Author: tom

For the last time in 2024, hello! It’s been an eventful year, but at least on my side things are starting to wind down, and this has also been reflected in the paucity of updates from the world of digital marketing as well.

The main news this week is the fallout from a US Federal Court upholding a ruling that means TikTok could be banned on January 19. Owners ByteDance are obviously pulling out all the stops to try and prevent this.

Elsewhere, global ad revenue has topped $1 trillion for the first time, and there’s a few updates around BlueSky – but it doesn’t feel controversial to say that the pendulum hasn’t exactly swung their way yet.

Before we get going, I just wanted to say thanks for reading through this year. Pulling together these updates is a genuine weekly highlight. If you’re feeling generous at this time of festive cheer, then you’re very welcome to buy me a Christmas coffee. Otherwise, you can also check out my views on the trends likely to shape digital in 2025.

With that said – let’s get to it!

TikTok requests emergency injunction

The big news at the tail end of last week was that a US Federal Court upheld a ruling meaning that ByteDance either needs to divest TikTok, or face a ban for the platform from January 19. It should be noted that ByteDance has a right to appeal, and has asked for an emergency injunction, so there’s a little way for this story to go yet.

In the meantime, Donald Trump has been reluctant to engage on the issue (he’s previously made noises that would indicate he would row back on any ban, but that was before the election). He seems to be of the view that ByteDance should sell up.

And what about us digital marketers trying to make sense of it all? Well if TikTok in the key pillar of your US-based activity, then this is the perfect time to look at Snap, Instagram, or even possibly Reddit – now’s the perfect time to diversify and explore. If it forms more of a secondary part of your ad spend, then now might be a good time to reassess your ad spend and potentially move to other platforms in preparation for the ban.

That said, I’d probably look to wait – if possible – until we find out the ruling on the emergency injunction, with the picture on whether it will be banned on Jan 19 at least likely to clear up over the next few weeks.

Further Reading

The global advertising market is set to exceed $1 trillion in revenue for the first time in 2024, driven by digital platforms.

The Guardian reported this week that X has lost 2.7 million active users over the last couple of months, while BlueSky has picked up 2.5 million. These sound like huge numbers – but they aren’t the critical mass that BlueSky needs to become a major player. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, has changed by the time I next write an update. It’s safe to say that subscriptions alone will not be enough to drive sufficient revenue with this current user base.

Meta endured a major outage earlier this week, though it does seem to have recovered now.

Instagram is experimenting with ‘trial reels’ that enable Creators to road-test content without it necessarily forming part of their grid. Like a focus-group, if you will.

That’s it for now! I’ll be taking a break from this newsletter for a few weeks, and plan to be back in mid-January. 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. Have a great Christmas, and a wonderful 2025!

After a seismic few weeks and months in the world of digital marketing, I have to admit that it feels ever so slightly like we’re now in the winding down period ahead of the festive season. Nevertheless, there is a potentially major ruling on TikTok’s future due in the US this week, and a few other bits and pieces going on elsewhere involving the major players.

I’m planning on continuing with these updates next week and possibly the week after before taking some time out until we have some meaningful news to look at, probably later on in January. In the meantime – what do we need to know from this week?

ICYMI: I looked at the upcoming 2025 trends

Will TikTok be banned this week?

We’re expecting to hear this week on whether a federal court in the US will uphold the ban on TikTok, with both sides asking for a ruling by Friday before the law is scheduled to take effect in January.

You know the story by now; the US Government wants to effectively ban TikTok in the US unless its divested by ByteDance. TikTok in turn has opened up a lawsuit against the federal government, aiming to nullify this law. There are various obvious reasons for this, but the stated ones are “technological”, “commercial” and “legal”.

The ban is due to take effect from January 19, which with the holidays factored in is barely any time at all – hence the request for a ruling so that there’s time to appeal, or put in place the steps necessary to comply with the ruling. This is important – whatever is decided this week isn’t necessarily final. Inevitably, my sending out this newsletter will mean the ruling will be about half an hour after I write this, because that’s how life seems to work in digital marketing.

The latest in the world of microblogging/tweeting/skeeting

Verification and authenticity seem to be the buzzwords in this week’s dispatch from the land-grab.

• Bluesky has an impersonation problem, and its looking to crack down on unverified/parody accounts.
• Similarly, having removed verified checkmarks (i.e. to see which accounts are real), X is now cracking down and trying to ensure ‘fake’ accounts state that they are parodies or impersonations. All of that fuss, to effectively be back at the start.
• Bluesky is now delivering more referral traffic than X for publishers; proof, if needed, that it is treating posts with links differently to X and other platforms.

Meta moderating “too much”

Meta has mistakenly removed too many posts, it revealed this week. This was shortly followed by a declaration that less than 1% of election misinformation was generated by its AI tools (which is still too much, in my view, but whatever).

Meta are taking the perhaps not unreasonable view that removing too much is better than removing too little, and are apparently working hard to ensure people are no longer “penalized unfairly.” It’ll be interesting to see if this has any material effect on the ads platform, where I’ve seen ads disapproved for some truly bizarre reasons. Fingers crossed!

Further Reading

It’s not just me – some other voices are piping up that Reddit is an underrated digital marketing platform. Happy days!

TikTok has implemented some new protections for young EU users (the most tangible one being the removal of certain filters for under-18s, among other features). This comes hot off the heels of the ban in Australia, and a lot of recent chatter around Instagram’s “teen accounts”.

Related to this – The Guardian took a good look earlier this week at why and how the Australia ban is driving concern among firms in Silicon Valley, that I recommend taking in with a cup of tea/coffee later on today.

That’s it for now! 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. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week!

In my little echo chamber, it feels like everyone is talking about Bluesky; but, in reality, it’s making relatively little impression outside of certain circles. That, at least, is what I’m taking a little bit more of a look at first this week, with the ongoing landgrab between X, Threads and Bluesky warming up.

Elsewhere, Reddit overtook X in the UK in terms of usage; it’s a viable platform for corporate comms, something I make a case for below. And finally, the issue of Australia banning U16s from social media has been bubbling up over the last few weeks; I start to make sense of it.

I’ll just leave a little plug for my Bluesky account, where I’m posting regularly about digital marketing, and then say let’s get to it!

Microblog Landgrab: X vs Threads vs Bluesky

The world of social media managers seems to be dominated by talk around the ongoing landgrab taking place between X, Threads and Bluesky. I’ve made some sense of it all below.

• Bluesky hit 22 million users this week. But, latest figures report around 1.5 million Daily Active Users (though presumably this is fluctuating all the time). When you consider that the last reports on X state it has 156 million Daily Active Users, it’s safe to say that there’s still a way to go yet.
• That said, that hasn’t stopped X from showing some nervousness. Features such as enabling users to hide engagements could be interpreted as a bid to conceal waning popularity.
• Elsewhere, Threads is just full on cloning Bluesky features, with ‘following’ feeds being tested as the default and the genuinely brilliant starter packs from Bluesky now suddenly coming to the platform.
• That said, Threads did add 35 million new sign ups this month – though recent daily active user data remains scarce.
• Where does this leave Bluesky? Well, this week they’ve had a regulatory headache, with the EU taking issue with user declarations (or a lack thereof). This might be slightly surprising as the platform seems to be providing almost daily boasts of new sign ups, but the issue seems to mainly be a declaration of how many users it has in the EU. This is a technicality and will be a quick fix.
• The bigger issue is that, in my experience at least, the honeymoon period isn’t really translating into usage. Much of my network has signed up and loves the vibe, but isn’t really contributing. I certainly would be reluctant to encourage clients to commit much resource yet.
• It feels like a lot of the same people are posting a lot, while others are either lurking or just out of the microblogging habit. I like it, so hopefully I just need to be patient, and will persevere for a while; you’ll find me here!

We need to talk about Reddit

It was fascinating to see Reddit overtake X this morning, in the UK at least, in terms of platform usage. And yet, as mentioned here before, many brands/organisations seem to ignore it as part of their marketing mix.

As mentioned in the link, Ofcom said Reddit was visited by 22.9 million UK adults in May this year, compared with 22.1 million on X. Admittedly, this isn’t super scientific, but it’s a sign of a greater shift.

My own experiences of advertising on there have been largely positive – a lack of flexibility with ad formats is made up for with good CPMs, and a fantastic ability to target active, niche communities. It seems weird to me as an SMB owner the amount of relevant advertisers who’ll splash the ads on relatively pricey (and difficult to attribute) out-of-home ads, yet don’t seem to be testing Reddit.

It depends on your offering and your audience, but if you have any relevant communities on there who might be interested in your product, it might well be worth giving it a second look.

16 year old debate Australia

I might try and delve into this further in the next few weeks, but it’ll have been hard to miss the news coming out of Australia that 16 year olds are very possibly going to be banned from using social platforms. There are concerns on how this will be enforced, but inevitably this has opened up discussions on whether this could be an option in the UK – though it seems unlikely for now.

With news that TikTok is blocking teenagers from beauty filters over mental health concerns, I expect we’ll see a lot more from the platforms in terms of pre-empting this, and trying to take steps to prevent any further action. Other platforms (i.e. LinkedIn) note that they aren’t really popular with kids/teens.

The obvious thing here in terms of what this means really comes down to your product and audience; its already difficult to use advertising to reach these audiences, but removing the organic audience will force a lot of brands to rethink their approach. This is a big thing to watch going into 2025.

Further Reading

TikTok has noted that it now has 175m european users.

Elsewhere, Elon Musk claims he ‘owns’ everyone’s Twitter account after a (weird) court filing involving Alex Jones. Conspiracy theory bingo card nearly completed.

And finally, a great piece on Wired on just how many LinkedIn posts – particularly LinkedInfluencers – are generated by AI.

That’s it for now! 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. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week!