After an astonishing couple of weeks in social media land, the dust is starting to settle and we’re starting to get a flavour of what the coming months and years will look like. Elsewhere, there are content moderation issues at YouTube, and some handy tips and tricks about how best to align your PPC and customer service activity. Let’s get to it!
What’s going on at TikTok this week?
- Firstly, Donald Trump and White House staffers are apparently brokering a deal between ByteDance and Oracle about the latter taking control of TikTok’s data collection & software updates in the US. A decision is expected in 30 days or so.
- We’ve also seen that after a nervous few weeks, TikTok’s ad spend is starting to pick up again – but major brands remain hesitant. As, frankly, should you; unless its a core driver of results, I wouldn’t be doubling down just yet.
What about Meta?
Mark Zuckerberg/Meta’s decision to scale back fact-checking a few weeks back has sparked a seemingly endless barrage of news, updates and hot takes concerning all things Meta.
- Firstly, and most interestingly, Meta has said that the news around fact checking has had no impact on ad spend. Perhaps it’s because we’re too early in the process to see what happens with ads and the content they appear next to, but certainly on a moral/ethical level it hasn’t changed anything.
- Meta also posted robust Q4 figures, and a solid year-end financial update. Far from collapsing, Meta seems to be continuing to grow, adding more active users across platforms.
- Zuckerberg has also said this week that he is planning big changes to the platform to make it “cool”, like it was “back in the day” (aside – as a relatively early user on Facebook, his use here of back in the day has slightly broken me). There were no specifics (shocking), but change is afoot.
And what about all those microblogging platforms?
- Bluesky announced this week that it’s up to 30 million users overall (it’s fair to say things are starting to stall on that front). This is still some way behind Threads though, which is now at over 100 million daily active users, and 320 million monthly active users.
- Threads also announced this week that it’s testing out ads in the US and Japan. There will be more to come on this in the next few weeks, hopefully.
- Meanwhile Wall Street banks are planning to sell off some of Elon Musk’s X debt at a discount, and X also announced a partnership with Visa this week that could open up a Cryptocurrency integration (about as on brand as it could possibly get for Musk).
Oh and what about LinkedIn?
LinkedIn have had a very good few months; while the world of social media seems to implode around them, the platform continues to see record levels of engagement, and particularly interestingly passed $2bn in Premium Membership revenues this year, demonstrating that there are avenues outside of advertising for social platforms – as long as you can offer a strong enough incentive for people to pay (i.e. more than a blue tick).
And what about those of us who don’t care about social media?
Presumably you’ll have heard a lot about DeepSeek this week – if you haven’t, the BBC have pulled together a useful explainer as to what it is and why it matters.
YouTube has a problem with explicit ads, with a significant increase in reports and increasing concern that the platform isn’t doing enough to moderate advertising, including adult ads reaching kids.
For those who use Google’s Workspace tools, the platform has announced a useful Gemini integration with Google Sheets, enabling far quicker chart/data visualization.
Search Engine Journal published quite an interesting article this week about the many reasons why your PPC activity and customer service activity need to be closely aligned. I’d argue this goes beyond PPC, but if you’re new (or even an old hand) to the space and looking for some new ideas, it’s worth a look.
That’s it! If you found this interesting, I would appreciate it if you shared it with your friends and colleagues.
If you’re feeling particularly generous, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Otherwise, I’ll be back next week. See you then!