Will TikTok’s Visual Search Feature Create More Advertising Opportunities?

Will TikTok’s Visual Search Feature Create More Advertising Opportunities?

by Jane Smith TikTok Uncategorized

TikTok is testing visual search in its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop. The introduction of visual search could mark a substantial improvement in the platform’s e-commerce capabilities, although time will tell. With visual search, users may now find and buy related products by uploading or taking a photo. In TikTok Shop, visual search could improve the buying experience by streamlining the product discovery process and giving consumers an easier method to find and buy things that attract their attention. TikTok Shop aims to enhance traffic and engagement on the site by integrating visual search. This offers integration of e-commerce features that might boost sales and revenue.

Boosting Sales and Brand Growth with TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop was introduced in November 2022 as an e-commerce choice to increase sales and promote brand expansion. Thanks to this service, users can search and purchase goods from their favorite creators and companies inside the TikTok app. This is an important way that TikTok hopes to generate revenue for itself and businesses.

How to Use Visual Search

The visual search feature is brand new, so it can be puzzling to figure out. Users access it by clicking the camera icon in the search box, which leads the platform to display the message “Take a photo or upload an image to find similar products.” Using visual signals, the latest advancement promises to make it simple for users to find and buy products, which TikTok says will streamline the shopping experience and raise conversion rates.

The Present Test Phase

Before expanding the feature more broadly, the platform may gather data, analyze user input, and adjust tweaks. That way, TikTok manages the risks involved with a vast audience, but it also means that the visual search functionality within the TikTok Shop has yet to reach its full potential.

Challenges

According to early reports, TikTok Shop’s performance does raise some concern. Although TikTok has ambitious goals, there are questions about the feature’s return on investment (ROI) for e-commerce companies. These worries are reminiscent of the difficulties faced by other social commerce sites, including Instagram and Pinterest. For instance, Instagram recently dropped its “Shops” feature because of low user interest. The difficulties these platforms have had making money through social commerce show potential problems that TikTok Shop might encounter.

Advertising Opportunities

TikTok’s visual search has significant consequences for advertisers looking to increase brand visibility and successfully connect with their target audience. Advertisers can take advantage of TikTok’s improved product discovery capabilities by utilizing this feature, making it easier for users to find and explore their items. Advertisers may develop appealing ad campaigns that align with the preferences and interests of their target audience thanks to visual search, which offers a more immersive and intuitive purchasing experience.

The success of advertising on the TikTok platform can vary. Despite TikTok’s enormous popularity, there is still debate over the return on investment for the platform’s ad campaigns. While other advertisers have had inconsistent results, some have reported satisfactory results and success in reaching their target demographic.

Data-Driven Insights

As TikTok improves its e-commerce capabilities, agencies should carefully track user activity and growth. Visual search interaction data breakdown can offer critical insights for improving marketing tactics, recognizing trends, and improving audience targeting.

It is still too early to assess the full usefulness of TikTok’s trial use of visual search. Although the potential advantages appear intriguing, there currently needs to be more conclusive proof of visual search’s efficacy. Understanding the effects of visual search in TikTok’s Shop feature will require ongoing observation. During this trial, digital marketing agencies and e-commerce businesses should pay special attention to customer behavior and feedback to learn more about its potential advantages. It’s crucial to view TikTok’s trial of visual search with a cautious sense of hope and to keep evaluating its success as current information becomes available.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed in the ever-changing world of online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

The TikTok Controversy: Advertiser Q&A

The TikTok Controversy: Advertiser Q&A

by Kurt Anagnostopoulos Uncategorized

By Kurt Anagnostopoulos and Mark Smith

Will TikTok get banned in the United States? And why is TikTok even running afoul of the U.S. government? Those questions and many others continue to arise as TikTok faces closer scrutiny by U.S. lawmakers – mostly recently when the company’s CEO recently faced a tough grilling by members of Congress. Following are answers to some questions you might have.

What is going on with TikTok and the United States government?

TikTok has faced several controversies and concerns regarding its ownership, data privacy, and potential national security threats in the United States.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, which has raised concerns about Chinese government access to user data and censorship. There have been concerns that TikTok is collecting user data and sharing it with the Chinese government. TikTok has denied these allegations and has stated that its data is stored outside of China.

In 2020, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would have banned TikTok from the United States over national security concerns. The order cited TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance and its potential to collect data on U.S. citizens and share it with the Chinese government. In June 2021, new president Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the Trump administration ban on TikTok, and instead ordered the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the app to determine if it poses a threat to U.S. national security.

In 2022 and 2023, the issue of national security arose once again. In June 2022, reports emerged that ByteDance employees in China could access U.S. data and repeatedly accessed the private information of TikTok users. Following the reports, TikTok announced that 100% of its U.S. user traffic is now being routed to Oracle Cloud, along with their intention to delete all U.S. user data from their own data centers. This deal stems from the talks with Oracle instigated in September 2020 in the midst of Trump’s threat to ban TikTok in the United States.

In June 2022, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, citing national security concerns, saying TikTok “harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.” In November 2022, Christopher A. Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told U.S. lawmakers that “the Chinese government could use [TikTok] to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations.”

As of February 2023, at least 32 states have announced or enacted bans on state government agencies, employees, and contractors using TikTok on government-issued devices. State bans only affect government employees and do not prohibit civilians from having or using the app on their personal devices.

In March 2023, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, appeared before Congress to address the concerns surrounding the app. He stated that TikTok’s data collection practices did not differ from those of U.S. social media platforms.

Is True Interactive concerned that TikTok poses a national security threat?

There has been no “smoking gun” evidence that TikTok poses a national security threat. There is no public evidence the Chinese government has actually spied on people through TikTok.

TikTok doesn’t operate in China. But since the Chinese government enjoys significant leverage over businesses under its jurisdiction, the theory goes that ByteDance, and thus indirectly, TikTok, could be forced to cooperate with a broad range of security activities, including possibly the transfer of TikTok data.

“It’s not that we know TikTok has done something, it’s that distrust of China and awareness of Chinese espionage has increased,” according to James Lewis, an information security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The context for TikTok is much worse as trust in China vanishes.”

TikTok has been erecting technical and organizational barriers that it says will keep U.S. user data safe from unauthorized access. Under the plan, known as Project Texas, the U.S. government and third-party companies such as Oracle would also have some degree of oversight of TikTok’s data practices. TikTok is working on a similar plan for the European Union known as Project Clover.

In 2022, a report found TikTok was spying on journalists, snooping on their user data and IP addresses to find out when or if certain reporters were sharing the same location as company employees. TikTok later confirmed the incident and ByteDance fired several employees who had improperly accessed the TikTok data of two journalists.

The circumstances surrounding the incident suggest it was not the type of wide-scale, government-directed intelligence effort that US national security officials primarily fear. Instead, it appeared to be part of a specific internal effort by some ByteDance employees to hunt down leaks to the press – which may be deplorable but hardly uncommon for an organization under public scrutiny.

Do you believe TikTok will get banned?

Only the U.S. government can answer that question with certainty. But TikTok says 150 million Americans use the app, it is increasingly popular with advertisers, and many smaller businesses say it is essential to their livelihood. It’s more likely that TikTok will face closer regulation and possibly be sold.

Should I be concerned about advertising on TikTok?

TikTok poses no more of a risk than any other social app. Every major app, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube – has faced public scrutiny and controversy over issues ranging from privacy breaches to content moderation lapses. As we’ve blogged, social media is a messy place for any brand to be. But social media also holds many advantages, as our work with advertisers has demonstrated.

How can TikTok help my brand?

We recommend that brands Consider TikTok for brand awareness, but the jury is still out when it comes to conversions. Our campaigns have performed especially well when our objectives have been to achieve reach and brand lift. In our experience, TikTok CPMs are typically less expensive than CPMs for Facebook, Snap, or Pinterest. Read our blog post about TikTok’s performance for more insight.

Contact True Interactive

At True Interactive, we work with our clients to maximize the value of all their online advertising, including social media spend. We strongly advocate for our clients as we work with apps such as TikTok. Contact us to learn how we can help you.

Is Search Ready for Conversational AI?

Is Search Ready for Conversational AI?

by Mark Smith Uncategorized

The brave new world of AI-powered search has hit a speed bump.

During the week of February 6, both Google and Microsoft announced they were developing new search capabilities that incorporate conversational AI, or chatbots that answer searchers’ queries with detailed, informative answers. This interface would provide an alternative to the search engines interface we are familiar with today, in which users need to click on to web links and read short snippets of content to find answers to their queries.

Microsoft said that its Bing search engine was using the same AI technology that powers the wildly popular ChatGPT chatbot created by OpenAI. (Microsoft has a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI.) Google said it was about to unveil Bard, a chatbot with similar AI-fueled capabilities. Bard was based on AI developed by Google for quite some time.

Both these Big Tech companies were responding to OpenAI releasing ChatGPT for public use on November 30, 2022. Since that date, ChatGPT had become the fastest-growing app in history.

Google didn’t outright release Bard – the company demo’d the product that week and said an independent party of reviewers was vetting the product before its ultimate public release. Microsoft started to make Bing’s chat interface available in limited preview mode.

At first, both companies received generally favorable attention for showing how rapidly two Big Tech companies could bring to market a new way to search. But then the problems began:

Definitely not a good look for conversational AI!

By February 16, things had gotten so bad that The Atlantic magazine was declaring “AI search is a disaster.”

In response, Microsoft said that these types of incidents are to be expected. Microsoft said, “The only way to improve a product like this, where the user experience is so much different than anything anyone has seen before, is to have people like you using the product and doing exactly what you all are doing. Your feedback about what you’re finding valuable and what you aren’t, and what your preferences are for how the product should behave, are so critical at this nascent stage of development.”

Microsoft also announced that it will begin limiting the number of conversations allowed per user with Bing’s new chatbot feature.

Meanwhile, Google has asked employees to improve Bard by rewriting answers for topics that employees know well – a human-in-the-loop approach in which people stay involved as supervisors of the development of AI products as well as the editing of AI-generated content.

So, what now?

Well, nothing really changes for businesses at the moment. Google has not rolled out Bard. Bing is still in preview mode. Clearly, there is work to be done. The bad press suffered by Google and Microsoft simply underscores how rapidly these companies are moving. From the standpoint of building public trust, it sure looks like they would have been better off taking more time before starting to take these products closer to market.

Conversational AI is coming to search. These products did not drop out of the sky. Sooner or later, this interface was coming. It happened too soon for Google and Microsoft to escape some reputational damage. But the big picture is that the industry is more aware now of how the search experience is evolving, warts and all.

As we’ve recommended in previous posts, we suggest that businesses watch the developments closely and experiment with conversational AI (as everyone is doing with ChatGPT right now). It is important to become familiar with the ways these tools function, including the way ChatGPT can generate content (known as generative AI). This is no time to ignore the phenomenon.

At True Interactive, we are staying in close contact with Google and Microsoft and will report developments as we learn about them.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed with online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

Photo by Om siva Prakash on Unsplash

Why Facebook’s Ad Business Will Take a Hit — and What Advertisers Should Do

Why Facebook’s Ad Business Will Take a Hit — and What Advertisers Should Do

by Mark Smith Apple Facebook Uncategorized

On September 22, Facebook made an unusual announcement well ahead of its third-quarter earnings, which won’t be shared until late October. In a blog post, Facebook indicated that its third-quarter results will take a hit because of the impact of Apple’s increased privacy controls. Let’s take a look at the news and what it means.

What Facebook Announced

  • Facebook confirmed that for the third quarter, the company’s advertising business will take a financial hit because of the impact of Apple’s Application Tracking Transparency (ATT), which went into effect in 2021 with a recent iOS update on users’ personal devices.
  • Under ATT, users are asked to give apps permission to track their behavior on their Apple devices. Facebook needs Apple users to give apps permission to track their behavior; Facebook has built a thriving advertising business based on its ability serve up targeted ads to iOS users based on their behavior off Facebook. But as many as 96 percent of users in the United States are opting out of having their behavior tracked.
  • In a blog post, Graham Mudd, vice president of Product Marketing, Facebook, wrote, “As we noted during our earnings call in July, we expected increased headwinds from platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. We know many of you are experiencing this greater impact as we are.”
  • Mudd also said that Facebook underreported iOS web conversions by approximately 15 percent. “We believe that real world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers,” he wrote.

What Facebook’s Announcement Means

  • Facebook’s war with Apple will intensify. Apple could find ways to impose even more privacy controls.
  • More advertisers will bolt to the Android operating system and take their ad business to Google.
  • Facebook will be forced to become more transparent to ad partners about its ad performance, especially after admitting that the company underreported iOS web conversions.
  • Facebook will probably devise more ways to mine first-party data from its own platform and Instagram to sell ad space.

What Advertisers Should Do

  • Consider tapping into your own first-party data more effectively to create ads (and True Interactive can help you do so). For example, collect more first-party data by using cookies to understand who visits your site; or run a promotion that collects email addresses. Collect purchase data if applicable to your site.
  • Consider relying on advertising platforms such as Amazon and apps such as Snapchat and TikTok that have strengthened their own ad products through their own proprietary first-party data.
  • Watch for the emergence of new tools and approaches. Apple’s ATT will inspire the emergence of workaround tools as well as approaches for developing personalized content. This is happening already as Google adopts privacy controls.
  • Review Facebook’s advice for how to analyze your performance and adapt your ad strategies on Facebook (or ask your agency partner to do so for you). Mudd provided some detailed steps to take in his post.
  • Consider negotiating more favorable rates for your ad account with Facebook if your performance is dropping but you still want to work with Facebook.
  • Don’t panic and change your ad strategy completely. This situation is still evolving.

At True Interactive, we’re doing the heavy lifting to help our clients navigate these changes. Bottom line: be ready to adapt.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed with online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

Why Discord Matters to Advertisers

Why Discord Matters to Advertisers

by Amanda Cortese Social media Uncategorized

Discord is a free voice, video, and text chat app that’s used by people aged 13 and up to chat and essentially hang out. Initially launched in 2015 as a home for gamers, the app has since expanded its reach and now attracts users from gaming and non-gaming communities alike. To say it’s popular is something of an understatement: the app enjoys more than 150 million monthly active users as of July 2021. But it accepts no advertising.

Why should advertisers care about Discord? Read on to learn more.

What Is Discord?

Users have embraced Discord as a way to connect with friends on a daily basis. Available for Mac, PC, iPhone, and Android devices, the app facilitates talk around any number of topics, from homework to mental health to travel.

Discord is mostly used by small and active communities who like to connect regularly, and for these groups the app follows an invite-only protocol. But larger, more open communities also flourish on Discord; these larger communities can be public, and tend to focus on specific topics like gaming, the app’s original mandate. Minecraft, for example, draws a large following.

As Discord puts it, shared interests drive the conversation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an entire vocabulary exists to help users navigate the app: “servers” are the spaces created by communities or friend groups (as Business Insider describes it, servers are a less-formal version of the Slack app). Any user can initiate a new, free server, and invite their friends; individual servers promote their own topics and rules. Discord servers are subsequently organized into text and voice “channels,” which are typically devoted to specific topics. Users can post (type) messages on text channels; they can also upload files and share images. Voice channels allow users to communicate real-time through a voice or video call.

There are literally thousands of Discord servers, so whether your jam is cute cats or a game like Fortnite, a Discord server that reflects your interests probably already exists.

Why Discord Matters to Businesses

But there’s no advertising. So, why should businesses care?

In a word: presence. Even though Discord is an ad-free platform, brands can and do maintain a presence there. Think of Discord as a social-listening tool. As reported in Marketing Dive, Discord is a source for learning about emerging culture and trends. By following Discord, brands can figure out fresh was to become culturally relevant with their marketing.

What does that look like, exactly? Essentially, brands can create their own branded communities on Discord, places where they can interact head-on with their most loyal customers. These communities are a zone where brands and consumers connect over common interests — and there might be a perk or surprise in there for the customer, to boot.

Virtual events are popular on the app: consider the Q&A fashion retailer AllSaints hosted in May, in which the menswear designer gave users a peek into how its styles have changed over the years. Chipotle took a different tack, hosting a virtual job fair on Discord that allowed the fast-casual restaurant chain to announce a hike in wages (to $15 an hour), and gave current employees an opportunity to talk about benefits and career paths.

Of course, for some brands, the app’s gaming roots are a rich vein to mine. Consider teen retailer Hot Topic, which initiated a Discord server specifically targeting fans of Japanese anime. Hot Topic relies on its own presence to support anime fandom, which overlaps with Hot Topic’s own audience.

What Brands Should Do

What does all this mean for your brand? We recommend that you:

  • Keep in mind Discord’s audience. Are they your audience? In other words, does Discord promote a niche that represents common ground for your brand and a community of Discord users?
  • Do your homework and learn from how other brands are succeeding on Discord. Discord users seem to respond to authentic conversations and events on the app. How can you capitalize on this? Keep in mind the Hot Topic example: the retailer tapped into a theme already established as part of the Hot Topic brand — then ran with it. They didn’t pretend to be something they’re not or try to shoehorn themselves into a conversation that didn’t make sense.
  • Listen and watch closely for ideas to inform your advertising beyond Discord. What can you learn from the ways Discord connects with its audience?

Contact True Interactive

Interested in exploring Discord—or another chat app? Contact us. We can help you stake your claim.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertiser Q&A: Google Showcase Shopping Ads

Advertiser Q&A: Google Showcase Shopping Ads

by Tim Colucci Google Uncategorized

Google has been beefing up its showcase shopping ads product to help retailers spice up their holiday advertisements. Showcase shopping ads make it possible for businesses to group together related products to merchandise them more effectively. The format is tailored for mobile viewing. Recently Google added new features such as video to make these ads more powerful. At True Interactive, we’ve been applying showcase shopping ads with favorable results. One of our clients running showcase shopping ads has seen an 80-percent higher click-through rate over standard shopping ads. This blog post explains showcase shopping ads based on questions we’ve received.

What exactly are showcase shopping ads?

Showcase shopping ads appear as a collection of shoppable images displaying different products offered by an advertiser. The ads are built to capitalize on broad keyword searches such as “winter sweaters.” The showcase shopping ads work this way:

  • Someone making a non-brand search for, say, winter sweaters will see in their search results display ads from different retailers with winter sweaters and promotional ad copy.
  • When the shopper clicks on the ad, they are taken to a landing page with a merchant’s line of winter sweaters. The shopping ad display, or showcase, resembles a brand page to the user, consisting of products the advertiser wants the user to see.

A shopper may click on an inventory and complete a purchase.

A business can create multiple showcase shopping ads. The header image can be different based on what is uploaded into each showcase shopping ad. In the above example of winter sweaters, a retailer could run a header image that focuses on sweaters but have another header image that focuses on outerwear for a “winter coat” search. The Google algorithm chooses which products appear based on variables such as the product titles, description, and type.

Who is this a good fit for?

It is highly recommended that you have at least 1,000 products in your inventory. There is no minimum budget. The format is effective for anyone who wants to get their products in front of a large audience because it’s based on broad keywords. It’s not for people competing for specific keywords. For bigger advertisers, showcase shopping ads are a good way to display multiple products for broad keywords. You can create an engaging photo and additional messaging that smaller businesses may not be able to afford.

Why is Google beefing up showcase ads?

The main reason Google is pushing showcase ads is that they are optimized for mobile. Salesforce recently predicted that mobile devices would dominate both traffic and orders for the entire 2018 holiday shopping season (68 percent of traffic and 46 percent of orders). On Black Friday alone, retailers saw $2.1 billion in sales from smartphones, accounting for 33.5 percent of Black Friday sales. The rise of mobile reflects broader shopping trends, and Google wants to capture a share of ad revenue associated with mobile shopping by offering a shoppable ad format.

What is the pay model?

The pay format is cost per engagement, not cost per click. The user has to be on the ad for 10 seconds or more, at which time the advertiser is charged. This approach can be a drawback. A click is a specific action. But having a page open for 10 seconds is a passive way to measure user intent. A person may not be really engaged with a product while a screen is open.

Any tips for getting the most out of Google showcase shopping ads?

Yes. Advertisers need to do two things:

  • Ensure all your products are grouped together in an easily findable way.
  • Have your products accurately labeled in each ad group.

Bottom line: Google showcase shopping ads give multiple advertisers a way to showcase multiple products for generic keywords that can otherwise be very expensive. If you compete for generic keywords in a mobile centric world – and who isn’t? – then you should consider Google showcase shopping ads. If you need help getting started or if you are running Google showcase shopping ads and want to take your game to the next level, contact True Interactive. We’re here to help.

Adapting Your PPC Strategy for Voice Search

Adapting Your PPC Strategy for Voice Search

by Taylor Hart Search Uncategorized

The evolution of artificial intelligence is changing the way people search online. Consumers are constantly connected to devices whether mobile, desktop, or tablet. And people are increasingly using voice search because of the proliferation of personal assistants on these devices such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Amazon’s Alexa. When utilizing voice search capabilities, consumers are exercising a more natural and conversational language, thus altering their search behavior. Consequently, brands need to alter their own behavior, including their strategies for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Since people do not type and speak in the same manner, digital marketers need to understand how their audience relies on voice search in order to be relevant in the era of voice search.

Unfortunately, Google and Bing do not provide a way to pull data regarding voice searches. Voice searches are translated into text and listed as regular search queries. At times you might see, “Siri, can you . . . ” or “OK Google” before a search term, but that’s not always the case. Brands need not wait for technology to advance in order to adapt their PPC campaigns for voice search. Here are a few strategies to consider:

Evaluate

First, evaluate your search queries and look for conversional text. “Who,” “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why,” and “How” are great phrases to focus on. Also, pay attention to any long-tail queries that include a natural phrase such as “near me” or “can I get the number for . . . ” Use these queries to understand what consumers want to know about your products or services. You can then gather those learnings to strategize a personal user experience for voice searchers.

People using voice search might seek a different user experience than what you’re providing for text searches. For example, the consumer might be trying to find “a plumber near me” but being driven to a landing page with a list of products on it. Once you know what your audience is looking for, determine if your paid advertisements and landing pages satisfy those searches so that you can improve performance for your PPC campaigns.

Optimize and Customize

Artificial intelligence encourages searchers to use conversational language. When trying to find an Italian restaurant in Chicago, one using voice search might ask: “What is the best Italian restaurant in Chicago?” However, if that same user wanted to search on a keyboard, they might type: “Best Italian restaurants Chicago.” The variation in tone shows that voice searches are looking for an immediate answer while text searches indicates that the consumer is still in the research phase.

Since voice search users are on the go looking for a quick direct answer, it’s important to optimize your content and ad copy to align with all the questions related to your offerings. Customize ad copy and drive traffic to a high-quality content landing page to ensure a better user experience and quality score. It’s also important to incorporate human-like content in your search ads and landing pages to match the natural phrases being searched.

Listen and Learn

Since voice search is becoming more widely adopted, especially for millennials, we can predict that we will see more PPC advancements and features to come focused around artificial intelligence. Even though we cannot track data for voice search yet, take advantage of what we have access to now by creating tests and strategies. Once you understand how your audience is using voice search, you can begin to prepare your PPC campaigns for the growth of artificial intelligence.