In this week’s “What’s Up” episode, host Jay Schwedelson discusses some of the big marketing and social media happenings related to the upcoming Super Bowl. He covers Meta’s latest user numbers for Threads and why it could take off soon, the huge costs of Super Bowl ads, a new spherical LED display in Las Vegas that brands can advertise on, and how emojis can boost email open rates this week.
Key Discussion Points:
– Meta’s Threads app now has 130 million monthly active users and could grow more once they add a trends tab feature
– A 32-second Super Bowl ad costs $7 million this year, but can be worth it for the exposure
– Verizon is paying $2 million to advertise on Vegas’ new Sphere display during Super Bowl week
– Using a football or trophy emoji as the first character in email subject lines this week can lift open rates 20-30%
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Transcript
Foreign. We are back for another what's up this week? All right, so what is going on this week? Well, a couple things going on.
First off, Meta just had their quarterly reports and I thought it was super interesting. They gave an update on Threads.
That is the social platform that you probably have forgotten about, that you probably have the app on your phone and you probably don't check. But believe it or not, it is growing. It now is up to 130 million monthly active users. I fully believe everybody is sleeping on threads.
It will eventually be a big deal and everyone's going to turn around and be like, oh, I wish I had followers. I wish I had connections on there. And now is that time. Now is when you could build that up. And the game changer, I think that's coming.
And this is right now being tested and being reported on that they're about to release a Trends tab and once they release a Trends tab, I think it's going to explode in use. So I think getting on the Threads train now is a good idea. I mean, Meta and Zuckerberg talked about it on the release. It is growing really well.
So that was a little surprising to me. But it is what it is. The other big thing this week, of course, is what's going on is the Super Bowl. Super bowl is coming up.
And interesting stuff as it relates to the world of marketing. First off, the 30 second superoroll commercials are not cheap. So if you want a 30 second commercial this year, it is $7 million. Yes.
But you know, when you think about the amount of impressions they get and everyone talks about it, get circulated, if you got the flow, you got the cash, it's actually not a bad investment. But what's an interesting investment, the super bowl is in Las Vegas this year.
And in Las Vegas, I'm sure many of you have seen it, there's now something called the Las Vegas sphere. And if you haven't seen this thing, it is unbelievable.
It is this giant ball that's made up of like a billion LED screens and it looks like a planet just stuck in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. And inside is an arena. And like YouTube is having concerts in there and all these other big bands are going to have concerts in there.
And it's like one giant LED screen. It's incredible. And you could put any video you want on the outside of this sphere that looks like a planet. So you can advertise on this sphere.
Normally they sell the advertisements. You can advertise for one week, have your thing take over this Giant ball.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should Google Vegas sphere. But you could take over the giant sphere for $650,000 a week.
On a normal week and it's estimated you get about 300,000 in person views like people walking around and then about four and a half million social impress.
But for the week of the Super Bowl, Verizon's actually doing a deal being reported by Men's Journal that they're paying $2 million to control the ad and run their ads on the sphere. That is bananas.
So it's always interesting to see the marketing that's going on and the other thing going on, marketing wise, as it relates to super bowl that you can do is this is one of the biggest emoji weeks of the year in your email subject lines. Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous, but this is a week of the year where emojis perform exceptionally well.
We did a whole study on my website, subjectline.com and the two emojis you really want to think about using.
On the consumer side, if you use the football emoji as your first character in your subject line, it can lift open rates by over 30% this week, specifically heading into the Super Bowl. And then on the business side, I know you're like business, I'm not using an emoji. Get over it. Come on.
On the business side, if you use a trophy emoji this week as the first character of your subject line, we're seeing that lift open rates by over 20%. It's not the ultimate emoji super bowl week, but it's a great week because of the super bowl to be testing emojis.
So that is what's going on this week. And then the other big thing, hopefully you check it out. Guru Conference, my giant free virtual email marketing events.
A two day email marketing conference. We opened up registration. If you go to guruconference.com right now, you can register for free. Last year we had 20,000 people.
We just opened the registration. Hope you check it out@guruconference.com and give this thing a five star review. Follow it, subscribe to it.
I don't even know what you're supposed to do, but you're awesome for doing it.
And we're gonna have another short episode later this week which is our ask us anything and then our 10 minute episode the end of the week where we share tactics, tips, whatever. So I hope you eat a lot of chips and guacamole at the Super Bowl. Thanks. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.
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