Today in Digital Marketing - Unraveling Threads

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, July 6th. Today, it has the users of Instagram, the advertisers of Facebook. Is Threads the threat to Twitter? It seems to be. Plus, TikTok loses popularity, B2B buyers are younger than you think, and why YouTube is rewriting the comments left on your brand's videos. I'm Todd Maff. That's Ahead. Today, Digital Marketing. Meta last night launched Threads, its Twitter rival, a day ahead of schedule. Within the first 24 hours, the app had more than 30 million signups. So far, I'd say the general opinion is that Threads is well-built, if a little underwhelming in terms of excitement. But a piece from Gizmodo today points out this might actually be the key to its success. Quote, on a chaotic internet fueled by outrage, dull might be what users and advertisers want. All Meta has to do to crush Twitter is to provide a

Starting point is 00:00:58 safe and stable alternative where you can make your dumb little posts and get likes from your followers. So far, it's working. Threads is pure banality. If Threads can get around some headwinds, the app has major advantages that could pave the way for Meta's victory and Twitter's disaster. Unquote. So, to the marketing implications. First, many brands have jumped on already. This in stark contrast to other Twitter competitors,

Starting point is 00:01:24 Blue Sky, Mastodon, T2, Spoutable. Most of these have been given a pass by brands, which makes sense given that Threads pulls its data from Instagram, where brands already have a presence, so it's easy for them to hop in. On the advertising front, nothing. There are no ads on Threads, but the company says ads will be how they monetize. For now, they're just working on building the app and its community. Almost certainly, you'll be able to run ads to Threads, and it will show up as a placement in Ads Manager. For influencer marketing, nothing established. There are no partnership labels or the same kind

Starting point is 00:02:01 of connection tools that Instagram has, though I suppose nothing preventing you from running that sort of campaign informally. One of the more surprising things Meta promises is it will soon join ActivityPub. That's the growing decentralized network that Mastodon and other platforms use. If that comes to fruition, it means people will be able to easily leave threads, take their content with them to another platform, and redirect their followers to their new home. It also means you'd be able to follow someone's threads account on, say, Mastodon, or vice versa. And the API that would drive that most likely would not push ads down the pipe, much in the way Twitter's API or Reddit's API contain only the content, not the ads. That's part of the reason why not everyone is convinced

Starting point is 00:02:46 they'll follow through on decentralization. Liz Hagelthorne worked at Twitter, today runs PostMarket, a content licensing platform. I spoke with her this afternoon. I've seen a lot of promises, especially in press and PR, only to monopolize the future. I can definitely see a world in which Th exploits and takes advantage of current decentralized networks. But will that be a two way street where the decentralized network can take advantage of threads? I don't see it happening without a paywall for API access or some type of, you know, deal with the devil there. That's never happened in Instagram's entire history until competition came along. The app, still in its infancy, of course, falls short in a few areas. One of the biggest problems is that you can't set your timeline to view posts from just the accounts you follow. So most people's feeds are overrun by celebrities, brands and influencers that you don't follow on the app.

Starting point is 00:03:39 The head of Instagram says it's on the list of features he wants to add. Other features on that list include post editing support, hashtags, searchability, and an easier way to switch between accounts. This afternoon, one of Twitter's lawyers sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter threatening to sue Meta over the app. The letter claims that Meta hired dozens of former Twitter employees to develop threads, which is a little rich considering Elon fired more than half the company's employees. But Twitter says many of these people still have access to its trade secrets and Meta took advantage of the situation by creating a copycat app. A Meta spokesperson late this afternoon posted this to his own threads account. To be clear, no one on the

Starting point is 00:04:21 threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. That's just not a thing. You can follow us. We've added our own accounts. My own personal one is at Todd Maffin and our podcast and newsletter account at Today in Digital Marketing. To other news now with online shoppers apparently shifting their search habits. TikTok's role as an e-commerce search engine is waning among U.S. adults, according to a recent study. The study found that half of respondents typically begin their search on Amazon, making it the top choice, followed by Google.

Starting point is 00:04:57 The study found that most people using TikTok, Instagram, or Reddit as their starting point for product searches are younger millennials and Gen Z, but data shows a steep decline in TikTok being used as a search engine among these age groups, with Gen Z's usage dropping from 20% to 10% and millennials from 10% to 5% between August 2022 and last month. On the other hand, Amazon's popularity as a go-to search engine increased by 45% for both age groups. The data comes from Civic Science's survey of more than 5,000 U.S. online shoppers. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage,

Starting point is 00:05:45 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. Marketers need to refresh their social media marketing strategies due to B2B buyers being younger than they think they are, according to a new Insider Intelligence report published yesterday. These buyers are digitally savvy, dominate online conversations, actively participate in the purchasing process, and rely on social media content for information and solutions. As the number of young decision makers continues to rise, social media's influence in B2B marketing

Starting point is 00:06:31 strategies grows as well. The report notes that millennials are influenced significantly by social media content when making final purchasing decisions. Recent surveys by W Promote and Ascend 2 found that social media has become the most effective B2B channel for both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel strategies, according to nearly half of marketers. LinkedIn is also witnessing a shift toward a younger user base. It's projected that millennials and Gen Zs will make up more than 60% of the total U.S. users on the platform this year. Overall, B2B professionals' engagement on social media has increased significantly.

Starting point is 00:07:10 A recent report indicated that almost 40% of professionals across various sectors engage with content multiple times daily, compared to 30% in 2021. As we've reported previously, Adobe recently added an indemnity clause to protect enterprise users from legal issues related to copyright problems in AI-generated content. This means that Adobe will cover the costs of any legal actions related to AI-generated content on their platform. Now, Shutterstock is taking on Adobe with its own generative AI indemnification offer. The company announcing today it's offering enterprise customers full indemnification for the license and use of generative AI images on its platform. Because Shutterstock's AI image generator is trained using images it claims to have already had permission

Starting point is 00:08:04 to use. The company says it's unlikely anyone using its products will be on the hook, since those images have already been licensed. And finally, YouTube is testing a new feature that could get your brand's content some more reach, hyperlinked keywords in video comments. Currently, viewers have to leave the video in order to learn more about a topic or product mentioned in the comments. Now, the platform is experimenting with hyperlinked keywords that let users click on them and initiate a new YouTube search while the video continues playing in the mini player.

Starting point is 00:08:40 Phrases or single words in comments that encourage exploration will be hyperlinked. YouTube says it selects the linked keywords based on user preferences and commenters cannot modify them. Creators, though, can remove links from video comments. Sometimes when some big thing happens and you're looking at tweets or social media posts and someone's posted a video, you see a reporter in there saying, hey, can we use this? You know these posts? So last night, after I got on threads and found it, that it was just full of people that I didn't follow. I made a old man rant about it on my TikTok. Went a little bit viral.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And a reporter from NBC showed up or an associate producer or something like that showed up and said, hey, can we use this with credit? I'm like, yeah, sure, go nuts, whatever. Didn't think anything of it. Woke up this morning to discover that the Today Show from NBC had actually used a clip of it. I still haven't seen it, but that was kind of cool anyway.

Starting point is 00:09:40 Don't forget, if you're new here, the premium version of this podcast, it's just like this one, but with no ads, exclusive weekly columns on the Meta and Google ad platform, story links in the show notes, audio chapters, and a whole bunch more. Tap Go Premium in the show notes to sign up. And once again, me on threads, at Todd Maffin, us on threads, at Today in Digital Marketing. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Outro Music

Today in Digital Marketing - Unraveling Threads

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