As Facebook parent company Meta Platforms continues its planned evolution to the metaverse, observers have begun asking about Instagram. Acquired in 2012, the photo and video-sharing platform may be finding the accommodations that help it with advertisers hurt it with younger users gravitating to TikTok and Snapchat. While Meta doesn’t break out numbers for Instagram, the “family of apps” of which Instagram is a member generated $32.8 billion in Q4 revenue, all but $155 million of it from advertising, according to earnings released Wednesday. That’s an 18 percent improvement over Q4 2020. Continue reading Wall Street Ponders Instagram as Meta Posts $10.2B VR Loss

Consumers were cheated out of $770 million by social media scams last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which said the number accounts for roughly one-fourth of fraud losses for the year. New scams involving e-commerce and cryptocurrency helped boost the haul, which was 18 times greater than the $42 million in social media fraud the FTC tracked for 2017. As a result, incidences of younger victims grew, with adults 18-to-39 reporting fraud losses 2.4 times more than adults 40 and over. Investment and romance scams were also high on the list.  Continue reading FTC Says Social Media Has Become Goldmine for Scammers

NBCUniversal is expanding its partnership with social video platform TikTok to include a joint promotion for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, set to kick off on February 4, and the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, beginning March 4. NBC Winter Games advertisers will reportedly have first crack at piggybacking onto what is being couched as a new type of brand experience that lets them draw from NBC 2022 Winter Games clips as they try to connect with sports fans. TikTok videos with Olympic-related hashtags have resulted in 18 billion views on the platform thus far, according to NBC. Continue reading NBCUniversal Teams with TikTok to Promote Winter Olympics

The European Parliament has added amendments to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act that will further strengthen consumer protections and make it more difficult for Big Tech to continue tactics for surveillance advertising and microtargeting. The new amendments, advanced at a plenary session last week, are significant in part because they apply to digital services more broadly than the original DSA, which targets “gatekeeper” companies like Google and Facebook. Parliament had already endorsed a full ban on the profiling of minors as well as limiting the use of special category data for ad serving. Continue reading Euro Parliament Toughens Stance on Surveillance Advertising

TikTok is testing the waters with a paid subscription mode for creators, joining Facebook, Clubhouse and others. Although TikTok remains tight-lipped about the experiment, it seems designed to keep TikTok influencers on the ByteDance platform rather than leaving for more lucrative pastures. Last week, Instagram announced a test allowing creators to charge from 99 cents to $99 per month for exclusive content, while Twitter in September debuted Super Follows, with rates of $2.99 to $9.99 per month. A creator with 13,000 followers that gets a 2 percent take rate at $4.99 per month can make $900 a month. YouTube and Snapchat also offer monetization options. Continue reading TikTok Experiments with Paid Subscriptions, Tweaks Stories

Spotify is bringing interactivity to the audio ad experience for podcasts with “Call-to-Action Cards.” As part of Spotify’s streaming ad-insertion platform, the CTA cards will appear in the app as soon as a podcast ad begins playing, resurfacing when a listener is exploring the app, reminding them to check out the product or service and eliminating the need to remember a promo code or URL. Advertisers can customize the CTA cards with images, text and clickable buttons. The feature makes podcast ads visually interactive for the first time, transforming the experience into something listeners can see, “and, most importantly, click.” Continue reading CES: Spotify Call-to-Action Cards Make Audio Ads Clickable

Atmosphere — a startup that curates streamed video content for commercial venues including Westin Hotels & Resorts, Taco Bell and Texas Roadhouse restaurants, as well as gyms, spas, airports and other places people congregate — has entered into a deal with TikTok to offer clients a channel programmed with the popular app’s short-form clips. The offering will be distinct from TikTok TV, launched in November as the mobile app’s first dedicated foray onto television screens and now available via Amazon Fire TV, LG and Samsung smart TVs, Google TV and other Android TV devices. Continue reading CES: Atmosphere Brings TikTok Mobile Video to New Venues

Sometimes you see a product idea that is so obvious you wonder why no one created it sooner. French company Fittingbox has developed an augmented reality app and a 3D model database that lets you try on new frames for eyewear without taking off your old glasses, so you can actually see what you look like as you try them on. Diminished reality is a subset of augmented reality focused on removing, rather than adding, elements of what you see and hear. The Fittingbox app uses the selfie camera on a smartphone to scan the face of the customer. It then recognizes and removes the wearer’s glasses from the 3D modeled image. Continue reading CES: Fittingbox Demonstrates Unexpectedly Useful AR App

TikTok made its shopping play this year, partnering with Shopify, then launching the TikTok World feature for creators and brands. The result has been items from clothes to cosmetics to tech accessories and household goods seeing sales boosts through exposure on the platform. The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt is said to have been viewed more than 7.4 billion times, and Amazon in May launched the category “Internet Famous: The Latest to Go Viral,” generously populated by products that “blew up” on the video-sharing service. Now brands are scrambling to leverage the social shopping made successful by TikTok influencers. Continue reading Social Video App TikTok Makes Splash as E-Tailing Presence

British lawmakers are seeking “major changes” to the forthcoming Online Safety Bill that cracks down on Big Tech but apparently does not go far enough. Expansions under discussion include legal consequences for tech firms and new rules for online fraud, advertising scams and deepfake (AI-generated) adult content. Comparing the Internet to the “Wild West,” Damian Collins, chairman of the joint committee that issued the report, went so far as to suggest corporate directors be subject to criminal liability if their companies withhold information or fail to comply with the act. Continue reading UK Lawmakers Are Taking Steps to Toughen Online Safety Bill

Personal data is fueling a $455.3 billion online advertising market, and a crop of new startups wants consumers whose information creates the value to get a piece of that action. Among the startups are Brave Software, Tapestri, Reklaim and Streamlytics. Now real estate billionaire Frank McCourt has committed $250 million to fund Project Liberty, which he hopes will restyle the web as a platform owned by the public. Of that amount, McCourt — former owner of the L.A. Dodgers — earmarked $25 million to create a decentralized social networking protocol that aims to reinvent the model for consumer data governance online. Continue reading Startups Want Consumers to Be Paid for Their Personal Data

Even before Jack Dorsey tweeted his resignation as Twitter CEO — and announced that another company he co-founded and runs as CEO, Square, will on December 10 change its name to Block — there was speculation that Twitter will soon be purchased. The rumors have been fueled by a belief that Twitter has potential beyond its stagnant share price — $44.47 as of yesterday’s close, slightly less than $44.90 the day of its November 2013 IPO — evidenced in its strong branding and popularity with elites. Top tech exec Parag Agrawal’s ascent to CEO is the corporate equivalent of staging in real estate.  Continue reading Talk of Twitter Sale Brews with Square/Block Floated as Suitor

From fast food to sporting goods, companies are harvesting and hoarding consumer data at a record pace in an attempt to maintain ad targeting at a time when government and Big Tech are erecting privacy firewalls. In the past, brands could rely on their platform partners to supply much of the data necessary for focused advertising. All that changed this year when Apple rolled out a new policy restricting how customers could be tracked on its devices. Google is said to be readying a similar revamp for Chrome. Meanwhile, California and Europe have passed new consumer privacy laws.  Continue reading Brands Adapt as Privacy Concerns Chill Advertising Business

Brands have begun dabbling in the metaverse. Chipotle, Vans and Nike are among those experimenting on Roblox, a platform where users play games, while Verizon staged a stadium game in Fortnite Creative, an affiliate service of the popular Epic game. Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook is said to be encouraging brands to use Instagram’s AR filters to get acclimated to the metaverse. There are reports that Apple is preparing its own meta debut, with Taiwan-based analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicting, presumably based on his supply-chain sources, that Apple plans to unveil an AR wearable late next year. Continue reading Meta Is Joined by Apple, Various Brands in Metaverse Pursuit

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as the company’s CEO, with chief technology officer Parag Agrawal promoted to fill that slot. Dorsey, who was concurrently serving as CEO of financial services firm Square and has recently become active in cryptocurrency, will retain his Twitter board seat until expiration of his term at the 2022 shareholders meeting. “I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it,” Dorsey said in a tweet yesterday. “There aren’t many companies that get to this level. And there aren’t many founders that choose their company over their own ego. I know we’ll prove this was the right move.” Continue reading Jack Dorsey Steps Down, Parag Agrawal New CEO of Twitter