TikTok drops a 19-page playbook to help you make content for your small business, while Google does a 180° on their decisions to bin cookies. There is much much more to get into in this week’s edition of digital updates so strap in!

What’s new with Meta?

Facebook and Instagram are about to get even better for businesses! Meta has just rolled out a new tool that automatically finds any sales or discounts on your website and adds them to your ads. So, if you’ve got a special offer, Meta can find it and show it off to the right people. It’s like having a super smart sales assistant!

Key features:

• Find your deals: Meta’s new tool can automatically find and display offers from your website in your ads. Meta finds promotions your business offers on your site and showcases them to users they believe will respond to them.

Recommendations for Business Owners: This is great news for businesses! It’s a time-saver and could potentially boost sales by pairing your already existing ads with offers from your business.

Zuckerberg just dropped a mind-blowing new AI tool! You can now turn yourself into anything from a gladiator to a pop star. Yep, you read that right. Meta’s AI can create super realistic images of you in any scene or style you can imagine. It’s like having your own personal image magician!

Key features:

• “Imagine this”: In a video, Meta’s CEO demonstrated how users can create personalised images of themselves in various places, eras, or styles by simply uploading photos of themselves and asking the AI system to create anything that they can imagine.
• Is this real?: From what the video showed, the images gave an accurate visualisation of what the prompt asked and were surprisingly realistic, but were easily recognisable with an AI-generated quality.

It’s pretty amazing to see how far technology has come and how accessible AI is to us even in our own social media apps. It will be interesting to see if this feature is used very often by users and what regulations will be put in place to make sure Meta’s AI content is appropriate for their platforms.

👀 Tests Spotted on Meta

• Users have spotted Meta Ads’ “Learning Phase” requiring only 10 optimized events in three days instead of 50 events. This change aims to make the learning phase much quicker and seamless for your ads process.

Want some help running your Paid Ads? Enquire now and never worry Meta updates again.

What’s new with YouTube?

YouTube focuses on Short-Form Video

YouTube’s making it easier for you to make awesome content! They’ve added a bunch of new features to help you save and share audio from YouTube shorts. Creators have faced challenges saving music from Shorts, but YouTube is introducing features to streamline the process of using Shorts audio for broader engagement. This follows the recent trend of other social media apps simplifying the process of choosing what sounds to use for your videos.

Our tip / key features:

• “Save Music”: A new “Save Music” feature on the Shorts UI allows you to directly store audio clips in your chosen sounds folder.

Our take: Music has been a driving force behind TikTok’s success, and YouTube is clearly aiming to replicate that magic by increasing its focus on music. Earlier this year, they introduced music remix options for Shorts as a first step. If it means more engagement from our audiences, we’ll take it!

What’s new with TikTok?

TikTok Releases Marketing Guide for Small Businesses

TikTok has unveiled a comprehensive playbook designed to help small businesses maximize their platform presence. The 19-page guide covers a range of topics, including TikTok’s popularity, available ad tools, and creative video tips. While some of the advice may be familiar to seasoned TikTok users, the guide offers valuable insights and practical steps to optimize TikTok marketing efforts. It provides a structured approach to content planning and leverages TikTok’s advertising features effectively.

Tips:

• Attention: Engagement is TikTok’s superpower 82% of users have discovered small to medium businesses on the platform.
• Sales: TikTok Ads turn discovery into sales with 52% of users going on to purchase from their newly discovered business.
• Custom Audiences: TikTok advises businesses to use ad targeting to find users that have already engaged with your business or exclude certain audiences to reduce ad spending waste
• Secret Formula: In the guide, TikTok gives their scroll-stopping formula to get more engagement out of your content. They recommend the first 3-5 seconds of the video being a hook that draws audiences in with the next 10-20 seconds building trust and highlighting brand personality, and finally, the last 3-5 seconds closing your video with a call-to-action.

Our take: With TikTok being the centre of a lot of businesses’ attention, it is nice to see TikTok give back to small businesses and help them navigate the ever-changing landscape. This playbook seems to be a helpful resource for businesses looking to tap into TikTok’s audience and achieve their marketing goals.

Struggling to get results with TikTok? Enquire here and we’ll prepare a strategic content calendar, along with direction for filming, editing all of your TikTok’s, posting and community management. And we provide a monthly report so you can see exactly how it’s contributing to the bigger picture.

What’s new with Google?

Google’s Big U-Turn on Cookies!

After years of back-and-forth, Google has finally given up on phasing out cookies. Instead, they’re taking a new approach that focuses on giving users more control over their data. This means businesses can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now.

Our tip / key features:

• More Privacy for Users: Instead of completely phasing them out, they’re giving users more control over their data. This means businesses will still be able to use cookies, but they’ll need to be more transparent and respect user privacy.
• Businesses First: Google is working on new tools to help advertisers reach people without relying solely on cookies. They’re also asking for feedback from businesses and regulators to make sure this new approach works for everyone

Recommendations for Businesses: This news is a big deal for businesses that rely on advertising. While it’s a temporary change, it’s important to keep an eye on how Google’s new approach will impact data tracking and targeting in the future.

📔 Other noteworthy updates or tests:

• Reddit is testing a new ad format that allows marketers to collect user information directly within the platform through new Lead Gen Ads! These ads include a sign-up button that takes users to a pre-filled form for easy submission.
• LinkedIn is rolling out its AI-powered ad campaign tool “Accelerate”, globally. This tool automates the entire campaign creation process, from generating campaign ideas to optimizing performance.
• Instagram has shared a guide to help users maximize their live streams, covering planning, promotion, and engagement tips. The guide also details how live streams work and offers suggestions for using additional live stream features to enhance the experience.

With TikTok’s roadmap offering practical advice for businesses to boost their presence on the app it ensures they keep spending their money on the platform! So if you know how to implement the advice in your own businesses’ It sounds like a win-win to us! Feel free to sign up for our weekly summary here so you never miss the best updates. AND don’t forget, if you do miss out you can always go back to last weeks blog posts here.

XOXO

OMD SQUAD