Newsletter 7/15/2022: Good Clients and Good Business

From the Desk of Dennis:

Thank God for clients.

A good client gives a marketer the focus they need to pick the best opportunities out of the noise of the media ecosystem.

A good client works with a marketer to understand their business, not just their brand.

A good client can be big or small, but at any size has a mission substantial enough to give deeper purpose to the marketer’s work.

All my clients are great clients.

Best,

Dennis A. Wilson

This Week in Marketing and Technology:

Ars Technica, “TikTok resists calls to preserve Ukraine content for war crime investigations”

“So far, China has refused to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine and backed Moscow’s complaints about NATO expansion. TikTok has admitted it has censored content critical of China in the past, including references to Tiananmen Square, for instance. TikTok says it no longer blocks content based on political sensitivities.“

And so, data analysts around the world are realizing how spoiled they were when all of the major social media platforms were owned by American companies who would give some cursory nod to transparency. If you’re working in American tech, this story should be a good reminder of why it’s important to bake transparency into your products and take the time to work with do-gooder organizations who are able to put your data to use fighting some injustice. It might not always be the most profitable use of your time, but it holds off the slow descent of our global society into Neuromancer.

TechCrunch, ”Unity merger under fire for Ironsource’s malware ties”

“…Ironsource is also the company responsible for InstallCore, which is used to bundle software downloads with other adware – which can be very harmful to PC performance. Malwarebytes lists the software as a ‘potential threat’, and says it is ‘often served as updates for popular plug-ins like Java or Flash bundled with potentially unwanted programmes and adware.’"

This spring I started dipping my toes into independent game development, and frankly had gotten up to my ankles in learning Unity. I’m frustrated by this news, because once this merger wraps up, I can no longer feel assured that whatever I code and put my name on can be shared with others safely. Although the CEO claims that this should ultimately create an easier path to monetization, it’s going to be impossible to make money off a game that Windows flags as a potential virus threat (as it’s done with Ironsource’s products to date).

SearchEngineLand, “Google Analytics 4 adds conversion, bounce rate, and UTM parameters”

“More data from Google is typically a good thing, especially when it comes after the release of a new product or feature. Additional insights into performance metrics should help advertisers diagnose and troubleshoot campaign performance issues.”

I’m stoked to see Google trying to get GA4 up to the bare minimum of functionality that previous versions of Analytics have shipped with… Here’s some quick definitions for the laypeople in the audience:

Conversion rate: how many conversions (a check-out, an add-to-cart, whatever event you want to track on your website) you receive per user or per session

Bounce rate: % of sessions not completed due to a user exiting on the landing page (e.g., as soon as they show up on your website)

UTM term/ad content: check out the end of a URL from any marketing communication, and as it resolves on a website you’ll see alphanumerics after phrases like “&utm_content=”. These UTM tags send those strings to Analytics platforms to tell advertisers which specific search keyword or ad placement brought a user to a site