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[00:00:01] It is Friday, January 24th. This week, ads are finally coming to threads. How TikTok's crazy week affected its advertisers, a whole bunch of performance max updates, and the branding mistake you might be making that is hurting your sales. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead in our Friday wrap-up of the week in digital marketing.

[00:00:25] We'll start with TikTok and the news this week that the app's 14-hour U.S. shutdown led to a dip in ad performance there, with decreased user engagement affecting campaign metrics. Data from Tenuity shows that while 70% of those campaigns that were paused have resumed, CPMs are down 30% compared to the previous week. While as TikTok and Meta as well face challenges, advertisers are shifting dollars to Google, YouTube, and Pinterest.

[00:00:53] Between Q4 of 2024 and January 2nd, Google, YouTube, and Pinterest saw an increase in U.S. paid media traffic, while TikTok and Meta's shares dropped. This shift aligns with TikTok's brief U.S. shutdown on January 18th and 19th, and Meta's move to replace third-party fact-checking with a new Community Notes moderation system. Google search, by the way, was up 81%.

[00:01:17] YouTube traffic grew by 73%, and Pinterest's share increased by 7.5%. More TikTok stuff in a moment, but there were a whole bunch of PMAX and other Google ad updates. There's now a private search term category in Performance Max campaigns covering queries searched by fewer than 50 users in the past 90 days. They've also added a new source column to the PMAX search terms insights report. That'll show you why ads are triggered for specific search categories.

[00:01:46] It'll display search themes, URLs, creative assets, and so on. Brand exclusions can now be applied to just search text ads, leaving branded shopping ads unaffected. Previously, those exclusions applied to both search and shopping ads. This is useful if you want to show shopping ads for brand terms while managing search text ads for brand terms in separate campaigns. URL contains rules.

[00:02:12] Previously available for standard PMAX campaigns are now expanding to campaigns with product feeds. For instance, an athletic apparel store can target all pages with shoes in the URL. Two new betas are on the way. First, age-based demographic exclusions. You'll be able to exclude age brackets like 18 to 24 or 65 plus. And device targeting. You can customize targeting for computer, mobile, or tablet traffic.

[00:02:38] Asset group performance segmentation is now available across all Performance Max campaigns, letting advertisers break down results by device, time, and so on. Additionally, asset group performance data is now downloadable. There are other platforms, of course. LinkedIn has updated its advertising attribution models by combining two methods, multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling. This new system will use more data points, they say, to track user responses across the journey from awareness to conversion.

[00:03:08] LinkedIn is rolling out this new methodology to all advertisers. Over at Snapchat, they have a new report showing creator ads outperforming standard brand ads with 12% longer attention spans and 8% longer play times. Their study also found that when consumers were exposed to a creator ad followed by a product, ad brands appeared more trustworthy. This, of course, is a study funded by Snapchat, so do with that as you will.

[00:03:35] Pinterest is vying for your ad dollars with a new mini-site promoting its evolving ad tools. It shows user shopping habits and growing engagement with Gen Z. And Google Analytics now lets you copy reports and explorations across properties. All right, back to TikTok. The company, of course, back operating in the U.S. after American President Donald Trump issued an executive order this week, delaying the enforcement of a TikTok ban for 75 days. What happened this week?

[00:04:05] Well, Perplexity AI, the search engine startup, submitted a bid to ByteDance proposing to merge with TikTok U.S. And numbers came out showing that that brief TikTok shutdown did not phase TikTok shop sales. In fact, it boosted them. Shop sales spiked in the days before the ban as well as on the day that the ban was lifted. When users returned to the app, sales continued to climb before settling back to pre-shutdown level for most brands.

[00:04:34] On January 19th, sales surged to $32 million, up half a million from the day before and nearly 5 million more than the week before. And I thought this was kind of funny. With TikTok still absent from U.S. app stores, opportunistic sellers are capitalizing on the shortage. The TikTok phone black market is thriving on eBay with used devices preloaded with the app selling for thousands.

[00:05:01] Some even listed for $50,000. All right, to the social media changes in the past five days. News today that Meta has started bringing ads to threads. The company announcing it is testing ads in the app with a small group of brands in the U.S. and Japan. Ads will appear as images between posts in the home feed.

[00:05:26] The company will target users based on activity across threads, Instagram, and, of course, even off MetaTech. Users will be able to customize the ads that they see from their account center and have the option to skip, hide, or report ads directly from their feed. A couple of other threads updates. The app now lets you schedule posts directly in the app. By tapping the three-dot menu, you can select a time and date with scheduled posts appearing in drafts.

[00:05:52] It's worth noting that this post scheduling has been available since March via the API, but now it is native in the app. Threads is also rolling out post analytics in the mobile app, providing data on top-performing posts, follower growth, interaction rates, and so on. You can also access these insights on the web version. So it looks like even Tumblr is coming for TikTok.

[00:06:14] After a surge in new users when TikTok was banned, the platform reported a 35% spike in iOS installs and a 70% jump in community joins. It is now rolling out Tumblr TV, a swipable vertical feed for GIFs and videos. With TikTok's fate in the air, both BlueSky and X have also launched vertical video feeds this week to lure short video content users.

[00:06:41] BlueSky added a customizable video feed under its search tab. The platform says that the ability to swipe through a video-only timeline is specific to custom feeds. And X started rolling out a video tab in the US featuring a circular play button in the app's bottom navigation bar. Instagram is reportedly luring TikTok creators with cash.

[00:07:04] According to a report from the information, the platform is taking advantage of TikTok's absence from app stores by offering creators huge payouts to post reels exclusively on Instagram. Bonuses range from 10,000 to 50,000 per month, requiring creators to share their short-form videos on Instagram before posting them to other platforms. They met a spokesperson and confirmed the launch of this. They call it the Breakthrough Bonus Program.

[00:07:31] Instagram also this week launching a new video editing app called Edit to take on TikTok's CapCut. The app is now available for pre-order on the iOS App Store. Back to threads for a moment. They just added a new markup option for re-shared posts, letting users highlight elements or add text to images before reposting. This is currently only available to a small group of American users. And finally, in the social media wrap-up, lots of Reddit communities this week banned links to X.

[00:08:00] After Elon Musk's gesture during President Trump's inauguration was compared to a Nazi salute, more than 50 subreddits have now banned links to X in new posts and comments, including big communities like the NFL. All right, we turn now to the world of SEO. And a study out this week found that website SEO content generated through a hybrid approach,

[00:08:28] AI drafting the content and humans editing it, outperforms fully human-written content in search rankings while cutting costs by 91%. The study's research is recommended using generative tools like ChatGPT, perplexity, or Gemini to draft SEO-optimized content based on top-ranking pages in your niche, and then have a human editor refine the tone, readability, and fix any errors. Well, first, Microsoft Bing was tricking users into thinking they were using Google.

[00:08:56] Now, it's fully hiding Google search results altogether. When you search for Google on Bing, results are under a Promoted by Microsoft search box. To see them, users have to click a new See More button that hides the results. Google recently confirmed a major change to its system requiring all users and bots to have JavaScript enabled when searching. This unannounced update caused disruptions in multiple SEO tools, leading to data blackouts last week.

[00:09:26] Google's search ranking volatility seems to be increasing, with reports of fluctuating traffic and rankings across SEO forums and social media since the beginning of this week. Some SEO tools are having issues tracking the changes. Others aren't. There's speculation about the cause, including the American presidential inauguration. And a bit of a rude awakening, Google is showing map pins on some service area businesses, which previously only appeared for businesses with public addresses.

[00:09:55] Some reports suggest it's a bug. Others think it's a new update. According to reports, this has probably been happening since December. To video and streaming now, Netflix adding nearly 19 million paid subscribers in Q4, bringing its total to around 300 million paid accounts last year. More than half of signups in ad-tier countries opted for the ad's plan,

[00:10:24] prompting the company to raise its price by $1 to $7.99. YouTube, Netflix, and Prime Video set new viewing records in December, per Nielsen. While the overall streaming market climbed 9%, capturing a record 43.5% of total TV viewing time, YouTube led with an 11% share, Netflix hit 8.5%, and Prime Video secured 4%.

[00:10:55] And finally, a few other interesting tidbits that didn't fit anywhere else. Starting in February, Microsoft will automatically keep you signed into your account unless you sign out or use private browsing. So if you are using a public computer or a shared computer at work, don't forget to log out or risk handing your account to, well, everyone. And a new study shows that nickname branding, like calling Rolex Rolli or BMW Beamer, can weaken a brand's power,

[00:11:25] leading to lower engagement and reduced purchase intent. While marketers often use consumer-driven nicknames to appear more relatable, this research says this tactic might be backfiring. On social media, brands with nicknames saw reduced social media engagement with fewer likes and shares, and a significant drop in click-through rates on Facebook and TikTok. Beyond social, nickname branding also led to lower purchase intent for both luxury and mainstream brands like Starbucks. And as for why?

[00:11:56] Well, the study researchers say nicknames make consumers see a brand as less powerful and authoritative. And that, in turn, directly hurts brand performance. Though those were the top digital marketing stories over the last five days, You'd have gotten all this news earlier if you were signed up to our email newsletter, which comes out every weekday at 5 o'clock Eastern and is completely free.

[00:12:23] You can sign up at todayindigital.com slash newsletter. Tuesday, on our weekly deep dive episode, new marketing research is out on how enjoyment in the production process impacts buyers and sellers. The study found that buyers perceive higher quality and are willing to pay more when you, the marketer, tells them your product was made with passion. As for sellers, they charge less for products that they enjoy creating.

[00:12:53] It is an interesting dichotomy, and I will speak to the co-author of that research paper. Well, if you are trying to reach marketing decision makers, consider an ad on this podcast or in our newsletter. Together, we reach more than 8,500 marketers. Some ad slots are just 10 bucks. Tap the link at the top of the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash ads. I'm Todd Maffin. Follow me on Blue Sky at toddmaffin.com. Follow us on Blue Sky at todayindigital.com. Thanks for listening. Have a restful weekend.

[00:13:23] The next newsletter is out Monday, and I will be back in your podcast feed on Tuesday.