All Your Ads Are Belong to Us

[00:00:00] It is Thursday, August 1st. Today, Zuckerberg is coming for your ads, and he wants your hands off the steering wheel.

[00:00:09] The ad business is still growing, just a lot slower than before.

[00:00:13] TikTok has a new app marketplace for small businesses.

[00:00:17] And paging doctor tweets, emergency, emergency!

[00:00:20] I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:25] Most of the major ad platforms released their Q2 reports this week.

[00:00:29] We analyzed them to look at whether ad spend was growing or slowing.

[00:00:33] And in almost all cases, Q2 was slower in terms of growth.

[00:00:38] We'll start with Meta, where investments in those properties rose by 10% year-over-year in Q2.

[00:00:43] That's down from 16% in Q1.

[00:00:47] Facebook, of course, still dominates Meta's ad spend, taking 68%, while Instagram share increased to 32%.

[00:00:55] Facebook CPMs actually decreased by 1% year-over-year, partly due to the increasing share of cheaper reels and overlay ads.

[00:01:04] Instagram's ad spend growth rate cooled to 24% year-over-year in Q2.

[00:01:09] Over on Google, search advertisers there increased their budgets by 14% year-over-year in Q2.

[00:01:15] That's down from 17% in the previous quarter.

[00:01:19] Shopping ads rose by 16%, while text ads saw a drop in click-through rates.

[00:01:25] Amazon's sponsored product spending growth decelerated to 8% year-over-year in Q2,

[00:01:30] but sales generated through sponsored product ads increased by 11%.

[00:01:35] YouTube was the only major platform that saw an increase in growth last quarter with 28% year-over-year growth in ad spend.

[00:01:42] This was driven by a 74% increase in impression volume, despite a 26% decline in average CPMs.

[00:01:51] Those are the major platforms.

[00:01:52] As for the smaller ones, Walmart-sponsored products, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest,

[00:01:57] all experienced significant growth last quarter, with Walmart leading at 45% year-over-year growth.

[00:02:08] Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the quarterly report to chat about his vision for advertising on the platform in the years ahead,

[00:02:15] and it's exactly what you think it is.

[00:02:17] AI is coming for your control.

[00:02:20] Quoting Zuckerberg, quote,

[00:02:22] Over the long term, advertisers will basically just be able to tell us a business objective and a budget,

[00:02:29] and we're going to do the rest for them.

[00:02:31] We're going to get there incrementally over time,

[00:02:33] but I think this is going to be a very big deal, unquote.

[00:02:37] A very big deal indeed, since most attempts at this level of AI control, by definition,

[00:02:42] remove human oversight from the process.

[00:02:45] You need only look at how Google's Performance Max started to see this model in action.

[00:02:50] Limited creative control, and certainly no level of reporting that advertisers had been used to.

[00:02:55] It's possible the industry did quietly clap back at the trend,

[00:02:59] since we've watched several of these AI products trickle some of that control,

[00:03:03] or at least some reporting back.

[00:03:05] But Zuckerberg is clear.

[00:03:07] He sees a future where, again, quoting him, quote,

[00:03:10] AI will be able to generate creative for advertisers as well,

[00:03:14] and will be able to personalize it as people see it, unquote.

[00:03:18] Creative generation is already here, of course, in the form of image enhancements, text options, and so on.

[00:03:23] But clearly, Zuckerberg sees a much deeper daddy-knows-best approach,

[00:03:28] an approach not everyone thinks is realistic.

[00:03:31] Quoting Mike Pruill, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester, quote,

[00:03:34] Let's be clear that it's a long ways off, if ever,

[00:03:37] before CMOs will simply hand over the keys to an AI agent

[00:03:41] that will autonomously create ad creative on their behalf.

[00:03:45] While Gen.I.'s technical capabilities meaningfully mature at an accelerated pace,

[00:03:50] Meta cannot lose sight of the responsibility

[00:03:52] and the importance of human touch in the advertising process, unquote.

[00:04:02] TikTok has launched a new app marketplace for small business users this week.

[00:04:06] It features a collection of TikTok tools built by third-party developers

[00:04:10] that can help small brands maximize their performance in the app.

[00:04:13] The App Center includes listings of apps in different functional categories.

[00:04:17] These offer lightweight solutions, as opposed to more comprehensive tools

[00:04:21] that are better suited to big brands.

[00:04:23] Most of the apps listed offer free trials,

[00:04:25] so you can try them out before signing up for their service.

[00:04:32] And finally, X has removed its Mac app from the App Store.

[00:04:38] The app hadn't really been updated since the rebranding from Twitter last year,

[00:04:41] but one big benefit to it is that it didn't display any ads.

[00:04:44] So, of course, it had to die.

[00:04:46] Instead, the company suggests users just use its iPad app instead.

[00:04:52] If you're not familiar, newer Macs with Apple Silicon

[00:04:55] can use iPad apps on their Macs,

[00:04:58] although they tend to be less functional than Mac-specific apps.

[00:05:01] Oh, and one other small note.

[00:05:03] If you do decide to use the iPad app on your Mac,

[00:05:06] your X account might be suspended.

[00:05:10] Yes, people are reporting today that as soon as they logged in

[00:05:13] using the recommended iOS version,

[00:05:15] their X account was shut down.

[00:05:19] It's probably a bug.

[00:05:20] We don't know for sure because X doesn't respond to media inquiries anymore.

[00:05:25] If you still have the old-school Twitter for Mac app on your computer,

[00:05:29] it does appear you can still use it.

[00:05:31] Just don't delete it

[00:05:32] because you'll never be able to get it back again.

[00:05:39] So I'm kind of in a weird video game funk.

[00:05:42] I've maxed out pretty much everything I could on Fallout 76.

[00:05:44] I've got all my legendary perk cards.

[00:05:47] They're all maxed out.

[00:05:47] I'm at max caps.

[00:05:49] Every one of my five shelters is at max budget.

[00:05:52] I have the bloodied fixer commando load.

[00:05:55] Like, I'm at endgame.

[00:05:58] And I haven't really played it in a few days.

[00:06:01] And I don't know what to play now.

[00:06:04] You know, I really wanted to play City Skylines 2,

[00:06:06] but it looks like it's never coming console.

[00:06:09] So I don't know.

[00:06:10] Xbox players, help me out.

[00:06:12] What should I play?

[00:06:13] Because I don't think any of us want me to go back to Overwatch.

[00:06:17] I've spent months bitching about my performance.

[00:06:20] None of us.

[00:06:21] None of us need that again.

[00:06:23] And for my fellow Canadians of a certain age,

[00:06:26] yes, this is the theme you think it is.

[00:06:28] A little present from me to you.

[00:06:30] I'm Todd Maffin.

[00:06:32] Thanks for listening.

[00:06:32] See you tomorrow.

[00:06:40] Until tomorrow, you know I'm free to roll.