Only 2% Of Teens Like Facebook, Tiktok Has Grown Up, and Want Your Content to Have 6x the Impact?

In a world full of constantly changing technology and information, this monthly newsletter keeps marketers up-to-date on the latest trends that will impact their business. I hope you enjoy it!

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Holiday spending is up this year, which is not surprising, but according to a recent report by?PwC, consumers plan to spend on average $442 on themselves this holiday season which is up 48% from 2020.??We saw an increase in self-gifting in 2020, but this is an even more significant jump. Analysts believe it's because consumer savings have?continued to rise?as people have put off making major purchases and have put important life changes on hold. For marketers, this is just a gentle reminder not to forget about the self-gifter as there is still some time to change messaging to capture those looking to indulge a bit this holiday season.??

Walmart?recently announced it will be doing away with its layaway program in favor of Affirm's buy now pay later program.???Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services have increased in usage significantly over recent years and are forcing Walmart to notice.??A recent report by eMarketer?says that more than 45 million people ages 14 and older in the U.S. will use BNPL services this year, up 81% over 2020, and the age range of BNPL users will widen over the coming years favoring GenZ. By the end of 2022, 44% of Gen Z digital buyers ages 14 and older will have used BNPL services at least once that year, compared with only 37% of millennial digital buyers. Walmart hopes this impacts its eCommerce ambitions as they continue to chase after Amazon. Adoption by Walmart is also a win for BNPL services overall. One of the main issues they have is barriers to adoption, especially among older consumers. Partnering with such a mass retailer like Walmart will expose a larger group of consumers to BNPL and increase the adoption of BNPL.??Affirm, the company that partners with both Walmart and Amazon, is starting to reap the benefits of its more significant partnerships. They just posted their Q4 fiscal numbers, with revenues increasing by 71% YoY and active merchants up 412% YoY.??

As the industry faces supply chain issues, Amazon attempts to spur holiday shopping to start earlier by launching Black Friday-worthy deals across most categories.?Amazon knows it can get a first-mover advantage by pushing the holiday shopping message before most brands. For brands, this means if you did not listen to all of the advice on starting your holiday planning early, you might be a bit behind the game as Amazon is already capturing holiday shoppers. Don't stress - all is not lost, but remember, people are shopping for the holidays early, so ensure your website is set up to capture that holiday demand today. Also, with supply chain issues, we expect to see a significant uptick in gift cards and downloads of digital products, so if your brand can take advantage of that, I suggest you do.??

Amazon also?launched?a new feature in its app that allows Prime members to send gifts to friends and family without their address.??Amazon is great at two things fast delivery and ease and convenience, and this is a great idea that falls into the ease and convenience bucket. Amazon knows that removing this barrier can capture more market share by removing one hurdle consumers often face when gift-giving. Once again, Amazon is trying to find new and unique ways to ensure consumers buy from Amazon.

While Amazon has been making many moves to make their customers' lives easier, they have not done so for merchants. Sellers know that reviews are the lifeblood of generating sales on Amazon, but Amazon took away the ability for merchants to respond to consumers last year. However, now it seems they are slowly changing their tune.??They just announced a new?"Contact Customer"?tool that lets sellers message consumers who have left a negative product review.??This tool won't necessarily remove the review, but it could help with buyer satisfaction after a bad experience. While this is something most sellers still wish they could respond directly to consumers and address their issues head-on. However, as with everything on Amazon, we will take what we can get.??

Everyone is trying to get a more significant piece of the holiday marketing pie. For Amazon, that means starting Black Friday-worthy deals in October, and for?Facebook, that means leaning into live shopping.??This November and December, Facebook is expanding its social shopping presence with plans to have over a month of live stream shopping events starting on November 1st. The daily live shopping events, which will run until December 21st, are Facebook's attempt to impact live shopping and push the category forward. Facebook is betting that live shopping will be the next difference-maker for the platform and offers people discounts if they refer friends or make their first purchase. They are right to keep exploring their live shopping ambitions - according to?eMarketer; social commerce is forecasted to generate $37 billion in the U.S. in 2021, up 35% from last year. Despite the impressive growth of social commerce, it is still relatively unused by most Americans. However, with Facebook (very used by most Americans) continuing to push this trend, it may help the live stream shopping industry move forward. While live shopping still seems out of grasp for the average brand the way it's been growing, it makes sense to put in your consideration set moving forward.??

Despite Facebook's innovation and attention to live shopping, they still have an adoption problem with GenZ (one of the biggest adopters of social commerce). Piper Sandler's recent report?"Taking Stock With Teens"?reported that Snapchat is the service teens favor most, followed by TikTok and Instagram.??While those were the three favorites, only 2% of teens said Twitter and Facebook were the most preferred. Facebook has had a GenZ problem for a while now, and luckily for them, Instagram is still widely used by the younger demographic. However, both Snapchat and TikTok are real threats to Instagram. All markers are interested in Gen Z in some way, shape, or form. As TikTok and Snapchat continue to gain ground on Instagram (and Facebook as a whole), marketers need to expand to channels to reach this audience, even if it makes their lives slightly harder than only using Facebook and Instagram.??

With the massive impact of iOS14, it makes sense that Facebook is leaning into other categories such as live stream shopping. Facebook recently provided an?update?on how Apple's privacy changes have impacted their ad business and disclosed that it is underreporting iOS web conversions by around 15%.??While Facebook said it's improving its conversing modeling to address measurement gaps, marketers have seen dips in performance and are unsure where to turn next. Despite the reduction in attributable conversions, the fact is that the platform has the same level of effectiveness it always had. Still, markers have become so reliant on immediate results that they may be pulling budget from a platform that is just as effective (just not as trackable) as it's always been. For everyone, this needs to be a wake-up call that attributable conversions are not the only measure of success - if that is how you make decisions, you need to start rethinking it. iOS14 is only the beginning of what is soon to be a very different digital marketing world, so all markers need to begin seriously considering other KPIs to grow. In addition to the gap in measurement, increased ad prices are also at the heart of advertisers' beef with Facebook. Attribution aside, increased cost immediately hurts advertiser ROI. Facebook says they plan to combat that with more ad inventory available through Instagram Reels and Shop; however, that will only slightly alleviate the problem.

Twitter, the other social platform that teens seem not to care about, recently released some new ad features and revamped the algorithm that decides which ads users see as part of an effort to grow its performance advertising business and possible eCommerce ambitions.??Twitter has always struggled with its ad product and has had less than stellar success growing revenue through advertising. Now they are trying to tackle the challenges head-on. Some of the notable changes to their ad product include promoting downloads for apps that allow users to download without leaving Twitter. Slide-show ads that feature multiple products can now send users to different websites when they click the advertisement vs. just one static destination. In addition to the new ad features, they have changed their algorithm to better gauge user interest and get more customers to engage with the ads. Twitter claims that these changes have seen very positive results, but only time will tell if they work and if these small pivots can bring more ad budget their way. I'm happy they are making some of these changes as I'd love nothing more than for Twitter to be a part of every media plan, but I have a feeling it's going to take more than this to make a real impact on their ad business.?

TikTok has officially reached 1 billion monthly active users.??While the number is now official, most digital analysts were predicting this, with eMarketer forecasting that by the end of 2021, they will hit 1.2 billion. While TikTok does have a massive number of daily active users (DAU's), its ad product remains an issue. Most marketers have not found an easy and quick solution for advertising in any scalable way. While job listings at TikTok make it clear they are continuing to build out their monetization platform, it can't come soon enough. Despite its lack of sophisticated advertising, new research conducted by??Disco, found that TikTok ads are stickier than the average social platform and are more likely to generate an action. Perhaps it's because TikTok's more native environment lets consumers interact with brands less interruptive way. However, most brands still struggle to create assets or influencer programs that feel authentic and engage the TikTok audience. Some marketers have also not engaged with TikTok significantly because TikTok is perceived to have a GenZ only user base. However, Disqo found that 50% of respondents, 35-54, use it daily and that affluent TikTok users are just as likely to spend much time with it. TikTok is a powerhouse and should not be pigeonholed for GenZ media plans only. They have the attention of many consumers, and, on Android, TikTok users are now spending more time watching content than YouTube users are, according to a new report by?AppAnnie. There is no doubt that TikTok is influential, but it needs a very different approach than your Facebook or Instagram campaigns with unique creative, strategy, and KPI's.??

With increased advertiser competition, every brand is looking for a competitive advantage and a way to stand out. That's why a recent report?from Stackla?is so interesting to me. It revealed that 83% of people want more authentic shopping experiences.????Not shocking, but when you dig into precisely what they want to see, it's somewhat easy and more cost-effective to execute. What people seem to want is more UGC. According to the report, only 19% of consumers find brand-created content authentic. Most respondents said that user-generated content (UGC) resonates as authentic, with almost 80% saying UGC impacts their purchasing decisions, making it 6.6x more influential than branded content. While this was the path we were headed down, the COVID-19 pandemic only intensified this sentiment, with 56% of consumers saying they're more influenced by social media images and videos when online shopping now than before the pandemic. The ability to show how something fits or looks on a similar body type or skin tone is not replaceable with brand assets. Consumers see UGC as an authentic data source on products that will sway their decision to purchase more than any photoshopped brand assets. So despite brands spending a significant chunk of their budget on beautiful product photography, people want real customer photos more. Of those surveyed, 72% of consumers said that real customer photos and videos are the content they want to see on eCommerce sites, and 80% said they would be more likely to purchase a product if its website had photos and videos from real customers. Over 60% of Gen Z and Millenial shoppers said they had left an eCommerce site because they didn't have customer photos or reviews. During the height of the pandemic, when we had no choice but to rely on UGC, we learned that consumers liked it. They engaged with it more frequently than our brand images because of the authenticity that UGC gave a brand. Now that we are back to normal let's not forget how important it is to supplement your brand images with consumer content.??

Roku is also hoping to make some inroads into eCommerce to capture holiday ad dollars. They are?launching?a new app that will allow Shopify merchants to build, buy, and measure streaming TV campaigns on Roku.??All Shopify merchants have to do is add the Roku app from the Shopify App Store. They can then essentially launch a CTV campaign right from the app. The plan is to have it available in the next few weeks in hopes that Roku can capture some incremental holiday dollars. Shopify integration is a smart move by Roku - while CTV is growing in its adoption by consumers and advertisers, it is still relatively complex to plan and execute. Making this easy for Shopify merchants can open up CTV to an entirely new class of advertisers allowing smaller eCommerce brands to plan and execute CTV buys without the traditional cost constraints. These advertisers are excited to expand their reach into CTV to continue to connect with consumers where they are. Digital video viewership will reach 3 billion people worldwide in 2020, and by the end of 2021, that number will hit 3.26 billion. According to?eMarketer, among the over 3 billion digital video viewers, three out of four internet users now watch streaming or downloaded video at least once per month in some capacity. Subscription OTT video service user growth, in particular, saw a spike in 2020, exceeding 1.5 billion users. While this is not a new trend, it showcases how important video and CTV are in the marketing funnel.??

And finally, USPS, FedEx, and UPS have?released?recommended ship-by dates for gifts to be delivered by December 25th. Good luck, everyone!??

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Megan Conahan is a 16-year veteran of the digital marketing industry. Over the last 16 years, she’s consulted with fortune 1000 brands on how to best negotiate the ever-changing digital marketplace demands and create unique solutions to set them apart. Megan is an EVP at Direct Agents, an independent and minority-owned digital marketing agency.??