Twitter pilots a new product carousel that can appear in profiles; Thursday’s daily brief

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, I need your help.

I’m hoping you’ll take three minutes to complete our Event Participation Index survey.

The team here at Third Door Media has been hard at work programming our third virtual learning journey of the year, SMX Convert, which will be on August 17. We’re also looking ahead to next year’s line-up of events and we need to know how you feel about in-person and virtual events. We publish the results so that all marketers who are wrestling with these decisions can have some data to work with. Please make your opinions heard by filling out our quick survey.

Keep on scrolling for the latest news. And for those who, like me, sometimes struggle with navigating the challenges that arrived with the pandemic and our transition away from it *knock on wood*, I’ve written a special section at the end of this newsletter that highlights the importance of mental health and provides a few tips that can help you take back some control over your life — hang in there, you’re tougher than this.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Instagram is disabling interest and activity-based targeting of underage users

Beginning in a few weeks, advertisers will only be able to target Instagram, Facebook and Messenger users under the age of 18 (or older in certain territories) based on their age, gender and location, Instagram announced Tuesday. As such, previously available targeting options, such as those based on interests or activity on other sites or apps, will become unavailable to advertisers. This policy change will roll out worldwide.

Why we care. If you’re managing Instagram, Facebook or Messenger ad campaigns that target minors based on their interests and activities across the web, then you’ll need to find an alternative way to reach them as you’ll be losing access to those targeting options in the coming weeks.

Read more here.

85% of users who did holiday research on Reddit made a purchase based on their research

We’re approaching the midpoint of summer, but for e-commerce marketers that means it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming holiday shopping season. Often overlooked in traditional campaigns, Reddit can be a tremendous resource for shoppers researching what to buy and 85% of users who did holiday research on the platform made a purchase based on what they found, according to the company’s recently launched holiday guide.

October is an opportune time to get in front of users exploring their potential purchases as the platform sees a 2.7x increase in daily shopping and gifting conversations during this month. Advertisers may also be able to take advantage of auction efficiency in October as well, since it’s just before the peak of shopping season. Additionally, 34% of Reddit users shop in-stores for last-minute gifts between December 1 and Christmas day, making it a good time to drive awareness for in-store sales.

Twitter’s Shop Module pilot adds a product carousel to profiles

Twitter has launched Shop Modules, a dedicated section at the top of profiles where brands can showcase their products, as a pilot, the company announced Wednesday. The Shop Module pilot is currently rolling out with a handful of brands in the U.S., and only people in the U.S. who use Twitter in English on iOS devices are currently able to see the module.

Why we care. If this feature receives a wider rollout, Shop Modules may help bridge the gap between audiences discussing a brand and discovering that brand’s products on Twitter. Additionally, the user bases of social media platforms vary by factors like age, gender and education level. This new feature may be especially useful for B2C or D2C brands whose target audiences are particularly active on Twitter.

Read more here.

Service areas in local business listings, Olympic athletes in AR and the marketing data diet

Google local business listings in Search displays service areas. It would appear as though Google is testing a new label for displaying local business service areas. When you click on a region in the “Areas served” section, all the areas the business supports are overlaid. A tip of the hat to Ben Fisher who first brought this to our attention.

Are marketers welcomed guests or party crashers? This week’s Marketoon takes us through the various stages of data intrusion at the hands of unsavvy data management.

Olympic athletes in 3D & AR in Google Search. Olympics fans can see some of the more well-known athletes in 3D via Google’s augmented reality technology. Check it out by going to Google.com on mobile or in the Google app and scrolling down to the “Athletes in 3D” section.

By now, burnout is a given…but it doesn’t have to be

“Thank goodness 2020 is behind us, the vaccine is here and I can pick up my life where I left off!” — that was my immediate reaction after my second vaccine dose. To my unfortunate surprise, shadows of that traumatic period continue to peak around the edges of my life. It seems I’m not the only one: four in ten U.S. adults have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder; that’s four times the rate reported from January to June 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“To muster the energy for reentry into non-pandemic life, people need more than a vaccine and a vacation; they need validation of their experience, a broader reckoning with how they lived before March 2020, and tools to dig out from more than a year of trauma,” Lucy McBride wrote for The Atlantic, in which she cites hustle culture, toxic stress and poor access to affordable healthcare as factors that conspired to make Americans among the least healthy populations in wealthy countries — and that’s before we even had a pandemic.

Many of us are already resuming parts of our pre-pandemic lifestyles, but that can also introduce new stressors, like returning to the office. To help cope, McBride offered the following advice: 

• Accept that there will be anxiety and that the accumulated stress may have physical manifestations. “Normalizing these attitudes can help remove the shame and self-stigma of feeling unwell,” she said.
• Being at the mercy of the pandemic can make you feel like you don’t have agency over your own life, so it may be necessary to take back control where you can. “Reassessing and simplifying our home life, work, and relationships can be a good place to start,” she recommended, “With limited space in our schedules and brains, we must populate our calendars with intention.”
• And, advocate for the recognition of burnout within your own company and community. This makes it easier for people to show compassion, which can also do wonders to reduce stress and anxiety.

Adopting these pointers has helped me rebound from quite a few bad days — even yesterday, as a matter of fact. “Evidence also shows that people who experience trauma and adverse childhood events, particularly those that are sustained, are at significantly higher risk for developing subsequent medical problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease,” McBride wrote, so taking care of your mental wellbeing may also carry positive benefits for your long term physical health as well.

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