Month: September 2022

“We recognize that cars are emotional, and Americans have personal and cultural attachments to them so this makes switching to new EV technology intimidating to many,” said Brandt Hastings, Volta’s chief commercial officer behind the marketing strategy. ”Our campaign had to appeal on an emotional level as well since it’s not just about facts and figures.”

As part of the brand’s marketing strategy, eye-catching EV chargers have also been placed at grocery stores, pharmacies, and shopping mall entrances. “With this campaign, we’re using the power of our Volta Media Network, which is embedded directly into our EV charging stations, to dispel myths and show all drivers why their next car should be an EV,” said Hastings.

Volta’s campaign is timely as momentum behind electric vehicles continues to gain steam. The campaign also launched on Volta’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. “We believe that all car owners will be EV drivers in the future, but to realize this future as quickly as possible, they must be able to see themselves behind the wheel of an EV,” said Hastings.

It is unclear how much Volta’s ad budget is allocated to this campaign, as Hastings would not share budget specifics. Volta’s media sales revenue increased 73% year-over-year to $11.2 million, per their second quarter earnings report. Volta also added some new brand partners in the second quarter, including Michelin, Genesis, and United Airlines. Hastings said outside paid channels were not used for this campaign and declined to share how the advertising budget was split between Twitter and Instagram. Ad spend data for the brand was not available on Pathmatics and Kantar.

Volta’s campaign ties in with the widespread automaker advertisements, especially for mainstream brands promising to make electric vehicles accessible.

“This could help position [Volta] into the evolving top tier and what will be a confusing logo-map of providers across the country,” said Mat Zucker, senior partner, co-head of marketing and sales at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting firm. He added that campaigns like this one could help encourage progress in establishing charging infrastructure, which leads to anxiety among EV owners about range.

For Volta, the future is focused on advancing a cleaner, carbon-free energy future for drivers and the environment. “We are continuing to expand access to public EV charging infrastructure and are doing so through the support of our powerful and impactful media network,” Hastings said.

TikTok’s quarterly disclosures come as the rapidly growing platform faces more regulatory pressure. Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have grown increasingly concerned with TikTok on a number of fronts ranging from data privacy and child safety to misinformation. TikTok is also under the microscope in Europe where the company is facing a potential $29 million fine in the United Kingdom over claims that it didn’t protect children’s privacy between 2018 and 2020. And during a forum in Brussels earlier this week, Brendan Carr, a Federal Communications Commissioner, joined European Union officials to discuss international data flows and whether TikTok’s poses a potential national security threat if user data can be accessed by government officials in China.

A TikTok spokesperson declined Digiday’s interview request about its own report. However, in a blog post about the findings, Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety, wrote that TikTok recognizes “the impact misinformation can have in eroding trust in public health, electoral processes, facts, and science.”

“We are committed to being part of the solution,” Keenan wrote. “We treat misinformation with the utmost seriousness and take a multi-pronged approach to stop it from spreading while elevating authoritative information and investing in digital literacy education to help get ahead of the problem at scale.”

Here’s a summary of the findings:

Finding and removing fake accounts

TikTok, which now claims to have more than 1 billion active users, removed 59.4 million accounts during the second quarter of 2022, according to the company’s new report — up from 14.9 million during the same period in 2021. Of the accounts it removed between April and the end of June, more than half — or 33.6 million — were deemed to be fake accounts. (The company got rid of 20.8 million fake accounts during the first three months of 2022, but just 1.7 million during the second quarter of 2021.) TikTok also removed another 20.6 million accounts suspected to have been created by kids under the age of 13, nearly twice as many as it removed for age violations a year ago.

As the company continues to grow its advertiser base, it’ll be increasingly important to have an accurate count so it doesn’t face the same backlash as other social networks when it comes to accurate marketing measurement.

The stakes are especially high right now for TikTok, said Claudia Ratterman, a director analyst at Gartner. Although major social networks release regular transparency reports, she said TikTok’s parent company, the China-based tech company ByteDance, makes it even more important to keep “building trust for continued growth” amid U.S. concerns that Chinese government officials could access U.S. users’ data.

“When users trust a platform, they are more likely to continue to use it and spend time on it regularly which translates into revenue,” Ratterman said. “Same goes for advertisers, if they trust the platform, they are more likely to invest advertising dollars on the platforms.”

Removing more ad and video content

The total ads that TikTok removed for violating policies and guidelines declined from 5.5 million in the first quarter to 5.1 million in the second quarter. (For comparison, the company removed 1.8 million ads in the second quarter of 2021.) TikTok also removed another 4.2 million ads in the second quarter due to actions taken against accounts—down from 8.7 million ads removed during the first three months of the year — but didn’t disclose what the enforcement actions were so that malicious actors couldn’t gain insights for evading detection.

In addition to removing ads and accounts, TikTok also removed more videos in the second quarter, taking down 113 million compared to 102 million during the first quarter of the year. Of the total videos removed in the past three months, it took down 43.7% with “minor safety” violations, 21.2% related to illegal activities and regulated goods, 10.7% that had adult nudity or sexual activity, 9.3% with violence and just 1.7% for having hateful behavior.

Advertiser impact

David Hook, who leads marketing at the Portland-based influencer agency Outloud Group, said TikTok’s disclosures about fake accounts contrast it with Twitter, which has faced allegations from Elon Musk and whistleblower Peiter Zatko questioning its true total number of bots. According to Hook, TikTok’s use of artificial intelligence to eliminate harmful content also helps make it a safer platform for its core audience of younger users. (According to Statista, around 25% of TikTok users in the U.S. were between the ages of 10 and 19 as of September 2021 and another 22.4% were between 20 and 29.)

TikTok’s latest report “demonstrates an ongoing maturation process for the industry on brand safety issues,” according to Mike Zaneis, CEO of Trustworthy Accountability Group and the Brand Safety Institute.

“TikTok has leaned into these efforts and it is great to see them increasing transparency into their operations as well as achieving real improvements to protect marketers and consumers,” Zaneis said.

Yomei Kajita, svp of paid social at digital marketing agency 3Q/Dept, said some smaller advertisers don’t want to pull their ads unless there’s something “extremely bad” happening that they want to avoid. In some ways, it’s similar to what many said about Facebook: for years, the ROI was too good to justify pulling spending even if advertisers had issues with brand safety on the platform. Kajita said TikTok’s not as effective yet in the same way, but it’s too popular to ignore.

Along with its quality control efforts, TikTok has been rolling out a number of new features for advertisers looking to reach the platform’s user base. So far this year, it’s introduced new tools for creators, beta tests for search ads, new formats for shoppable content and even a BookTok feature with Penguin Random House.

“It’s a good thing that they have the tech to find these accounts and shut them down,” Kajita said. “But as an advertiser, when I’m talking to my clients and they ask if I recommend TikTok for them, are the people they’re targeting real people or are they bots?”

“Our focus this year has been growing that games business, thinking of Wordle as an incredible opportunity to introduce all those people to our games,” said New York Times head of games Jonathan Knight. 

The strategy has paid off, according to Knight. “In recent weeks, we’ve definitely seen evidence that, when we ultimately offer people a subscription to games and give them the choice to take the games subscription or take the larger New York Times bundle, people take the bundle,” he said, though he declined to provide specific subscription numbers. “It’s an exciting opportunity to introduce people to everything that the New York Times has to offer, so we’re definitely beginning to see that strategy play out.”

And there is a logical overlap between the audience for the Times’ puzzle games and its editorial content. “The people that are attracted to word games, in general, are a pretty good fit for somebody who wants the more intellectual news coverage,” said Peter Ericson, creator of the digital subscription platform Leaky Paywall.

The significant demographic expansion of its gaming audience due to the Wordle acquisition was a motivator for the Times to more directly leverage its gaming vertical. Knight said that the makeup of the Times’ gaming audience has shifted considerably toward international markets, though he was unable to provide specific demographic figures.

The international expansion of the Times’ gaming audience has gotten a boost from the global success of Wordle — and at least some international users have followed the exact subscription funnel laid out by Knight and his team. Sonia Pham, a New York Times Games user based in London, said she was introduced to the Times’ gaming vertical through Wordle, but now rarely plays the free game, choosing instead to spend most of her gaming time playing Spelling Bee, a premium offering. 

“Initially, I just wanted the game subscription. But then I was like, ‘well, how much is the news subscription as well?’ I ended up getting the subscription to news, and only more recently have I started using it as a source of news,” Pham said. “It’s a very expensive way, really, for me to play one game every day. But it’s just one of those things that becomes part of your daily routine; it’s a subscription you set up and forget about.”

As the Times’ gaming audience continues to grow, increased subscription revenue is only one way the publisher is looking to take advantage of its gaming vertical. The Times’ games are also valuable ad inventory, and the company has begun to experiment with merchandise and brand partnerships, including a Wordle board game produced with Hasbro and the integration of some of the Times’ partners directly into its games. This month, for example, commuters in New York City can play Spelling Bee via digital game boards on subway trains and platforms, an activation developed in partnership with outdoor advertising firm OUTFRONT Media. 

“Millions of people turn to New York Times Games for a delightful break in their day that can also challenge them,” said Chandra Cooks, managing director of marketing for New York Times Games. “As we look to celebrate our community and increase the awareness of our portfolio, brand collaborations and thoughtful earned integrations will continue to play a role in our marketing mix.”

In today’s attention economy, gaming is one of the fastest-growing forms of media and entertainment, and is increasingly becoming another facet of media consumers’ wide-ranging entertainment diet alongside written editorial content. The Times’ increased focus on gaming reflects the company’s understanding of the changing media market.

“We’ve been lucky to have a tremendous organic interest in our daily games and wordplay forums. They engage users from all over the world, at all skill levels, to enjoy gameplay every day,” said Holly Harnisch, head of earned marketing at the Times. “We’re just now dipping our toe into larger marketing efforts to deepen our connection with our well-established community and invite more people to play.”

To start, Digiday’s survey found that brands and agencies agree that Google drives the most marketing success when compared with other marketing channels. In fact, agencies’ confidence in Google is higher than that of brands: 69% of brand respondents said they are confident that Google drives marketing success, compared with 72% of agency respondents who said they are confident the channel drives success for their clients.

But how do these findings measure up when it comes to how brands and agencies are actually allocating marketing budgets?

When it comes to brands, it turns out their confidence in Google as a marketing channel is reflected in how much they actually spend there. Nearly 60% of brand respondents to Digiday’s survey said they spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Google. Meanwhile, just shy of 70% of brand pros said they are confident or very confident that Google drives marketing success for their businesses, putting the difference between the two at just 10 percentage points.

Digiday’s survey revealed a different story when it comes to agencies. While nearly three-quarters (72%) of agency respondents said they are confident or very confident that Google drives marketing success for their clients, only 44% of agency pros said a large or very large portion of their clients’ marketing budgets goes toward the channel.

This discrepancy of 28 percentage points among agency respondents is a significant one. But why is there such a difference between how brands allocate their marketing budgets and how agencies allocate budgets on their clients’ behalf? It’s possible that part of the agency advantage is that they help brands diversify their marketing spend more effectively than brands are able to do it on their own. But it’s also possible that agencies overestimate the impact other channels like social and TV have on making actual sales.

Either way, Google’s dominance in the marketing big picture holds strong.