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This Week's News: 2021/08/04

This Week's News: 2021/08/04
Hotspex Media Team

Facebook, Google and Amazon are having a banner year and it's causing ad prices to spike — here's exactly how much

TLDR
  • Amazon CPC prices: Up 20% between the first quarter and second quarter for all ad formats
  • Snapchat CPM prices: Up 64% year-over-year in July 2021
  • TikTok CPM prices: Up 92% year-over-year in July 2021
  • Facebook CPM prices: Up 89% year-over-year in July 2021.
  • YouTube CPMs soared 108% year over year in July
Brief

Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Snapchat's advertising businesses are soaring, and so is the cost of their ads. A few factors behind the price increases include:

  • Apple's ad-tracking changes cut back targeted advertising, making it more expensive for advertisers to pinpoint ads at audiences.
  • Advertisers are shifting money from TV to digital and seeking prominent ad placements.
  • Retailers have increased ad spending to keep up with the shift to e-commerce.

Below is a breakdown of ad prices by platform.

  1. Within Amazon, beauty and retail clients have seen particularly high CPM spikes in Amazon's programmatic inventory, with average prices for those clients rising from $3.60 in February to $8.60 in May and June and topping the agency's average programmatic CPM of $4.60.
  2. Facebook reported that the average price per ad increased 47 percent year-over-year in the second quarter and warned investors that ad prices are likely to continue to climb in the second half of the year. On a sequential basis, ad prices increased 30% from the first and second quarters, with an average CPM of $11.
  3. YouTube has become a bigger moneymaker for Google as advertisers shift linear TV money to streaming, making $7 billion in second-quarter revenue (up 84% year-over-year).
  4. Snapchat said in second-quarter earnings that Apple's tracking change didn't impact ad revenue as much as expected, but warned it might dip during the second half of the year. Snap's revenue rose to $982 million during the quarter, up 116% year-over-year.
  5. TikTok's ad price increases suggest it's starting to attract mainstream advertisers in addition to Gen Z advertisers.

How TikTok’s monetization and product features changed in Q2 2021

TLDR
  • In the top 10 growth markets, TikTok's monthly user growth rate will be above 30%
Brief

Recently extending their video length to 3 minutes, TikTok has become a force to reckon with among the more established social platforms. Monthly TikTok users in each of the 23 forecasted countries will have double-digit growth in 2021. In the top 10 growth markets, the monthly user growth rate will be above 30%. 

As TikTok has been ramping up its advertising portfolio, they will charge $1.4 million for a homepage takeover in the US during Q3, and that figure will rise during Q4, especially during the holiday period. Getting creators’ input can help brands create content that resonates with the TikTok audience and to help, IPG Mediabrands launched a new TikTok studio that will match TikTok creators with clients to provide feedback and guidance on campaign strategies.


Twitter’s Shop Module pilot adds a product carousel to profiles

TLDR
  • Shop Modules are rolling out on Twitter with a handful of brands in the U.S., and only domestic English-language users on iOS can currently see it.
Brief

Twitter has launched Shop Modules, a dedicated section at the top of profiles where brands can showcase their products. If the pilot is successful, Shop Modules may become widely available, providing brands with a new way to help audiences discover their products. This new feature may be especially useful for B2C or D2C brands whose target audiences are particularly active on Twitter.   

  • The Shop Module is a carousel of products. Tapping on a product takes the user to the associated product detail page (in an in-app browser, so they aren’t leaving Twitter), where they can learn more and/or complete the purchase.
  • The Shop Module pilot is currently not open for businesses to sign-up.
  • Twitter is creating a "Merchant Advisory Board" that will consist of “best-in-class examples of merchants on Twitter” to address the needs of businesses of various sizes and across verticals in its own product innovation.

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