Social Media

We asked agency experts: With TikTok under the microscope and a potential US ban looming, what are you advising brands do?

Team Whistle says TikTok’s programmatic ad offerings pale in comparison to YouTube’s more robust, Google-supported ad platform. But while YouTube Shorts’ new revenue share and creator funds can offer meaningful revenue, Team Whistle prefers the predictability of sponsored content.

El Pollo Loco began as a small restaurant chain in the 1970s, first in Mexico and later in Southern California. The brand only started leaning into digital ad channels in 2019, and today, it spends half its media budget on digital – a huge portion of which is reserved for TikTok. Last month, El Pollo Loco launched its latest campaign, “Abuela Approved” – its first TikTok-only campaign.

When customer experience software company Sprinklr went public in June of last year, it joined a veritable stampede of ad tech companies that hit the public market in 2021. And then … 2022 happened. The market might be tough right now, but Ragy Thomas, Sprinklr’s CEO, isn’t letting it shake him.

Seven months ago, TikTok surpassed one billion worldwide users, breaking into a club that previously consisted only of Google and Facebook apps. Since then, TikTok has been on a massive ad platform expansion campaign as it tries to both follow in the footsteps of apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and differentiate itself from the old guard of the billion-strong walled gardens.

Piano is tuning up its plan to become a bigger player in the social media sphere. On Thursday, Piano, which provides analytics and subscription services for publishers, announced its acquisition of social media revenue optimization platform SocialFlow.

Banner ads? More like background noise. Social display has become an attractive option for publishers trying to get around banner blindness, and there are now multiple startups on the market that help brands repurpose their social creative to run across the open web. Growth in the sector is catching the attention of investment firms. On […]

Snapchat is growing up. Well, its ad tech is, at any rate. The youthful makeup of Snapchat’s user base is still one of its biggest selling points for advertisers. But competing against Facebook, Google and even Twitter for direct response dollars requires a big investment. DR spending was up during the pandemic across most large […]

This time last year, Facebook CPMs were a bargain. Well, they’re back to where they were and then some. The cost of Facebook advertising is up overall by 30% compared with mid-March 2020, according to data from digital agency Aisle Rocket. Rain the Growth Agency, a DTC-focused performance shop, is seeing Facebook CPMs of between […]

TikTok offers fertile ground to build a media brand. Ten weeks after launching on TikTok, fashion-focused media brand Rag Report is posting twice a day and seeing its audience grow 200% each week.  The Wednesday I scheduled the interview, it had 170,000 followers. But by the time we spoke, the numbers were already out of […]