Hey, it’s been a couple of weeks… Are you ready for the latest news from the marketing world? Let’s dive into Sunday Rundown #109 🙂
Meta Unveils AI-Powered Ad Tools at Newfronts
Meta has announced a range of new ad tools at NewFronts 2024, including improved creator search for affiliate campaigns, multi-destination product ads for Reels, and more.
First off, Meta’s adding new, machine learning-powered creator recommendations for brands in Instagram’s Creator Marketplace. This will help brands find the right creators to work with on their campaigns. Meta’s system will recommend the best creators to work with for your business, based on a range of signals relating to audience similarity, topic relativity, and more.
On another front, Meta’s also extending its AI “Image Expansion” option for Advantage+ creative, with marketers now able to use Image Expansion for Reels campaigns as well. To explain, Image Expansion makes it easier to reform your creative elements to fit each format.
Meta’s also launching multi-destination product ads for Reels, which will use items from your product catalog to display relevant matches to each user. That’ll provide Reels viewers with a swipeable display of product images, helping to drive expanded interest, based on each viewers’ in-app behavior.
Finally, Meta’s also adding a new element to its Reminder Ads, with brands able to include external links to a new product or sale in their Reminder promotions. That’ll provide more functionality for your Reminder promotions, with the capacity to prompt users about upcoming events, and products, in stream.
TikTok expands its premium ad slots despite potential US ban
In an effort to capture more ad dollars, despite the looming U.S. ban, TikTok is introducing new advertising products and opportunities that will allow marketers to better control what sort of content their ads appear against.
The company says it will use generative AI to curate trending, brand-safe content; expand its selection of “tentpole” moments, like the Paris Olympics and Met Gala; and allow advertisers to buy slots with specific networks and content offerings.
The company introduced the “Pulse Premiere” ad slot last year, and it is now adding new partners to it. The offering focuses on bringing in more premium ad dollars by letting advertisers position their ads directly after publisher and media content in over a dozen categories, including lifestyle, sports, entertainment and education. The ads would appear on content from select publishers on the app’s For You feed.
The slot is meant to appeal more to TV advertisers who are used to being able to buy ads that run alongside specific programs.
Instagram beats TikTok for video-based user acquisition, survey finds
Marketers prefer Instagram as their platform for video-based user acquisition over TikTok, according to global research from app marketing solution Zoomd that Marketing Dive can exclusively share.Â
When asked to split their user acquisition spend between Instagram and TikTok, 79% of survey respondents allotted at least 75% of their budget to Instagram, compared with 25% at most for TikTok. However, when asked which media sources they worked with in 2023, 53% of respondents said both TikTok and Instagram.Â
The survey was conducted in February and March 2024, before U.S. lawmakers approved a bill requiring TikTok to separate from its Chinese ownership or face a potential ban in the country, which the ByteDance-owned company is now challenging in court.
Bonus links
- Meta is quietly winning the AI wearable race
- Snapchat Showcases New AR Ad Tools at NewFronts
- Amazon’s Prime Video ads rollout gains traction ahead of upfronts debut
- Three things we learned about Apple’s AI plans from its earnings
Thank you for taking the time to read our Sunday Rundown #109. If you have a story that you want to see in this series, reply to us below or contact us.