Fear and Surprise and Ruthless Counterfeiting Efficiency

Shein Sues Temu, YouTube Takes on TikTok, and the Google Bug That's (Mostly) Fixed

YouTube Expands Shopify Deal to Take On TikTok

YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify, giving creators access to thousands of new brands to tag in their shopping videos. This marks a significant increase from the few hundred brands they currently have access to.

All eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the U.S. can now sign up for the YouTube Shopping affiliate program.

Taking on TikTok Shop

This expanded partnership is really a shot over the bow at TikTok, which is trying to grow its TikTok Shop U.S. business to $17.5 billion this year. That platform expects to have 500,000 U.S. merchants on its Shop by the end of this year.

New Chrome extension

YouTube is also launching a new Chrome extension that will let U.S. creators in the affiliate program save products while browsing a brand or retailer's site. This should make it easier to tag them in videos later.

E-commerce efforts ramping up

This expansion of the affiliate program comes as YouTube has increased its e-commerce efforts in recent years to bring in more revenue amid a slowdown in digital advertising.

In 2023, people watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, with a 25% increase in watch time for videos that help people shop.

Google Wrapping Up Fixing Weekend Search Bug

Google says it’s mostly fixed the widespread bug in search ranking that started late last week.

Friday morning, Google reported on its status page that the issue was “affecting a large number of search results.”

Not completely fixed

SE Roundtable reports today that it’s not completely fixed on the back-end, but the front-facing errors in results has been patched, so the visible effect is no longer there.

Yesterday, Google search analyst John Mueller posted on LinkedIn saying:

Was the core rotten?

The bug came apparently from the August core update, which rolled out the day prior to all this happening.

Google used to give us a lot more detail about what these core updates updated. This time, we got a fairly vague description from Mueller:

It wasn’t clear exactly how the bug impacted listings, but it’s worth going in and checking to see where your brand sits in a day or two.

Update to misplaced ads

And an update on the baffling bug we reported on a couple of weeks back that saw advertisers running ads for other brands from Merchant Centre — sometimes competitors of theirs.

Some affected marketers are posting screenshots of emails they’ve received from Google. For those who had their ads dropped into other accounts, Google says it’s asked the managers of those accounts really, really nicely to please delete that stuff.

Which, you know, I’m sure they did.

Amazon Ads Growing — Here’s Why

Amazon is leaning more and more on advertising to boost profits.

New numbers show Amazon's advertising revenue grew 20% YoY in the last quarter, nearly matching last year's growth rate.

Large, intent-driven base

Amazon's vast user base and strong customer intent data allow it to offer highly targeted advertising.

Emarketer has a good breakdown of this space today.

Robust measurement

Closed-loop measurement and real-time feedback about what is and isn't working is also driving advertiser demand, said Goldman.

New ad inventory expands reach

Plus, Amazon’s been continually expanding ad placements — like new spots on Prime Video. That has significant potential, and it feeds its own data ecosystem. Information from engagement on Prime Video ads gets added to customer records. This, of course, helps the retail media side of the business.

Amazon continues to invest heavily in content rights, like its $1.8 billion annual NBA deal starting in 2025-26.

Instagram Tests New Profile Grid

In another sign that the social world is going vertical, Instagram is testing a new vertical grid display on user profiles. Currently, profiles have both a traditional square-shaped thumbnail image for feed posts, and a separate tab for Reels thumbnails.

This is a sort of hybrid, where the thumbnails are taller (though not quite 16:9) and all in a single tab.

The new format, of course, better aligns with Reels in formatting. It essentially translates the Reels grid to the main feed.

Coming to all users

Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri explained in a recent Q&A that this update, or a variation of it, is likely coming to all users soon.

He said the vast majority of content uploaded to Instagram today is vertical, either 4:3 photos or 9:16 videos. Cropping these to squares is “pretty brutal,” he said.

Impact on brands

This could change your brand’s content strategy, if you’re one of those which meticulously plans the layout of that Instagram profile grid. This is something that isn’t as popular to do as it once was, but several third-party tools like Buffer and Sprout Social both have profile grid preview tools for those who really want to do this.

To Hashtag or Not to Hashtag

Here’s another reason to consider dropping hashtags from your brand’s organic social media posts.

LinkedIn has introduced semantic matching to its search system, letting it understand content beyond just keyword hashtags. This, LinkedIn says, will let it provide more relevant search results, even if posts don't contain all the query keywords.

Dwell time up 10%+

LinkedIn measures the success of its search engine on both topic matching and dwell time — in other words, how much time people spend reading content that surfaces from a search. The platform says this new system has led to a significant boost in overall discovery, with on-topic rate and long-dwells increasing by more than 10%.

Hashtags less essential

This is part of an industry-wide trend — platforms from LinkedIn to Facebook to Instagram have relied less on hashtags for discovery, and more on understanding the content using machine learning.

That’s probably a good thing for most people, but hashtags certainly have a place for helping link more obscure content together — think of a conference hashtag or those which link content with only videos.

There is, of course, a rebound effect — some networks, like Mastodon and Bluesky — both still use hashtags extensively, as neither has a single algorithm making the decisions on what content surfaces.

What should marketers do?

If you’re running out of space in the post on a major platform, it’s probably fine to drop the hashtags. No platforms have said they penalize posts for having them, so if you want to include one or two, that’s probably just fine. Just try to use hashtags that don’t repeat words from the main post.

X Sees Decline in EU Users

Elon Musk’s X continues to see a drop in users.

While the company, which is now private, no longer shares the volume of data it did when it was public, is still has reporting requirements in some regions — notably, the EU.

X’s latest report, provided to comply with the EU Digital Services Act, shows a 5% decline in European users in the first half of 2024.

Logged in users up

Despite this, X has seen a 10% increase in logged in users versus non-logged-in guests since last year. Some people believe this is likely due to X restricting the amount of posts non-users can see.

Trends suggest slow decline

The EU data reflects similar trends seen in other reports, suggesting X is experiencing a slow decline in interest rather than a massive shift. SimilarWeb data shows UK X usage steadily declining over time, while usage on Threads — that’s Meta’s new competitor to X — is slowly rising.

Musk's approach may be a factor

The overall trends could indicate that Musk's “free speech” approach isn't resonating with users, or more likely, that his own political commentary is turning people off from the app.

The platform has not added any daily active users since November 2022.

X Ads Appear Next to Harmful Content: Report

Another possibility of X’s slow decline is the perception the ad industry has of it being an unsafe place for brands.

And a new report from The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) backs that up.

The report found that X displayed ads from major brands alongside misinformation related to the recent U.K. race riots. Some of those brands included GlaxoSmithKline, the British Medical Association, and the International Olympics Committee.

Millions of views for controversial accounts

According to the group, five key U.K. accounts pushing lies and hate amassed 260 million views in the week following the Southport attack on July 29. X presented ads for well-known brands near their content.

The CCDH also notes that many of the more incendiary profiles posting about the riots are part of X's Creator Ad Revenue Share Program, meaning X is effectively paying these users to post controversial remarks.

Musk amplifying controversial figures

X’s owner Elon Musk is himself amplifying comments from controversial spokespeople, including a post just yesterday by Tommy Robinson, whose anti-Islamic sentiments are believed to have played a significant role in sparking the recent riots.

Advertisers scaling back on X

This new report likely won't help boost X's standing with advertisers, many of whom are already scaling back or halting their X spend due to concerns over their ads appearing next to harmful content.

Shein Sues Temu for Counterfeiting

Pot, meet kettle.

In a civil complaint filed this morning in the U.S., the Chinese fast fashion giant Shein accused its rival Temu of copying its products and selling counterfeits.

Shein claims Temu masquerades as a legitimate marketplace while controlling every aspect of its sellers' activity.

The lawsuit alleges that Temu reproduces virtually identical copyrighted images of Shein products and uses them as promotional images on its website and mobile app. Shein also says Temu is impersonating their company on social media.

Shein itself, of course, has long faced accusations of design theft from major fashion brands and independent artists.

History of sparring in court

The two retailers have a long history of legal battles. Last year, Temu sued Shein, alleging “mafia-style intimidation” of manufacturers. Shein has also accused Temu of contracting influencers to make false statements against it.

Shein is requesting a trial by jury in this case.

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