New TikTok Dimensions: 48 feet high and 14 feet wide

In This Issue of Tod Maffin’s Today in Digital Marketing:

• Google phases out four attribution models in Ads and Analytics
• YouTube unveils AI-driven ad feature and better product tagging
• TikTok introduces 'Out of Phone' ad expansion
• ByteDance‘s new 'CapCut for Business' is a huge upgrade for brands
• Snapchat is working with third party platforms on an influencer API search
• Threads rolls out branded content tags and (free) post editing
• LinkedIn cuts jobs amid declining ad revenue growth
• Ampersand faces ransomware attack, disrupting operations
• YouTube’s new 'like' and 'subscribe' button upgrades are, well, flashy
• TikTok sets auto captions as default for all videos
• Google Business Profiles adds Disabled-Owned & Indigenous-Owned attributes
• X (formerly Twitter) is testing a $1 annual fee for new users

YouTube’s New Event-Based Ads

YouTube is launching a new ad product which could get your message right beside big events.

They call them “Spotlight Moments” and here’s how the company described them:

[It] identifies popular YouTube videos related to a specific cultural moment.
Take this Halloween example: An advertiser wants to drive awareness for its brand during the spooky season. Spotlight Moments lets the advertiser seamlessly serve ads across Halloween-related content on YouTube and curates them into dynamically-updated playlists that will live on the sponsored hub. Brands will automatically appear alongside the most relevant and engaging content associated with the moment.
YouTube

If you, like me, are a bit of a control freak around your brand messaging, you might want to put this on the watch-but-don’t-act list for now. Remember, YouTube’s AI will be deciding what content goes into these playlists. It’s also a higher-end product, so it might be of more interest to large brands and agencies.

Timestamped Shopping Buttons

YouTube also announced a big upgrade for marketers who sell physical products — video creators will be able to add timestamps to specific products that they tag in their videos.

This means that the creator can pop up a shopping button at the exact time they want to.

A few other changes also on their way:

1. Creators will be able to bulk-tag affiliate products in their video libraries
2. YouTube Studio will soon show channel managers which affiliate products bring them the most revenue

Both of those updates coming in the next couple of weeks.

TikTok Moves Out of the Phone

TikTok conquered the small screen; now, it’s going big.

The company has announced a new program which will let marketers use TikTok content out in the real world.

@tiktoknewsroom

Introducing Out of Phone! This new out-of-home solution enables brands and partners to extend TikTok content beyond the platform, into the real world through screens on billboards, in cinemas, restaurants, airports, gas stations, retail stores, and more.🌎 🤩 Learn more at the link in our bio!

♬ Canyons - Official Sound Studio

It has a kind of awkward name — they call it “Out of Phone”.

It sounds like more of a higher-end bespoke product. There are three programs, actually:

• Billboard – which lets advertisers play their TikTok campaigns on real-world billboards
• Cinema
• And then a catch-all called “Other Screens” that lets brands use TikTok videos in bars, airports, retail stores, and so on. It sounds sort of like a TikTok TV channel.

What’s interesting is that TikTok already does this through a partnership they’ve had for two years now with a company called Atmosphere.

But, as SocialMediaToday.com notes in its coverage of this:

This is more specifically aligned to each brand and campaign, which will require more direct assistance and guidance from the TikTok team.
So it may not fit into the budgets of most smaller brands, but it could be another consideration for those looking for new ways to reach a wider audience.
SocialMediaToday.com

TikTok says if you’re interested in kicking the tires, reach out to your ad rep.

TikTok’s Video Editor Gets a Massive Upgrade

Speaking of TikTok videos, you might know that TikTok’s parent company has a video editor called CapCut. It’s free, and is shockingly good. For small projects, it rivals what professional editors like Final Cut Pro have.

Now, they are expanding it with CapCut for Business — a web-based video editor that is also on par with the big boys.

Creating ads for your brand just got easier 🎉 CapCut for Business is here with all the tools you need to take your ads to the next level!

Check it out now in the CapCut App! #capcutforbusiness pic.twitter.com/xocoegUhuX
— CapCut (@capcutapp) October 16, 2023

Among the features:

• It can write an ad script for you once you give it a few prompts — this is the same tool that’s in its Creative Center
• There are a number of templates with some commercially licensed assets
• An automatic product video maker — you give it a URL of your product page and it’ll make a bunch of TikTok videos for it.
• And even some AI-generated presenters — artificial characters that can act as a kind of narrator

I tried out the video maker component, and fed it this story as its source material, and the results were terrible.

• When it heard the word “TikTok” it just slapped the TikTok logo up there.
• When it heard “blog” it used some kind of infographic about content marketing.
• And when it heard the phrase “marketing team,” which you’ll hear in the next paragraph, it used what looked like a New Yorker cartoon of executives sitting around a boardroom table looking at a whiteboard on which was written: “Our new marketing strategy: Sue their pants off.”

You can watch the video it made here:

A test of CapCut Business

To be fair, though, it’s probably stronger with words related to products, not some boring business reporting.

I personally think the big deal here is it’s now web-based, and you can share your drafts with members of your marketing team or your agency.

You can post directly to TikTok, of course, or send your video right to your Ads Manager — but you can also send it to Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube right from the interface, or just download the file.

And they don’t even force you into vertical format — you can make it a square or landscape video.

One consideration for risk-averse brands: CapCut’s owner is a Chinese business, which some people say has connections to the Chinese government, and it’s not entirely clear what guardrails exist around your brand’s content, where it goes, and what it’s used for.

You can learn more about it at https://www.capcut.com/business

Snapchat Launches a “Creator-Finder” for Third-Party Influencer Tools

Snapchat today announced a handful of tools aimed at making it easier for brands to find and work with creators.

• First, they have a new API for finding creators. This will let you search by name, filter by follower count or age. This is an API, so this is meant for third-party tools. Apparently Captiv8, CreatorIQ, and Pearpop are among the handful working on building this into their platforms.
• Second, advertisers can now place branded content within creator-driven Stories. These are essentially midrolls.
• Finally, in the coming weeks, verified creators will be able to tag a brand when posting their own Spotlight, Snap Map, and Public Story Snaps. Brands can then approve the partnership within Ads Manager, letting marketers see the analytics and use the media as an ad.

The company says their app reaches more than 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds, across 20+ countries.

Threads Adds Disclosure, Editing, and a Whole Lot of Twitter Refugees

Speaking of brands and influencers, Threads — Meta’s challenger to what’s left of Twitter — has added a disclosure function.

When you compose a post, there’s a new three-dot icon in the top right that reveals a “Mark as paid partnership” option. Tapping it just adds #paidpartnership as a hashtag at the end of the post — which is a little confusing, given that hashtags aren’t yet tappable or searchable.

Hashtags are coming, though, and if this paid partnership hashtag is also tappable, that might make a really easy way to search through paid influencer content. In theory, you could search for your product category, then the hashtag, to get a kind of swipe file. We’ll see how strong the forthcoming search will be.

Still no timeline on when they’ll add Threads as a placement option for ad campaigns, though some code recently found in the app did hint that it’s already being worked on.

Threads Benefitting From Elon’s Missteps

Threads did see a pretty significant jump in activity and new accounts, ever since concerns were raised over X’s ability to control the spread of misinformation and graphic content regarding the developments in Israel and Gaza.

You Can Now Edit a Post — Free!

Last week Threads also added the ability to edit a post.

There is a catch — you only get five minutes after first posting to change it. After that if you want to change something, you’ll have to do it the old-school way of deleting then reposting.

A little icon indicates that a post has been edited, but there’s no edit history yet.

And, unlike over on X, this functionality is free.

In Brief

• LinkedIn is cutting more than 650 jobs, mainly in its engineering team. This comes as ad revenue growth slows. The company is also increasing hires in India, its second-largest user market. Last May, LinkedIn cut more than 700 jobs and announced its exit from the Chinese market. read more
• The TV ad company Ampersand suffered a ransomware attack. The company sells viewership data to advertisers on about 85 million households. They would not disclose if a ransom was be paid. read more
• YouTube is introducing visual cues for its "like" and "subscribe" buttons. When creators say these words, the corresponding buttons will animate, which I’m sure creators won’t abuse and won’t get old quickly, right? read more
• TikTok will start automatically adding captions to all videos starting next month. You can still edit or delete these captions after posting, but just be aware that their captioning may be incorrect and potentially embarrassing if you don’t give it a quick readthrough. read more

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

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