Is this the TikTok election?

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are as cool as the other side of the pillow:

↘️ META: $8.06 CPM | ➡️ TIKTOK: $4.06 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $8.57 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🎁 Meta’s holiday gifts to advertisers

• PMax (positively) accentuates the negative  🔎

• 📺 YouTube’s CTV revamp

But first…

🗳️ Will 2024 be the TikTok election?

The latest study from Pew Research on Social Media and News Consumption finds that 54% of Americans consume news on social media platforms. While this new figure reflects 8% growth year-over-year, that’s only a slight increase from 2020, the last election year. 

But that overall flatness obscures some interesting changes. For instance, the percentage of those who get their news from Facebook is down from 36% to 33%. Meanwhile, there’s significant growth in news consumers on YouTube (32%, up from 23%) and Instagram (20%, up from 11%). 

The most dramatic growth, however, is at TikTok: 17% of US adults report getting news from the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. To underscore how much TikTok is evolving as a news destination, more than half (52%) of all TikTok users now consume news from the app, as opposed to just 22% back in 2020. (Reminder, in case the campaign managers out there get any wild ideas: TikTok doesn’t accept political advertising.)

The Pew report also reflects the increasing fragmentation of social media along demographic lines:

• Women make up greater portions of regular news consumers on Nextdoor (64%), TikTok (62%), Facebook (60%), Snapchat (60%) and Instagram (59%).

• Men make up greater shares on Reddit (68%), X (64%), Rumble (60%), Truth Social (58%) and YouTube (57%).

• 48% of news consumers on WhatsApp are Hispanic – much higher than on any other site.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

📸 Instagram: Over the coming weeks, the Instagram accounts of users under 18 years of age will be automatically made private, the platform announced this week. Just one of several additional security measures coming to the platform, this added security feature will allow 16- and 17-year olds to manually opt out of this new default privacy. 

(The move comes on the heels of a new coalition — featuring more than 40 states’ attorneys general — that’s calling on Congress to put warning labels on social media platforms.)

Will IG’s security shift make a difference? The new measures come with several caveats: the first of which is that these new features will be applied to accounts that were created by users who self-identified as minors. Those of us with teenagers in the house — and those of us who’ve been teenagers in the house — realize this strategy may not be ironclad.

🎁 Meta just gifted advertisers with a slew of new targeting options ahead of the holiday season. Here’s a few we’re excited about:

• Reminder ads can now drive to in-app purchases, with increased notification options to “help increase demand for seasonal sales by informing people when deals will kick off and when they will end.”

• Advertisers now have the ability to reach people who live in, have recently visited, or are showing interest in a specific location.

• This fall, Meta is testing the ability to target people “most likely to shop in-store and highlight nearby locations so people can easily plan their next visit.” Here’s what that one looks like:

🎵 Meanwhile, Facebook has launched new music-related options for ad-boosting in Reels:

• Labels can boost reels that are made by creators and feature the labels’ licensed music, using Partnership ads (referred to as “Creator Boosting”). 

• Labels can also boost reels with licensed music uploaded to Label accounts (referred to as “Label Boosting”).

🎥 Netflix: As the streamer rolls out direct-buying capabilities more broadly, we're seeing Netflix CPM rates come in significantly lower when buying direct than we've seen in the past, for both video ads and QR-code-enabled pause ads. Keep in mind, Netflix can still only be bought direct with larger budgets (think six figures or more). Inventory is still available with no minimums through DSPs, but it will come with a steep CPM upcharge.

🔎 Google is finally adding the ability to add campaign-level negative keywords to Performance Max (PMax) by end of year. Why is this a big deal? Google’s AI-powered PMax delivers ease of use and machine-learning optimization—but at the expense of control. This feature, long requested by advertisers, is a move in the right direction 

• Another helpful PMax addition: Impression-share reporting for text and shopping ads should already be available in the Google Ads interface.

📺 YouTube is rolling out a major revamp of its connected TV app, designed to improve user experience with features like episode and season organization for creators in an attempt to make serial content more accessible on TV screens. Why now? YouTube is leaning into their dominance in the CTV space just as it is becoming top of mind for advertisers. According to the Nielsen Gauge, YouTube accounted for 10.6% of viewing on connected TV devices in August, compared to 7.9% for Netflix, and 3.1% for Prime Video (everyone else followed with <3%).

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

🤠 A few months after announcing that it would soon vamoose from its San Francisco headquarters, Twitter/X revealed — in a lawsuit, naturally — that for legal purposes, at least, its new home base is now in Bastrop, Texas. Which leads us to ask the obvious question:

📊 Last edition’s poll results: What’s your favorite secret Google project code name? 

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Project Banksy 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Project Poirot 

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Project Narnia 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Jedi Blue 

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Project Bernanke

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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