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Today's News
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Google’s Cooking New Ads for Shorts
As short-form video continues to thrive on YouTube, Google is coming after even more of your ad budget.
New ad formats
Yesterday, Google announced new ad formats for Shorts, including sticker ads and animated image ads.
The new Shorts sticker ads will display an image from a product feed that, when tapped, opens a carousel of products for viewers to explore.
Animated image ads, meanwhile, pull multiple product images from your feeds and animate them into one ad unit.
These options let brands tap into Shorts without creating their own video content, by pulling images directly from Google Merchant Center feeds.
More buying control
Google is also expanding format buying controls, letting brands run campaigns exclusively in the Shorts feed or only use horizontal creative.
These controls are already available for Video Reach Campaigns, with a pilot for Shorts-only buying in Demand Gen underway for select advertisers.
Creator partnerships
On the influencer marketing side of things, Google is testing a new “Creator Partnerships” tab to centralize your influencer and affiliate marketing efforts.
It's also launching a new video linking API to manage multiple requests at once, and will soon let creators tag partners in their brand videos.
On top of that, Google is expanding its audience-building tools for Shorts, soon adding view durations and working on third-party sales lift measurement for Shorts ads.
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How YouTube Comments Could Save Google Search
As Google pushes Shorts, it’s also working hard to reclaim its search dominance with a new YouTube feature: hyperlinked comments.
Search dominance at risk
Google Search made Alphabet $49.5 billion last quarter alone, but reports show that for the first time in more than a decade, Google’s market share is about to fall below 50%, thanks to competitors like ChatGPT and TikTok becoming go-to search engines for Gen Z.
Turning comments into clicks
To protect its search lead, Tubefilter reports that Google is now using YouTube’s hyperlinked comments to drive more traffic to its search engine.
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Ads Are Coming to Threads (Reportedly)
While other short-form posting platforms face waning advertiser trust, Threads might start luring advertisers to the platform in just a couple of months.
According to a report from The Information yesterday, Meta plans to launch ads on Threads and will let a small number of advertisers run campaigns starting as early as January.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri also confirmed earlier this year that the company is “definitely” planning to bring ads to Threads.
Revenue impact
While Meta reported nearly $40 billion in ad revenue last quarter, the company's CFO says Threads isn’t expected to become a “meaningful revenue driver” in 2025.
What will ads look like?
It's still not clear how ads will appear on Threads, but “sponsored” posts might be the route, according to a recent discovery by a reverse engineer.
Meta has not commented on its future plans.
LinkedIn Gets ‘Open to Volunteer’ Feature
LinkedIn is launching a new feature to connect users with volunteer opportunities.
The new “Open to Volunteer” option lets members add an informational tab to their profile indicating the causes they’re interested in supporting, while also helping charitable organizations find volunteers.
How it works
Users can opt in by selecting “Volunteer” from the “Open to” dropdown menu under their profile picture.
They can then specify supported causes, skills, and preferences, including location and whether they prefer in-person or virtual volunteering.
Once active, LinkedIn will display relevant volunteer opportunities in the feed and offer alerts for matching roles.
TikTok Expands Affiliate Marketing Program
TikTok is looking to make content on the app more shoppable, with a new feature called affiliate comment links.
Update to the TikTok link-in-post news:
It’s called an affiliate comment link and needs to be added before you upload your video
To check if you’re eligible:
Settings >
Content disclosure and ads >
More options >
Product link 👆🏻— Lia Haberman (@liahaberman)
3:46 PM • Nov 13, 2024
How it works
According to reports, some TikTok creators can now add affiliate links from select brands to their videos, which then appear at the top of the comment stream.
When clicked, these links direct viewers straight to the product pages.
This move is part of TikTok’s expanded affiliate program, designed to encourage creators to add direct shopping links during the upload process.
Currently, only links from selected partners, like Amazon, Expedia, Temu, and Target, can be included.
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