The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 TIKTOK’S NEW VIDEO AD EDITOR

🤖 AI overlords, but for ads: TikTok’s Video Editor in Ads Manager has been updated and is now integrated with Symphony Creative Studio (its AI video generation tool), giving advertisers access to its digital avatar feature.

Brands can also access new features like narration with auto-captions, one-click translations with voiceovers, and AI-generated soundtracks, along with editing tools. more

• The avatars let you create videos with an AI character leading the clip. These avatars sync with your audio and can look like a real person presenting your content.

• The editor now includes 388 stock avatars, created by licensed actors, speaking more than 30 languages.

• It also includes a variety of templates based on trending TikTok formats.

• You can access the Video Editor through the 'Tools' tab in TikTok Ads Manager or within the ads creation flow under 'Create New.'

🥈 AMAZON’S TIKTOK FAIL: RIP INSPIRE

📱 The TikTok feed that wasn’t: Amazon pulled the plug on Inspire, its TikTok-style shopping feed launched in 2022, that never quite took off. more

• Users accessed the feed through a lightbulb icon in the app’s navigation tab, where they could scroll endlessly through product videos and images.

• Some content came from influencers earning commissions, while others were sourced from customer reviews.

🥉 SPOTIFY’S AD TARGETING MISSES THE BEAT

⏭️ Skip ad… forever?: Spotify is thriving... except for its ad business. Despite hitting its first annual profit in 2024, ad revenue growth slowed in the second half of the year, raising concerns. The Information has a great rundown about its future role in the competitive ad market. more

• In December, Spotify told several advertisers it struggled to find enough listeners to deliver ads during the busy holiday season.

• Advertisers say Spotify's ads don’t reach enough listeners, particularly small businesses seeking sales-driven campaigns.

• The platforms targeting tech lags behind competitors like Meta, making it harder to track ad performance.

• As Spotify leans into subscription growth, some question if its ad business is even necessary.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• The Trade Desk’s big AI push in advertising faced setbacks in Q4, despite a 22% revenue jump to $741 million. It marked the first time in eight years the firm missed internal revenue targets. Executives admitted that the rollout of Kokai, its AI ad offering, has been slower than expected, with plans to transition all clients to Kokai this year. more

• New research shows that TikTok ads drive higher incremental sales, according to a study from TransUnion and TikTok's partnership — so take that as you will. more

  • More than half of consumers who made a purchase after seeing TikTok ads were only exposed to TikTok, with little overlap from other channels.

  • The platform delivers 1.8X the share of conversions relative to its share of spend.

  • Advertisers report 1.4X more conversions with multi-touch attribution than with last-touch models.

Search & GMC 🔍

• Google’s John Mueller just crushed the dream of a shortcut for faster crawling. While you can speed it up for specific cases, he said there’s no way to get Google to crawl your site faster 24/7. more

  • To speed things up, he suggests focusing on high-quality, unique content, provide value, and ensure your site is technically fast and easy for Google to crawl.

• 📖 If you’re not page 1, you’re… nothing?: Google is testing removing the numbers from the pagination menu at the bottom of the search results page. Instead of displaying page numbers, there’s just a ">" button to click next. more

• Google Merchant Center is now testing experimental AI-generated summaries of your site’s performance in Search. These summaries highlight traffic growth, like increased clicks, and suggest improvements, like optimizing product titles. more

  • Note: the feature is still in testing, so accuracy may vary.

Social Media 📱

• 🗣️ Haters gonna hate... just lower in the feed: Instagram is testing a new dislike button on comments, letting users downvote remarks they don't like. There's no public count, but the platform says it may use this signal for comment ranking to push disliked comments lower in the feed. more

• 🤨 FrEe SpEeCh: X is blocking links to Signal. Users are currently unable to post links to Signal.me, which are used to securely send DMs. Attempts to post the links are met with error messages, with some flagged as spam, harmful, or malicious activity. more

  • Signal is a secure messaging app used by journalists for confidential communication, and recently, it's become a tool for federal whistleblowers to report DOGE activity to the press.

• 🚨 False alarm: Meta recently sent out an alert asking some Facebook Page managers to confirm their content isn't targeting kids under 13. Turns out, it was a bug. The company said it fixed the issue, noting it's testing notifications to enforce its Terms of Use, but these alerts were sent by mistake. more

• Threads is testing a feature that lets you hide the "Replies" tab from your profile, with the option to still access it privately through your settings. more

Product Updates 🆕 

• Microsoft Clarity has a new Conversion Map feature that lets you identify and edit areas on your page to understand their impact on purchases, helping you pinpoint sections that need improvement to drive more conversions. more

In Memoriam 🕊️ 

• Ari Weiss, a renowned ad industry veteran, has passed away at 46 after battling cancer. Known for his innovative creative work, he worked with top agencies and founded Quality Experience. He created award-winning campaigns for brands like Starburst, Twix, and McDonald's. more

  • One of his notable projects was the Skittles Super Bowl 2019 alternative — a one-night-only Broadway show starring Michael C. Hall.

WTF 😱 

• 🔪 “Fake crime” now going viral: YouTube has shut down a "true crime" channel for posting fake crime videos made entirely with AI. The channel, "True Crime Case Files," uploaded more than 150 videos using ChatGPT, AI images, and voiceovers but it was a fictional video about a "Husband's Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son" in Littleton, Colorado that got the channel axed after media caught wind. more

  • YouTube terminated the channel for violating multiple community guidelines, including child safety policies.

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