Who Sells Short Shorts

[00:00:01] It's Thursday, November 14th. Today, shorts get a boost with Google's latest ad tools,

[00:00:08] YouTube comments get hyperlinked, fueling Google search, ads could be coming to threads

[00:00:13] sooner than you think, and LinkedIn opens the door to volunteering. I'm Steph Gunn sitting

[00:00:19] in for Tod Maffin. That's ahead, today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:23] As short form video continues to thrive on YouTube, Google is coming after even more of your ad

[00:00:29] budget. Yesterday, Google announced new ad formats for shorts, including sticker ads and animated

[00:00:36] image ads. The new short sticker ads will display an image from a product feed that, when tapped,

[00:00:41] opens a carousel of products for viewers to explore. Animated image ads, meanwhile, pull multiple product

[00:00:47] images from your feeds and animate them into one ad unit. These options let brands tap into shorts

[00:00:53] without creating their own video content, by pulling images directly from Google Merchant Center feeds.

[00:00:58] Google is also expanding format buying controls, letting brands run campaigns exclusively in the

[00:01:04] shorts feed or only use horizontal creative. These controls are already available for video reach

[00:01:10] campaigns, with a pilot for shorts-only buying in demand gen underway for select advertisers.

[00:01:16] On the influencer marketing side of things, Google is testing a new creator partnerships tab

[00:01:21] to centralize your influencer and affiliate marketing efforts. It's also launching a new video linking API

[00:01:27] to manage multiple requests at once, and will soon let creators tag partners in their brand videos.

[00:01:32] On top of that, Google is expanding its audience building tools for shorts, soon adding view

[00:01:38] durations, and working on third-party sales lift measurement for shorts ads.

[00:01:46] As Google pushes shorts, it's also working hard to reclaim its search dominance with a new YouTube

[00:01:51] feature, hyperlinked comments. Google search made Alphabet $49.5 billion last quarter alone,

[00:01:59] but reports showed that for the first time in more than a decade, Google's market share is about to fall

[00:02:04] below 50%, thanks to competitors like ChatGPT and TikTok becoming the go-to search engines for Gen Z.

[00:02:11] To protect its search lead, TubeFilter reports that Google is now using YouTube's hyperlinked comments

[00:02:17] to drive more traffic to its search engine. Quoting TubeFilter,

[00:02:22] If the feature becomes a permanent thing on YouTube, it's easy to see how this could benefit Alphabet.

[00:02:27] Even if some people find hyperlinked comments spammy, it's likely that with hundreds of millions

[00:02:32] of comments across YouTube's smorgasbord of video content, thousands or even millions of users will

[00:02:38] click on them every day and generate potentially valuable traffic for Google search. Not only will

[00:02:44] these users be pumping Google search numbers, but they'll also be presumably be targeted traffic,

[00:02:49] since at least in ideal cases, they were already watching YouTube content about a particular topic,

[00:02:56] and now are being served more information about that topic."

[00:03:04] While other short-form posting platforms face waning advertiser trust, threads might start luring

[00:03:10] advertisers to the platform in just a couple of months. According to a report from the

[00:03:15] information yesterday, Meta plans to launch ads on threads and will let a small number of

[00:03:21] advertisers run campaigns starting as early as January. Instagram head Adam Mosseri also

[00:03:27] confirmed earlier this year that the company is definitely planning to bring ads to threads.

[00:03:32] While Meta reported nearly $40 billion in ad revenue last quarter, the company's CFO says threads

[00:03:38] isn't expected to become a meaningful revenue driver in 2025. It's still not clear how ads will

[00:03:44] appear on threads, but sponsored posts may be the route, according to a recent discovery by a reverse

[00:03:50] engineer. Meta has not commented on its future plans.

[00:03:58] LinkedIn is launching a new feature to connect users with volunteer opportunities. The new Open

[00:04:03] to Volunteer option lets members add an informational tab to their profile indicating the causes they're

[00:04:09] interested in supporting, while also helping charitable organizations find volunteers. Here's how it works.

[00:04:15] Users can opt in by selecting Volunteer from the Open to drop down menu under their profile picture.

[00:04:21] They can then specify supported causes, skills and preferences including location,

[00:04:25] and whether they prefer in-person or virtual volunteering. Once active, LinkedIn will display

[00:04:31] relevant volunteer opportunities in the feed and offer alerts for matching roles.

[00:04:39] TikTok is looking to make content on the app more shoppable with a new feature called

[00:04:43] Affiliate Comment Links. According to reports, some TikTok creators can now add affiliate links

[00:04:49] from select brands to their videos, which then appear at the top of the comment stream. When clicked,

[00:04:55] these links direct viewers straight to the product pages. This move is part of TikTok's expanded

[00:05:00] affiliate program designed to encourage creators to add direct shopping links during the upload process.

[00:05:06] Currently, only links from selected partners like Amazon, Expedia, Timu and Target can be included.

[00:05:16] So I was making dinner last night and I went to go get some onions from our pantry and I noticed that

[00:05:21] they all had a very tiny bite out of them. All of them. So I'm thinking that it's probably time we put

[00:05:27] a toddler lock on the pantry. Don't forget about answering our one question survey. Doing so could

[00:05:33] win you a $100 Amazon gift card. All you have to do is answer one question for us. That question is,

[00:05:40] if you could change anything about our podcast, what would it be? You can head to todayindigital.com

[00:05:46] slash question to answer it and you could win a $100 Amazon gift card. Tomorrow, we will be bringing you a full

[00:05:53] sample episode of the Founders Forum podcast, which is a fantastic show for senior marketers and direct

[00:05:59] to consumer media buyers discussing what's working in the e-commerce and digital ad space. Tomorrow's

[00:06:04] episode will be all about digital marketing strategies for Black Friday. And Todd is back

[00:06:10] on Monday from his vacation with a special deep dive marketing science episode discussing the role of

[00:06:15] Schadenfreude in social media comments. Thanks for listening. I'm Steph Gunn. We'll talk to you soon.