📰 Round Up: Meta's New Attribution Settings

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In today’s edition:

• Meta’s New Attribution Setting?

• Universal Strikes Back Against TikTok

• Pinterest’s 2024 Guide

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META’S NEW ATTRIBUTION SETTING

Yes, you read that right. Despite a lot of debate recently over attribution windows and whether view-through attribution has its merits, Meta has announced the release of their newest attribution setting — Engaged-view. Designed to help advertisers better understand the impact of their video content as this ad format continues to grow in usage, Meta describes it as the following:

Check out Meta’s news release below for the full breakdown below.

UNIVERSAL BACKS OUT OF TIKTOK

In an unexpected turn of events, Universal Music has announced its plan to remove its extensive song library from TikTok due to unresolved negotiations regarding payment terms. This decision affects access to tracks by prominent artists like Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and Drake. Universal criticizes TikTok for offering substantially lower payment rates compared to other platforms and accuses the company of "bullying." Universal's stance is to ensure fair compensation for their music's use on TikTok, emphasizing the importance of equitable business practices in the industry. In response, TikTok offered a relatively shallow response, basically pushing the blame off of themselves while pretending to align with the artist, which is transparently incorrect. TikTok’s statement on this: "It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” Check out the article on the BBC below for more details.

TIKTOK JUST KEEPS GROWING

TikTok has finalized its acquisition of 75.01% of Tokopedia, Indonesia's largest e-commerce platform, for $840 million, marking a significant move to reintegrate its online shopping business in Indonesia. This deal comes after TikTok Shop was shut down in the country due to a ban on social media-based online shopping aimed at protecting smaller merchants and users' data. That seems weird, right? Okay, so it's not just me, then. According to ByteDance, the partnership is expected to benefit Indonesian micro, small, and medium enterprises as they will be able to reach wider audiences through TikTok’s social commerce infrastructure, but I can’t help but feel this just backs these companies into the corner of relying on TikTok to succeed. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as TikTok remains laser-focused on expanding its social commerce plans. Check out the article on Reuters below for more info.

A CREATOR-FIRST ECONOMY

More and more platforms have begun to take note of YouTube’s creator-focused monetization program, as companies like X and now Instagram have rolled out the option for creators to earn income on their content. This is fantastic as it not only rewards creators for producing great content but also encourages them to continue creating at their best. These are certainly interesting times to be focused on content. Check out Daniel Snow’s post on X about this Instagram monetization discovery below.

META’S MASSIVE GROWTH

Meta reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023, which saw significant growth. The company saw a 25% increase in quarterly revenue and a 16% increase for the full year, with operational income and net income showing substantial gains. User engagement across its platforms also continued to rise, with notable increases in daily and monthly active users. Meta also announced a quarterly dividend, marking a new phase in its financial strategy. Additionally, the company provided insights into its restructuring efforts, focusing on efficiency and strategic realignment, and shared expectations for revenue and expenses for 2024, alongside anticipated investments in AI and infrastructure. Overall, it was a massive update that was not only great for their P&L, but also the stock market. Check out Ayman’s analysis on this below.

PINTEREST’S 2024 GUIDE

While this is technically designed for agencies, there are many learnings to glean here for operators of all kinds. In Pinterest’s Agency Guide for 2024, they share insights on leveraging Pinterest for trend prediction and strategic planning, emphasizing Pinterest's track record for accurately forecasting consumer interests. As we know, Pinterest is different from most other social platforms, where planning and preparing is the norm rather than impulse shopping behaviours. Here, you can use trend forecasting much more accurately, so it’s important to pay attention to how they evolve. Check out Pinterest’s guide below for all the details.

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SHOPIFY’S NATIVE SUBSCRIPTION APP: Shopify has finally launched its own native subscription app, which provides all the functionality you’d normally see from a third party for free.

CLUBHOUSE REBRANDS: Clubhouse, the infamous live audio app, has announced that they are rebranding itself as a voice-only group chat app where you can send audio clips to your friends.

GOOGLE RESPONSIVE ADS UPDATE: Google Ads has dropped three new updates to their responsive ad formats, including changes to headlines, campaign-level settings, and more.

GOOGLE SHOWS TIKTOKS IN STRUCTURED RESULTS: The times are certainly changing. As of recently, people have started spotting TikTok video results as structured snippets as responses to queries on Google Search.

X’S SPACES GET VIDEO: X just announced that they are adding a new feature to their audio-only live chatrooms called Spaces, which now allows users to join via video. Another move towards more video on the platform!

RELATED: X GETS VERTICAL VIDEO ADS: Continuing to push the video angle, X brings vertical video ad formats to their platform.

TIKTOK JUST CAN’T PROTECT YOUR DATA: Despite its constant claims that TikTok is protecting US user data from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, it appears as though this is not true, and they haven’t been able to keep the data from being accessed. Everything’s fine.

McDONALD’S — McSPICY

Agency - Leo Burnett

Am I just bitter? Jaded? Now that I know how the ‘machine’ ticks, does it suck the fun out of commercials for me? I’m not sure, but whether that’s true or not, I really do not like this ad. In fact, it is a great representation of everything that most people (as far I know, anyways) hate about corporations. It’s patronizing. In this campaign, McDonald’s sought to target Gen Z, and so, naturally, you need to speak their language. It’s at this point that the cracks begin to show. How do you speak to Gen Z, exactly? Well, apparently, like this. It’s trying very hard to be a blend of the classic Tim & Eric format with some TikTok flavour, and, in my opinion, does not land. Again, though, maybe that’s just me. What do you think?

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