Wednesday Morning, Issue 8 (11/29/23)
Q3 social ad spend and performance reports are flying around, so let's recap 'em.
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.
🗞️ JUST THE HEADLINES:
1️⃣ Let’s talk about TikTok (and Meta) as several reports on spend and performance have begun circulating in advance of year-end, when we must crown a winner.
According to Digiday’s latest research into brands’ investment in TikTok ads, 35% of brands said they purchased advertising on TikTok in the past month, compared with 24% at the same point last year. Context is always good, though, and this context from brands’ response about Meta spend is helpful:
70% of brands said they purchased ads on Facebook
72% of brands said they purchased ads on Instagram
TikTok released a report this week about how their ad spend and performance numbers are on the up and up, but I do have a few questions/notes (as you do re: self-reported good news):
Why was this study conducted in Canada vs. the U.S.?
It’s great to see the year-over-year growth in efficiency, effectiveness and total ad spend, but these also seem like expected self-comparison numbers given TikTok’s current acceleration path.
Why are using TV as the comparison channel vs. other social platforms, like… Meta?
Insider Intelligence’s recap of the battle between TikTok and Meta for media budget share is a great read. Here are my tl;dr takeaways:
Even though TikTok is set to surpass Facebook in time spent by 2025, it’s not forecasted to come close to matching Facebook’s ad revenue per hour spent on the platform.
Advertisers are becoming more interested/invested in TikTok, but they’re comfortable on Meta and the budget is going to skew to where you’re comfortable.
2️⃣ YouTube Shorts placements in Video Reach campaigns are now generally available to all advertisers. While Shorts ads began rolling out in 2022 for advertisers running Video Action Campaigns and App Campaigns, the expansion to Video Reach campaigns is an exciting update for advertisers who want to test this format for awareness initiatives.
🗒️ ON THE TO-DO LIST: Reddit recently expanded its ad training video library to include ad creative tutorials. As creative becomes increasingly important across all social ad platforms, I’m particularly interested in learning about Reddit’s tips for customizing creative for their audiences.
Thank you for reading, as always. See you next Wednesday!