4,600 Research Studies vs. 1 TikTok'er

Today In Digital Marketing is a daily podcast showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. This week, Tod touches on:

• MEDIA BUYING: Is TikTok the New King of Brand Awareness?
• SEARCH ADS: New Business Attributes for Bing Ads
• INSTAGRAM: Silent Mode — Bug or Feature?
• ACADEMIA: Thousands of Studies Thwarted by TikTok’er

Below is the transcription from this weeks topics

MEDIA BUYING: Is TikTok the New King of Brand Awareness?

They hooked them up to a heart-rate monitor. An eye tracker. Electrodermal receptors. All in an attempt to learn what happens when people watch ads on TikTok.

The study was conducted by neuromarketing research firm MediaScience — TikTok underwrote the research. They wanted to get deeper insights into ad response than a platform dashboard could offer.

There were 343 people in the test who had basically free reign on their phones — they could scroll through their TikTok feed as they normally would, or even check out competing apps.

Here’s what they found:

First, brand recall for TikTok ads was particularly strong. Quoting the study:

Brand recall increases the longer an ad is watched, but ads on TikTok see strong brand recall regardless of view duration. An ad on screen 6 seconds or less still delivered 38% of the recall compared to ads viewed 20 seconds or more.
Regardless of how long an ad stays on screen, TikTok draws early attention and physiological engagement in the first few seconds. In other words, ads on TikTok take less time to make an impact with their audience than similar ads on other platforms.

Again, let's not forget TikTok foot the bill for the research, but it did come from a reputable firm.

It also found that response and engagement rates are generally higher than the other three platforms tested against, which the study didn't name but almost certainly included Facebook and Instagram.

SEARCH ADS: New Business Attributes for Bing Ads

Microsoft has launched 32 new business attributes that you can apply to your Bing search ads.

They all fall into the categories of inclusion, environmental, community/social responsibility and accessibility.

Inclusion:

• Vegan
• LGBTQI+-friendly
• Unisex
• Allergy-friendly
• Pet-friendly
• Family-friendly
• Kosher
• Halal
• Alcohol-free
• Gluten-free
• Vegetarian

Environmental:

• Eco-friendly
• Carbon-neutral
• Sustainable
• Carbon-negative

Community/social responsibility:

• Cruelty-free
• Non-profit
• Supports a cure
• Local business
• Small business
• Family-owned
• Minority-owned
• Black-owned
• Supports disease research
• LGBTQI+-owned

Accessibility:

• Wheelchair accessible
• Visual assistance
• Hearing assistance
• Mobility assistance
• Touchless pickup
• No-contact delivery
• Web accessibility

To add them to your ads, go to All campaigns, then Settings, then check the labels you want to apply to your account, and hit Save.

INSTAGRAM: Silent Mode — Bug or Feature?

If you've noticed some audio issues with your brand's Instagram Stories, we might know what's going on.

Since the release of Apple’s iOS 15 update, some users have reported audio glitches on Instagram.

The glitch mutes the audio of Instagram Stories when the iPhone's ringer switch is set to silent. And while you might think that's the way it should work, it's not. That switch is meant to silence system sounds, like the phone ringer or text notifications — not audio from apps.

Facebook says they're aware of it, and working on a fix.

SEARCH ADS: Google Ads Bug

Speaking of bugs, if you were poring over your Google Ads reports and noticed a big dropoff Wednesday of this week, that wasn't a reporting error — your ads really did turn off for a period of time.

Google has confirmed it had an "account outage issue" that resulted in some ads to stop serving for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon.

Google says it wasn't you, it was them, and they've fixed it.

ACADEMIA: Thousands of Studies Thwarted by TikTok’er

A 25-year-old American TikTok’er named Sarah is being blamed as the reason thousands of scientific studies had to toss out weeks of data.

Sarah made the video earlier in the summer; it was the start of a series on side hustles you can do to make some quick cash. One of her recommendations: the website Prolific.co — a tool used by scientists to conduct behavioural research.

Like much academic research, many of the studies on the platform paid a small amount of money for participation.

Her video resulted in the site being flooded with people responding to those studies. Which you'd think would be a good thing, right?

Problem is, suddenly almost all of the new completions were being done by young American women — massively skewing the demographic sample. The site apparently didn't have any screening tools in place to make sure that it got representative population samples.

The research site said about 4,600 studies were disrupted by the TikTok video.

Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com