In Today's Issue

• Meta’s Advantage+ Now on All Campaign Types

• Meta Upgrades Its Fake-Product Detection System

• Instagram Now Lets You Turn Off Read Receipts

• PayPal Adds “Predictive Purchase” Receipts

• TikTok vs YouTube: Battle for a Generation

• Social Media Named an “Environmental Hazard”

Meta’s Advantage+ Now on All Campaign Types

Meta has expanded its Advantage+ targeting to all campaign objectives.

This came out of their latest version of the Marketing API; version 19 now.

Social Media Today has great coverage of this today:

The real question is — how much longer before everything is Advantage with no opt-out, regardless of campaign type?

Most media buyers say Meta’s machine learning does often get better results than their micromanaging did. But how will they feel when the only section they can change in the ad campaign setup is budget.

MORE:
Meta’s latest Marketing API update
Meta’s Advantage targeting process

Meta Upgrades Its Fake-Product Detection System

Meta is also using machine learning to get better at detecting forgeries, counterfeits, and other IP violations.

The company today announcing an update to its Brand Rights Protection Manager tool.

This tool can detect fakes in product catalogs, and they’ve also added a new Intellectual Property Reporting Center that will provide a central location for IP violation reports. This is similar to their Account Health dashboard, if you’re familiar with that.

The way the Protection Manager tool works is you upload photos of your products, and Meta’s system will then use those as a kind of digital fingerprint to compare against other products that people might be selling as knockoffs.

One big limitation with the previous version is that you were capped at 50 of these reference images. Now, that’s been upped to 200. This will certainly provide more accurate detection.

Meanwhile, this new Intellectual Property Reporting Center is described by the company like this:

And they’ve also added a new help section on their business site called Protecting Businesses that gathers a bunch of guides together if this is a space you focus on.

Instagram Now Lets You Turn Off Read Receipts

Of all the things in social media apps that I hate — and, I’m in the my 50s, so it’s a long list — is read statuses in messages.

I don’t want someone knowing I opened their DM. Maybe I want to spend a day thinking about a reply. Maybe I don’t ever want to reply. I don’t want people to know I saw it at all, and also while I’m at it: you kids get off my lawn!

Now, Instagram has taken the surprising but very welcome move of letting us turn read receipts off on DMs.

But there is a catch — you can’t make this the default for all your messages. Instead, you have to manually enable it with each message or group message thread.

That is, for some people. Apparently others do have access to a default toggle in the “Messages and Story Replies” settings, so check there, and if you don’t see a Read Receipts section there, then you’ll need to do it with each message until that account-wide setting rolls out to you.

From a marketing point of view, most brands probably either use desktop or a third-party platform like Sprout Social or Sprinklr to handle incoming Instagram messages — there’s no API support for Read Receipts, so people messaging your brand account won’t be able to see when you’ve read their message.

But if you are using the actual Instagram mobile app to do replies, this makes for a nice option.

PayPal Adds “Predictive Purchase” Receipts

A few interesting updates from Paypal this week.

First, the company is adding a new "CashPass" feature, offering personalized cash back deals. Customers can find tailored offers in the PayPal app, shop at participating brands, and earn rewards by checking out with PayPal. Initial partners include Best Buy, eBay, Priceline, Ticketmaster, Uber, Walmart, and McDonald’s. This feature, set to launch in March, lets customers combine these offers with other PayPal rewards.

They’re also adding something they call "Smart Receipts," which are predictive upsells, essentially. The receipts will show what products the customer would probably want to buy next from the same merchant.

Also, they’re adding "Fastlane," that’s one-click guest checkouts. This will let people save their information even as guests, so they can checkout faster. They do call it one-click checkout, though as some people pointed out on social media today, PayPal’s own help pages say:

PayPal is also revamping Venmo business profiles to include subscribe buttons, profile rankings, and some promotional options.

And finally, they’re working on an advanced offers platform for merchants. This will analyze transaction data to create customized offers for customers, with an opt-out option for data sharing.

TikTok vs YouTube: Battle for a Generation

Is YouTube losing the battle for younger eyeballs?

A new study by a parental control software company, and based on 400,000 families and schools worldwide, has some interesting findings.

First, a dramatic rise in TikTok's popularity among children aged 4 to 18. They spent an average of 112 minutes daily on the platform last year. This is a 60% increase in time spent on TikTok compared to YouTube, despite YouTube remaining the top streaming app for this age group.

TikTok was the most popular social media app among kids, followed closely by Facebook, and then X (formerly Twitter).

If you’re wondering why Snapchat isn’t there, it’s because for some reason they grouped that into the Messaging bucket, rather than the Social Media bucket. There, Snapchat took the top spot, averaging 74 minutes of use daily.

Streaming services saw a 27% overall increase in viewership by children, although specific platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu experienced a decline in watch time. YouTube Kids reached a record high of 96 minutes daily.

But the real surprise was the web site which 20% of children globally visited: ChatGPT. Despite being relatively new in 2023, OpenAI's website was the 18th most-visited site in that age group.

Social Media Named an “Environmental Hazard”

And finally, New York City yesterday said it has added a new environmental toxin to its list of dangerous substances. No, it’s not acid rain. It’s not asbestos. It’s social media.

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