Social Media

TikTok’s Testing a New Instagram-Like Profile Format, While Questions Remain About Moderation Policies

If nothing else, TikTok is certainly sparking a lot of debate, and angst, within social media marketing circles. The short-form video app, which saw a huge rise in 2019, is now looking to solidify its offerings, and maximize its ad potential – though it still seems to have a way to go before it establishes itself as a mainstay in the social media platform race. That’s somewhat reflected in the latest news about the app – first off, TikTok is reportedly looking to update its profile design, switching to a more Instagram-style format.

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Byte – the Revamp of Vine – Was Downloaded 1.3 Million Times in Its First Week

As you can see here, Byte reached 1.3 million downloads in its first week, surpassing Vine’s performance in the same time period after launch. And while the comparison is not exactly fair – Byte has the advantage of building off of Vine’s popularity, and there are more social media and app users now than there were back in 2013 – it’s still a pretty good performance measure for the short-form video app. But the app hasn’t been totally free of issues. One of the main problems that many Byte users have noted early on is that the comment streams below each video have been flooded with people desperately seeking to boost their follower counts, with a view to monetizing their content.

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Marketing

YouTube Kicked In $15 Billion as Google Ad Revenues Topped $134 Billion in 2019

Google parent Alphabet finally broke out YouTube ad revenues, for the first time, in Q4 and 2019 full year earnings. Total Alphabet 2019 revenues reached nearly $162 billion. Google advertising revenues accounted for $134.8 billion, with YouTube contributing $15 billion for the year. While earnings beat analyst expectations, fourth quarter revenues were lower than expected: $46.07 billion vs. $46.94 billion expected. In addition to YouTube, Alphabet announced that its Cloud business has a $10 billion run rate. As individual businesses, these revenues would be significant.

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How the Facebook & Instagram Divergence Impacts Your Media Spend

Nowadays, a marketer will tell you the user demographics for Facebook and Instagram aren’t the same. Despite being managed within the same ad manager interface, the reality is that these two avenues are starting to have less in common. On the surface, it’s usually a tale of “Instagram skews younger.” That’s certainly true, but it’s interesting (and important!) to note that there are also vastly different goals for users on these platforms. These differences are key in how results play out in advertising on the platforms. In the past, Instagram was a placement box that was checked, and little further thought was given to it. The inventory was smaller, so fussing with it didn’t necessarily result in more value; it was just gravy if it worked.Now? We are seeing vastly different performances in the two channels, not only in age but also in ad formats.

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