TikTok bets on context, Twitter looks to premium

At the IAB’s NewFronts, held virtually this week, social media platforms unveiled their upcoming offers – some of the highest profile contained one lesson in advancing and another in defending: here’s what it all means.

Why it matters

It’s straight from the peddler’s mouth – in the nicest way possible. While claims to bosses/clients tend to contain a fair bit of sugar, these presentations are still a pitch for investment, not regard.

But the underlying contours are also telling. TikTok’s new product, Pulse, is primarily a contextual advertising solution but it follows the announcement of a first- and third-party tracking pixel as it deepens its attribution capabilities. Together, it’s a sign that the short video platform is gunning for Meta: offering placement next to top-performing, safe content, while measuring all sorts of intent.

Meanwhile, Twitter is in a bit of a pickle, to put it lightly. It appears premiumisation is the answer to the question thrown up by the acquisition of the micro-blogging site by a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” at a time when brands want to steer clear of the conflict and acrimony that unbridled free speech can bring.

TikTok Pulse

Per the ByteDance owned app, which now boasts over a billion monthly users, its new product TikTok Pulse promises to place brands next to the top 4% of content in users’ For You feed beginning in the US, with further markets added later in the year. Per TechCrunch, buyers can purchase inventory through TikTok Ads Manager on a fixed CPM.

TikTok offers 12 categories of Pulse in which brands can place their ads next to the most culturally relevant content. It also offers filters to ensure that ads through the Pulse platform are running on verified, brand-suitable content, the firm explains in a statement.

As part of the programme, creators with a minimum of 100,000 followers will receive 50% of the ad revenue if their videos are featured.

What it means

It points to a deeper lack of consensus on what contextual advertising means. There are both very high-tech and very low-tech ways of reaching audiences with relevant ads (just ask old school print media buyers), but TikTok’s Pulse appears to be a reassuringly straightforward method of buying into a fixed pool of verified categories.

This is no bad thing; as TikTok works to overcome lingering trust issues, a bit of predictability is likely to work in its favour.

Twitter’s brand safety struggles

Will Twitter become a free-for-all, with most moderation guardrails abandoned under its new ownership?

Twitter says ads will be kept apart from the real rough and tumble on the site, and funnelled instead toward a handful of premium video partnerships including:

• Conde Nast
• E! News
• The WNBA

But the sense is that while advertising is still critical to the platform’s revenues, the broader, Elon-Musk-shaped elephant in the room is about other things.

Sourced from TikTok, TechCrunch, Twitter, WARC