Wednesday Morning, Issue 7 (11/22/23)
TikTok has too many ads, major advertisers pull spend from X and a Reddit stat to think about on your couch this week.
Hello and welcome to Wednesday Morning, a weekly digest of the social advertising platform news and updates you need to know, along with occasional deeper dives, best-in-class ad examples and the resources we find truly helpful.
šļø JUST THE HEADLINES:
Insider tasked two Gen Z employees with watching 500 consecutive TikToks and roughly ~30% of the content they were served was promotional. That sounds like a lot (and as the designated TikTok watchers noted, it also felt like a lot) ā but Insider points out that this is proportionally similar to a network TV viewing experience, where youād typically watch ~17 minutes of ads per hour. A key component in this experience shift: traditional ads were being experienced alongside affiliate content, product reviews and self-promotional videos, which created an aggregate feeling of āads everywhere.ā This wasnāt helped by a few advertisers running at high frequency/saturating the user experience. This feels like a pretty natural crossroads for an app that monetizes attention and offers users the opportunity to do the same, so weāll see if this ratio becomes the norm or if TikTok makes an algorithmic shift to lower it.
IBM, Apple and Disney pulled X spends in response to a tweet by Elon Musk that promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy. Further X advertiser fallout followed after media watchdog group Media Matters released a report that claimed that X displayed major brandsā ads alongside Nazi content. Advertisers have been trickling away from the platform since Elonās takeover last year and AdWeekās latest rundown gives a helpful a playback that show itās all gone down (and who is still sticking around).
š¤ AI, AI, AI: We often work with clients who have pretty lean ad creative budgets, so this is the lens Iām viewing these tools through. This week, I spent a few minutes playing with TikTokās AI-powered creative assistant and can definitely see potential for this tool to help advertisers āthink in TikTokā and develop first-pass ideas on approach for ad creative.
š¢ NUMBERS TO THINK ABOUT: The Drum released a great rundown of tips for brands who are Reddit-curious. In it, they note that according to Redditās research, 23% of its users donāt use Facebook, 47% donāt use Instagram, and 69% donāt use TikTok. I loved this less-than-intuitive audience detail as an additional layer on top of their more well-known attributes (niche-focused, community-driven).
Happy day-before-Thanksgiving Wednesday morning! See you next week for the final holiday season push. š„§šŖ