Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Organic Farming
TikTok has had the same two business priorities for years. One, to develop an ecommerce marketplace on the app and, two, to create a conversion-based ad platform akin to Google, Amazon or Meta.
TikTok has struggled mightily on both fronts.
Its attribution – other platform features, too, but attribution in particular – has been a mess. Brands that love TikTok for how it converts still see poor self-reported attribution.
Guess TikTok is like the other big walled gardens after all, where conversions are overstated.
TikTok’s ecommerce adoption in the West has also been a dud. For the past two months, TikTok has offered a 40% – yes, 40% – discount for North American users who make their first purchase on the app. Yet TikTok still can’t make fetch happen.
Where TikTok excels, however, is with creative and tapping into culture.
As a recent Digiday survey shows, even while TikTok’s paid media growth is relatively lackluster, advertisers are creating more and more of their content specifically for TikTok.
TikTok’s biggest problem may simply be that, despite ad platform investments, it remains a strong organic content machine. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram – not to mention Amazon – are pretty much purely pay to play at this point.
BOGO Sticks
The classic buy-one, get-one-free offer (a BOGO deal, in industry parlance) was created mainly to clear out excess inventory and so shopper marketing execs could hit their sales goals.
Nowadays, though, BOGO deals have found a new use as a data-collection gimmick, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Take the Domino’s “Emergency Pizza” promotion, which allegedly offers a free medium pie you can redeem at any point within a month – but there’s a catch. People have to join the loyalty program and actually make two purchases – the first is the order, which unlocks the freebie, and then they have to check out again to actually get their reward. This gives Domino’s a solid first-party data anchor on the individual and their household.
The BOGO with red tape is gaining in popularity. Offering a freebie as a reward without strings is a major cost, because so many people claim it. Erecting one roadblock (like requiring customers to return to a shop, join a loyalty program or download an app) narrows the field of people who redeem the discount, while still delivering valuable data.
Emergency X-It
Surely you’ve heard about X owner Elon Musk’s message to advertisers who have exited the platform: “GFY.”
But don’t expect mass resignations next year among ad sales staff. Because, turns out, the bulk of the team already left, according to media reporter Claire Atkinson’s The Media Mix newsletter.
Several senior and junior salespeople resigned shortly after X doled out its November bonus checks, Atkinson reports.
The resignations include some stalwarts from before CEO Linda Yaccarino joined the company earlier this year.
Beyond Yaccarino and her NBCU alums Joe Benarroch and Carrie Stimmel, only a skeleton crew reportedly remains.
Yaccarino has tried over the past few months to make inroads with advertisers based on her vision of X as a growing media empire.
But Musk seems content to let the ad business sink – if not to actively sink it himself.
Advertising has clearly never been central to his vision for the company, although that’s tough to square with the fact that Musk hired Yaccarino – a longtime TV ad sales vet – as CEO.
Guess there’s just a “wild storm” in his mind.
But Wait, There’s More!
Why advertisers are excited about attention metrics. [Marketing Brew]
Meta is asking an appeals court to stop the FTC from unilaterally reopening a consent agreement that would prohibit Meta from monetizing users under age 18. [Reuters]
Apple, meanwhile, lost an appeals suit in London and will face a UK antitrust case regarding its dominance in mobile browsers and cloud gaming. [Bloomberg]
From the ad biz to Twitter: “Message received.” [The Rebooting]
You’re Hired!
The ecommerce tech company Rokt appoints Doug Rozen as its new CMO. [release]
Dentsu elevates Brian Monahan to head of retail media solutions. [release]
