What happened in marketing: Meta’s Vibe shift,TikTok Migration and AdTech at CES

This week: Meta is getting roasted by everyone, Supreme Court hears TikTok's appeal and CES launches that matter to marketers.

Jan 12, 2025

There’s only 0.1% chance that next week’s newsletter will be titled ‘TikTok survives the ban’ or ‘survives the day’. Fingers crossed!

In case you followed this newsletter after seeing my TikTok, you can follow me on Instagram for future social content.

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Top 6 Updates of the Week

Supreme Court signals it will uphold ban on TikTok over national security concerns. (AR)
2024 Holiday Shopping Season drove a record $241.4 Billion online and rising 8.7% YoY. Adobe’s data showed that for every 1% decrease in price, demand increased by 1.029% compared to the 2023 season. (CT)
- Online spending grew 3% to a record $1.2T over holiday period, says Salesforce.
Amazon Ads launches Retail Ad service at CES. (read)
Reddit announces new AMA ads and analytical tools for marketers. (TF)
EU vows to ‘Energetically’ pursue X probe under Digital Rulebook. (BG)
LA Wildfires - How the city’s ad industry is coping with the disaster.
- A list of brands and foundations offering help in LA.
- Our friends at
  Silence, Brand!
  put out a special edition discussing how internet-social media is reacting to the disaster.

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The conversation around spineless corporation called ‘Meta’.

The Official announcement of Meta removing fact-checking program and launch of community notes.
Mark Zuckerberg’s end to Meta fact-checking is a desperate play for engagement.
Brazil gives Meta 72 hours to explain new fact-checking policies.
Meta and Amazon axe diversity initiatives joining US corporate rollback
Dana White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst to join Meta Board of Directors.
Meta’s ‘free speech’ overhaul sparks advertisers’ concern.
Meta exempted top advertisers from standard content moderation process.
Meta’s Fact-checking partners say they were blindsided by decision to axe them.
Inside Meta’s dehumanizing new speech policies for trans people. (Casey Newton)

CES 2025

CES Updates 2025: Product reveals and analysis of launches from Samsung, Nvidia, Toyota, Sony, and more. (read)
At CES, TikTok executives were positive and ignorant of the looming U.S. Ban.
AdGood launches first-ever nonprofit CTV platform at CES 2025. (AH)
Disney brings new biddable ad capabilities to Live Sports and Entertainment. (LR)
Comcast to launch Industry-changing, cross-publisher ad solution for the premium video category. (BW)
Amazon is letting advertisers analyse 5 years worth of consumers’ shopping.
Disney makes its case for bigger ad budgets at CES. (TL)
Amazon Ads brings generative AI to Amazon Marketing Cloud with new SQL generator.
CES Briefing: Agency compensation models in the AI era, a speedrun of the CES show floor & Disney’s tech showcase.
Why Razorfish is prioritising podcast ads and second-party data.
Peacock is testing mini-games and vertical videos to boost engagement.
NBCU kicks off road to network’s 100th anniversary with new ad capabilities, data.
Albertsons' retail media arm launches a new API for smarter campaign tracking.
Yahoo pitches curation and partnership at CES.

Trending 🗞️

As Musk pushes AfD, German officials consider ditching X.
- Fact-checking: The conversation between Musk & AfD’s Alice Weidel.
VideoAmp is offering advertisers free data amid Nielsen-Paramount standoff. (LW)
- VA renews measurement and currency partnership with Paramount Global.
Microsoft Ads launches two new retail media offerings: Curate for Commerce and Sponsored Promotions by Brands. (read)
Bluesky seeks a $700m funding round—and an identity apart from Meta, X. (ST)
Advertisers can now see if Amazon’s streaming ads drive sales at Walmart and Target. (AK)
Reddit not ranking as well in Google suddenly? (read)
Elon Musk’s xAI launches standalone app for Grok chatbot. (read)
Delta partners with YouTube to make premium and music services available free on flights for SkyMiles loyalty program members. (TG)
Snapchat partnered with Wpromote and Lumen to share new insights on Interactive brand experiences. (SP)
2025 Beauty Predictions — Wrinkle-Free Robots, Emotion-As-Luxury, & Longevity Dads. (read)
OpenAI is losing money on ChatGPT pro plan, says Sam Altman. (NB)
Getty Images and Shutterstock have confirmed their plans to merge. (BG)
Digital Health companies brace for Ad-mageddon 2.0. (TR)
Channel4 launches OOH ad trolling Meta’s fact-checking controversy. (CL)
Elon Musk says AI has already gobbled up all human-produced data to train itself and now relies on hallucination-prone synthetic data. (AK)

Also, Trending

Cut+Dry and Instacart announce new partnership to boost Foodservice advertising. (AX)
Sprout Social 2025 Index shares 40% of consumers find it “cool” when brands engage in viral trends, while 33% consider it “embarrassing.” (TG)
McDonald’s partnered with John Cena to launch new McValue brand platform. (RT)
Grey Goose raises a glass down under with Australian Open sponsorship. (DK)
Discovery+ is rising pricing by $! On both ad-supported and ad-free plans. (WS)
Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland to share branches. (TB)
Ad firm Clear Channel Outdoor to sell Europe-North business for $625 mln to Bauer Media. (read)

Candy Crush, Tinder, MyFitnessPal: See the Thousands of apps hijacked to spy on your location. (TR)
Emirati billionaire to invest $20 bln in US data centers, Trump says. (RT)
Ethnicity pay gap highlighted in ‘Bias Starts With a Name’ ad campaign. (watch)
Y/Project is officially shutting down. (BF)
The Anti-social century - Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. (TA)
Art Deco style is popular again, a century after its heyday. (read)
Chips Ahoy! has a new snack, but it isn’t a cookie: Baked bites. (WT)
Valeo’s Manomasa rebrand divides marketers’ opinions on LinkedIn. (GV)
Amazon Auto launches online sales. (AD)
Britain to make sexually explicit 'deepfakes' a crime. (AR)
Sam Altman shares a new blog reflecting on his journey building OpenAI. (ER)
Google and Microsoft donate $1 million apiece to Trump’s inauguration. (MK)
Wayfair to exit Germany, cut 730 jobs as it looks to focus on physical retail.

TikTok 🎶

TikTok confirms that it will shut down in the US by January 19 if ban is upheld.
Trump has vowed to save TikTok. Lawmakers are wondering how.
TikTok adds post scheduling to Studio App. (AR)
IPSOS and TikTok publish new thought paper about Commerce revolution. (read)
Triller launches a tool to back up users’ TikToks ahead of the US ban deadline. (DW)
TikTok releases What’s Next 2025 trends report. (read)
With a ban on the horizon, TikTok creators are changing their approach to brand partnership contracts. (HOW)
TikTok pushes users to Lemon8 as ban looms. (AX)
Currently, only 31% of parents support a TikTok ban for all Americans, but 50% believe such a ban would improve children’s safety. (US)
TikTok testing curate your memories feature.
ByteDance releases Short Drama App Melolo. (AR)
TikTok now allows users to add multiple songs to carousel posts.

Instagram & Threads 🗂️

Meta’s revised political content approach could benefit Threads.
Instagram shares tips on maximising content reach. (read)
Instagram has shut down a program that paid creators for ads placed on their profiles. (read)
Instagram is testing a new function to show Story Highlights you failed to watch. (TC)
Threads working on the ability to attach music to posts. (AT)
Threads experiments with Custom Display Names and Cover Images. (ST)

X (Twitter) ⏳

X users will soon have ability to share location with Grok AI for better results. (AR)
Grok will soo have ability to analyse your post during creation process. (ST)
Musk examines how to oust Starmer as UK prime minister before next election. (TC)
X’s parody account labels are now live on web and android. (AS)
Grok search is coming soon. (LC)

Youtube 🕹️

YouTube expands 3-minute Shorts to all users. (SP)
YouTube testing a new video highlights tool in Studio. (FT)
MrBeast thinks U.S. Healthcare system should be fixed. (OT)

Google

Google search console adds hourly data export to 24hr view. (SJ)
Google plays catch-up in video ad tech as streaming ads take off.
Google Search testing audio version of Discover named Daily Listen. (ST)
Google’s clarifies 404 and redirect validation in search console. (SL)
Google updates financial products policy for crypto ads. (SL)
Confirmed: Google isn’t dropping ad scheduling for Smart Bidding campaigns. (SL)
Google ads updates political content policy for CA residents for deepfakes. (SJ)
Google Local Services Ads for tax specialists drops auto credits and features. (ST)
Google Performance Max gets budget reallocation experiments. (CB)
Google AI overviews appear in 18% of publisher-related queries. (SL)
Google says using Generative AI to create content for backlinks against guidelines. (SR)

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The Agency and Brand news segment will be shared next week on Tuesday with further commentary on Meta’s stance on free speech + my picks for best ad campaigns of 2024.

AI 🤨

ChatGPT’s newest/removed feature lets users assign it traits like ‘chatty’ and ‘Gen Z’. (PT)
Anthropic raising funds valuing it at $60 billion. (MG)
Perplexity will now show hotel information from TripAdvisor. (read)
Google moves AI studio, Gemini Developer API and their teams to Google DeepMind. (XD)
Hugging Face settles suit with AI startup FriendliAI, which had accused it of patent infringement. (TC)
OpenAI is working on video search for Sora. (MH)
Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits. (TV)
Panasonic reveals AI family well-being coach at CES. (NT)
Google Cloud announces new AI tools for retailers at NRF 2025. (NZ)
Apple’s inaccurate AI news alerts shows the tech has a growing misinformation problem. (CB)
Nvidia announces Blueprint for AI retail shopping assistants. (VB)
Hippocratic AI launches AI agent app store for Healthcare. (BW)
Wall Street expected to shed 200,000 jobs as AI erodes roles. (BG)
Google launches Gemini 2.0 Flash thinking, a new experimental model. (TC)

Microsoft & LinkedIn

Microsoft accuses group of developing tool to abuse its AI service in new lawsuit. (MS)
LinkedIn shares How to market to Japanese audiences guide. (read)
Microsoft is reverting its Bing AI image generator because of quality complaints.
Microsoft plans to invest $3B in AI and cloud in India. (BA)
Microsoft confirms performance-based job cuts across departments.

Marketing &….

Notion launches Notion Faces, build custom notion-styled avatars like Snoop Dogg. (EB)
Automattic turns against WordPress community itself. (SJ)
Why Disney was willing to pay up for Fubo in its quest to launch a new sports streamer. (BN)
Salesforce launches Agentforce for retail. (MB)
Paramount and Comcast announce multi-year distribution agreements. (MH)
Integral Ad Science launches AI-driven Total Media Performance solutions to maximise ROI for advertisers.
SAP launches loyalty management solution to strengthen retailer-customer relationships.
Wordpress launches Studio Sync local development. (NR)
Xbox app launches on LG Smart TVs. (NG)
Asda cuts prices on thousands of household staples.
Hightouch partners with Databricks to launch self-service AI-powered audience management solution for offsite retail media network. (PR)
Venu Sports venture called off.
Contentstack acquires CDP Lytics. (MP)
McDonald’s new commitment to inclusion somehow rolls back DEI. (KD)

The Pulped; Market Data & Studies of the week

Google search rankings and AI assistant mentions are correlated: “Brands ranking on page 1 of Google showed a strong correlation (~0.65) with LLM mentions. Bing rankings also mattered but less so (~0.5–0.6). (read)
What 97 Trend Reports Reveal About Social Media & Influencer Marketing in 2025 by
Ryan Davis
. (read)
Diageo’s report found that conversations around unique products and experiences, part of the neo-hedonism trend, grew 83% YoY in 2024 while conversations around on-the-go products rose 45% over the same period. (read)
A new study from NYU: Medical large language models are vulnerable to data-poisoning attacks.
CMOs have slightly reduced martech spending as a share of the total marketing budget, down 0.9% from spring 2024. However, martech usage increased by 1.4% in the same period. (read)
In US, Private sector employment increased by 122,000 jobs in December and annual pay was up 4.6 percent year-over-year. (read)
86% of people think distractions can be a healthy way to cope with the stress of everyday life + 82% of people say that sometimes looking forward to an experience is more enjoyable than the experience itself. (Escapism)
These interests dominated email marketing campaigns:
- Spider-Man accounted for more than 1,600 campaigns – 22% of all movie-themed emails, while Batman closely followed with 21%. Family-favorite films like "Inside Out," which garnered 16%, also played a significant role.
- Sports events were also highly popular, with over 2,000 Olympics-themed emails, which made up 32% of all sports-related emails. Closely followed by the NBA at 30% and the Super Bowl, with 18%. (read)
AARP shares list prices for the 25 top Medicare Part D drugs not currently selected for Medicare drug price negotiation have increased by an average of 98 percent—or nearly doubled—since they first entered the market. (USA)
Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative. (read)
While non-gaming ad spend increased by 8% globally, the UK market saw 48% year-on-year growth. But gaming ad spend in the UK declined by roughly 9% year-on-year, aligning with global gaming trends but with a less severe decrease than other markets. (read)
1 in 3 Gen Z (34%) have accepted a job, then never showed up and offered no explanation. This move has been termed "career catfishing."
On average Millennials made 21 purchases on TikTok in the last 12months compared to the 20 items bought on the social platform by Gen Zers.
Despite many consumers remaining loyal to their preferred brands, some 83% feel undervalued by these same companies. (NS)
A new analysis now projects another Demographic Cliff at colleges in the number of 18-year-olds beginning in 2033, after a brief uptick. By 2039, this estimate shows, there will likely be 650,000, or 15%, fewer of them per year than there are now.
By the end of 2024 the streaming ad market will have grown by more than £300m to £1.1bn to be 30% of the size of the under-pressure traditional TV ad market, which will shrink to £3.58bn, according to Ampere Analysis. (TG)
A new study analyzing the digital readiness of North America’s top RV sales and services businesses shares alarming shortcomings in website performance, with 77.5% of sites possessing enough shopper visits to qualify for Google’s assessment failing to meet essential standards for user experience. Plus, 64.7% (1,551 websites) failed to generate enough consumer visits to report for both mobile and desktop experiences.
Teens make the most from selling clothes, footwear and accessories — earning a bit over $100 a year on average in a year. The higher earners can make at least $1,000 a year on these sales. The average hourly pay for babysitting in the country is about $17 an hour, which amounts to just over $35,000 annually
New study shares 0.6 Tbsp of honey provides the same sweetness intensity for 10 fewer kcal compared to 1 Tbsp of table sugar. (more)
Four-in-10 (41%) users say they would be upset if the TikTok winds up being banned. That number increases to 57% of Gen Z users. Should TikTok be banned, consumers plan to shift to Facebook (47%), Instagram (44%) and Youtube (40%).
According to Honeywell survey, comparing prices across stores is by far the most sought-after use case for AI (53%) followed by checking product availability (41%) and having a simpler and more seamless checkout experience (34%).
Nearly 70% of consumers notice ads on retailer websites and apps compared to 63% on social media. Poor customer experience (CX) and sustainability are the main reasons consumers switch brands or retailers. (read)

MarTech Releases & Finds

Jellypod - AI Powered Podcast Studio for creators
Bionic - A smart media planning and buying platform.
Airship - A customer experience platform built for web and app.
Pletta - Customise the web content in your links based on the customer, segment or location.

Content Opportunities / Ideas of the week

13 Jan: Public Radio Broadcasting Day / National Sticker Day / Plough Monday / National Gluten Free Day / Calennig / National Clean Your Desk Day / Korean American Day.
14 Jan: International Kite Day / National Dress Up Your Pet Day / Mahayana (Buddhist New Year) / World Logic Day / Makar Sankranti / Ratification Day / Poetry at Work Day.
15 Jan: Wikipedia Day / National Hat Day / National Bagel Day / Museum Selfie Day / National Booch Day / National Strawberry Ice Cream Day.
16 Jan: International Hot and Spicy Day / National Quinoa Day / International Rooibos Day / National Good Teen Day / National Nothing Day / National Boston Day / Religious Freedom Day.
17 Jan: Custom Service Day / Benjamin Franklin Day / International Mentoring Day / Severance S2 begins / Oscar nominations / Popeye Day / Cable Car Day / International We Are Not Broken Day.
18 Jan: National Michigan Day / National Winnie the Pooh Day / National Gourmet Coffee Day / NFL Divisional Round / Sundance Film Festival.
19 Jan: TikTok Shutdown / National Popcorn Day / Good Memory Day / World Snow Day / World Religion Day / World Quark Day.

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