Today in Digital Marketing - Democracy Manifest.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Monday, November 4th. Today, election ad surge forces brands to go big or go home. Threads comes for X with 275 million users, and Amazon's ad growth outperforms its overall sales. I'm Steph Gunn sitting in for Todd Maffin. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing. When political ad dollars flood the ad market, brands pay the price, literally. With final votes in the U.S. election being cast tomorrow, a spike in political ad spend has caused CPMs on major channels like TV, Facebook, and Instagram to soar, forcing advertisers to seek alternatives. Ad prices for some brands on Facebook and Instagram tripled in the election's final weeks as candidates poured in millions to seek alternatives. Ad prices for some brands on Facebook and Instagram tripled

Starting point is 00:00:45 in the election's final weeks, as candidates poured in millions to reach voters. TV ad costs also surged in swing states, pushing some brands to target areas with less political competition. To dodge rising prices, some advertisers shifted budgets to Amazon, which they say is a more stable option when costs get too high elsewhere. Others, such as a home fitness brand that mainly advertises on connected TV, remained on competitive ad channels but adjusted their messaging to break through the political noise. Quoting eMarketer, As the election winds down, spending is likely to return to Instagram, Facebook, and other ad channels affected by the campaign ad surge due to their proven results, and, in the case of Meta's platforms, unparalleled reach, end quote.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Although their cage match may have never happened, Mark Zuckerberg may soon metaphorically take down Elon Musk in the battle of social media platforms. Zuckerberg recently announced that Threads, Meta's challenger to X, now has almost 275 million monthly active users. Launched just nine months ago, Threads started strong, attracting around 8.3 million new users each month. Recently, however, its growth has exploded, adding 100 million users in just three months, more than tripling its growth rate. This surge comes at a time when user engagement is waning on X. Quoting Marketing Tech, team and relying heavily on crowdsourced community notes for content control have sparked concerns about the spread of misinformation, particularly political falsehoods. In contrast, Meta appears

Starting point is 00:02:32 to be strategically steering threads away from politics, driven by user feedback indicating that political divisions contribute significantly to declining Facebook usage. This divergence in approach positions threads as an attractive alternative for users, disillusioned with X's current trajectory. End quote. With a daily growth rate of 1 million new signups, threads could potentially surpass X's monthly active user count by next June if the momentum continues. Amazon's ad business is thriving. The company last week reported its third quarter results with its ad business growing faster than its overall sales. Ad revenue hit $14.3 billion of nearly 20% from last year, making up nearly 9% of Amazon's total sales. In comparison, Amazon's overall net sales rose 11% to $159 billion.

Starting point is 00:03:29 Amazon is projecting a big holiday sales season and it said it will continue to invest heavily in generative AI. Looking ahead, the e-commerce giant plans to hire 250,000 additional employees for the holiday season and projects sales could pass $188 billion in the fourth quarter. YouTube is giving brands a clearer picture of content performance by updating the content tab in YouTube Studio. The new layout organizes all content types, videos, shorts, live and playlists into dedicated shelves within Studio's mobile app to track performance by format. A view all option will be available on each content shelf, letting users see a list view of each format. A scheduled filter will also be available

Starting point is 00:04:18 if a creator has content scheduled. YouTube says that the revised layout will roll out to creators over the next few weeks. YouTube is also updating the Comments tab, which is being renamed Community. The new tab will feature an overview of audience metrics, including comment counts and stats on returning viewers. It's also adding a Community Spotlight feature, which will highlight some of the most engaged viewers. In other updates, YouTube is also expanding AI-generated content summaries on select English videos. These summaries offer an additional description to help users find relevant content

Starting point is 00:04:53 without replacing creator-generated descriptions. The platform is also testing out a new interactive chatbot within YouTube Studio on desktop to help creators and brands understand how each feature works. And finally, a couple of updates from the professional network. First, LinkedIn is rolling out a lead generation objective for boosted posts. Advertisers can now select lead generation as their goal when boosting a post directly from their feed. Previously, the only available objectives were reach and engagement. With this update, the ad setup allows for budget and targeting options,

Starting point is 00:05:30 plus the addition of a lead form template tied to the campaign. However, keep in mind that while boosting posts offers convenience, it comes with more limited targeting capabilities compared to LinkedIn's full campaign manager. The company says the boosting feature is now available globally. And in other news, LinkedIn is saying goodbye to some of its celebratory post templates. These are the post types that include animated graphics. Almost all of them are being retired, leaving only the confetti template to carry the torch. It's a big day for our American friends tomorrow. So due to tomorrow's US election, which ends up just being a really slow news day for any marketing related content,

Starting point is 00:06:13 we won't be publishing a podcast episode or a newsletter issue. But I promise we will be back to our regular programming on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. I'm Steph Gunn. We will talk to you then.

Today in Digital Marketing - Democracy Manifest.

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