AI-powered everything
Scroll to the end for the full scoop this week for creators, entrepreneurs, and social-first brands.
Happy Met Gala evening! Don’t be fooled by the AI couture.
We’ve got a lot to get into this week, let’s go.
In this edition:
📺 NewFronts updates: Google, Meta, Snapchat, TikTok
⌚️ Consumers aren’t sold on wearable AI yet
🧑💻 Jack Dorsey departs Bluesky
🛍 TikTok Shops doubles merchants in new safety report
🎧 TikTok secures UMG music deal
🛠 TikTok adds new ad placement options
💔 𝕏 redesigns user interaction interface & revises block feature
📹 YouTube experiments with AI for video ideas
🗣 WhatsApp introduces community events
Stay saucey 🍯
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Creative Industry / News & Trends
2024 NewFronts: AI-powered everything
🤓 WTF is a NewFront? You can skip this paragraph if you already know. But for the uninitiated, NewFronts are a big media industry event that happen every year in the spring. It’s like New York Fashion Week, but for media companies — and instead of fashion on the runway, it’s platforms like YouTube and TikTok pitching advertising opportunities to brands and agencies. (In the old days, it was the industry’s roadshow to sell advertisers on limited TV ad spots). We like NewFront announcements because it gives us a good idea of what to expect from platforms over the next year.
The highlights:
📺 Google — Google said its expanding partnerships with major streaming providers like Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros Discovery to integrate their ad inventory and audience data into the Display & Video 360 platform. This means approved advertisers can now easily buy and run their ads on Hulu, Disney+, and HBO.
∞ Meta — Meta had a lot of announcements to unpack at NewFronts, mostly focused around creators, Reels, and AI. There are AI recommendations coming to Instagram's Creator Marketplace, a new AI tool to predict high-performing organic content for paid ads, more AI creative tools for Reels (image expansion), multi-destination product ads for Reels, and new features for Reminder Ads.
👻 Snapchat — Snapchat introduced a range of new ad products with a focus on augmented reality (AR). AR Extensions means advertisers can integrate AR Lenses and Filters directly into all Snap ad formats. Snap is also looking to simplify AR creation with new automation tools for the building process, including with generative AI to create custom AR Lenses via text and image prompts.
📱 TikTok — Even under the pressure of a potential ban (which it didn’t shy away from discussing), TikTok’s NewFronts focus was on its ad offerings, measurement capabilities, and brand control.
New partners are joining the TikTok Pulse Premiere program, including Paramount Global and NHL. This program which debuted last year to give advertisers more brand safety control.
TikTok introduced new audience measurement solutions, including partnerships with iSpot and Nielsen.
TikTok introduced a new tool called Pulse Custom Lineups, which uses generative AI to help brands target relevant content categories.
Advertisers will soon be able to buy ads against specific content from partners like NBCU and Vogue around tentpole events.
🧠 TV analytics platform Samba TV debuted new AI capabilities that can identify people, products, and context in TV shows to enable more precise targeting and measurement for advertisers. It’s a clear glimpse of how generative AI is being integrated at a macro scale, now rolling into enterprise tools like Samba to enable next-level contextual understanding of content. For TV advertisers (including streaming platforms) this is a gateway to better, more inform data — driven, ofc, by AI.
AI wearables aren’t ready for mainstream
Wearable AI has caught heat lately, in part due to viral commentary around products like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1. But it’s not that the products are bad, it’s that our expectations, as consumers, are too high. The tech simply isn’t ready for mainstream adoption — and that’s ok.
Critics have lambasted the latest prototypes for unreliable performance, clunky designs, and overall lack of practical utility, which is to be expected in first-generation technology like this. The bottom line is that wearable AI won't outdo our current benchmark (aka smartphones) until the hardware, software, and AI improves significantly — and the culture catches up with it.
Jack Dorsey leaves Bluesky
Jack Dorsey, the OG co-founder of Twitter, is on the outs at Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform he helped start around the same time Elon took over Twitter.
While there hasn’t been a concrete reason “why” Jack is leaving, we know he’s been vocal in his support for "freedom technology" like 𝕏 and Nostr. For now, Bluesky is searching for a replacement board member who “shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience."
Social News & Trends
🛍 TikTok Shops growth skyrockets. TikTok released its first-ever safety report on TikTok Shops, reporting that 500,000+ merchants were selling to US users on its app at the end of 2023 — more than double the number from three months earlier.
🎧 UMG music returning to TikTok. On the music front, TikTok has finally inked a deal with Universal Music Group granting users access to UMG's catalog for content creation. Hopefully this means all the UMG sounds that were removed amidst the ongoing negotiations will soon be reinstated.
🛠 TikTok’s big bet on ad revenue. Like I mentioned above, TikTok is expanding its premium ad options and offering advertisers more prominent placements in the app to amplify reach. My bet is TikTok won’t stop pumping out new features for advertisers until — or if — a ban in the US becomes a reality. ‘Til then, TikTok’s ads business is cooking.
💔 𝕏 interaction buttons to disappear. 𝕏 is coming out with a relatively major UI change that will hide all interaction buttons on posts, which an 𝕏 employee previewed last week. While these buttons won’t be visible on the main feed, the new UI will feature an “exploding menu” with all the interaction options appearing like so:
🚫 𝕏 is changing how the ‘block’ feature works. Musk has been critical of the blocking feature for awhile now, saying it serves little value and should be scrapped (except for in DMs). Users will soon be able to see replies from blocked accounts, though the identity of the commenter will remain hidden, which Elon believes this aligns with his commitment to free speech on the platform.
🤖 AI ideas for YouTube content. We knew this was coming — but now it’s here. YouTube launched a live test of its AI-powered ideas generator for Clips, which will give creators suggestions for short-form videos and clips. It looks like this:
🗣 WhatsApp “Communities” beefs up. Keeping pace with the community-driven nature of apps like Telegram, Geneva, and Discord, WhatsApp is adding “Community Events” which will allow Community members to highlight upcoming functions in-stream. Events will be displayed in the group chat when announced and also in the group's information page so members can track upcoming functions. It’s also adding replies to Announcement channels so admins can collect responses and members can get a sense of how announcements are received in the community.
Sauce Snippets
Stray news, memes, and trends from the internet ✨
The total internet era of rap beef
The social media creator economy reckons with a possible TikTok ban
All of Katy Perry’s viral AI Met Gala photos
The teens making friends with AI chatbots
Man or bear? Viral question sparks serious conversations
The top TikTok trends to try this week (you know, before it gets banned)