Brandom Fandom
The most lucrative advertising strategy doesn’t have to be particularly expensive or high tech. Rather, having a product that’s so good people can’t stop talking about it is the preferred approach for some brands.
Of course, relying on word of mouth is easier said than done.
Prebiotic soda brand Poppi, for one, describes its marketing strategy as “community first,” Sophia Sesto, head of the brand’s social media, creator and ambassador operations, tells Digiday. “I like to say it’s pop culture,” she says. Ba dum tss.
However, getting fans to spread a brand’s gospel requires a thorough understanding of consumers’ media habits, interests and opinions. Only then can brands develop relevant product launches that spark conversation.
Meanwhile, Digiday notes, social media has seen a shift toward brand fandom as feeds have become dominated by creator-produced content instead of posts by people users know in real life. That shift has been great for spurring brand loyalty.
But advertisers face a trade-off in crowdsourcing their marketing: They sacrifice brand voice and content guidelines in exchange for getting into the room where people make their purchase decisions – although, in this case, that “room” is often a Discord channel or WhatsApp thread.
The Map That Leads To You
Apple’s transformation into a Google-grade advertising machine continues apace.
On Friday, Apple launched its long-promised ad platform for Apple Maps. The unsubtly named “Ads on Maps” is now open to advertisers in the US and Canada.
Google was first to introduce advertising to its Maps service, not as a standalone offering, but as an extension of Performance Max, Demand Gen and Search campaigns. By going second, Apple has an opportunity to learn from Google’s mistakes, Jon Kagan, director of search and digital media at marketing agency Amsive, tells MediaPost.
Kagan says he stopped using Google Maps ads “a long time ago” for a few reasons. For one, buyers can’t control how much of their budget goes to Maps advertising. Also, Google Maps tends to surface nearby businesses of the same type fairly evenly, which can reduce the incentive to pay for ads just to stand out. On top of that, Google Maps doesn’t offer tools for building brand loyalty or offering rewards.
But just because Google stumbled with Maps ads doesn’t mean the format itself is doomed.
Ads on Apple Maps could give Apple more Google‑esque capabilities for finding highly relevant audiences, says Mick Rigby, founder of app marketing agency Yodel Mobile. And, he adds, Apple could offer anonymized foot traffic attribution through its SKAdNetwork – which could replace some performance signals mobile marketers lost after Apple released its AppTrackingTransparency framework in 2021.
Does This Count?
YouTube will now count a view as a view the moment a video or broadcast begins – rather than after 30 seconds of playback.
Apparently, YouTube wants to create parity between how creators and brands measure live and on-demand videos, including for YouTube Shorts, which pivoted to the new viewership metric last year, TechCrunch reports. Plus, TikTok and Instagram also count views from the moment playback begins.
Still, the change is also a cheap way to inflate metrics. YouTube acknowledges that “creators will likely see their total view counts increase faster moving forward.”
Higher view counts aren’t necessarily good for creators, though. Last week, YouTube doubled its required watch hours before creators can monetize with subscriptions and ads. If creators can’t hit 20 million Shorts views in 90 days, they need 8,000 qualified watch hours instead.
Besides, counting every play is hardly a decent metric for a video’s popularity or session duration. Which explains why YouTube is preserving the original view metric as “engaged views” within its analytics dashboard.
Session duration and engagement matter to advertisers, too. If marketers don’t see an increase in conversions to go with YouTube’s inflated view counts, it might make them question their budget allocations.
But then again … YouTube is YouTube. Those budgets will likely keep flowing no matter what.
But Wait! There’s More!
Apple will change the language of its consent management pop-ups in the EU after an investigation by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office found Apple’s phrasing steers users away from sharing data with third-party apps and encourages data sharing for its own apps. [Reuters]
The Motion Picture Association reached an agreement with TikTok owner ByteDance on a framework for restricting the use of movie studio intellectual property in AI video and images. [Deadline]
Amazon is buying large quantities of rare books, scanning their content to train AI and destroying the physical copies in the process. [404 Media]
Opinion: With AI being used at various points throughout the campaign process, what purpose do government-mandated AI disclosures in advertising even serve? [Ad Age]
