SOCIAL MEDIA

Down the social audio rabbit hole

On Monday, we wrote about Clubhouse exiting beta—and what that means for the app’s potential as a marketing platform. But as it officially opens up to the masses, it faces a slew of competitors, ranging from Twitter Spaces to Spotify Greenroom.

Question: So what should marketers know about the social audio space?

Answer: The marketers we spoke with agree it's too early for brands to double down on any single social audio app or feature, as it’s unclear which one—if any—will come out on top. But they said the success of each will hinge on its ability to attract and retain creators. 

Who wins the social audio race? 

“The short answer is the listeners go where the content and the talent goes. Spotify’s Greenroom, Facebook, Twitter Spaces, and Clubhouse will be competing for contracts with creators,” Aubrey Strobel, head of communications at Lolli, told Marketing Brew. 

Twitter Spaces might be the most buzzed-about Clubhouse remix, but a handful of other platforms that pressed copy and paste are also in the running to become the Uber of the Amazon of the Facebook social audio’s top dog. 

Spotify Greenroom: Spotify introduced Greenroom in June to stake its claim in the live audio market; it’s since hit 107,000 global installs, per data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower. “If Clubhouse wants to stay at the top of its game, it may have to compete with Spotify’s Greenroom to sign major deals with creators and podcasters. We’ve seen this play out (not well) with Triller in competition with TikTok. The power is in the hands of the creators and whoever has the largest checkbook,” Strobel said. For what it’s worth, Greenroom released a TikTok-like “creator fund” to help creators monetize their live audio content. 

LinkedIn: LinkedIn announced in March that it was working on getting its Clubhouse competitor ready for beta testing, and it also recently debuted a “creator mode” that lets users act more like influencers on the platform. “I could see LinkedIn eventually being really competitive with Clubhouse because so many LinkedIn users were power social audio users, and I still see a lot of LinkedIn content creators heavily using Clubhouse,” marketing consultant Chantelle Marcelle told us. 

Facebook Live Audio Rooms: For Facebook’s part, the social behemoth announced Live Audio Rooms in June—it’s essentially Clubhouse within the Facebook app. And we bet you can guess who it partnered with for the debut: “public figures,” of course.  

Clubhouse was more hare than tortoise 

Clubhouse is not where many marketers are placing their bets—mostly because Spotify, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all have other multifunctional apps that users already spend time on for reasons other than social audio. “I can't see a standalone audio app cutting through the noise,” Allyssa Eclarin, director of product marketing at Postal.io, told us.

While Clubhouse has gotten millions of downloads since becoming available on Android in May, interest among iOs users is falling. Sensor Tower said 881,000 people downloaded Clubhouse from the App Store last month, a steep decrease from its peak of 9.6 million in February.

Click here to learn more about how marketers can navigate the social audio space beyond Clubhouse.—PB

ADVERTISING

Google sees green

Coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, Google made money last quarter. Like, a lot. On Tuesday, the search giant said its ad revenue rose 69% year over year (YoY) to $50.44 billion in Q2. The company has benefited from skyrocketing digital advertising spend during the pandemic. Global digital ad spending is expected to grow 20.4% YoY, per eMarketer estimates. 

• YouTube’s ad business alone pulled in $7 billion in the quarter, up 84% YoY. That’s just shy of Netflix’s Q2 revenue of $7.34 billion. 

Rewind: Last week, Twitter reported its total revenue jumped 74% YoY and Snap’s was up 116%. Yesterday, Apple announced its revenue increased 36% during its third quarter, totalling $81.4 billion. Yeah, it’s been a good week in Silicon Valley. 

Related, unrelated: Google kicked the can last month, telling advertisers it would hold off until 2023 to kill the incredibly popular third-party cookie. UK regulators have raised antitrust concerns about Google’s funeral for cookies, prompting the search giant to promise it will “provide for greater transparency” as it creates and implements cookie alternatives.—RB 

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TV

Spotted: An iSpot report on DTC ad spend

TV analytics firm iSpot recently released a report about direct to consumer (DTC) TV advertising trends, and we’re not going to bury the lede: The funniest part is that it lists Ancestry.com as a DTC brand. 

Anyway, its latest report looks at how much brands like DoorDash, Smile Direct Club, and Freshly have spent on TV advertising over the past eighteen months. The company said it analyzed ads from 192 DTC brands across linear and cable, and more than 300 OTT publishers and CTV platforms. 

The brands that spent the most on TV advertising during the first half of 2021: 

• Peloton dished out $68.9 million—that’s more than it spent in all of 2020. Not bad for a brand that said it didn’t need advertising when the pandemic hit the US. 
• Uber Eats followed, spending $54.3 million during the first half of this year, and Carvana came in third with $43.6 million.

And the DTCs with the most TV ad impressions: 

• Peloton took the number one spot, with more than 11.5 billion impressions throughout the first half of this year, while Chewy and Carvana settled into slots two and three, each garnering more than 10 million views. 
• Speaking of Chewy, the report also cited this Chewy ad called “The Walk” as the best-performing creative for the first half of 2021 (the “best” according to Clifford, Lassie, and iSpot’s audience sentiment metrics, of course).

Looking ahead: iSpot’s VP of business development, Emily Wood, told Marketing Brew it’s “safe to say, the more TV resembles digital, the more you'll see these brands integrate television into their models. The process is just getting started, so we'd expect their presence to grow even more in the coming years.” —PB

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Instagram Reels can now be 60 seconds long.
• Nielsen’s post-cookie measurement solution relies on machine learning.
• Facebook said it won’t let advertisers target users under the age of 18 based on their interests.
• NBCU News Group said it’s got 200+ openings on its digital team. Now, if it could just tell us when Olympic swimming starts.
• Campbell’s is redesigning its iconic cans, but just barely. It’s also debuting NFTs.

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FRENCH PRESS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren't those.

Emails: The case for not undervaluing email marketing lives here. 

TikTok: The app is rolling out eight new livestreaming features, and this article explains each.

Love Island: Apparently, the (hot take incoming) lesser version of The Bachelor offers a case study on integrating pop culture into your social strategy. 

Red alert: There’s an easy way to reach podcast listeners. RedCircle lets you target the right demographics and measure the right metrics across thousands of independent shows, all with just a few clicks. Learn how to plug and play your brand here.*

METRICS AND MEDIA

Stat: The Olympics opening ceremony’s viewership numbers were the lowest in 33 years, drawing a US audience of 16.7 million.

Quote: “Many social-media specific jobs still offer lower salaries than comparable fields like marketing. The average annual salary for marketing managers is $102,496 and $109,607 for marketing directors on Glassdoor, according to a spokesperson for the jobs website. Meanwhile, the average annual salary is $67,892 for social-media directors and $47,908 for social-media assistants.”—an excerpt from The WSJ piece on social media managers coming of age.

Read: This WaPo deep dive on Virginia’s famous tourism campaign slogan.

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• For official sponsors, Tokyo’s Olympic Games will likely be a letdown
• Why Clubhouse is no longer “exclusive”
• An earnings roundup from holding companies