📰 Growth Daily - Wednesday, Jan 25

Today's news, tips, & tools you need to know

January 25, 2023

1 - Google Is In Trouble

📰 TL;DR - The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google seeking to The complaint seeks to “halt Google’s anticompetitive scheme, unwind Google’s monopolistic grip on the market, and restore competition to digital advertising.”

What does that mean exactly? The DOJ says Google has moved quickly to squash any competitors or innovations that threaten its dominance of the online ad market. They are calling for, at the least, Google to divest its Google Ads Manager suit of tools including DoubleClick for publishers (which it acquired in 2008 for$3.1b) and its ad exchange. 

💡 Insight - It seems as though The DOJ doesn't want Google to essentially own the online search market AND the online publishing advertising market. There are a lot of semantics and politics involved so make up your mind on it if you want by reading the article below. Wherever you stand on the matter, if you invest in DoubleClick ads, this is definitely something to keep an eye on. 

2 - Legendary Social Scheduling Tool Is Strugglging

📰 TL;DR - Arguably the first major social media scheduling tool, Hootesuite, announced its third round of layoffs in 6 months (this time 7% of its current workforce aka around 70 people) along with a CEO swap, bringing in the former CEO of CareerBuilder. They are down to 900 people from 1,400 in August of 2022.

💡 Insight - We have tried not to report on the mass amount of tech companies shedding employees but this one is particularly interesting to us. When Hootesuite launched there were just a few social scheduling tools that let you post and analyze content across multiple platforms. Back then you could get started with Hootesuite for around $19/mo.

If you haven't checked out their site in a while, you should. Their lowest tier now starts at $99/mo with their "business plan" listed at $799/mo... That's a big difference! It seems, as countless competitors came into their space and undercut them on pricing, they swam upstream to focus on bigger brands and agencies.

We think they overstaffed like every tech company over the last 5+ years and with this economic downturn, brands are likely switching to tools like Later that will let you manage the same amount of social channels that Hootesuite charges $249/mo for, for $40/mo.

We are curious to see if they drop their pricing in the coming months. 

3 - Instagram Prioritizing Photos, Again?

📰 TL;DR - Adam Mosseri, Instagram's lead, said a few days ago that the platform went too hard in pushing videos last year so they will look to make static photos more of a priority in the feed. As someone who has had an Instagram account since 2012, this makes me happy since it takes us back to the OG days of spending hours figuring out which filter to use. That IG felt more "pure" than today's Instagram.

Mosseri said that finding the right balance of photos and videos in the feed has been a challenge but as of late, comments on photos versus videos have become more balanced again. 

💡 Insight - The easy insight here is that you should consider posting more static images if your brand has been prioritizing stories and Reels. But! The deeper insight here? If Instagram is going to start showing more static images in the feed, that means users are going to get more accustomed to photos again so you might want to try testing static photos in your ads if you have been prioritizing stories and Reels placements in your ads.

4 - Google Launching 20 AI Projects To Compete With ChatGPT

📰 TL;DR - The leader in online search (and a bunch of other industries) is officially freaking out about ChatGPT given the news they plan to launch 20 projects powered by AI this year. One of those will be a version of its search engine with chatbot-like functionality, seemingly identical to ChatGPT. 

💡 Insight - Unless you have been living under a rock, this is not complete news to you but you can bet we will be covering all 20+ that they launch

*5 - The Job Market Is Now More Competitive Than Ever

📰 TL;DR - Turnover is on the rise, employees leave their existing jobs for better opportunities, employers have to anticipate and adapt to this higher level of power on the side of the candidate, and compensation has to increase in order to compete for the best talent.

Finding affordable and highly-qualified marketing talent for high-performing teams has become a lot harder. CXL is changing that with its new Talent Program.

CXL will match you with a full-time contractor aka an experienced marketer, at a very cost-effective base salary.

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