‘The ad free internet’

This week The Economist put out a really interesting article relating to how advertisers are changing their online spending habits now that social media regulations are tightening, and what that shift looks like ahead of 2024. The piece itself is behind a paywall, however there were some interesting thoughts for digital marketers I wanted to share.

Firstly, I was amazed to find out this week that Amazon made $45 billion from ads this year. That itself doesn’t sound so remarkable, but the amazing bit is that this was more than the entire newspaper industry combined. Indeed, they’ve been running ads for a decade and are an obvious place for consumer-facing businesses to run ads, but are indicative of a wider trend for advertisers to look for new opportunities.

Other emerging opportunities include ad networks for in-room TVs and airlines showing personalised ads during in-flight entertainment, which all sounds a little bit like something out Minority Report. For the moment this is the preserve of bigger budget advertisers, but nevertheless is something to keep in mind – less obvious channels offer some great awareness opportunities. 

With social networks increasingly looking to diversify revenue streams outside of advertising (just this week Snapchat+ announced some impressive growth, with $20 million revenue in November, while other social channels have launched ad free versions), it’s fairly safe to say that the digital advertising landscape is going to look very different in five years time to how it looked five years ago.

Twitter/X tries a different tact

Having reportedly scared off the majority of its big-ticket advertisers, Twitter/X is now focussing on attracting smaller advertisers to the platform. It is now also exploring partnerships with other ad platforms, including talks with Amazon to use its ad-buying software. 

This move is seen as a strategy to lure small and mid-sized businesses, a pivot from the platform’s traditional reliance on larger brands. As the platform opens up to smaller advertisers, it is likely to offer more accessible and possibly more cost-effective advertising options compared to its previous focus on bigger brands. 

Personally, I would steer clear of the platform until there is more stability; it feels like every week there is a potentially harmful major controversy and, as mentioned previously, even prior to Elon Musk’s ownership Twitter never really delivered the same ROI (in my experience) as other platforms. Which brings me nicely to…

Threads launching in the EU

Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, is set to finally launch in the EU this week. This is a significant step in the platform’s expansion, aiming to catch people while they’re scrolling their way through the holiday season.

While Threads has been available in the UK for a while, its continued expansion is a strong indicator that Meta is committed to its success, and that it might not be the flash in the pan some have dismissed it to be.

In terms of what that means for your brand, as with any channel, you should only be on there if you feel it helps you solve a problem or connect with new audiences. Most of the brands doing Threads well are already well-establish goliaths, but that doesn’t mean you should be put off. Using it in a similar way to Twitter (regular updates about the great stuff your business is up to) could well yield dividends; but I wouldn’t be betting the house on it just yet.

Further reading:

WhatsApp is rolling out pinned messages, a boon to well-meaning people who find their messages about scheduling social events are buried by non-stop ‘bantz’.

And finally, after last week’s bumper week of AI announcements, this week Google admitted an AI viral video was edited to look better, a great example of the importance of transparency in relation to how we’re using AI. Otherwise the EU agreed a ‘historic’ deal to regulate AI.

That’s it for me in 2023, and I’ll be taking a break from this newsletter for a few weeks. 

If you’re feeling particularly generous at this festive time of year and have enjoyed this newsletter, then you’re of course very welcome to buy me a coffee or, alternatively, I would really appreciate any recommendations of this newsletter to your friends and peers.

Otherwise, I hope you have a great holiday season, and I’ll be back in January!

A brief round up of the many platform AI announcements, as well as the implications of TikTok expanding its partnership with Ticketmaster, and a look at Reddit’s latest updates.

Generative AI Round-up

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to follow the multiple announcements coming from platforms around their Generative AI integrations. Indeed, numerous platforms have been working on their AI game this week, a few highlights as follows:

Meta is adding AI-generated post prompts and images – while I don’t expect this to replace the current approach at bigger brands, this is likely to go towards reducing the need for smaller firms for external social support. Meta also announced that its latest AI package will make speech translation expressive, factoring in whispers for example.

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is working on a platform which would enable users to create custom AI chatbots.

Microsoft has been talking about its new Deep Search offering, which uses GPT-4 to interpret and expand user queries for more accurate and relevant search results. This type of approach is likely to be copied by other platforms in time. My own view on what this means for marketers remains the same – monitor, and make sure your SEO is on-point, because its increasingly likely that your copy will form the basis of the answers being given to users searching via Generative AI.

TikTok Expands Ticketing Feature

Having initially launched in the US last year, TikTok is expanding its Ticketmaster integration to 20 other markets, including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and many (well, 16) others. While this direct news doesn’t have direct implications for many of the people reading this, what it is a sign of is the increasing growth and expectation from users that they’ll be able to do everything in one app.

For years, apps such as WeChat have been mythologised in the West as platforms where you can pretty much do anything. It feels that as time goes on and with the increasing adoption of social shopping, that we may start to have the same expectations as well.

Reddit Recap & New Ad Placements

Following last week’s much heralded slight changes in colour scheme and font, Reddit had some actual news this week. Firstly, it’s added new elements to its reply stream ad placements, with more flexibility around using images and carousels. I find that Reddit ads are oddly underused by some brands, although I suspect that the previous lack of flexibility with images was part of the problem.

It does however offer high potential for very specific and cost-effective interest-based targeting – sure, there has been some negativity, but I personally find it to be a similar level to Twitter pre-Musk.

Otherwise, Reddit released its 2023 Recap. Apparently in 2023 there was a notable increase in Subreddits devoted to serious, intellectual discussions; the hope here is that this might help a more cerebral type of marketer. I think it’s certainly worth dipping your toe in, but maybe reserve the larger budgets for when you’ve seen some ROI.

Further Reading

Threads is launching in the EU. If you haven’t already thought about where the platform can fit in to your marketing mix, early 2024 poses a good time. My own view is that it isn’t Twitter – we need to see what it becomes before over-committing.

A US-centric study has indicated that brands will place increasing trust and spend with content creators in 2024.

A Spanish media association filed a 550 million euro lawsuit against Meta, citing unfair advantages in the advertising industry. More one to watch with curiosity than expecting anything impactful at this stage.

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.