Author: tom

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.

Welcome to the first of hopefully many weekly updates from the world of Digital Marketing! Read on for all the latest industry insights and trends.

Amazon partners with Meta and Snap

Amazon has partnered with Meta and Snap to introduce in-app shopping features on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. These integrations allow users to shop Amazon products directly within the platforms, leveraging real-time pricing and Amazon account information.

This enhances Amazon’s reach in social commerce, particularly among younger audiences, and reflects a significant push into integrating e-commerce with social media​​. This also puts Meta and Snap into more direct competition with TikTok, and heralds an era where Social Media and Shopping are more intertwined, something any D2C brand in particular needs to be planning for. 

Funnily enough, this is all remarkably close to Elon Musk’s long-held vision and plans for Twitter/X – unfortunately however for him, this is a vision more likely to be achieved by competitors.

2024: The Year of LinkedIn?

I’ve attended multiple Webinars and seen multiple trends articles over the last few weeks stating that, with Twitter/X in decline, LinkedIn is seeing a massive uplift in activity. This isn’t a new take. What is interesting this week however is research from Hootsuite indicating that LinkedIn is expected by marketers and ad buyers to be the social channel that delivers the best ROI in 2024.

The ad platform has, it’s fair to say, not always offered buyers the best experience. But after years of catching up it now offers a similar range of formats to competitors and a unique targeting setup. If you’re a B2B firm (or even a consumer brand), nailing your LinkedIn approach in 2024 is absolutely key.

Bing – Your new copilot?

While a lot of the conversation around AI focuses understandably on Chat GPT, it’s worth taking a look at what Microsoft is doing with Bing. 

AI is being increasingly integrated into the search platform, and Microsoft is now rebranding Bing Chat as Copilot in its bid to take further market share – interesting, given the amount it has invested in OpenAI. Indeed, it’s working to further integrate the two, but it’s hard not to see a desired outcome of having a singular platform at some point.

Bing’s daily active users have increased since the platform was integrated with Bing Chat; still some way off Google, but they’ve gone from around 7% global market share at the beginning of 2022 to 9% now, or around 100 million daily active users (Statista).

This all has implications for marketers. While I wouldn’t be abandoning Google just yet, I would keep a close eye on Bing. If you’re looking to scale or test new ground for PPC, it’s a relatively easy integration process from Google Ads; if not, then I would at least keep an eye on developments.

Further Reading:

• A new report has found that Facebook and YouTube remain the top social sites for news, although TikTok is making inroads in the US in particular.
• Meta and TikTok both recently revealed Ad Free subscriptions. However, if you sign up to Meta’s, you then can’t run ads from the same account. Awkward.
• Not strictly digital marketing, but a bit of AI WTF… YouTube is launching a new feature that will give select users the ability to make music with the artificial intelligence-generated vocals

That’s it! If you liked this, please consider signing up to my Substack to get this emailed to you before anyone else, or feel free to say hello.

I’ve read all of those trends articles and emails, so you don’t have to.

1. Voice search is coming…for some

What?

After a slow start, voice assistants are creeping more and more into everyday lives, normalised by phrases such as “Hey Google, set a timer for five minutes.” Voice search has been much talked about, but I’m slightly sceptical as to how important this is right now – while there are 1 billion searches every month, this is still less than 1% of the number of searches made via Google in that same time frame; however, this is only going to increase as we become more comfortable with the technology.

Why should I care?

Well, that depends. If you’re selling B2B products or services, I’d skip to the next trend. I find it hard to believe that people will be asking Siri to recommend cloud computing solutions. But for D2C brands, this is important – making sure that your site is optimised for long-tail SEO keywords has never been more important, as you’ll want to be ranked #1 when your customer is asking after something you offer.

2. Organic search will continue to die

But…you just said…

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. While being ranked #1 has never been more important, paradoxically being ranked #2 onwards has never mattered less.

…what?

In an era where AI copywriting tools enable sites to be stuffed silly with thousands of SEO-friendly and keyword-rich articles, and with the prevalence of ad placements on Google Ads, I’m seeing less and less traction on the second, third and fourth placements of organic search ads, to a point where unless you have a strong chance of ranking #1, it’s worth considering putting your money into PPC or other channels instead.

Why should I care?

I’m not actually suggesting ignoring SEO or organic rankings; instead, focus on ranking well for attainable, strategic keywords. Evolve your strategy so you’re also putting money into controllable channels.

3. Target Smarter, not Harder

What?

GDPR; great for privacy, terrible for marketers. Even years after its introduction the effects continue to be felt, with Google and Meta continuing to tighten targeting options. This all means that we need to think more carefully about who we target, not just targeting anyone with a potentially adjacent interest.

Why should I care?

Meta in particular still has a place in upper-funnel activity, as does LinkedIn and Google. By splitting out and creating smaller, nuanced audiences with tailored content, and then combining this with your first-party data (hello lookalike audiences!), you can still offer a personalised approach even without cookies.

4. Video advertising is changing

What? 

Up until this point, outside of social media, Video has been the preserve of programmatic networks, meaning that the cost and barrier for engagement has been high for many businesses. However Microsoft’s partnership with Netflix, Disney’s self-service announcement in relation to its ad-supported tier, and similar moves expected from Amazon/Hulu, are going to change all of this.

Why should I care?

Because up until now, if you wanted to reach people at-scale via Video, you either had to revert to socials, or engage a media buying agency. But the barriers – and costs – between you and having your video shown alongside contextually relevant content to targeted audiences are about to get a whole lot lower.

5. AI will make you better at your job

What?

Sure, AI is changing the world. Maybe it’s even going to lead to our demise. But you knew that already; what I want to focus on is the AI tools, that when applied judiciously, will make you a better marketer.

Why should I care?

If you like the sound of getting more done in less time. With the right prompting, ChatGPT can create a detailed customer journey map, or messaging framework for multiple personas. Otherwise, auto-generated insights on tools such as Google Analytics can be insightful. Blog posts written by Jasper can be genuinely interesting. They can, of course, also be absolutely duff. Apply the 80/20 rule; let AI do 80% of the legwork, while you do the 20% of finessing and fact-checking.

Anything else?

There are, of course, many other themes:

• VR and AR continues to attract investment (but has been slow to show any ROI)
• The continuing move from macro to micro-influencers
• The never-ending melodrama of X, or the fact that Musk’s vision is not that far off the social commerce model experts keep going on about…
• The usual social media trends around video being increasingly important, platforms becoming search engines, and focusing on authenticity

But, that would have taken us well over the three-minute marker. Another time, perhaps.

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