Long Read On The Short Report

AppLovin’s reclusive CEO has reluctantly embraced the spotlight, Business Insider reports. 

AppLovin is battling back from a precipitous selloff in February, when a cascade of short seller reports leveled allegations against its ad platform. The company is also attempting a long-shot takeover of TikTok US.

Short reports aside, AppLovin’s ad business, especially its ecommerce beta, is an object of great approval by Wall Street types. Makes sense, since AppLovin is following Meta’s Conversion API playbook.

But a question remains. How is AppLovin doing it?

DTC brands win customers on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They know it, because they can hear the proverbial cash register ring. Likewise, every marketer understands how Google and Amazon claim fabulous ROAS. People search for things they want to buy. Duh.

But the value of AppLovin’s mobile app supply, which skews heavily toward in-game ads, is far less intuitive.

But, hey, maybe vicious short-seller scrutiny is just part of the process of launching a big ads biz. Criteo’s been tagged by some of the same firms, as has Zeta Global.

Last November, when AdExchanger spoke with Lauren Balik of Upright Analytics, a prominent short-seller firm, she cited AppLovin, which was at an all-time high, as a likely target. She was also waiting with apparent glee to short Klarna, which was poised to IPO. It’s not anymore. 

All’s Fair In Ads And Politics

Tech for Campaigns, a nonprofit that helps democratic candidates with their digital marketing strategy, just released its political advertising report – which is to say, its autopsy report on the 2024 election season. 

Unsurprisingly, the results mostly validate what Founder Jessica Alter told AdExchanger back before the November presidential election. Compared to commercial businesses, political advertisers on both sides of the aisle spend barely any money on digital ads – but Republicans are vastly far ahead in terms of off-season engagement and brand-building.

For example, although left-wing ad spend on Meta surged dramatically during 2024, right-wing groups have consistently spent more overall since 2021. 

With the presidential election in particular, Trump’s team consistently put more of their Meta spend toward mobilization efforts compared to Harris – and Elon Musk’s super PAC did more than both official campaigns combined. (Perhaps he’s regretting that now? Probably not.) 

Another interesting tidbit: Not only did Tech for Campaigns candidates find success with influencer content for local and down ballot races, but “AI influencer-like content” performed just as well if not better in some cases, even though (or maybe even because?) it was disclosed as AI on each platform. 

Traffic Triumphs

Good news: Your daily TikTok habit might actually be a good thing. For publishers, at least.

Over the past year, 47% of publishers have seen an increase in referral traffic from social media platforms, according to Digiday research.

Per the survey, a combined 25% of publishers saw the biggest increase from Facebook and Instagram, although they may be lapping some very low numbers, since platforms have been deprioritizing news. 

But TikTok traffic is especially welcome, because the platform has proven quite befuddling to publishers in the past. Publishers are “still figuring out how best” to drive traffic from TikTok, as Digiday diplomatically puts it.      

But TikTok still has a ways to go before it matches up with its social competitors. It lags behind Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn in terms of overall traffic. 

Hey, everyone’s gotta start somewhere.

But Wait! There’s More

The US ad industry employment number slumped in May for the sixth consecutive month. [Ad Age]

Private-label retailer brands are a secret weapon for stores as tariffs hit name brands. [Axios] 

The Congressional Creator Caucus, a bipartisan effort to support the online creator economy, has officially launched. [TechCrunch] 

OpenAI is storing deleted ChatGPT conversations as part of its lawsuit with The New York Times. [The Verge] 

How Heineken uses CreativeX to track the performance of social media ads that feature people with different skin tones. [Digiday]