Monday, October 7

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Meta is implementing an ad restriction period for the upcoming U.S. election

• You can now remove followers from your TikTok

• Google is testing verified checkmarks in search results

• 📊 Stat of the Day: Around 70% of consumers report feeling annoyed or negative toward commerce video ads on a monthly basis. (Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: How marketers can optimize RCS for mobile messaging

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💡 Today’s Insight 💡

How marketers can optimize RCS for mobile messaging

🗞 TL;DR - With Apple’s recent iOS 18 update, iPhones now join the standard adoption of Rich Communication Services (RCS) which is a more robust version of SMS that allows for greater media-sharing capabilities and stronger communication functionality. RCS for business messaging (known as RBM) is a major opportunity for SMS marketing campaigns, and Marketing Dive compiled five insights marketers should know going into the new messaging landscape.

💡 Insight - Apple didn’t invent RCS or RBM. The capabilities themselves are over a decade old and has been primarily supported by Google. That said, the ability for marketers to leverage RBM is dependent on carriers. Smaller companies like Spectrum and Xfinity already support RBM. Other major carriers are working on rolling out RBM with Google around Q1 to Q2 2025.

Early RBM results are promising. In case studies, RCS messages outperform SMS. RCS messages have average read rates of around 50% and an average response rate of 6-9%. The research is still small because of smaller numbers of adoption of RCS – though the new addition of iPhone adoption may make it more popular.

RBM provides verified sender identification. This would allow a brand to display a verified checkmark alongside their identity, helping consumers distinguish against fraudulent activity and potentially making a difference in consumer response rates. For example, “with RBM, the “cryptic” 10 or 5-digit short-code marking an incoming message would also be replaced with the brand’s name and logo.”

RBM could shorten the path to purchase. Consumers can essentially place their whole order through RBM versus downloading an app or opening up a website. Any additional action for customers adds friction, and RBM makes the process seamless. It also makes the conversation collaborative, by allowing brands to send follow-up messages, localized responses, or generative AI assistance.

But just because RBM is powerful, doesn’t mean it’s for every brand. Experts recommend using the first half of 2025 to experiment and learn this new technology before entirely replacing your SMS campaigns. While it has some great features, you should only be using them to simplify the buyer journey. Plus, it’s always important to remember that there’s a lag time in the adoption of Apple’s software updates, “with only around 70% of consumers having updated their phones by six months out.” Start to explore and understand what the tech can do before deciding what it can do for you.

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out 🛠

🍱 DOORDASH - DoorDash announced several new advertising offerings for enterprise restaurants and CPG brands last week, including a self-service Ads Manager that’s already been adopted by Chipotle & Sweetgreen.

🎞️ IG STORIES - Feeling like your Instagram Stories could be better? Here are 20 apps that can help your stories look like showstoppers and generate better engagement.

🇪🇺 EU VS META - An Austrian court ruled last Friday that Meta must restrict the use of EU personal data harvested from Facebook for targeted advertising. This means that EU advertisers may not have access to a string of user targets soon.

⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

✨ Meanwhile in the U.S., Meta added a ton of new (very personalized) features

😳 ByteDance launched a web scraper that’s 25x faster than OpenAI

✌️ You can now ‘Remove a Follower’ from your TikTok account

✅ Google is testing verified checkmarks in Search results

🇺🇸 Meta is implementing an ad restriction period for the 2024 election

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