Category: Uncategorized

Ofcom reveals British online habits

Ofcom released its annual Online Nation report this week, detailing how we’re using the Internet in the UK.

To nobody’s surprise, Twitter/X is seeing dwindling use, but it’s not alone – Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest also experienced circa 1.5 million users dropping off. On the other hand, TikTok continues to flourish, with a remarkable YoY increase of 4.6 million users. While I question how many of these are daily active users, it’s another undeniable sign digital marketers cannot ignore it.

Platform usage has also undergone some shifts; despite losing users, those who continue to use Twitter/X are actually spending more time on it, suggesting drop-offs were more casual users. However, other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram did mostly see drops in daily use.

Regarding search, for the third week in a row I’m writing to tell you that Bing is worth watching, with a 13% increase in reach on the previous period, which Ofcom says was driven by Bing AI. Given that 23% of UK internet users said they have used generative AI, that’s probably not a surprise.

But, with all of that said, Google still monsters over everyone else, with 86% usage. Speaking of Google…

Google gives forums an upvote

Google’s latest update has significantly influenced how search results display discussion forums and social media platforms. This directly addresses the growing issue of optimised, machine-generated content that undermines the usefulness of search results. Google wants to prioritise user-generated content and focus on first-person perspectives.

To achieve this, Google has introduced key features such as the “ProfilePage markup” which showcases creator profiles directly in search results, and the “DiscussionForumPosting markup” which enables better recognition and indexing of conversations from online forums and Q&A sites. This aligns with Google’s broader strategy to stay ahead of other platforms during a time when AI tools may disrupt the ecosystem. All of this means it’s going to be a lot more important for brands to monitor Reddit and its peers, as results from here are likelier to usurp other websites.

Otherwise, this week Google’s Public Search Liaision told us that the best way to rank highly on SEO is to focus on user satisfaction, rather than focusing on metadata and other technical aspects. Given that this is what content and SEO-focused marketers have been saying for years, this probably isn’t the silver bullet you were hoping for, but it’s a good way to ensure a good all-round customer experience.

LinkedIn unveils ad platform enhancements

My relationship with LinkedIn’s ads platform has been turbulent. 5-10 years ago it was infuriatingly far behind competitors, and yet the targeting made it an essential part of any B2B marketing mix. Now however the platform has caught up, with features to rival Meta and competitors.

This week it unveiled easier event-tracking via CAPI, a post-GDPR friendly version of the Insight Pixel. This enables you to connect activities on your website with your LinkedIn advertising. Previously to track any button-based (or even non-button) conversions often required tedious event-tracking and time-consuming setup platform-side; now, this has been simplified. If complexity was putting you off from tracking website actions previously, it need not now.

Otherwise it also announced upgrades to its Document Ads this week, enabling people to access whitepapers etc. in-feed, in exchange for a few details. The changes are largely designed to help you with retargeting and moving prospects down the funnel. This is where LinkedIn was once lacking, but now looks increasingly competitive.

Further reading

Reddit announced a major rebrand as it attempts to create distance from the boycotts earlier this year. No doubt a change of font and colour scheme will solve that.

Meta have produced an interesting guide on how to maximise advertising during the post-holiday season (by which they actually mean mid-December to mid-January). 
Finally, there was plenty of AI WTF around this week. Firstly, an agency created an AI model who earns up to $11,000 a month because it was tired of influencers ‘who have egos’. Yikes. Meanwhile, Dazed & Confused (who else) have written a piece studying what happens when people lose their AI girlfriends.

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

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