4 Paid Media Digital Updates from August 2024
August 2024 has seen several digital media updates which reflect the demands of advertisers as well as the behavioral changes of users interacting with these platforms. Here’s a roundup of the latest developments in case you missed some!
TikTok’s partnership with Amazon
Tiktok’s integration with Amazon is a strategic move by both platforms and comes as no surprise as similar deals have been striked with other major social media platforms like Pinterest, Meta or Snapchat.
The partnership will allow Tiktok’s users to transact seamlessly within the platform, improving its acquisition strategies. On the other hand, Amazon will expand its market reach into social commerce, a leading trend in the years to come.
Content creators will receive the news with open arms as this will mean a new revenue stream for them allowing them to link their recommendations to Amazon purchases. This will also benefit Amazon as we all know the power that user generated content has in influencing consumer behavior.
We will have to wait and see how this impacts engagements across Tiktok and if the partnership is strong enough to compete with Meta on sales driven campaigns.
Meta brings updates to their attribution tools
Meta has been improving its attribution reporting in an effort to tally business data or Google’s reporting with its own performance.
Meta and all other social media platforms which sit outside Google’s domain have always been under scrutiny because of the way they attribute events. Tallying up conversions from these platforms which attribute both sales that happen on a post impression and a post click basis, not necessarily on a last click, has always led to duplication.
The new updates will give advertisers the ability to choose how to see the conversion count. Results will be shown for ‘All conversions’ or ‘First conversions only’, the first will include all conversions based on ad view or click vs. the latter which will only count the first conversion after an ad has been viewed or clicked, decreasing the amount of reported events.
The move shows a willingness from Facebook to bring clarity into its reporting, and a way to align the platform with other reporting systems widely used by brands. It will help shed light into Meta’s direct contribution into a campaign but lets not devalue Meta’s overall impact into the consumer journey which can be observed through different attributions like the ‘All conversions’ report.
YouTube is testing longer ad breaks on CTV
Internal testing has shown 79% of users prefer longer periods of time uninterrupted whilst watching content, causing ad slots to be grouped.
In a move to please viewers, YouTube is testing expanding its ad break by 29% and there’s already talks this might be increasing to 50%. Ads will therefore be cramped into longer but dispersed blocks.
YouTube is yet to report on the impact to advertisers, how viewers are responding to the longer ad promotions as opposed to shorter in-stream ads but it’s something that brands will be looking out for in the next couple of months to understand how ad engagement shifts, specially now when half of YouTube’s viewership comes from CTV in the UK.
Netflix and DV360
Netflix announced this month future integrations with major DSPs which will enable advertisers to buy private marketplace deals with the network. One of those partners will be Google’s own DSP, DV360.
Other buying capabilities will come soon, with programmatic guarantee deals coming this November.
On the measurement and verification side of things, the integrations also extend to Google’s campaign manager 360 for impression verification and third party providers like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.
Although the integration is only available currently in the US, Canada, Brazil and Mexico it will soon be rolled out globally, so keep your eyes peeled!