Data-Labor-Technology

Experts suggest the current market conditions set TikTok up as a worthy challenger to Facebook’s ad dominance, fairly early into TikTok’s existence.

“I can’t emphasize how aggressively [TikTok] is trying to take share at the moment,” said Paul Kasamis, managing partner of performance at media agency Starcom. “They’re going after Facebook, they aren’t going after Snapchat … that’s the mantra from the business. They are not just here to take a little share: They believe they can be bigger than Facebook in the coming years, and quickly.”

TikTok continues to follow the playbook other social platforms have charted before it, where launching a self-serve platform unlocks a sizable spigot of revenue growth from performance advertisers. Experts have noted TikTok’s product rollout and third-party measurement and ad verification partnerships announcements have amassed far quicker than its competitors. TikTok has been beta testing the platform since last fall and had been talking to agencies for at least two months about its imminent launch, according to two agency staffers. A TikTok spokesperson said the launch had always been planned for the summer and that it has not been expedited.

If past history is anything to go by, the first three months will be a key “window of opportunity” for TikTok to bring new advertisers on board given the supply-demand economics of ad auction marketplaces, said Kasamias. Anthony McGuire, a former Facebook employee who now works as a technology consultant and startup founder concurred. Facebook’s strategy to win around reluctant first-time advertisers was to set them up on a three month test, he said.

Ad rates on Snapchat were around 30% lower than comparable ads on Facebook in the first three months after the former company launched its self-serve ad manager in 2017 and then started calibrating upwards as more advertisers began to use the service, Kasamias recalled. Self-serve cost-per-view rates on TikTok are also currently tracking at around 30% lower than those on Facebook, Kasamias said.

Facebook’s pain is TikTok’s gain

As many larger marketers hit pause on spending in the earlier throes of the coronavirus crisis, CPMs on Facebook plummeted and many small businesses and direct-to-consumer advertisers jumped on the opportunity — especially as many were forced to ramp up their e-commerce operations. Not only that, but many DTC brands reported higher than usual conversion rates, with Facebook and Instagram becoming significant performance marketing channels.

Facebook CPMs soon bounced back in May. Then in June, the “Stop Hate For Profit” advertiser boycott gained momentum and hundreds of brands have committed to pausing spend on Facebook for the month of July and in some cases longer. (Some large advertisers have also pledged to remove their advertising from other social platforms.) Yet, many DTC companies were in a bind about participating. While they supported the spirit of the movement, many digitally native brands are reliant on Facebook and Instagram for a majority of their sales, as Modern Retail reported. Small businesses are understood to make up the lion’s share of Facebook’s advertiser base. TikTok’s alternative has arrived slapbang in the middle of the July boycott — and in the same week Facebook flunked an independent civil-rights audit.

“A lot of the SMBs I have spoken to and VCs really do feel like they are over-reliant on Facebook [and there is an opportunity] for diversifying the performance budget options,” said Stefan Bardega, a marketing consultant to small- to medium-sized businesses and former EMEA president of iProspect. As for TikTok’s launch, he added, “If you want to get a slice of the Q4 retail pie you’ve got to start now.”

The new self-serve platform launched as usage of TikTok has soared. TikTok has generated close to 2.3 billion downloads worldwide across the App Store and Google Play to date, according to mobile app measurement firm Sensor Tower. This figure also includes the Chinese version of the app, Douyin. Around 19% of lifetime downloads to date — approximately 439 million installs — took place between March 1 and July 8 as the coronavirus crisis swept across the world. The average time spent per month on the app per U.S. user rose 93% to 855.6 minutes between October last year and May this year, according to Comscore.

SMBs may have only heard about TikTok six months ago and not considered using it as a marketing platform, but that soon changed as the coronavirus crisis escalated, said McGuire. Some SMBs have also benefited from the platform’s early organic reach, he added.

Chiropractor “@dr.cracks,” who remixed the popular Savage dance challenge to demonstrate stretches to relieve lower back pain, for example, has racked up more than 2.3 million likes for that TikTok alone. That said, it’s unclear how easy it will be for SMBs to gain virality as the platform matures.

Credit where credit’s due

TikTok said this week it is committing $100 million of advertising credits at for small-to-medium businesses in 18 countries, including the U.S. and U.K., to be used this year as part of a “back-to-business” program to help companies affected by the coronavirus crisis. That includes a one-time free credit of $300 and any additional spending up to $2,000 matched with another credit. For the $300 credit, there is a daily cap for each region, though eligible businesses can opt to claim it the following day. The credits will be awarded at the same time to eligible businesses at the same time, after a verification process, per a spokesperson.

Free ad coupons for new customers are not unusual in the online ad space, but as the coronavirus crisis began to take hold several large platforms offered ad credits as a way of support. 

Facebook in March pledged $100 million in cash grants and advertising credits to small businesses in more than 30 countries to help them weather the storm. However, at the time of writing (July 9) for 94% of the 36 listed countries listed on the grants program page Facebook says it is still working through eligibility details for those regions. The website says it is no longer accepting applications for companies in the U.S. and Canada.

“Our small business community has been clear that financial support is what they need and we are working to support them,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “Our $100 million global grants program is halfway rolled out, over 10,000 small businesses from multiple countries will have received a grant by the end of the month and we are on track to rollout the full program by the end of the summer.”

Google announced a $340 million ad credit program for small businesses in March. Credits, which varied depending on past spend, were applied automatically to accounts in July, a spokesperson confirmed.

TikTok’s business challenges

Facebook and TikTok are not like-for-like platforms. TikTok’s targeting and measurement options are still nascent, its audience skews younger and uncertainties linger around the quality of its data and brand safety options, experts said. TikTok’s full-screen video ad format that often leverage the “challenges” and dance trends popularized by its users tend to require more heavy lifting in the creative department than an average, static Facebook news feed ad. Yet experts also credited the slick user experience of the new self-serve ad interface — which resembles other ad managers — and the potential to reach audiences in a different way.

“The biggest opportunity is probably the audience: TikTok say 40% of those on TikTok aren’t on Facebook,” said Kat Harding, social director at Havas marketing agency Cake. “It’s unsaturated and you can get a lot of bang for your buck.”

For advertisers not looking to target a younger demographic, YouTube is likely to be a more suitable alternative to Facebook and Instagram, given its audience structure and available formats, said Werner Iucksch, global digital strategy director at We Are Social Singapore

TikTok faces major challenges aside from looking to boost its appeal to advertisers. Several governments around the world have voiced their concern about TikTok’s ownership, the Chinese firm ByteDance, and whether the company might share its user data with the Chinese government. India, for one, banned TikTok — along with dozens of other Chinese apps—late last month. Earlier this week U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview that the U.S. is “looking at” banning TikTok and other Chinese social media apps.

TikTok has maintained that it has never shared user data with the Chinese government and wouldn’t do so even if it was asked. The company recently hired the high-profile former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive officer, who is based in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that ByteDance is considering changing TikTok’s corporate structure to further distance the app from its Chinese parent.

TikTok’s bid to topple Facebook won’t happen overnight. Bytedance recorded $5.64 billion in revenue in the January to March quarter, Reuters reported last month, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Facebook reported $17.7 billion in revenue in the March quarter.

It’s an odd but obvious reversal. An analysis for Digiday by ZipRecruiter found that in 2016, only 5.6 in 100,000 postings mentioned that work from experience would be considered a plus, according to the company’s labor economist, Julia Pollak. In 2020, that demand is more than eight times more common.

Work-from-home (or anywhere) used to be something you’d have to convince employers to accept. There are plenty of advice columns out there from the BC (before-coronavirus) era advising those who wanted to work remotely how to sell prospective employers on the concept with lists of reasons why it would be good for their companies.

At least a few execs privately said to me in mid March that they worried about their employees not working as hard as they may have if they were in the office—while the check-ins and constant video meetings were well intentioned, there was a feeling of Big Brother about them. 

Plenty of companies (ours included) were built on notions like “you have to be together to be productive” and “company cultures can’t be built remotely.” And plenty of remote workers were for years shut out of jobs because they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, move near the company HQ. At Facebook, employees were paid bonuses of up to $15,000, just to live near its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Some of it was undeniably about collaboration, sure. Work offers socializing, identity and purpose for many. But much of work’s very design was driven by this need to be “present,” that somehow logging an eight-hour work week under fluorescent lights under your manager’s eyes meant you were also working very hard. And that was despite decades of research that showed people working remotely, were more productive than those who weren’t. That was despite mounting evidence that the traditional 9-to-5 in-office job wasn’t designed for working parents in mind, and assumed an outdated division of labor in households. Still, offices persisted. 

Plus, there was always this undeniable (no matter what bosses said) feeling that remote workers were somehow second-class citizens. “I got this feeling everyday at my current job before,” said the strategist, who worked out of Norfolk, Virginia, while her firm’s headquarters were in New York City. “It was like I had to beg to be included. I was an afterthought.”

Now, with everyone distributed, there is no remote — after all, who is remote from whom? “Satellite” employees now feel a renewed sense of power within companies. “My manager asks me about my life more than he ever did before,” said the strategist.

Our own research shows how good communicative habits have crept in: About 27% of agency employees and 23% of media workers say their managers have made a proactive effort to learn about them since they began working from home. 

The balance of power has shifted. Add that to the growing list of changes inside workplaces. Some of it is obvious and overt: The overwhelming backlash against the perceived “elites” during this massive global upheaval that found the bosses in opulent homes while their workers worked in small apartments; the conversation around social justice and inequality following Gorge Floyd’s killing, and overall the realization that in the workplace — we aren’t all equal.

Companies like Tulsa Remote, which awards grants to people for relocating to and working from Tulsa, have seen a boom: The program, backed by the George Kaiser Family Foundation has seen applications to the program double — especially as newly remote workers consider where to move to. After all, why tempt a company to move to a city when you can just tempt its workers? Similar programs are now cropping up in Savannah, Topeka and more, reports Bloomberg.

Job search engine Adzuna found that among 4.5 million job postings, data showed an increase in work-from-home in the job description. (They were already up 270% since 2017, yet another point that this has simply accelerated existing trends, not created them.)

It’s certainly not for everyone: Even at Facebook, which says almost half its employees will be remote indefinitely, people in their first jobs, or more junior people won’t be allowed to work remotely post-pandemic. They have to, after all, learn how to work in an office, before being let out of it, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who explained the thinking in an all-hands town hall earlier this spring. 

But for others, it’s a welcome reversal from being a second-class citizen, away from the center of the action. And it’s nice to put some of those hard-earned skills to use.

Rebecca Sullivan, who runs PR at ad agency MullenLowe in Boston, worked from home as an independent business owner for 16 years before she joined the agency in February in the office. She said there is a “leg up,” of a sort. “I can get more work done in a short amount of time,” she said. There’s a learning curve for others, new to working from home that she is way past.

“Some of this is I already worked through it: I had to work through my ideal workload, I figured out how to stay motivated and how to stay busy. How to get an area for working. I realized how I needed office buddies who I chat with all day,” said Sullivan. “I know what works.”

Zetland, founded in 2012 and 30-staffers strong, generates all revenue from its 16,000 paying members. The standard membership rate is 129 Danish kroner ($19.61) a month. It publishes up to four long-form news stories a day such as what the world looks like if the temperature rises by five degrees celsius and tech giants building giant data centers in Denmark. It says it broke even in fall 2019. 

On a good month, Facebook — with its huge scale, precision targeting and easy attribution — generates roughly a third of the new members for Zetland. The publisher wouldn’t share exact numbers but it’s worth noting that these are small. Still, that didn’t make the decision any easier.  

“This was no easy decision, we felt our hands shaking when we made it,” said CEO Tav Klitgaard. “We are an antidote of what social media represents. At the same time, we are in the market for people’s attention, that is a dilemma, and not an easy dilemma.” 

Like others, Zetland saw a membership bump during the coronavirus crisis — this month, its membership is 70% higher compared with the same period last year — but it has been on a growth trajectory for the past year since it began imploring current members to spread the word. 

Over 1,000 advertisers have sworn off Facebook for July as part of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. Most publishers are now enjoying cheaper Facebook ad rates to drive demand, sell subscriptions and boost reach on ad campaigns. But a few publishers like Zetland are staying away for the time being. For example, New Zealand news publisher Stuff quit posting editorially to the platform this week citing examples of social ills on Facebook that aren’t compatible with trust. 

“Few have the courage to [quit], and I really encourage [publishers] to try it because the trial at [Danish boradcaster] TV Midtvest opened our eyes regarding the unfocused ways time can be spent on social media for media companies,” said Nadia Nikolajeva, media consultant and former TV Midtvest executive.

Zetland is more able to quit Facebook than other publishers for several reasons: It’s a small, more specialized publisher reliant on reader recurring revenue rather than driving ad money through clicks. When it asks its readers for help, they respond. Just don’t call Zetland’s move a boycott.

“We don’t say we’re part of the boycott, that would be hypocritical,” said Klitgaard. “Facebook will not die if we move away so we don’t want to say big words like, but we can chip in.” For that reason, it doesn’t have specific demands of the platform like some other marketers.

Zetland has wanted to reduce its dependence on Facebook as a marketing channel since the beginning of 2019. But it’s still publishing organic links to its articles on Facebook and Instagram to drive new readers and generate chatter about its pieces. Nearly 29% of its referral traffic comes from social media, 85% of that is from Facebook, according to SimilarWeb stats. If a paying member shares a Zetland article on Facebook, anyone can read it.

Previously, 98% of Zetland’s marketing budget was spent on Facebook, where the cost per customer acquisition is roughly 300 Danish krone ($45.67). Now, the money will go towards hiring more journalists. It’s also asked readers if they have suggestions for small, grassroots companies they might be connected to that Zetland should sponsor.

Klitgaard notes these higher than usual conversions this month are from asking its current readers to help by introducing new members. Without Facebook, it’s tougher to say exactly where these new recruits are coming from.

The crux of Zetland’s problem with Facebook is the platform’s business model is designed to grab as much attention from people as possible. Ultimately, this leads to clickbait, polarization and hate speech. 

Ultimately, Facebook is impossible to replace as a marketing channel but other media can drive similar performance on one of its key characteristics. Podcasts, for instance, rival Facebook for ease of attribution.

“Zuck is right, people will come crawling back because [Facebook] has a superior product, a company like ours can be on the front line because we build relationships with the customer,” said Klitgaard. “In three months, probably not much will change, but in five to 10 years it will, the platform will have to work differently and ad-based journalism will be much harder.”

“We were like we can’t do this, it would be ridiculous to not acknowledge that the world had changed and there are many unknowns,” said Wengroff. Instead of putting up Hiki’s deodorants and other sweat-resistance products up for sale, Arfa decided to donate its initial slate of inventory to health care workers and first responders. Earlier this month, Hiki decided to finally put its products up for sale.

After months of Instagram posts about how “we’re all in this together,” and turning their factories into production centers for masks, direct-to-consumer brands are finally starting to return to business as usual. That’s particularly evident by the number of new startups entering the market. Over the past several weeks, new entrants on the market have included alcohol-free aperitif brand Ghia, multiple DTC air conditioner startups, and shopping app The Yes.

But for brands who do decide to move forward with a launch, the playbook has changed. Launches always come with a number of unexpected headaches, but even more so in the age of coronavirus. Startups that launch today can’t ensure a steady lineup of glowing press pieces about their launch, as publications have been slammed covering both the fallout from the coronavirus, as well as unrest following protests over the death of George Floyd.

Rather, these new brands have to curtail splashy marketing plans to keep more cash on hand, revamp their messaging — and even product assortment — to better speak to the new shopping habits created by the coronavirus, and virtually connect with customers that they can no longer get feedback from in-person.

Direct-to-consumer startups have crashed and burned by spending too much money on paid marketing in their early days, and letting customer acquisition costs balloon. So, while the crop of startups that have launched during the coronavirus outbreak may be experiencing trial by fire now, it could be beneficial in the long run by teaching them how to do more with less.

“We were definitely considering [postponing] our launch, as a handful of investors advised us to hunker down and ‘wait it out’ until at least the fall,” said Kim Pham, co-founder of Omsom, which sells Asian pantry staples and launched on May 13.  “That advice really scared [me and my co-founder]. As first-time founders, you often think your investors know best.”

Pham said that the coronavirus has impacted Omsom’s launch in a number of big and small ways. Post-launch, Omsom was hoping to promote its products through influencer dinners and pop-up showcases. Now, those are out of the question. In another instance, a big photo shoot for Omsom, that was planned the week that New York City went into shelter-in-place.

“I propped, shot and manned all of our recipe videos myself. Everything came out a bit grittier, but it was kind of a blessing in disguise,” said Pham. “I think consumers want real and raw right now.”

“This is certainly a stressful time for people, and when you are starting a new business that in and of itself it is stressful,” said Mike Mayer, co-founder and CEO of Windmill, a direct-to-consumer air conditioning startup that launched in the middle of June.

Windmill is lucky in that the coronavirus hasn’t destroyed consumers’ appetite for air conditioners as it has for say, suitcases. But, Windmill’s unveiling still wasn’t able to go exactly as planned. The company was hoping to launch in May, but had to push it back until mid-June because the company’s Chinese factory was closed for two months.

“It was not easy to push out a launch — we had been working on this for two years,” Mayer said. What Windmill decided to do instead was still create a pre-launch list, so that customers could still sign up to be notified when Windmill started shipping. Mayer said that within 24 hours, 3,000 people had signed up for the waitlist.

 “One thing that stuck out to me as I’m responding to customers, is just how supportive everyone has been,” Mayer said. “Everyone is on the same page — we’re all working from home, they get where the world is right now, they get that supply chains are backed up, that factories had to close.”

Delaying launches has allowed some brands time to get more feedback from customers. Wengroff said that by delaying the launch, Hiki was able to spend more time testing out its website. Arfa describes its business model as a “collective” where members sign up to serve as product testers, and in exchange get a percentage of the company’s profits. Arfa has hundreds of collective members, according to Wengroff.

So, in the several months between when Hiki planned to make its products available for sale and when it actually did, the company was able to spend more time getting feedback from the frontline workers it donated products to, as well as from its collective members. For example, collective members told the company that they wanted Hiki’s body powder to be more skin inclusive. In response to the current crisis, Arfa also decided to produce and sell hand sanitizer under the Hiki brand.

“It’s so important to stay agile — we’ve really seen 5-10 years of trends happen in the last six weeks,” said Wengroff. “Now is an incredible opportunity to think through not only being direct with your consumer, but someone who is hopefully going to be part of your company’s journey.”