS 14 update, it was really an update to the iPhone operating system and it's focused on improving privacy and data collections for the users. Specifically, it's going to prohibit certain data collection from third party cookies and sharing, unless people opt into the tracking. It used to be, they really had to opt out. So they're really going to cut down on some of the ability to track very specific audiences with very specific interests and behaviors.

On the other side of that, Google announced that they're working towards blocking third party cookies from its Chrome browser by the end of 2022. Google in this case was a little bit behind other browsers like Safari and Fox, because they had already started implementing this a few years back. So cookies is no longer funny. No longer served with milk. They're serious. And it's about privacy for the average person now.

Bryan Earnest: So Margaret, thanks for being with us. How does this affect our digital marketing going forward?

Margaret Whitson: There's a lot of things that our clients, the businesses that want to provide digital marketing or take advantage of digital marketing. The first thing that the two major platforms, Google, YouTube, and Facebook, Instagram start off, they start off by handling the changes similarly. They're requiring businesses to verify who they are, they're requiring domains to be verified. And then also on the advertiser's side, they're requiring us to be certified to run certain types of ads and certain types of categories. From there, the platforms, they're handling things differently.

Mark Mathis: So I think, for all of us that watch digital marketing from the outside, you work in it every day, Margaret, but as we watch it, it just seems like there's constant changes that you're keeping track of, but most of us are not. These changes seem rather dramatic. So what do marketers need to do next to work through all these issues?

Margaret Whitson: Marketers right now, we're finding that we really need to educate ourselves on the similarities, but also the differences on how these things are being handled and rolled out by the major platforms. We always focus on the major platforms, Google and YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, because that's where the majority of the users are every day.

We'll start off with Google. Google is handling this differently because they are working within what they call the privacy sandbox. They're considering proposals from a range of ecosystem participants, offering new purpose-built ways to handle important advertising cases. They're focused on privacy-preserving technologies. People have to opt in or give consent to be tracked.

In their future, what they're looking at, what they've been rolling out for marketers is modeling, machine learning and automation. So they're collecting huge amounts of information across all their different platforms within Google, not only Search, but Display, Maps, Weather, that kind of thing. All that huge amount of information together into a box, and then they're allowing us access to target these groups of people with groups of interest, not so much the individual.

Facebook on the other hand is working towards targeting server or first party cookie. And so there's a lot more steps that the advertisers and the clients, the businesses need to take in order to move forward with their advertising. And they're working more with code as well. A lot of the advertisers, our clients don't have access to place code. They need developers and website folks to help them. And we have to guide them through these transitions.

Bryan Earnest: Well, certainly a lots to think about. Besides this recent change to both iOS and Google, there's been a lot of change with Google as well as the Facebook platforms over the last year. What are some of the things you've seen, Margaret?

Margaret Whitson: The biggest thing that I've seen and I never thought I would say this is both platforms shut down certain types of advertising during the election for the good of the general population. Both felt strongly about non-advertising anything having to do with politics during that time in order to help keep everyone maybe a little calmer, keep information at a honest level. So that was one of the biggest changes I never thought that we would ever see.

Other changes, there's a lot of platforms coming in and targetting different generations. You know, we have TikTok and Twitch making a huge splash on the scene and they're video-based. We also have Pinterest that we can use and Twitter. Twitter is generally trending to the older generations, but still it's there.

So we're seeing a lot of different things, lot of different platforms coming out, video making a strong stand and engagement with businesses, the expectation of immediate answers coming in, and this just makes digital marketing more dynamic, more engaging.

Mark Mathis: Margaret, you've been in this business for more than a decade, working day in and day out watching these changes. We've been talking a lot about the changes, but could you talk about over the course of your career, what are some of the major changes in how businesses approach this, things that you've seen?

Margaret Whitson: Yeah. Well, I've been doing this for about a decade and a half. And I can't believe I'm saying that. And back in the day when we started, it was only Google and Yahoo really out there. As time went on, Google just kept taking up more and more of the landscape with the videos and the maps and other things. And Yahoo merged with Bing trying to create a bigger footprint, just the bigger splash on the landscape, taking up more geography.

When we first started, there was barely anything to report on as far as who was clicking, who was going to our website, what were their interests, what were their behaviors, what else were they doing out there? It's gotten to the point now where we can almost point at an individual and say, "Hey, you did this, this and this out there." And as a result, our younger generations grew up with no expectation of privacy and putting a whole life out there on the internet. And the older generations are like, "Whoa, what are you doing?"

I'm kind of really happy, you know, to see the privacy coming around and to see this reversal. But some of the other big changes and businesses used to be able to just say, "Hey, go ahead and put an ad out there and just kind of set it and forget it and let it roll." and now, there's a lot more to it. There's a lot more information that we also take advantage of, even though we stay within the realm of privacy. We can target different days, different times during those days, different segments. So there's really just a lot more going on right now.

Bryan Earnest: Well, Margaret. This is your opportunity. You've been at this for quite some time. You get to look in your crystal ball a little bit. Do you think is coming next?

Margaret Whitson: Oh my gosh. I think we do see this a little bit because messaging is part of the digital world and responding to comments on Facebook. I see those as coming together more as an audio video, response right then and there, not the bots that pop up, but real people with real faces, real video, real-time video, I should say responding to people's questions about their products and services in real time. I don't know. I just see it becoming more personal, even with the privacy more specific because people are requiring that. They're actually asking for that. That's my crystal ball. We'll see what it does.

Mark Mathis: I like where it's going. I like that digital is trying to get more personal. I think that's real positive for the medium. What should people do? What should businesses do to prepare for this new future that's coming?

Margaret Whitson: Businesses, if they don't have a marketing person that's able to dedicate a large amount of time to think updated and interacting with the digital marketing, with the clients, having the ability to pivot and change as needed, they really need to start going towards ad agencies or folks that do to digital marketing full time and have them work this for them, have them stay educated and updated for them.

We've heard from different platforms from both Google and Facebook, if businesses aren't following these requirements, I think Facebook said at one point in the near future, the campaigns are just going to be shut off. Google and Facebook regularly review the campaigns and they'll shut campaigns off who have some kind of error, some kind of, "Hey, it goes against policy" and they don't always let the businesses know. They need someone that's going to be there to not only stay up-to-date on that, but also be able to challenge it, to address it, to fix it and get those campaigns rolling again right away.

Mark Mathis: Well, Margaret, thank you so much. I mean, this is an incredibly dynamic world you work in, and we appreciate you staying up-to-date on all of this so that we don't have to be that up-to-date on it. But that's today's episode on the Amp Up Podcast. And if you like the insights that you heard or you're interested in Amperage, please visit us at amperagemarketing.com. And if you get a chance, would you please rate and review us? We would certainly appreciate any feedback you could offer. So for Bryan Ernest and me, Mark Mathis, thank you for listening. And we'll move your needle.