Is Meta the new Twitter?

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are making New Year’s resolutions:

↘️ META: $6.21 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $2.76 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $5.31 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• ⭕ Ask Us Anything: Reddit’s new ad unit

• Comcast launches self-service TV-buying platform  📺

• ♾️ Our weekly poll: Will Meta become the new Twitter?

Welcome back, and happy 2025! We’ve got a lot to get into. But first…

☠️  TikTok DeathWatch: Decision time

Friday, January 10 could be TikTok’s last stand, as the Supreme Court considers whether to uphold an historic law that would ban the app in the U.S. unless a sale is completed by January 19, 2025. (If you’re reading this on Friday, you can listen to live oral arguments at 10 a.m. via this link.) 

Those hoping for a last-minute reprieve were greeted by ominous signals from within TikTok this week. Two of the platform’s top U.S. advertising executives—Sameer Singh, head of ad sales for North America, and Jack Bamberger, general manager of agency business—announced their departures ahead of the SCOTUS hearing. Meanwhile, brands began altering their contract language, creators urged fans to follow them elsewhere, and agencies wrestled with the weight of the moment. As one influencer marketing agency told the New York Times, “I think we all sort of feel in the back of our heads that it isn’t actually going to happen.” 

With the SCOTUS hearing looming, Shark Tank veteran Kevin O’Leary made headlines for joining former L.A. Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Guggenheim Securities in a last-ditch bid to buy TikTok’s U.S. business. We’d caution that McCourt’s $20 billion bid is unlikely to succeed—and if it does, the offer is for a TikTok without ByteDance’s proprietary algorithm. Even with that caveat in place, ByteDance has given no indication that it’s any closer to selling. And McCourt’s plan for TikTok — buying the brand name in order to apply it to a very different kind of social network— may not bode well for retaining the platform’s current creators or audience.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

⭕ Reddit unveiled new tools at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, including a new ad format: Ask Me Anything (AMA) ads. As more brands tap into Reddit’s signature Q&A format — which lets subject-matter experts answer questions from Reddit users — advertisers can now promote AMA sessions directly from Reddit’s ad dashboard, and see the number of RVSPs for a particular AMA.

📸 Instagram testimonial ads are available now when linking a partner as a second entity within an ad. This option will allow you to feature a comment of up to 125 characters from the selected partner entity.

📺 Comcast used CES as a launching point for Universal Ads, a new self-service platform designed to make TV buying more approachable to all. (Tagline: “TV advertising, now as easy as social.”) Initial inventory partners include NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros Discovery, Fox, TelevisaUnivision, Roku and more—which makes it an interesting addition to the CTV self-serve ecosystem. But what makes it even more interesting is that Comcast plans “to support linear TV advertising in the future,” which would be a game-changer.

🐭 Disney will combine its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo and become majority owner of the resulting company in a deal that creates a major streaming player and settles all litigation between Fubo, Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over the Venu Sports streaming joint venture.

⚠️ Google Ads warning: When moving from non-conversion to conversion-based bidding, Google appears to automatically enable broad match on campaigns. This affects existing exact and phrase match keywords, converting them to broad match without user confirmation.

❓Who’s the youngest of them all? As we clutch our pearls and wait to see if we’re re-allocating all of our TikTok inventory next week, clients are rightfully wondering: What’s next? To which we always answer: Let’s look at the data. We just got a peek at Sensor Tower’s “State of Digital” report, which crunches the numbers on the first half of 2024. And when it comes to the social platforms seeing the most adoption among young users, the data confirms what we’ve seen in our qualitative research, which is: Snapchat is big with the kids. (Also not a shocker: Pinterest is popular with women.)

🐘The Elephant In the Room: Our weekly office poll!

Is Meta the new Twitter? That’s the question on the minds of marketers around the world, as Mark Zuckerberg announced a major platform shift for Facebook, Meta, and Threads. Claiming that Meta has been too zealous in its content moderation efforts, Zuck announced a sea-change in policies. Out: fact-checkers. In: user generated “community notes.” Out: guidelines that prevent hate speech. In: regulations that prevent insulting language, unless the victim is LGBTQ. 

Now that Zuck has removed the guard rails, brands are waiting to see whether Meta suffers a qualitative decline similar to what afflicted Twitter/X after Elon Musk took over. 

🥡 Our take: Meta isn’t Twitter—at least not yet—and in 2025 we expect two countervailing forces will be at work. 

• Meta is arguably more vulnerable to brand flight than Twitter was—if only because Musk didn’t need Twitter to succeed, and famously told advertisers to…well, you remember. Zuck is unlikely to be as flippant if, indeed, user experience plummets and brands flee—which could give users and brands more leverage in a battle for a modicum of civility, truth, and moderation. 

• However, Meta isn’t Twitter in another way: advertisers are now much more reliant on Facebook and Instagram ads to drive sales and growth—there’s no programmatic platform that can scale with the same efficiency. As AdWeek reported, brands feel “less powerful than they were a few years ago” during the 2020 boycott by 500 brands including Coca-Cola, Ford, and Starbucks. 

That’s why at some point this year, advertisers could be cue-ing up the Clash’s timeless anthem: “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”

Which leads us to this week’s poll question:

📊 Last edition’s poll results: Will TikTok be banned in the U.S. in 2025?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week to fill your inbox with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.

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