July 2023: What's new in the world of digital
Posted on 10th August 2023 at 17:00
Read Time: Approx. 7 Minutes 24 Seconds
Author: Lewis Stretton & Liv Rutter
Welcome to July's edition of the Digital Revolution, where we provide you the latest updates from the world of digital.
Elon musk rebrands Twitter to X
What is it?: On the 22nd of July Elon Musk announced that the well-known blue bird will be gone forever! He shared that ‘X.com’ now redirects to ‘Twitter.com’. The iconic vocabulary known with Twitter has all changed with him stating people will now ‘X’ rather than ‘Tweet’.
Why is it important?: Since Musk confirmed the takeover of Twitter back in October, he announced that many advertisers spendings declined or completely stopped, that resulted in an approximate 59% drop in Twitter’s US ad revenue. This has affected the global Ad revenue percentage and could be the thought process of why Elon Musk believed a rebrand was the solution to fixing this. The CEO of Twitter has stated the change is for the future, she called it a ‘Global Marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.’ The change could also be a response to Threads, Metas’ new social media creation, that saw outstanding growth within the first couple of days of launch. However, the change may have caused more problems than solutions, as many people are discussing how the change to X will perform, one key factor being the changes to SEO. Many Tweets are embedded on to sites across the web, meaning these site owners will have to keep a keen eye to see if these embedded tweets break or stop working, because it will affect SEO on their site. The team at ‘X’ are working very hard to make sure this does not happen, as they know this will also affect the SEO of ‘X’ as well.
What action should you take?: We understand that ‘Twitter/X’ was not in every brands social plan, with all the changes happening so quick and the future of ‘X’ being unclear. Twitter is known to be more of a B2B platform, therefore it will be interesting to see whether this change will adopt more of a B2C perspective. We would recommend that if you are currently using ‘Twitter/X’, to review what other brands in your sector are currently doing with ‘X’. If ‘X’ isn’t currently in your social media plans, do not rush to include it, with many declining metrics being reported on ‘X’, there is scepticism whether this change was for the better or worse.
TikTok Launches Ads Transparency Library
What is it?: TikToks Ads Transparency Library is a Commercial Content Library that allows marketers to access key data to improve their campaign strategies. It offers information such as when the advertisement ran, the main parameters used for targeting and the number of people who have seen the ad. In addition to this, TikTok has also given marketers access to a Commercial Content API, which is where you would submit your application so your data can go into the Ads Transparency Library. This was created to clamp down on the misuse of data
Why is it important?: This is important as it gives marketers key information such as who is interacting, watching, or ignoring their ads, allowing them to adapt and improve their campaign strategies to get a larger reach and higher impression rate. The TikTok Ads Transparency Library is very similar to the Meta Ad Library, as they both have the same mission of gaining insight into the advertising strategies of businesses and solo affiliates on their respective platforms. This is another sign of how TikTok is trying to help advertisers increase their investment in the platform, as they compete with budget from media platforms such as Meta.
What action should you take?: We recommend anyone who posts on TikTok, to use this tool as it will give you a greater understanding of what’s happening with your videos once you have posted them and what you need to do in order to meet your goals. Don’t forget, if you want access to the Commercial Content API you must create a Developers TikTok account!
Looker Studio Makes New Data Fields Available from GA4
What is it?: With less than a month until the official migration date to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google announced that they had made 170 new data fields, previously not available to utilise in Looker Studio (formally known as Data Studio).
Why is it important?: Looker Studio is one of the most commonly adopted data visualisation tools, due in part to its seamless integration with Google products, the ability to add connectors such as Zapier or Funnel.io for other channels and the fact that is free to access and use. Most marketers and data analysts will have had some real challenges transitioning existing reports, which used Universal Analytics data, as Looker did not have a large chunk of the metrics available. Whilst not all the data views are replicable, this release is a massive move forward.
What action should you take?: Whilst there are new data visualisation capabilities available directly in GA4, our view and from speaking to other industry peers, is that solutions like Looker Studio have a place and allow more flexibility for reporting. We would recommend that if you haven’t already, you attempt to migrate all the existing dashboards you have (refresh your data sources in GA4), understand the gaps and see if GA4 is able to support with this.