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Is this ByteDance’s backup plan for a TikTok ban?

Plus: The new TikTok/Spotify mash-up you didn’t know you needed

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are downshifting:

↘️ META: $8.41 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $3.83 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $8.75 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

  • 🚀 Instagram stickers just got a boost 

  • Here’s how to share your Spotify songs to TikTok 🎶

  • 🔎 Google cracks down on Customer Match

But first…

🍋 Just in case, there’s still Lemon8

🕺ByteDance announced that users can now access its photo-sharing app Lemon8 with their TikTok credentials — ostensibly to make photo sharing easier, by giving creators the ability to cross-share photo content between the two apps. 

That’s certainly not the only benefit, though. Lemon8, which is similar to Instagram and Pinterest, lets users share slideshows, photo collections, and browse content through “Following” and “For You” feeds. The app launched in the US last year, as a potential alternative to TikTok, seemingly in response to increased support for a TikTok ban — which then came to pass. 

Whether the U.S. will follow through with its TikTok ban is still an open question after the 2024 presidential election. But allowing Lemon8 users to login with TikTok follows a playbook similar to Meta’s decision to launch Threads by allowing users to login with their Instagram accounts — an efficient way to streamline the growth of your user base. Just in case.

🚀 Instagram just got boosted. Gone are the days when content featuring GIFs were exempt from paid boosting—now, IG has made more kinds of content boostable. Most GIFs and stickers are now boost-eligible. And for posts with copyrighted music, you can have the audio for the boost swapped to a sound with commercial clearance when the post serves as an ad. 

👎 Meanwhile, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has debunked the common myth that Instagram deliberately downranks posts tagged as “sponsored content” in order to force brands to pay for reach. That’s not to say that spon-con posts don’t struggle with organic engagement. Mosseri is just saying that if they struggle, the algorithm isn’t to blame. One theory for lower reach on sponsored posts is simply that when users see the “Sponsored” tag on a post, some just scroll on by—reducing engagement, and ultimately reach.

🎶 TikTok already allows you to save songs from TikTok to your Spotify account — and now music is coming back the other way. The platform just launched a “Share To TikTok” feature for Apple Music and Spotify that allows users to easily post about music using green screen or photo mode, or DM their friends content via TikTok messages. Like this:

🔥Hot Tip: When creating a new Website Conversion campaign on TikTok, Smart+ will be toggled ON by default. You can set the toggle OFF manually. 

  • Keep in mind that according to TikTok, advertisers see better success 71% of the time when using Smart+ Web Campaigns over their business-as-usual manual setup, and see a 53% increase on ROAS when they optimize for value.

Coming Soon: TikTok Smart+ campaigns will support Spark and dark ads in the same campaign by the end of Q4.

📺 CTV Pro Tip: You can use Amazon DSP to serve Connected TV ads to Amazon audiences across non-Amazon inventory, including Hulu, Max, Peacock, and more — with Netflix coming in 2025. 

While you’re likely to see a higher CPM than when booking directly with those streaming services—in line with other programmatic partners—this approach gives you access to Amazon’s powerful targeting, measurement, and allows you to consolidate down to one pixel, all with no budget minimums.

📽️ One place you won’t be able to place CTV ads through Amazon DSP: Amazon’s ad-supported streaming channel Freevee, which is being shut down over the next few weeks and rolled into Amazon’s Prime Video brand.

🔎 Google is cracking down on Customer Match violations beginning on January 13, 2025. Google warns that misuse of Customer Match — a Google Ads tool that allows advertisers to target their customers and other similar customers — could lead to immediate account suspension without warning. Misuse could include:

  • Consent violations, such as using email addresses without explicit user permission

  • Creative compliance, such as personalized messaging that appears to single out specific users.

♾️ Meta’s Conversion Value Rules—which Meta teased back in August—are now available to allowlisted advertising partners. 

🧠 Reminder: These rules let us prioritize certain audience segments that we value more, by letting us choose to bid more to target higher-value customers within the same campaign. (These were previously only accessible via API.) They can only can be used with age, gender, geo-location, and platform type.

💡 According to eMarketer: “Most industries we track now favor digital advertising over traditional channels. Technology and electronics have almost abandoned traditional media, allocating just 12.9% of ad spending to channels like print, radio, TV, and OOH. Retail shows a similar trend, with less than one-fifth (17.1%) of its ad budget going to traditional formats.”

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

🎁 We’re two weeks out from Black Friday. Choose your fighter:

Which social platform do you think will have the most significant impact on holiday shopping campaigns this year?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

📊 Last edition’s poll results: What’s the greatest Super Bowl ad of all time? 

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Mean Joe Greene trades his jersey for a Coke 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Ridley Scott’s 1984 ad for Apple 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Budweiser, “Wasssup!” 

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ The E*Trade talking baby 

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ The Mountain Dew "Puppy Monkey Baby" ad

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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