Why X's Decision Today Might Be the End of the Platform

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[00:00:58] Today X gives up on brand safety auditing as some of its most important advertisers bail out. TikTok adds a new metric as marketers spend more there. The one product they said would never be sold on Amazon will be sold there next year.

[00:01:13] And sometimes the little things mean the most. A tiny but very helpful change is coming to Google's Performance Max campaigns. I'm Tod Maffin. That's ahead. Today in digital marketing. Even the most fervent Elon Musk fanboys must worry this is the final nail in the coffin.

[00:01:34] X, formerly known as Twitter, has decided to opt out of brand safety auditing. DigiDay reporting today the company will no longer comply with independent auditing for its media rating council credentials. The MRC is the industry gold standard for brand safety.

[00:01:51] This comes after Elon Musk's praise last week of an anti-semitic post caused IBM and a few small brands to withdraw from advertising on the platform. We reported on that Friday. Then just after our deadline, that trickle of advertiser withdrawals became a flood of big spenders bailing out.

[00:02:09] Apple, Sony, CBS, Paramount Global, Warner Brothers, Lionsgate, Disney, Comcast, even NBC Universal, the company where X's current CEO came from. All cancelling their ad campaigns on X. Some even saying they'd stop posting organically as well.

[00:02:28] Even before this widespread boycott, the platform was already experiencing a decline in ad revenue. Insider Intelligence forecasts that X's worldwide ad revenue will plummet by more than 54% by the end of the year.

[00:02:42] And after withdrawing from a recognized audit of brand safety, you have to wonder what advertisers will be left. Over the weekend, Musk tried to smooth things over with advertisers, his company's most important partners, by, do I have this right here?

[00:02:57] Attacking them, calling them quote, the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech. Elon Musk paid $44 billion to the company one year ago. Stock grants given to employees last week value the company now at about $19 billion.

[00:03:15] One of the obsessions of the digital marketing industry, and rightly so, is campaign measurement. You know the old adage, half of your ad dollars are wasted, the trouble is knowing which half. Historically, marketers have relied on click-based attribution models.

[00:03:32] Specifically, last click, attributing all of a campaign's results to whatever was the last touchpoint in the consumer's journey to a conversion. To that end, TikTok launched what it calls a self-attributing network, which tries to give you better visibility into the impact of your TikTok ads

[00:03:47] by understanding which clicks and video views led to conversions within your attribution window. And now they're adding another touchpoint to the mix, engaged view through attribution. Quoting the company, TikTok allows users to easily swipe up to skip videos including ads.

[00:04:05] So when someone watches a video ad for more than six seconds, we consider this an engaged view. To help advertisers measure the conversions driven by these views, we've introduced a new attribution method called Engaged View Through Attribution, or EVTA.

[00:04:21] EVTA measures the conversions that take place after a user views an ad for six seconds or more but doesn't click, then goes on to convert within the attribution window a maximum of seven days. Of course, this will have benefits in the back end as well.

[00:04:39] The company's ads manager will get more signals to optimize your campaigns over time by showing your ad to users who are more likely to take action. In its announcement last week, TikTok admitted it's playing a bit of catch up here.

[00:04:52] Quote, other platforms have already introduced engaged view conversions for video campaigns, bringing our attribution models to parity with other platforms, provides you with a clearer comparison of performance across different platforms, ensuring fairer result measurement.

[00:05:08] You should also be aware that they have somewhat dramatically changed what they call their all clicks metric. Now, in addition to clicks, or I guess taps to be more accurate, the metric now covers likes, shares, comments, follows, exploring related hashtags and checking the music accompanying TikTok videos.

[00:05:27] If you want to distinguish all of these taps from the taps directed toward your campaign specific destination, as you most likely will, you will now need to refer to the clicks destination metric.

[00:05:43] It's no surprise that TikTok is racing to play catch up new research from DigiDate shows that brands have been spending more on TikTok leading up to the holiday season this year than previous years.

[00:05:53] Quoting DigiDate, quote, the percentage of retailer and brand pros who said TikTok is extremely valuable to driving their revenues as opposed to somewhat valuable or just valuable was already trending up slightly as of last year.

[00:06:07] In 2022, 8% of respondents to DigiDate survey said the platform was extremely valuable to their revenues compared with 5% in 2021. However, this year that percentage saw a very significant spike.

[00:06:21] Nearly a third of brands and retailers said this year TikTok is extremely valuable to driving their revenues a lot more than last year's 8%.

[00:06:31] It's when you look at spending that the numbers seem especially impressive, quote, throughout 2022 and even into the first quarter of this year, about half of brands said they didn't put any marketing spend toward TikTok.

[00:06:43] But in Q3 of this year, 78% of brand pros told DigiDate that at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets go toward TikTok. That is a big jump from the 54% who said the same in Q1, unquote.

[00:06:59] All that said, they are still really nowhere near meta. This year, 72% of brand and retailer pros said that they purchased ads on Instagram this year. That number on TikTok was 35%.

[00:07:17] Let's be honest, retros can be boring. And if you're the organizer, you know it's more than just running a meeting. You have to synthesize and categorize themes, get the team involved, assign next steps, and make it all a fun safe space where teammates want to participate.

[00:07:33] Miro is the visual collaboration platform that helps you run effective, engaging and actionable retrospectives. We use Miro at our agency to map out a client's messaging for our engagement team. That can be complicated. A lot of if-vents.

[00:07:47] But making it visual and sharing it directly with our client sped things way up. Plus our side can share spitballing ideas with private mode. The client doesn't get to see our thoughts until we've decided on the approach.

[00:08:01] Whether you work on the marketing side or in product design, engineering or UX, bring your team together on Miro. And your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at Miro.com. That's three free boards at Miro.com.

[00:08:31] Shopify revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide. With Shopify, you only set up your online shop. Without programming or design knowledge. Thanks to the efficient design and intuitive social media and online marketplace integration, you can sell and sell ebay and co-purchase via Instagram.

[00:08:50] To reach new target groups was never easy. Shopify offers a single secure platform to build all your tools in your online business. Test free and present a business of the world. Shopify.de-try Just enter Shopify.de-try and start. Made for Germany. Powered by Shopify.

[00:09:34] The largest e-commerce platform in the world from selling cars starting next year.

[00:09:39] Hyundai this week announced it will work with Amazon to sell some of its vehicles. And yes, you can have your newly purchased car delivered, though we can only assume not in a box, or you can pick it up in a nearby dealership.

[00:09:52] This technically isn't a new thing. Online car sales picked up during the pandemic, but Amazon's entry into the market may very well catapult the practice into the mainstream. Which means that while faster car delivery may be in, haggling is almost certainly out.

[00:10:08] And finally, tiny item Google has added brand and custom labels to performance max product campaigns. This lets you quickly tag your products for easier organization.

[00:10:23] My eyeball is still in its socket. I had eye surgery, laser eye surgery for a torn retina, which I now think came because I rubbed my eyeball too hard one day. That's my best guess.

[00:10:47] Anyway, still have the floaters and the black dots so hopefully that will fix itself. Fingers crossed, my eye exam is in a week. Our email newsletter, it's free. It comes out every day. Just tap the link in the show notes.

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