Will the last advertisers to leave X please turn the lights off?
You may have heard news about advertisers fleeing from X. If I’m being honest, from my own experience and also speaking to peers, it feels like most have already fled. However, it seems like Elon Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic tweets has pushed many of the remainers over the edge.
In reality, I suspect the report that Apple ads had run next to pro-Nazi content (a sentence I never thought I’d write) had something more to do with it. Musk is looking to take action against the publishers of that report, but the damage has already been done.
For those who work in digital marketing, this is a further reminder that there are other, more technically stable platforms offering better targeting options, demographic breakdowns and outcomes. Put your ad spend in those. The reality is that from my own experience, Twitter was looking less and less attractive an option even before Musk came in; everything since has very much reinforced that.
Bonus X Content: Marketing “namers” don’t rate the name change. Who would have thought it.
Status Quo at OpenAI
When I said last week to keep an eye on OpenAI and Microsoft, I didn’t exactly picture the chaos that followed. Some people have claimed that it resembles something from Succession; it felt a little more like a farce from Silicon Valley for me…
In any case, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pretty much back where he started seven days ago – but, in-between, he was forced out by the board, looked set to join OpenAI investors Microsoft, looked likely to be joined by 90% of the OpenAI workforce, and finally has been reinstated back to his original role.
Aside from the drama, the fallout has implications for digital marketers. The experience can only have brought Altman and Microsoft closer together, which goes back to my point about expecting more integrations between OpenAI and Microsoft services. Meanwhile, the fact that a power struggle in a company that a year ago had a fractional share of voice, shows the outsized impact that OpenAI has had on the industry, and why we should be paying attention.
Brandwatch State of Social 2024
Brandwatch unveiled its State of Social 2024 report this week. In a remarkable departure from other trends reports (ahem), it has predicted that AI will be big in 2024 and that social platforms will continue to pursue new features. No, really.
Dedicating 2/3 of the executive summary to these points felt tantamount to asking readers to switch off, but there are some interesting nuggets if you read on.
Firstly, their research indicates that online reviews are increasingly important in consumer decision making (so make sure you’re leveraging them).
Meanwhile, the best day to drive engagement in food services is a Thursday, and indeed brands are most likely to be mentioned on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Women are more likely to discuss brands than Men, while the majority of people talking about consumer tech are Gen Y.
Nothing in this report will be earth shattering, but the vertical breakdown is genuinely interesting, and if you’re a social media manager (or working with one) it’s worth looking up the points salient to your world.
Further Reading:
TikTok is introducing new metrics to better link TikTok ads with conversion data. This is a smart play, and one I’ll be watching with interest.
Meta has improved its Lead Gen forms by offering new features including conditional logic, in theory increasing the overall quality of submitted leads.
Snapchat is joining the ad-free subscription party.
Social Media Today published a nice infographic with a quick summary of Email Marketing best practices.