Newsletter #51: April 25th, 2024
News to Know
What happens now that Biden has signed the TikTok bill?
The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve a bipartisan bill that would require ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell the social media app or face a ban on all U.S. devices. The vote was 352-65.
The legislation's fate is unclear in the Senate. The top two lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, and Mark Warner, D-Va., released a joint statement praising the House bill and urging Senate action but the timeline is unclear. Several lawmakers have suggested the Senate should hold hearings on the legislation before moving forward.
Source: Axios
Coke’s logo gets a handmade upgrade for its new ad.
A new campaign for the soda maker shows that imitation is the best form of flattery.
Humans are bad at getting the details of logos right (this much we know), but Coca-Cola is embracing the imperfections of fan-made dupes.
A new ad campaign called “Every Coca-Cola is Welcome,” features handmade Coke logos made by shopkeepers and artists from around the world. The team behind the campaign—led by ad agency VML, developed by WPP Open X, and supported by EssenceMediacom and Ogilvy PR—scouted the logos from hundreds of examples.
Source: Fast Company
LinkedIn is testing a TikTok-like video feed.
Another day, another platform trying to be like TikTok.
LinkedIn is testing a short-form video feed, following in the footsteps of so many other apps that are trying to be like TikTok.
TikTok, home to over a billion users, has sent social media apps scrambling for years. Instagram, YouTube, and even Netflix have tried to mimic TikTok's winning formula: the app's vertical video feed and the way it happens to spark trends and conversations on the daily.
Source: Mashable
Meet Your New Assistant: Meta AI, Built With Llama 3.
Built with Meta Llama 3, Meta AI is one of the world’s leading AI assistants, already on your phone, in your pocket for free. And it’s starting to go global with more features. You can use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger to get things done, learn, create and connect with the things that matter to you. We first announced Meta AI at last year’s Connect, and now, more people around the world can interact with it in more ways than ever before.
We’re rolling out Meta AI in English in more than a dozen countries outside of the US. Now, people will have access to Meta AI in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe — and we’re just getting started.
Source: Meta
Appetite For Digital Audio Advertising On Upswing, NAB Panelists Say.
Radio’s digital revenue grew 6.8% in 2023, reaching $1.9 billion and stealing market share from other local media competitors, according to the annual digital revenue benchmarking report released in February by the Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates.
“We're absolutely doing better and it is predominantly about digital audio,” John Rosso, President and CEO, Triton Digital, said Tuesday at NAB Show 2024 In Las Vegas.“We're doing way better, on average, in driving rates, particularly in streaming and podcasting,” Rosso said during a panel discussion about selling digital advertising. “And it's podcasting that is leading the way, and then streaming gets packaged in by a lot of sellers.”
Source: Inside Radio
Skeptical CMOs are wrong – social media marketing is a powerful tool.
Are we really still discussing the validity of social media marketing, asks Daisy Domenghini of VaynerMedia EMEA? Those who doubt it is risk being left behind.
For the second year running, over a fifth (22.5%) of the 3,000 marketers responding to Marketing Week’s 2024 Career & Salary Survey, say social media is the most overrated skill in a marketer. Frankly, this shows how much education and modernizing CMOs in our industry need to undertake.
Social media is not a distraction from traditional marketing, it's an extension of it. It seems crazy to me that we are repeating the same conversations from ten or so years ago, about whether digital marketing is just…well, marketing. Social is not just part of the modern marketing mix, but one of its most important parts.
Source: The Drum
Smarter ads, better results: The next era of digital advertising.
Part of why I joined Google Ads in 2019 is because I loved an ad I saw for a hotel when I was planning a family trip using Google.com — seriously. It was a relevant ad that helped me find what I needed, just as ads have done for billions of people. But, as an engineer, I marveled at the technology. It’s an extraordinary challenge to understand billions of queries, match them to advertisers’ campaigns, and serve relevant and engaging ads in a fraction of a second. I was fascinated by the challenges and opportunities in digital advertising and wanted to help drive its future.
Fast forward to today: I’m about 100 days into leading Google’s advertising business, during a time when technology is changing faster than I’ve seen at any point in my career. But not everything is changing. What makes advertising work — right customer, right ad, right time — is still the ultimate goal. People’s desire to explore and choose new products or services isn't going away. Google’s mission to make information accessible to everyone isn’t changing, and ads play a crucial role in making that happen. Our industry will continue to be an incredible economic engine, and I’m excited to be part of shaping what’s next.
Source: Think with Google
Ad Industry, Cable Lobby And Consumer Advocates Criticize New Privacy Bill.
The ad industry is weighing in against a new privacy bill that could curb companies' ability to engage in online behavioral advertising.
“The bill could significantly limit the ability of advertisers in every Congressional District (businesses, nonprofits, political campaigns, and the government alike) to reach their customers at the most relevant time and with the most relevant message with targeted advertising,” the Association of National Advertisers and American Association of Advertising Agencies writes in a letter to lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Source: MediaPost
Here’s how TikTok could avoid a national ban.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” CEO Shou Chew said soon after the bill became law.
As Kesha prophesied years ago, TikTok [is] on the clock [to make sure] the party don’t stop. Yesterday, President Joe Biden signed into law the controversial new bill that gives TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, 269 days (~9 months) to sell the social media platform or else have it banned in the US.
TikTok replied: “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” CEO Shou Chew said in a video posted soon after the bill became law.
TikTok is only considering a sale as a last resort if all the legal challenges it’s promising to fling at the US government don’t pan out, Bloomberg reported. That means this showdown is likely destined for months or years of court proceedings that could delay the ban from taking effect.
Source: Morning Brew
Smells Like McDonald’s
Source: The Verge
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Google delays third-party cookie phase-out to 2025 (maybe).
For the third time, Google has postponed the anticipated deprecation of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.
Google has postponed the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome this year due to multiple challenges and increased scrutiny from the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Why we care.
Brands now have extra time to prepare and explore alternatives to third-party cookies. However, this is just another delay. Third-party cookies will eventually go away – just not this year.What Google is saying: Google acknowledged concerns about the feedback and requests they have received from the industry, regulators, developers, and the CMA in a statement they released via...
Source: Search Engine Land
YouTube launches new Shopping features to help creators market products and grow their earnings.
YouTube announced on Tuesday that it’s launching new Shopping features that allow creators to curate shoppable collections, better plan their shoppable videos, quickly monetize older videos and more.
The launch of the new features come as TikTok Shop is seeking to take on YouTube Shopping and other competitors in the space. TikTok is reportedly aiming to grow the size of its TikTok Shop U.S. business tenfold, to as much as $17.5 billion this year.
YouTube is launching “Shopping Collections” to allow creators to curate products from their favorite brands for users to browse through. Creators can pick a selection of products based on a theme, such as an everyday makeup look or a capsule wardrobe. The collections will appear in a creator’s product list, Store tab and video description. At launch, creators will be able to make Collections on the Studio app on their phone. YouTube plans to launch the feature on desktop soon.
Source: Tech Crunch
Publishers test new TikTok feature that adds links to organic videos.
TikTok is testing a way for publishers to attach links to organic videos, according to three publishers.
The test seemingly comes at an opportune time, given the decline in social referral traffic from platforms like Facebook and X, and the challenge of getting users from popular platforms like Instagram and TikTok to publishers’ sites.
However, it remains to be seen how much traffic TikTok can actually drive for publishers. TikTok declined to comment on the feature or its ongoing test.
Source: Digiday
Cookies get another stay of execution — but have marketers already moved on?
Marketers shouldn’t cancel their post-cookie plans, especially as Google faces antitrust action, the possibility of a nationwide data privacy law and its own shifting priorities.
Oops, they did it again: Google has — for the third time — delayed the death of the cookie in Chrome, further complicating the advertising industry’s efforts to move beyond a bedrock technology of digital advertising.
The most recent timeline held that the tech giant would phase out the tracking technology for all users in the second half of 2024, following a test deprecating cookies for 1% of users that began in January. However, Google said in a blog posted April 23 that it now hopes to proceed with deprecation early next year.
Source: Marketing Dive
Amazon introduces shoppable, ad-supported channel to Prime Video, Freevee.
The channel leverages the e-commerce giant’s “shop the show” technology enabling consumers to purchase content seen on their TV screen via a mobile device.
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults are looking at a mobile device while they are watching television, according to 2023 Samba TV research, which helps explains why so many platforms — including NBCU and Disney — have been eager to launch shoppable TV services.
Meanwhile, Amazon reports that more than one billion people in the U.S. and India watched its Amazon Live content across desktop, mobile and Fire TV platforms last year. Enabling even a small percentage of that audience — not to mention three-quarters of them — to shop on its platform could be a big win for the online retailer.
Source: Retail Dive
Data Suggests Threads Is Seeing More Daily Users in the US Than X.
Okay, I will preface this by noting that third party app data providers don’t have a full stream of info from the apps themselves, which often means that their numbers, while indicative, are not 100% accurate.
But that said, even if this is indicative, it’s a fairly significant shift.
According to the latest insight from Apptopia, Threads is seeing a steady rise in daily active users, and is now beating X in daily actives in the U.S. market.
Source: Social Media Today
How to fix a huge traffic drop after rebranding.
Bounce back from a post-rebrand slump and regain branded and non-branded traffic through technical SEO, affiliate promotions and more.
Rebranding happens when companies grow or face big PR problems. As a marketer and SEO expert, you’ll deal with it due to acquisitions, executive decisions or investor demands. Regardless of the reason, traffic will drop when things go wrong.
But don’t panic.
Both branded and non-branded traffic can be recovered. It depends on the cause of the loss and what you do next.
Source: Search Engine Land
Dads Are The Wrong Target For Mother's Day Marketing Campaigns.
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, marketers are ramping up their efforts to cash in on the $35.7 billion (according to the National Retail Federation) spending occasion. For many however, dads will be the focus of digital ads, television commercials, and emails -- all ignoring the largest group of Mother’s Day consumer: moms.
Eighty percent of mothers in the U.S. purchase a gift for one or more other moms in their life, according to BSM Media research. Moms are purchasing gifts for their own mother and their mothers-in-law, but 36% of moms say they also buy a gift for themselves during the Mother’s Day shopping season. Moms admit to also purchasing gifts for aunts, godmothers, friends and grandmothers. It may seem counterintuitive to market Mother’s Day gifts to moms -- but as the Chief Household Spender, it’s Mom who has Dad’s back when it comes to gifting.
Source: Media Post
New Jersey Is One Of The Best States For Working From Home.
Many businesses embraced working from home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and plenty of workplaces have kept this structure in place. Forbes reported as of 2023, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% work a hybrid model. The hybrid model combines both home and in-office working, offering flexibility and maintaining a level of physical presence at the workplace. According to Upwork, by 2025, an estimated 32.6 million Americans will be working remotely, which equates to about 22% of the workforce.
