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What's new in the realms of paid search and social media? Basis' Senior Vice President of Paid Search and Social compiles all the latest news, trends, and resources each month for easy access.
How the Metaverse Went from Sci-fi to Mainstream in One Year
The pandemic accelerated the use of digital worlds for work and entertainment. While Facebook’s rebrand to Meta helped put the word "Metaverse" on many people’s radar for the first time, a lot happened in 2021 to support this evolution. eMarketer provides a quick chronological recap of all the Metaverse-adjacent events that happened in 2021.
Platforms Catch Social Commerce Fever
It’s clear that social platforms prioritized expanded ecommerce features in 2021, although some are more sophisticated than others. eMarketer has compared and contrasted the features available on Facebook/Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest to show where the industry stands.
Insider Intelligence Q&A with Google Commerce: Understanding the Google Shopping Ecosystem
eMarketer recently spoke with Google’s lead of strategy, operations, and go-to-market initiatives for Google Commerce, Martha Walsh. Read this to get her take on the trends influencing consumer shopping behavior, how Google's relationship with brands has evolved in recent years, and what Google Commerce is doing to improve the ecommerce experience.
Pinterest Insights: Male Pinner Usage
The platform’s latest research reveals information about how their male user base is planning (and planning on spending) in 2022. More importantly, Pinterest provides some recommendations on how brands can get into their consideration set as searches and intent begin to convert into sales.
Brands Need to Leverage Customer Content Now
Luggage maker Calego shared insight into how they began leveraging UGC during the pandemic in this interview with Search Engine Land. The result was a wider top of the funnel than ever before, and higher than average conversion rates as they harnessed the power of customer reviews.
TikTok Tops Facebook and Google As the Most Visited Website
Cloudfare analyzed web traffic from 2021 and found that TikTok was the most-visited website and the most widely used social media platform of the year. This article also includes the other top 10 most-visited websites of the year, as well as the top social media platforms (in order).
How TikTok Drives Offline Sales Impact
Through a series of offline sales lift measurement and MMM studies, TikTok aims to prove how the platform drives offline sales outcomes and positive return on ad spend. Overall, the studies showed a 14% higher paid media ROAS compared to all digital media measured, and a 2x offline sales efficiency. In-feed video was, not surprisingly, proven to be the best performer against these metrics.
Report: US Social Video Advertising in 2022
eMarketer updated their forecasts for how much US advertisers will spend on video ads on social networks in the coming year. Spoiler alert: video ad spending will make up over a third of total US social network ad spending. The report also discusses how iOS privacy changes continue to affect social video advertising, and how advertisers are approaching video to drive both branding and performance goals. One key theme that stands out is marketers investing in more informal creative, likely as a result of the rise in popularity of TikTok.
Check out Basis' Video Unleashed Guide for a deep dive into how to leverage video advertising.
Report: Social Media Video Sees as Much Consumption Time as Traditional TV
A new study conducted by the Consumer Technology Association showed that user-created content on social platforms accounts for 39% of all weekly media hours consumed by Americans. The trend is more pronounced for teens, who spend more than 56% of their time with user-created content. The data shows the evolving shift away from traditional media and toward social media platforms as the key form of content consumption. As a side note: Google also recently weighed in on this topic on their blog, Think with Google.
New Year, New Snapchat Features
Snapchat released a few new features earlier this month to help make messaging with friends more expressive and interactive, including: chat replies in ongoing conversation strings, Bitmoji reactions in chat; poll stickers for Snaps and Stories, and improved video and audio calling capabilities.
For fast reference, Twitter recently published a comprehensive list of all the important events to plan your year around. You can use this link to navigate between months (and regions across the globe) for a better understanding of upcoming key moments.