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Edition #478
How AI overviews are democratising search, TikTok is back but is Vine?
AI Overviews is democraticising search results. Readers from last week might have caught the datapoint that 63% of sources cited in AI overviews are not found in the traditional top 10 results.
Which is super interesting, that information was there before, but it wasn’t in a nice and tidy bundle to be a top 10 result. Which in over optimized keywords was always the case, each page was designed to be there. But the nuggets of knowledge we find are spread out between the pieces.
We used to use encyclopedias & white pages, because the information was in a nice tidy bundle. But search and wikipedia helped filled the gaps we didn’t realise they missed. And now we’re experiencing the same with AI overviews.
An example of how AI overviews pick up the nuggets, is if you look for say ‘family friendly things to do in Paris’. Any one list might be ok, but a query that returns a slice of the best of 3 is better. Which is kind of what is happening here.
And that’s an exciting opportunity and part of the original intent of search to bring rich results in. It is a new era.
Axios also covers all the ways other platforms are trying to pick up TikTok videos, it was just interesting seeing it all laid out like that.
Everyone has their own take. At the moment TikTok is back & functioning but not yet in the app stores. The latter is surprising.
Does this switch or short term reprieve change anything for brands? I’m not sure, make hay whilst the sun shines I imagine is the short term approach. Long term, well that’s next quarters problem.
Notable stories this week
- From native to branded content: Avid Collective calls for industry alignment.
- Journalism needs to tome to grips with the fact the era of free traffic is over.
- Vine founder launches a meme coin. Could this be used to fund Vine 2.0?
- Introducing the Substack creator fund.
- Community notes will not be displayed on paid ads.
- The Trade Desk plans to redefine ad quality outside the walled gardens with Sincera.
- A16z adopts a new logo for the golden age.
- Competitors rush to fill possible TikTok void.
- Amazon’s DSP ambition: becoming the primary DSP for advertisers.
- A16z adopts a new logo for the golden age.
- Competitors rush to fill possible TikTok void.
- New Performance Max features.
- Agencies have mixed feelings about using AI tools for product placements and influencer marketing.
- Star systems.
Deals/M&A
- Kantar Media is being sold to H.I.G. Capital for about $1b.
- Meta backs data analytics firm Databricks as AI boom attracts investors.
Campaign of the week
- Ikea Sweden reliving old memes to highlight its new points loyalty program. Watch here. More on the story behind it here.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “What we are interested in is about how you get data that may not be available in the bid stream, and then use that to empower buyer’s decisioning vs. disintermediating them from that process.” –Will Doherty, VP Inventory Development, The Trade Desk.
- ^ This is analogous to companies doing their own research on Stocks, rather than just taking the standardized numbers released. Expect this trend to continue, what data outside the bidstream that could impact bids.
Datapoints of note
- 90% of CEOs and Board Directors follow the news closely, reading an average of six articles per day.
Events
- Native Advertising Institute is holding their first US based event in April.
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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