The Tears of Kate Bush 😢

Meta Ad Changes. And Bugs. Because Of Course.

A couple of things seem to have changed in Meta's ad platform this week — in particular, a new metric visible in the Ads Manager called Campaign Strength. This appears to be a measure of how in line your campaigns are with Meta's machine-learning based Recommendations.

Here's part of the help text under that field:

This is, of course, what all the platforms have been transitioning toward — AI picking and choosing so-called Recommendations that it thinks would increase performance in your campaigns. I think I can speak for the entire digital media buying industry when I say that most of these recommendations range from being so generic as to not be useful, to being actually harmful to performance.

Also, while we're on the subject of frustration, there seems to be a pretty widespread bug in the Meta ad platform, leaving many unable to use the Inspect tool on their ad sets. All the other panels like Edit, History, and Charts work fine — but clicking Inspect actually displays a photo of Mark Zuckerberg with his middle finger in the air... oh I'm sorry, I read that wrong, "clicking Inspect actually displays a completely blank page."

So if that's happening to you too, it doesn't seem to be from your end.

AppleVerse ETA 

Image: The Information

Will Apple completely destroy Zuck's iPhone moment? 

We recently reported that Meta is delaying the launch of its upcoming VR glasses, originally planned for 2024. Now, Apple's VR headset "will likely" be announced as soon as this January, according to an Apple analyst. 

The latest release date estimate was shared in a new report examining the VR industry, 9 to 5 Mac reports.

The report also examined how Meta will be affected by Apple's VR headset competition in the months ahead. It's expected that while Apple's headset will be "a game-changer for the industry", its biggest competitor Meta will take a step back. The analyst anticipates Meta will cut back its near-term investment in VR hardware to focus on its primary business model, advertising. 

Finally, the analyst predicts Apple's competitors will imitate its mixed reality headset design, driving the entire industry forward. 

If any of the analyst’s “game-changing” predictions hold true, you might want to really start considering your brand’s position in the VR space. 

Walmart's AR Shopping Tools

While the biggest tech company in the world prepares for VR, the biggest retailer in the world is investing more in AR. 

Walmart announced yesterday that it will release two new augmented reality shopping tools for the company's app. 

1. The first feature, called "view in your space" is an online app tool that lets shoppers view furniture and decor in their homes. 

Similar to other retailers using this technology, customers can view AR-enabled items in real life by clicking the "view in your space banner," and the tool will walk them through connecting their camera. They will be able to toggle the item dimensions to check if the item will fit, and take pictures. 

Walmart said the tool will be available for 300 items at launch and will be rolled out to all iOS users by early July, with plans to roll out on Android and mobile web.

1. The second feature is an in-store app tool, which is still in development.

According to Walmart, shoppers and employees will be able “to simply point their mobile device camera at our store shelves via the Walmart app to filter our assortment based on your personal preferences.”

Instagram Gets More Augmented

Everything's coming up augmented — From AR shopping to AR social marketing.

Instagram is testing new AR stickers and text within Stories, which lets brands add animated, or 3D digital objects to their content, similar to Snapchat's World Lenses. 

Soon, creators and brands will also be able to import their NFTs into their Stories as 2D virtual objects. 

Meta announced this week that it will begin testing NFTs on Stories using its augmented reality platform Spark AR. This includes an element called 'See in AR' which lets creators apply real context to NFT items to make them more tangible. 

Images: Spark AR & Alessandro Paluzzi via Twitter

HBO Max's New Ad Formats

HBO Max announced new ad options today, the first of which nobody who is a viewer is going to like — but you with your marketing hat on just might. That first one is:

1. Pause Ads

Which are static ads that appear on screen while content is paused. 

In contrast to other platforms, HBO's offering aims to minimize disruption to storytelling. Instead of an ad taking over the full screen, the brand's ad will appear as an overlay on top of the content. 

1. Next up, Sequential Stories

Advertisers can use this format to create longer messages to consumers throughout an episode or movie. 

During a show or episode, one brand will own all ad spots, and the advertising will consist of a series of pre-roll and mid-roll ads that tell a story.

1. Finally, HBO Max is getting an upgrade to its Brand Block ad suite. 

This option enabled one advertiser to run a spot in front of a movie and then after the ad, the content would play interrupted. 

Now the suite includes Previews, which mimic going to the movie theatre. It's a front-loaded ad experience that delivers trailer-specific creative before the film streams uninterrupted. This ad format will only be available to studio and entertainment partners.

The TikTok Attribution Manager

A new attribution tool has just launched for TikTok. 

Yesterday, the platform released its new 'Attribution Manager' tool, which lets advertisers set custom attribution windows within their campaigns. 

The tool provides more ways to measure ad response, which could help improve your ad strategy. 

For web and app campaigns, the tool lets marketers select a specific time period to measure success, via two options:

1. Click-through attribution: Which can range from 1 day to 28 days

2. View-through attribution: Which can range from off, 1, and up to 7 days

Attribution Manager can be found under 'Assets' in TikTok Ads Manager.

NBCUniversal Gets Emotional

"How does that ad make you feel?" – NBCUniversal. That just might be the new and fully measurable metric you'll start seeing in campaign dashboards.

NBCUniversal announced this week that it's adding emotion to its ad measurement framework. 

According to NBCUniversal's VP of measurement, the company believes that "emotion is a great way in which to understand the linkage between pre-market creative performance and in-market measurement," Marketing Dive reports. 

But, I’m sure you’re wondering, how can emotion be measured? The media giant is working with Dumbstruck, an emotion analytics company that uses facial coding and eye-tracking AI, to learn how an audience's emotional response to a specific ad affects its market performance. 

The company also noted several other measurement partners working in this space including; 

• System 1

• Emoto.AI, and 

• Kantar’s Link Ad Test

Kate Bush is Not Getting Rich

If you've spent any time on TikTok in the last week, no doubt you've heard the 1985 song Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush. (Interesting side note: She actually wanted to call it A Deal With God, but the record label thought that would be too controversial.)

Anyway, Kate Bush rarely licences her music, but when the producers of the Netflix series Stranger Things asked her if they could use that song in a show, she agreed — apparently, she's a big fan.

The show aired, and a generation of young people heard the song for the first time, loved it, and soon — as these things do — it was going viral on TikTok. 

So you might think — wow, lucky Kate Bush! She must be getting serious royalties.

Well, she's probably not.

To explain why, I present another TikTok viral tune.

It's called Funny Song, and it's usually paired with video of cats running into walls, kids stumbling around, that sort of thing. 

The artist is Thomas Hewitt Jones from the U.K. He makes his living composing production music for stock music libraries. This one, he knocked off in about a half-hour. It was part of a collection of goofy songs called "Vintage Oddities Vol. 4" that his production music bosses wanted. He did it in one take.

Honestly, didn't think it would go anywhere. Then some YouTuber uploaded it, someone found it on TikTok, and it took off. It has more than a million plays on YouTube. More than a million on Spotify.

But on TikTok? It's closing in on 7 billion plays.

And so, like Kate Bush's sudden viral hit, you might think: Well, good for Mr. Jones, he's probably swimming in the royalties.

But no, in an interview with AdWeek, Jones says so far, he's made about $730 bucks. For 7 billion plays. He doesn't even get fame, since the song is credited on all these platforms to Cavendish Music, the production music publisher.

Turns out, unlike the deals record labels have cut with streaming music providers like Spotify, TikTok royalties are paid based on how many videos use the song — not how many times the song has been streamed. 

So while Kate Bush may be enjoying some new attention, she's not reaping buckets of cash from it all. It's certainly an outlier in royalty arrangements, and perhaps one the labels will try to change when the music contracts renew.

A deal with God, indeed.