Wednesday Morning, Issue 23 (6/14/24)

Reddit taps Sprinklr as API ad and data partner, Instagram tests intrusive ad formats (yay), YouTube shares thematic findings from analyzing +8k top ads.

??? JUST THE HEADLINES:

Instagram is testing a new video ad format stops users from scrolling in the main feed until they’ve viewed a video ad and Story text overlays that show up on your friends’ story content and drive off-platform. Both of these new formats are a bit intrusive and user response to the non-skippable video format has been overwhelmingly negative, so as an advertiser I’m not really itching to get into this new inventory.

LinkedIn announced a new video ad program called The Wire that give brands the opportunity to buy pre-roll placement in a select set of publishers’ video content, which currently includes Barron’s, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, LinkedIn News, MarketWatch, NBCUniversal, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and more.

Reddit chooses Sprinklr as Data and Ads API Partner , giving Sprinklr customers the ability to manage their Reddit ad campaigns in the Sprinklr dashboard, but I find the access to Reddit data to be the most exciting piece of this partnership. Per Reddit, the data integration will give Sprinklr customers “direct access to near real-time public conversations on Reddit. This social listening partnership will show relevant Reddit posts and comments in Sprinklr’s interactive customer dashboard.” I have big tool envy at the moment.

Pinterest teases Pinterest Ad Labs, a program that will allow brands to generate backgrounds for products that are based on users’ shopping preferences and leverage Pinterest’s Collages feature—which uses AI to cut out images and compile them into a mood board, that’s then used as an ad format. They also recently shared results from a new study that emphasize the importance of gaining both passive and active attention from consumers .

YouTube analyzed 8,000 top YouTube ads and here were their findings (tl;dr of key themes found in these ads below):

1. Celebrate self-expression
2. Depict community
3. Embrace magic and fantasy
4. Partner with creators

Search vs. Social: According to a new study by Forbes Advisor:

• 24% of people say they only use or primarily use social media to search online
• Gen Z uses Google 25% less than Gen X when searching online
• 24% of people say they find new brands on social media daily

AdAge interviewed Gary V. about his new book and this line was a great 2024 ad planning in a sentence summary: Creative is the variable of success—media isn’t hard to understand.

???? IN THE WEEDS:

Advertisers running LinkedIn campaigns targeting users in EU countries can no longer use Group targeting , as part of the platform’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act.

LinkedIn is reducing in-feed visibility for posts that link off-platform by making the image preview much smaller. If you want to have a larger preview, you’ll need to spend to boost the post.

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If you’re curious about how TikTok search ads work, this explainer is for you.

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