“Marketers continue to struggle with targeting. At the same time, some studies show that social media platforms may only be accurate about 30% of the time in pinpointing consumer decision-making,” explains Ashley Cooksley of The Social Element. “However, a more intense level of regulation related to the 2020 elections, a renewed focus on fake news on social, as well as hyper-targeting with bias, may draw targeting and regulation into the same sphere for useful collaboration. Platforms with micro demographic targeting options have lulled marketers into ignoring offline behavior. Successful brands in 2020 will look beyond simply refining audience targeting and rather view social media targeting as one small part of the whole, regard new regulations as not a limitation, but a benefit.”

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A seemingly infinite combination of variables can make or break your email marketing. Join us for this MarTech Today webinar to explore emerging elements and trends for email marketers and learn how to keep your emails out of the spam folder and in front of your subscribers.

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Pinterest embraces diversity in product development. In its 2020 diversity report released last week, Pinterest hit a new milestone by exceeding its three hiring goals with respect to diversity in 2019. For full-time women engineers, the company set out to increase hiring rates to 25% – and surpassed it at 27%. For underrepresented minority engineers, Pinterest’s goal was 8% but managed to close the year with a 9% rate. Finally, the company wanted to increase hiring rates for underrepresented minority employees across the entire company (business and product) to 12% – and exceeded it at 14%.

Messenger’s new policy start date gets pushed. To give developers and businesses more time to prepare for the new policies and features coming to Messenger, parent company Facebook has changed the effective policy date from Jan. 15 to March 4. Based on feedback from the developer community, Facebook said it found additional policy-related use cases that weren’t covered under the original set of message tags used for personalized conversations. As a result, Facebook plans to roll out a “one-time notification” API in February to give businesses and developers time to implement the new API before the new policies take effect. The new policy will be especially important for businesses that already engage with customers on Messenger using the platform’s advanced personalization features.

WhatsApp needs some space. Facebook, the parent company behind Whatsapp, is reportedly taking a break from building out WhatsApp’s ad product to realign its approach as a revenue-generating messaging platform. According to the Wall Street Journal, WhatsApp in recent months disbanded the team responsible for developing an ad integration solution. The team’s work was then deleted from WhatsApp’s code, according to sources who spoke to the Journal. “For now, the focus is on features [which allow] businesses to communicate with customers and organize those contacts,” the news reads. Advertisers, take note: it looks like WhatsApp won’t be a major ad driver any time soon. 

Do you have a search marketing specialty? Maybe it’s selling products on third-party platforms like Amazon or Facebook… perhaps it’s paid search… maybe the nitty-gritty of multi-location or technical SEO. SMX Workshops were designed for marketers like you. These immersive training experiences, hosted by recognized industry experts, allow you to drill down into a specific aspect of search and soak up channel-specific tactics you can implement immediately. We’re hosting six outstanding, full-day workshops Friday, February 21 in San Jose… which will you choose?

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CTV extends audience reach while boosting engagement, study says – Marketing Dive

Remember the Setting of Mobile Shoppers – Practical Ecommerce

Millennial, Gen Z shoppers lead contactless payment adoption – Retail Dive

What’s The Growth Team’s Job, Anyway? – AdExchanger

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, hits trillion-dollar market cap for first time – CNBC

Cambridge Analytica email chain with Facebook sheds new light on data misuse scandal – TechCrunch

Study says Grindr, OkCupid, and Tinder breach GDPR – ZDNet