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Against Mall Odds
TikTok is many things: a payday for influencers, a news service, an entertainment provider, a music video player, a search engine and more.
“Though, what executives really want TikTok to be known as is a digital shopping mall,” MarketWatch reports.
TikTok confers purchasing power. One breakthrough moment in the US two years ago was when a TikTok trend emptied stores of Ocean Spray.
But TikTok hasn’t been able to create a social commerce boom in Europe and the US like it has in China.
“The actual commerce delivery experience is often disconnected from the advertising conversation because advertisers usually just want to tell you about a product and make sure you convert,” says Ana Milicevic, co-founder of Sparrow Advisers.
For instance, Facebook has generous incentives for advertisers to send shopper traffic to Facebook to convert, rather than to the brand’s website or Amazon page. But ad subsidies cannot overcome consumers’ qualms about ordering from Facebook Marketplace or Instagram and not getting what they paid for.
Amazon’s customer service, warehousing and refund policy is like flour and butter baked into the Amazon Ads platform. If TikTok wants to be a digital mall, Amazon’s approach may outperform Meta’s pixel-and-SDK playbook.
Dilly-Dallying Over Diversity
The ad industry certainly talks the talk when it comes to investing in diverse media. But now is the time to walk the walk.
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“Get freakin’ committed,” said Tony Wells, Verizon’s marketing SVP, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) Masters of Marketing summit in Orlando.
The US is becoming a more and more diverse population, so it should be a marketing priority on the merits of ROI alone. Brands that invest more in diverse-owned media now will have a competitive advantage later, Wells added.
One way to get more ad dollars to diverse or minority-owned media is by making the inventory available at scale programmatically. That’s why investing in partnerships with DSPs to increase programmatic spend is currently Verizon’s “number-one priority,” Wells said.
As P&G’s Marc Pritchard said earlier at the ANA conference, said Wells, the onus is on brands and agencies to make sure their marketing fosters diversity and reaches broader sections of the population.
For one thing, Wells said, advertisers need programmatic inclusion and exclusion lists, noting that investments in diverse-owned media don’t hold much water if the company isn’t withholding spend from platforms that perpetuate discrimination or hate speech.
Holding Co’s Holding Strong
There’s a strange dynamic happening where major advertising platforms like Google and Meta, as well as the next tier of mobile players (Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify, etc.), are getting hammered. Mobile gaming apps, ecommerce companies (Chewy, Etsy, Wayfair, et al.) and businesses with a stake in the mobile data economy are suffering, too.
Guess who defies this downward trend. Go on, guess.
OK, Amazon reports earnings this afternoon and will probably come out on top, as always. But ad agency holding companies are apparently thriving.
WPP is the latest agency company to up its Q4 guidance, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“We’re not expecting a slowdown in the fourth quarter,” WPP CEO Mark Read told investors on Wednesday. “And actually, a couple of clients are looking to increase their budgets.”
Agency hold co’s may be hedged somewhat on advertising losses. If brands spend less on ads, they may need PR and comms or ecommerce marketing services even more. Or it could be that agencies are a lagging indicator compared to the likes of Snapchat, which is the canary in the coal mine.
But Wait, There’s More!
Spotify wants to get into audiobooks, but Apple is in the way. [NYT]
Nielsen consolidates many of its podcast advertising surveys into one report. [Ad Age]
Facebook and Instagram are making it easier for brands to file IP takedowns. [The Verge]
The “Shitty Media Men” list goes to court. [New York Mag]
My Digital Hero: Wendi Dunlap, SVP, Outcome Based Planning at Kinesso. [New Digital Age]
You’re Hired!
Digital Remedy taps ex-Channel Factory exec Jeremy Haft as CRO. [release]
