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The Marketing Architects
Nerd Alert: How Marketing Varies by Digital Platform
00:13:45
Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We’re breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use. In this episode, Elena...
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- [00:00]
Rob Demars
Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?
- [00:02]
Alena Jasper
Yes, exactly. What a bunch of nerds.
- [00:05]
Rob Demars
Nerd alert.
- [00:06]
Alena Jasper
Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Alena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.
- [00:23]
Rob Demars
Hello, Elena.
- [00:25]
Alena Jasper
Hello. Well, we are back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, understandable language for Rob, and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?
- [00:37]
Rob Demars
I am ready to have my assumptions retargeted, Elena. Let's do this.
- [00:42]
Alena Jasper
All right, let's get into it. As always, we'll link the research we cover in the episode notes. This week I read a study titled Platform Research in Marketing by Anya Sen, Anya Lambrett and Jessie Newby. But before I get into things, Rob, I wanted to ask you, what digital platform do you think has the best user experience at this point in time?
- [01:03]
Rob Demars
I'll have to say TikTok. They kind of have that frictionless scroll sorcery down. I don't go on it much, but when I do, it's like, oh, boy, buckle up. And I just find myself losing an hour. So I just think they. They really have it down.
- [01:19]
Alena Jasper
So you think it's sort of like the entertainment factor, like wanting to stay on the app?
- [01:24]
Rob Demars
I think it's a combination of how it actually works, like how they've really mastered the ability of the scroll, the timeline that's involved in how long the videos can be. The algorithm, I mean, it's just. It's dopamine on demand.
- [01:40]
Alena Jasper
A big part must be the algorithm, because I'm guessing what you would call a good user experience is, like, content you enjoy seeing. So seems like TikTok has figured out a way to do that for every individual.
- [01:50]
Rob Demars
But I think their UI is really smooth. I do think that their experience they've curated the way they've curated the ease of it. I mean, it started out as musically, Right. It was like a little kids app. And, you know, I think they were really. They made the platform very easy and simple and seamless to use.
- [02:08]
Alena Jasper
Yeah. So it's not just the algorithm, it's the actual, like, the experience of it. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that the experience that, you know, a user has on a digital platform, how much do you think that affects the advertising results that a marketer might feel using that platform.
- [02:24]
Rob Demars
This is a really good question because my knee jerk reaction would be, well, the better the ui, the better the ad experience. But I'm always interested to hear what the research is going to tell us because sometimes you can be surprised, I think on websites I almost wonder if it's too, too good, if the UI UX is too good. Do people ignore the ads because they're just so into the experience that the website is offering? So I guess, you know, I don't know. I think Amazon is one of the ugliest UX UI experiences, but it's probably incredibly effective the way that they're serving things up because it's just such a shopping engine.
- [03:02]
Alena Jasper
It is tough because I think about like the advertising experience on Instagram and now a lot of those ads, like they almost seem native, like you don't even notice it's an ad. So that experience is nice for the user. But you're right, I guess that more effective than Amazon where it's more obvious that it's an ad, but it's maybe more, there's a heavier ad load. Yeah, so that's a, that's an interesting, interesting question. Well, the goal of this paper is to explore this a bit under we want to understand how platform design influences outcomes for marketers, platforms and users. So what these authors did is they looked at research from top marketing journals and adjacent fields and they were trying to find this view of where platforms create value, where they might introduce complexity, and where marketers may misjudge what works. And the paper begins with network effects, which are really the foundation of platform economics. Network effects occur when more users on one side improve the value for others on the same side. So think about things like messaging apps, while indirect network effects connect multiple user groups. Think riders and drivers on Uber. And empirical work in this space has shown that these effects are real but context dependent. So for example, online dating markets show that adding more users can either raise standards or increase competition, changing user behavior. Similarly, platform growth strategies often depend on managing these cross site effects. For example, balancing acquisition versus buyer attraction in marketplaces. Advertising plays a dual role. It's a revenue stream for the platform, but it's also a visibility tool for participants. One key insight from the study is the interaction between organic and paid content. So studies have shown there's a spillover between sponsored and organic listings where paid ads can increase organic engagement. But that effect depends heavily on brand familiarity in the competitive landscape. They also looked at measurement, so a B testing remains a gold standard. But recent work finds that even Advanced observational methods can't reliably replicate experimental results. Then they also looked at pricing. They found that the rise of free digital services funded by advertising led to wide experimentation with paywalls, freemium models and algorithmic pricing. And research has shown that paywalls don't always hurt growth. In fact, strategic paywall suspensions can increase long term subscriptions. Another one of the studies they looked at found that freemium apps often boost paid usage, especially when users are allowed to sample the core experience. They also did a deep dive into how online reviews and ratings shape decisions and how their structure impacts trust and behavior. Some of those key findings were reviews matter, but how long they are displayed changes their impact. Cumulative scores may often soften off outlier opinions. There's growing attention to review fraud and platform manipulation. So fake reviews can inflate trust and increase sales, but they have that long term reputational risk to the platform. And finally, the paper looked at how platforms curate content through rankings, labels, endorsements and personalization. They found that even simple signals like woman owned labels can meaningfully impact demand. And platform endorsements like this is Amazon's choice raise interest not only in the endorsed product, but also increase confidence in the overall platform. On the other hand, self preferencing native advertising and subtle manipulations of rankings raise ethical and regulatory concerns, especially when it's unclear whether content is paid, promoted or truly organic. So Rob, I just threw a lot at you, looked at a lot of different layers of this. But let's talk about that last point. Do you think that platform should have to clearly label like what's paid and what's organic? I was just saying earlier how on Instagram you can't really tell, is something an ad or is it organic? Is this just how things are now?
- [06:45]
Rob Demars
Gosh, you know, it's really tricky. Back in the day, back in the olden days, you could run print ads called advertorials, but you were, but it was clear that this was a paid advertisement. And I think we have to continue to evaluate that and go, okay, are we being deceptive to consumers? Because obviously news is probably going to be more effective. But you know, at the end of the day, if you trick the consumer into going into your ad, will they actually buy what will the data support there? Or do they, will they feel like they were conned? So I think it's an area that is a slippery slope and personally, I think the more we can try to make it clear to consumers that this is an ad versus this is content is just better for all of Us.
- [07:31]
Alena Jasper
I agree. It seemed like too that study found that like in the short term like some of these shadier things will work, but it's like the long term damage that you have to worry about. So like I said, there was a lot in this study. But I think the big takeaway for marketers listening is that platforms, they're very complicated systems and every design decision that a platform makes, how meta shows their ads, how Amazon aggregates reviews, how the prices are structured, they have ripple effects across the ecosystem. So if you're a marketer you should be thinking beyond immediate performance metrics and consider the platform itself, how it's designed, how it displays ads and content and how users interact with it. Because the attribution on these platforms as we talked about many times before, it can be flawed or incomplete and what looks like a strong result in a dashboard not might not reflect the full picture. We did want more specific takeaways from this by platform. I mean at least that's what I was thinking when I read the study and I do get into that to an extent. Here are a few interesting ones. Google and Bing, they looked at both those platforms and they had multiple studies that showed branded search ads often provide little incremental value while non branded keywords work better for new users. We've talked about that study before actually on the podcast they looked at Amazon and they found there was evidence of self preferencing where Amazon's own products are giving more prominent placements in search results which can distort fair competition. This is why we'd argue it's pretty important to build a brand outside of just being in retail media results. They looked at Pandora and found that personalizing ad loads based on user behavior led to higher subscription revenue. And then they also looked at websites like the New York Times, ESPN.com and found that temporary access and free content during high demand periods drove long term subscriptions. I would say this study personally when I first looked into it I was like oh this could tell me stuff about like general marketing results by platform. It did not. It more was talking about how like the systems work, like how advertising works on the different platforms. And I think this could be interesting to dive into if you have one platform you're really over invested in or just thinking about like how performance varies by platform. But I would say it's more just. I think another takeaway might be don't overthink it because the study also concludes that you can't always trust the immediate results coming from these platforms. So maybe it's Better to think about holistically your ad spend and what's performing well. But let's see if the Rob GPT can help us out a little bit. A platform is like a crowded train station. Network effects are the people arriving, advertising is the signage guiding them. Pricing is a ticketing system. Reviews are the whispers from fellow passengers. Content display is a layout of the station, who gets the spotlight and who's stuck in the back. If you tweak one part, it changes how everyone moves, who boards and whether they come back. Rob, what did you think of that one?
- [10:27]
Rob Demars
Yeah, I think there's a lot of good takeaways from it. The one thing that I kind of miss, and maybe there's more of it going on than I realize, creative work that isn't trying to trick a customer, but it's clever in how it's respecting the UI of the platform that it's in and actually making interesting ads because they're in that space. I mean, back in the day, there used to be just great banner ads on websites that would look like the banner ads were interacting with the content you were reading in clever ways, or multiple ads that were working in tandem together to tell a story. So I think in any channel that you're in, is there a way to double down on the UX UI in a way that respects the brand, respects the customer, and just makes everyone have a more interesting experience?
- [11:17]
Alena Jasper
I think that's a great takeaway and maybe a good lesson for marketers. Instead of trying to invest in all the channels you can, it's like, what are the few where I know my brand can show up in a way that's going to feel native and natural? We even see that with TV advertising. Like, sometimes marketers will take their digital video ads and put them on national television. And I'm sure everybody has seen some of those ads where they're just like, oh, this doesn't really feel like a fit.
- [11:40]
Rob Demars
Right.
- [11:41]
Alena Jasper
Something like tv. And we found that while you can repurpose ads and repurpose certain pieces of them, there is this element of what's relevant to the platform. I feel like Reddit's a good example of this, where I'll bet there are some brands that just crush it on Reddit, like their user bases there, they really understand, like the humor on Reddit, the sarcasm, but that I would be terrified to advertise on Reddit personally, just because, like, it seems like they have such little patience for failure there.
- [12:10]
Rob Demars
Yeah.
- [12:10]
Alena Jasper
And so, yeah, that's a great advertising.
- [12:13]
Rob Demars
To a school of Piranhas. Be careful.
- [12:15]
Alena Jasper
Yeah, exactly. If your brand, if it doesn't fit there, I think you're just going to be roasted. So you probably should focus more on channels where your audience is more open to your advertising. Or you can, like, adapt your message accordingly. Maybe AI is going to be helpful at this too. Like, how do you take one core message and distribute it in a way that's natural?
- [12:34]
Rob Demars
Mass customize it to channels that are. And make it relevant. Make it more relevant.
- [12:40]
Alena Jasper
This also just reminded me of the importance of owned channels and the significance of channels that are a little more stable. Because these are online platforms. They are such crazy systems. Like, they could change in an instant. They have many different priorities. And you hear this all the time with Amazon. I've heard about some brands who, for whatever reason, were kicked off of the Amazon seller platform. And it can take months or even years to get back on. So important to not be dependent too much on one of these platforms. Or you see Twitter completely changed. We talked about, like, the Facebook privacy stuff like that changed Facebook and those are the benefits to some, like, more traditional marketing channels or I think, diversifying your investments too.
- [13:22]
Rob Demars
Totally, totally.
- [13:24]
Alena Jasper
Lots to think about. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing marketing Architects.