After a raft of platform updates over the last few weeks, the tail-end of May has been comparatively quiet. At least from a UK perspective it’s likely that most media has the election firmly on their mind, but even in the US there has been relatively little to report.

As such, this week I’m devoting this newsletter to a couple of interesting brand case studies that I’ve come across this week – one featuring British electronics retailer Currys, and the other looking at Budweiser’s lovely offering on Spotify.

Beyond that there are (as ever) a few interesting nuggets of information relating to finding out which keywords your competitors are bidding on, ad blockers and which words you should avoid using on LinkedIn. Like I say, it’s been a slow week, but stick with me – the good stuff is coming…

TikTok’s Unlikeliest Star

There’s a new star on TikTok; namely Currys, an electronic retailer that I would guess most Britons have a fairly neutral opinion towards. However, it isn’t just chance – there’s actually some strategy in there, with The Drum taking a look at this this week.

The electronics retailer has managed to captivate audiences with a blend of quirky and authentic videos, which are not just random acts of weirdness but carefully crafted pieces aligned with their brand strategy.

The key to Currys’ TikTok fame lies in understanding the platform’s unique environment. As we all know, TikTok’s algorithm pushes and rewards content that engages users quickly and retains their attention. Currys has mastered this by producing high-quality, short, and engaging videos that resonate with their audience. 

They leverage trending hashtags and incorporate popular cultural elements, ensuring their content is discoverable and shareable​.

What can we learn from this? Well, authenticity and strategic planning are crucial. Embrace a platform’s trends and quirks, but ensure your content aligns with your brand’s voice and goals. It sounds simple, but it’s remarkable how few brands actually do this. Most platforms offer insights into what your audience are interested in; indeed, TikTok’s Audience Insights can show you how to identify relevant interest categories and hashtags, and focus on creating engaging content that hooks viewers from the very start.

Budweiser harnesses the power of Spotify

It’s not often I look at case studies from Brazil, but this caught my eye this week; Budweiser turns songs mentioning the brand into targeted ads on Spotify.

Budweiser Brazil has launched a groundbreaking campaign called “UninterruptAds” on Spotify, replacing traditional ads with songs that mention Budweiser in their lyrics. This approach integrates over 500 tracks featuring the brand name (who knew there were that many!) into Spotify playlists. This campaign not only enhances brand engagement but also leverages Spotify’s rapidly growing user base in Brazil.

Goodness knows we don’t all manage brands that are lucky enough to have been mentioned across over 500 different tracks – but, this is a great example (and one of the few I can think of) of a brand using Spotify in a genuinely useful way. Fair play.

Further Reading

Apple has signed a deal with OpenAI to integrate its products into iOS, although it is still looking to offer Gemini as an alternative choice.

Ad blocker users are now finding that YouTube is muting or skipping videos, after a long-telegraphed crackdown on them by Google.

Hootsuite loves an experiment, and this week they’ve been looking at how many Instagram stories is optimal for a brand. While the obvious answer is “it depends”, it’s still interesting to read and ponder.

If you’ve ever wanted to find which keywords your competitors bid on, then this how-to from Search Engine Journal might come in handy.

Finally, and while it’s absolute clickbait, I did enjoy this from Forbes on the 10 most hated business phrases, and ensuring you avoid them on LinkedIn. Anyone using the phrase ‘Spidey Sense’ on their LinkedIn profile deserves to be rinsed, quite frankly.

That’s it for another week – if your Spidey Senses found this interesting and you fancy being a Change Agent, then I would really appreciate it if you shared this with your friends and colleagues. 

If you want to Act Your Wage, then I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Otherwise it’s Mission Critical that you have a great weekend and I’ll see you next week for more Ideas Harvesting!

With quarterly earnings now well out of the way, we’re into the part of the year where major tech firms seemingly announce changes to their ad platforms, with both Google and TikTok announcing (lets be honest, broadly similar) changes and improvements this week.

Otherwise, there has been some concerning news coming out of India regarding ‘political’ ads Meta has approved which incite violence; concerning because there are a number of major elections coming up, and the platform has done little to suggest its fit for purpose re political comms.

There have also been a wide range of stories doing the rounds relating to X, Google, TikTok and Open AI. Lots to get on with, so without further ado…

We’re all living in a TikTok world

TikTok announced a range of improvements to its ad platform this week at TikTok World. Given that your correspondent has spent nearly an hour this morning wrestling with glitches, bugs and timeouts to get a few ads live, in my own view this is most timely.

The new tools include advanced targeting options via machine learning (though its fairly vague as to exactly what this means), some new ad formats, and improved analytics. The centrepiece is the introduction of Smart Performance Campaigns, which is essentially TikTok’s take on the Advantage+ campaigns offered by Meta. This will in theory make it much easier for time-poor SMBs to run campaigns on the platform.

As an ad platform (and particularly with targeting in mind), TikTok has made leaps and bounds over the last 18 months, so it will be interesting to see how these new features pan out. Although it can’t all be going smoothly (beyond the obvious issues in the US), with the sad news this week that its the latest firm to announce a round of layoffs.

Google updates Performance Max

TikTok wasn’t the only one announcing new AI-powered ad tools this week, with Google joining in the fun at Marketing Live. 

Similarly to TikTok, Google is tweaking its AI-powered Performance Max campaigns, which in theory take much of the work out of campaign setup and optimisation (though I do find that the actual generated ads often leave much to be desired). However, the promise of improvements to this tech is interesting, and it could be time to give it another try.

Meta under fire after approving ads which incite violence towards Muslims in India

You may recall that in previous editions of this newsletter, I’ve mentioned that 2024 is a huge year for Meta and other mainstream social platforms, with multiple elections take place and all the scrutiny that comes with this. 

Well, this week there was a major black mark against the platform, with the news that ads were approved in India which spread disinformation and incited violence against Muslims. 

The response from Meta that “people should follow the process” (I’m massively paraphrasing but honestly, I’m not even doing them a disservice there) is less than satisfactory to say the least, and is certainly concerning with the UK election just announced, the US election heating up and a fair few others on the horizon.

Further Reading

Brief but interesting from Futurism regarding Google ‘jamming’ ads into its new Gen AI-powered search results. Inevitable but potentially concerning, and I’m curious to see exactly how transparent this all is. Related: How I made ‘Web’ my default search on Google & Google CEO ‘empathetic’ to content creators Search has wiped out

TikTok launched ‘Fan Spotlight’, a feature designed to promote artists and musicians, enabling them to better engage with fans through the app.

Curiously, TikTok is testing 60 minute videos; I say curiously, because YouTube is also pushing Shorts more and more. It’s all becoming the same thing.

OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT now enables you to import files directly from Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, without the need for fiddly third-party plugins.

You probably know this by now as (of course) it was announced shortly after the last edition of this newsletter dropped, but X has fully migrated from Twitter.com to x.com. Although, while I don’t know about you, I fully expect I’ll be typing Twitter.com going well into the 2030s.

And finally, after a raft of ‘celebrities’ have been somewhat embarrassingly caught out, X has also announced that it will be removing the ability to see what tweets other profiles have ‘liked’. It’s good to see they’ve got their priorities straight.

That’s it for another week – if you found this interesting then I would really appreciate if you shared this with your friends and colleagues. 

If you’re feeling particularly generous, then I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next week!

It’s been another busy week in the world of Digital Marketing, with a relatively major announcement from Google potentially changing Search forever – certainly one which merits some of your consideration.

Otherwise it’s business as usual – Instagram provides some useful advice on content creation, X provides an (admittedly and, for once, potentially brilliant) platform update, while there’s plenty going on elsewhere. Let’s get to it!

How is Generative AI changing SEO?

This week heralded the launch from Google’s of AI-generated “AI Overviews” in search results. This could majorly impact SEO and referral traffic. 

Generative AI is rapidly changing SEO on several fronts – in terms of content creation, in terms of how users consume content, and then in terms of how firms are now defining SEO strategies.

The challenge is that with Google favouring quality content and supposedly down-weighting AI-generated articles, it isn’t quite as simple as saying “Hey ChatGPT, can you please write 100 articles about cake for my website”, publishing and hoping for the best. Instead, in order to best harness AI tools, you need to become a prompt master and then still apply that extra 20% of editorial insight to ensure that what you’re publishing is actually relevant and useful to your audience.

These summaries, powered by Gemini AI, aim to directly answer queries in the search results page, reducing the need for users to click through to websites. This shift may particularly affect sites optimized for informational content like Wikipedia, as users can get answers directly from search results.

Google suggests that these AI Overviews could lead to increased diversity in site visits for more complex queries, potentially offsetting some negative impacts on traffic. This development will likely necessitate new SEO strategies as the dynamics of search change.

The good news is that if you get the first bit right (i.e. write good, relevant and well-presented content), you’ll then be well prepared for this. Social Media Today took a deeper look which inspired this musing. Bloomberg has also shared some interesting thoughts.

X will soon enable advertisers to create audiences with AI

X has announced that advertisers will soon be able to create advertising audiences via AI prompts. This is actually the neatest idea I’ve heard from X (or Twitter) in literally years. 

This article includes an example showing that you’ll soon be able to describe the target audience you have in mind, such as “users who are leaders in technology,” and X’s AI matching system will then provide you with an appropriate audience based on that description.

I am fascinated to see how this actually works, as there is often a lot of nuance and curation to this type of audience creation that a prompt such as this simply doesn’t cover. But it would be a great way to build a first draft, or even answer a quick question from a stakeholder.

Instagram says longer reels can hurt performance

After years of driving people to post more and seemingly longer videos, Instagram now tells us that this might actually be harmful for performance.

The key headline here is that Reels which are longer than 90 seconds can hurt distribution.

It’s relatively unlikely if you’re reading this that you even post Reels that long on a frequent basis, but good to know moving forwards; don’t do it.

Further Reading

Google also introduced a ‘web filter’ this week, to near-universal acclaim. In short, this is a way to filter results to more meaningful and useful content.

OpenAI launched Chat GPT 4o this week, a new version that inputs and outputs in voice, images and text.

In this week’s edition of “Remember that?”, Meta is shutting down Workplace. No, really, it was still going.

TikTok, or specifically BookTok, is driving a book buying renaissance. Remarkable to see us going full circle and social driving offline economies in this way.

And finally, Zuck celebrated his 40th birthday with a nostalgic recreation of locations important to him and his formative years. Imagine the expectation you’d have of being on that guest list and how wild a night it would be, only to find out you’d be spending the night in a recreated office. It’s a genuinely sweet gesture but not what we’re about here at Digital Marketing in 3 Minutes.

That’s it for another week – if you found this interesting then I would really appreciate if you shared this with your friends and colleagues. 

If you’re feeling particularly generous, then I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next week!