Today in Digital Marketing - TikTok Has Everybody's Eyeballs

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. It is Monday, August 28th. Today, TikTok keeps getting more eyeballs. So why does Instagram keep dominating in ad spend? We now know how Google's core update has affected page rankings. You'll never forget to renew your domain name now. And here they come. God help us, the cigarette influencers. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Another study this week showing TikTok is taking a big bite out of viewing time. But how much of a bite are they taking out of ad budgets?

Starting point is 00:00:59 A new report released this week by Insider Intelligence found that American TikTok users aged 18 and older are forecast to spend 4.4 billion minutes a day on the app this year. Compare that with the forecast for Instagram at 3.9 billion. One thing Insider notes is that this was especially impressive when you consider that TikTok has far fewer users than Instagram overall. Instagram should close out the year about 118 million monthly actives. Insider believes TikTok is expected to hit around 82 million, though they did note the company claims it has many more. So how well does TikTok's larger viewer base translate to ad spend? Not as well as TikTok would probably like. Quoting Insider's report, Instagram's greater scale and ties to Facebook and other meta-owned apps have helped it stay well ahead of TikTok in advertising spend.

Starting point is 00:01:53 In 2023, the company's projected to earn around six times as much as TikTok in ad dollars per adult user for each hour spent on the apps, unquote. In fact, they say ad spending on Instagram will be about six times greater than it was on TikTok for this year. Facebook will be about five times greater. We have a chart in today's newsletter showing TikTok's trajectory passing even Facebook in daily minutes use by 2025. Our newsletter is free. You can sign up by tapping the link in the show notes or going to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. And as one of the study's authors noted, quote, Reels are really cannibalizing time

Starting point is 00:02:31 on other services on Instagram or feed. We're not necessarily seeing overall time on Instagram increasing because of Reels. People are just spending a slightly similar growing amount of time every year, and Reels is just a part of that. Reels is definitely getting more traction, both with advertisers and with users now. But it still seems like it's very far behind TikTok, unquote.

Starting point is 00:03:00 A quick programming note before we continue. We want to know what topics you think we are covering too much of and what topics you think we should be covering more of. Are we doing too much about SEO and not enough about TikTok or too much about Instagram and not enough about ad strategies or the ad market? Anyway, we have a very quick two second survey up. Here is the URL b.link slash more or less. You'll also find a link at the top of the show notes. If you've ever thought, God, I wish you would stop talking about this. This is your chance to let us know. Again, the link is b.link slash more or less or tap the link at the top of the show notes.

Starting point is 00:03:37 All right, back to the show. More good weather appears to be in the forecast for the ad market. After dropping just a bit in June, the U.S. ad market tracker had its biggest gain in monthly ad spending for the last year and a half. In fact, since last July, only one other month had actual growth, not a decline. That was this past May with a 2.5% growth. Last month's growth was at a very healthy 6.2%. That said, compared to July of 2021, that's still down a little over 8%.

Starting point is 00:04:12 Quoting MediaPost's coverage of this, given better comparisons with year-ago levels that were experiencing a mini ad recession, the remainder of 2023 should see gains or at least less severe declines, even as many agencies and some media companies have been reporting a weak start to the year, citing macroeconomic volatility, unquote. As we covered last week, Google released a core update. Those are big algorithm updates that change how their search engine ranks content and usually happen every month or so.

Starting point is 00:04:46 Since then, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable has been tracking the changes and volatility. He reported today, quote, So far, and keep in mind it's far from over yet, the update does not seem as widespread as previous core updates. That is not to say sites were not hit hard and in a significant way, but it just doesn't seem like this update had a footprint on tons of sites SEOs are working on, unquote. Barry said the update appeared to start affecting things later than usual. Google announced it last Tuesday, but it wasn't until Friday that people started noticing any real changes. While it doesn't appear to have affected things as widely as previous updates, some sites were seeing traffic gains or losses of up to 80%, though again, those huge movements were not common. Google used to tell us what was in an update. For instance, deranking content that looked spammy or adding a boost to pages with product reviews. But for the last year or so, they've stopped doing that. Now their update page reads more like app store updates on your phone,

Starting point is 00:05:48 a very generic and not particularly helpful version of performance updates and bug fixes. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. We reported last week that X, formerly Twitter,

Starting point is 00:06:26 saw its downloads on the app stores dramatically drop once its name had changed. Now we're learning that name change was probably responsible for even more of a drop than just app downloads. SensorTower reporting that

Starting point is 00:06:39 in the two weeks after the rebrand, weekly active users fell 4%. But revenue actually increased after the rebrand, weekly active users fell 4%. But revenue actually increased after the rebrand. From August 6th to August 20th, revenue jumped by around 25%. That is a small measurement window, mind you, and might be more of an anomaly than anything. There was also an interesting uptick in downloads of its little-known cousin, Twitter Lite. This is a mobile app designed for regions with slow internet. It did not change its name, so when people were searching for Twitter in the app stores,

Starting point is 00:07:12 this is all they came up with. So folks started downloading it. In the week following the rebranding, Twitter Lite downloads more than quadrupled. Also up, X's competitors, Mastodon apps were up 15%. And in that same first week, Blue Sky downloads were up 180%. Digital brand managers have lots of nightmares. What happens if our intern accidentally posts from her personal account to our brand account? What if our meta account gets locked by those policy enforcement bots and we can't get back in?

Starting point is 00:07:51 And, my personal hell thought, what if I let my brand's domain name expire? It happens to big players, more than you might think. 11 years ago, Microsoft let its hotmail.co.uk domain expire. Some squatters briefly took it over. Kraft Foods forgot to renew Vegemite.com and someone bought it and posted a message claiming to be Kraft and that they were discontinuing the product. The Washington Post let its shortlink WAPO.ST expire, which broke every news story link shared on social media. Now, there is a solution. The CMS company WordPress has launched a new 100-year domain plan. And it's expensive, more expensive than just 100 years times $10 a year for a cheap domain name.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Because to buy this plan, you have to agree to a renewal cost of $380 per year, paid all up front in an eye-watering $38,000 bill. Which, to be fair, might be a no-brainer for a big brand that just wants to guarantee its domain won't expire, or at least will outlive every current employee. WordPress also says it'll throw in backups, unmetered bandwidth and support. But, and this is weird, the company is trying to position it as a family product. The CEO saying in the announcement,

Starting point is 00:09:15 quote, whether it's giving a newborn the special gift of a domain and lifetime home on the web or something you put in your will to make sure your website and story are accessible to future generations. I hope this plan gets people and other companies thinking about building for the long term. Unquote. Thirty eight thousand dollars. And let's not forget that the Internet Archive does this for free. But anyway, if you've got the change. And finally, there are social media influencers for everything these days.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Toddler influencers, dog fluencers. But here's a new one. Cigarette influencers. And no, I don't actually mean nicotine vapes. I mean, literal light them with a lighter cigarettes. The brand is called Hestias. It's been around since the early 2010s, but they are boldly pushing into spaces that for a generation have been seen as off limits. They've been popping up at high society parties, at a literary salon, even recently

Starting point is 00:10:19 raffled off as a prize at a purity ball fundraiser held at the World Trade Center in New York. You can't actually legally buy them in New York. Only four U.S. states like Florida and Texas sell them in stores. But the company does have an online store and the New York Times reports they've been seeding them with influencers in New York and Los Angeles. Quoting the Times, cigarette makers have always relied on creating an aura of coolness around smoking to sell their products. But the old standbys like Marlboro no longer need to buy out full-page magazine spreads or put up billboards just to boost their brand recognition. Nor could they. Today's tobacco laws restrict outdoor advertising in most of the country, and a majority of social media companies similarly prohibit tobacco-related advertisements, unquote.

Starting point is 00:11:10 One influencer, a blogger called Meg Superstar Princess, recently wrote in her newsletter, quote, smoking cigarettes is extremely important and cool, unquote. Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in most of the world. It is responsible for nearly one out of every five deaths. Boy, we had a great weekend. We went to a community trunk sale. I guess it's kind of like a garage sale, but there were about 100 people there. You just like show up and you put out a blanket in your area and you sell.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Anyway, I unloaded like three iPod minis and three Mac laptops that have been sitting around just literally collecting dust. And I found my new favorite mug. It is a giant glass beer stein. I don't drink, but I'm super clumsy. So I always really like heavy bottom, big thick mugs for my iced tea. And I have my new favorite. I'm so excited.

Starting point is 00:12:11 See you tomorrow. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca.

Today in Digital Marketing - TikTok Has Everybody's Eyeballs

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