Today in Digital Marketing - TikTok Prepares to Take On Google

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Tuesday, March 7th. Today, TikTok is getting ready to compete head-on with Google. Where the ad dollars will go if TikTok gets banned, Microsoft rolls out some nice updates to its ads platform, and Elon Musk's plan to get rid of Twitter bots appears to be backfiring. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. While Google and Microsoft play games of thrones over AI-powered search, another competitor has quietly been preparing a big search ad move. TikTok has been testing search ads for almost a year now on an invite-only basis. However, Business Insider reported today that the company has recently been pushing

Starting point is 00:00:40 its new search product to advertisers. Sources say TikTok is pitching the product more often, and one person said the company's asking advertisers to participate in case studies. These moves, along with recent company job postings for search ad engineers, suggests that TikTok's search ad product is nearing a wider release. One agency source expects TikTok search ads will be more widely available by Q3. A spokesperson for TikTok said the details they could share about search ads were limited. However, Insider obtained a recent sales pitch deck from the company, which describes its search ad format as a new entryway

Starting point is 00:01:16 into familiar user-created content. According to the report, some advertisers can currently use a toggle on their existing campaigns to activate search ads, which appears thumbnails on the search results page. But you can't control where those search ads will appear. Those ads will instead appear based on the audience the advertiser is targeting and, of course, the search query the users entered. For example, during the Austin Marathon weekend, a TikTok search for sneakers provided one user with a footwear ad promoting a video featuring a running influencer. But what good are search ads if TikTok gets banned? A new bill banning the app was proposed just two days ago in the United States.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Insider Intelligence has a piece up today looking at where brand ad dollars would be spent if TikTok were banned in America. One analyst suggests that YouTube Shorts would reap the rewards. Shorts' revenue sharing program could cut into Google's earnings, but creators may follow the ad dollars to Shorts if TikTok is banned. Another analyst suggests retail media could also benefit. Insider Intelligence forecasts that retail media will grow to $45 billion this year and another $10 billion by next year. The band could also benefit Instagram, Netflix, and even BeReal, especially with its younger audiences, although that said, BeReal still needs to figure out how to monetize its app. It's also worth noting that all the analysts agree that a ban is unlikely.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Meanwhile, Snapchat saw its shares rise nearly 10% yesterday after the U.S. Senate announced plans to introduce a bill that would ban foreign technology, including TikTok owner ByteDance. Microsoft released several new product updates to its ad product today. First, local search ads have been introduced to enhance location extensions, and they will run on the local results entity on Bing's search engine results page, as well as Bing Maps on PC, the features available now in North America. The company has also launched a code-free custom conversion setup wizard. This new tool lets you set up custom conversion tracking without updating the website code

Starting point is 00:03:29 by enabling Microsoft Clarity Insights through the universal event tracking tag setup. Microsoft is also rolling out a new option within the UET settings to delete unused tags. To remove tags, you can now check the box next to the unwanted tag and delete it. Updates to custom combinations have now been released. You're able to create combined lists of various audience types now, including customer match, custom audiences, remarketing, and dynamic remarketing. You can also add your company's brand logo to your multimedia ads through Microsoft Advertising Online. And finally, Microsoft will enable shopping advertisers to upload feeds in French in Canada

Starting point is 00:04:08 and Spanish in the US later this month. The pivot to short form video has finally infiltrated Reddit. The company is testing a TikTok style feature in its mobile app that separates text and video content into individual feeds. Video content on the platform will be placed in a new feed called Watch, while text content will appear in the feed called Read. Both feeds will include a combination of posts from subreddits users are subscribed to, as well as recommendations. Reddit confirmed that the feeds are currently being tested, but will roll out in the next few weeks. Other updates coming soon to the platform include a reorganized interface,

Starting point is 00:04:49 chat upgrades, and new storefront updates. 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. Best Buy is looking for more of a piece of your ad budget. Best Buy Ads, which is the company's existing retail media network, is launching a new self-service campaign platform called My Ads. The platform will initially offer self-serve reporting for on-site display and sponsored product formats, which will let clients download real-time shopper data, such as product placements and campaign placements. Advertisers can currently activate Best Buy ads campaigns directly

Starting point is 00:05:45 and via tech partners like Criteo and Google. My ads will eventually let partners log into the platform directly to build, view, or manage various campaign elements on their own. The company says that My Ads' first offering of self-service reporting will be rolled out to all brands

Starting point is 00:06:02 and agency partners later this year. And that will bring us to the lightning round. Meta is reportedly planning to lay off thousands of employees as soon as this week. In November, the company laid off more than 11,000 employees, about 15% of its workforce. Chat GPT is coming to Slack. Soon, the AI chatbot will be able to summarize conversations, help users research topics, and even draft replies directly in the Slack app. Google has expanded its local services ads offering to more than 70 new businesses. The new categories include education, people care, pet care, wellness, and healthcare.

Starting point is 00:06:41 And TikTok launched a new feature today called Series, which lets creators put content behind a paywall. Videos can be 20 minutes long and creators can set the pricing for their series while receiving 100% of the earnings for a limited time. The feature is currently only available to invited creators. And finally, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he seemed oddly obsessed with bots on the platform. It's true, there were bots, many of them bought Twitter, he seemed oddly obsessed with bots on the platform. It's true there were bots, many of them spam bots, some that were weaponized in the American election cycles, but many were harmless and added a little levity to the feed. Most of the latter were killed off by Twitter's recent removal of a free API. So surely the spam bot problem on Twitter has gotten better, right?

Starting point is 00:07:23 No, actually, it's probably gotten worse. Rolling Stone this week reported that one bot network was searching out racist language in tweets and replying, offering guns for sale. That's against Twitter's rules, of course. So the tweeters in question have devised a clever, cunning workaround that appears to have completely defeated Twitter's ability to detect them. They used a different word for gun. Quote, when author Jim Wright offered somewhat profane advice to Michigan residents during an ice storm, a bot answered, yo, I got cheap, clean poles for sale. Click the link in my bio. In rap lyrics, pole refers to gun. Other common euphemisms in these tweets are heaters, straps, and the water gun emoji. More unusually, some of these bots are only responsive to tweets that contain the N-word,

Starting point is 00:08:14 indicating that they seek out potential buyers through a crude form of racial profiling. The context in which the word is used doesn't matter. In fact, it's often a casual comment. And the problem has gotten so pronounced on Twitter that it's turned into a meme among Black users bombarded by such messages. One person complained that they see the bots more than their own family,

Starting point is 00:08:36 only to be hit by another bot reply. So I'm testing out the new version of the DAW, the digital audio workstation that we use to mix the show spent an hour trying to troubleshoot why i could not hear any of the stings that's the little two second music between stories um an hour an hour i spent, guess what? Apparently there's a mute button on the track. I mean, I knew it was there, but I just, I don't know, it looks a little different maybe with the new software. I don't know why. So yeah, you unclick that and then you can hear everything. That's my day. How was your day? We have a bunch of new people here from TikTok. Hello, welcome. And if you're not aware, we have a newsletter as well,

Starting point is 00:09:30 which you can sign up to at todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tap the link in the show notes. It is free. It comes out every Friday, or you can upgrade to the premium version of the newsletter, which comes out every single weekday. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:09:41 So do you want to dance? Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - TikTok Prepares to Take On Google

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