A TikTok ban is coming and LinkedIn expands its Thought Leader Ads

1/5 A full TikTok ban in the US is imminent?

The US House of Representatives has passed a landmark bill that would see TikTok banned in America. It would give the platform's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell its controlling stake or the app would be blocked in the US. While the bill passed overwhelmingly in a bipartisan vote, it still needs to clear the Senate and be signed by the president to become law. Biden has said as soon as the bill reaches his desk, he will sign it.

2/5 A tricky TikTok-life balance has stunted TikTok’s growth

TikTok's growth stalled in the final quarter of 2023 and even went into reverse in the US. Many young users have been using the platform since its launch in 2016, but these core users are now entering their 20s and getting busy with other obligations. After TikTok’s major success in dominating the social space through 2020 to the first half of 2022, the platform’s DAU growth has collapsed. In Q4 of 2023, TikTok had fallen behind Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. And with the impending TikTok ban looming, it’s very likely its DAU will continue to fall.

3/5 LinkedIn expands its Thought Leader Ads

LinkedIn is expanding its Thought Leader Ad capabilities so advertisers can now sponsor content from any member, not just employees, for any Page they manage. The expansion will allow brands to showcase voices beyond their employees, and give them a new way to reach their target audience with relevant information, such as customer testimonials.

4/5 TikTok launches Creator Search Insights

TikTok is rolling out a brand new analytics element that will provide creators with information as to what users are searching for on TikTok, so they can customise their own content in line with audience interests. With Creator Search Insights, creators can filter results by a general topic, including Sports or Science, to find more specific data insights. This tool will allow creators to perfect their content strategies—something that might be needed due to the dropping DAU.

5/5 Meta updates to Advantage+ and Shopping Ads

Meta has announced a few new updates retailers will want to know. The first is “Advantage+ creative optimizations”, which will automatically optimise video ads for viewing on Reels, or the mobile Facebook and Instagram apps with 9:16 ratio. The new process will also enable advertisers to dynamically create multiple variations of an ad, so the system then has more options to display to users, depending on what they respond best to. Meta is also updating its Advantage+ catalogue ads, with the added capacity to import and use branded videos or customer demonstration videos, instead of just static images.

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