1. TikTok Launches 'TikTok Tactics' Online Course - TikTok has launched a new, video-aligned platform training course for marketers, designed to provide tips and insights on how to make the best use of the platform for brand promotion and development.

The new ‘TikTok Tactics’ course is an ‘easy to follow, best-practice guide to advertising on TikTok’, which provides a range of lessons on attribution, targeting, creative best practices, and more.

The course, which you can sign-up for here, focuses on four key elements:

You can sign-up and go through the TikTok Tactics course here.

2. TikTok Instant Page Meets Users’ and Brands’ Needs for Speed - As it looks to maximize business engagement in the app, and boost its revenue opportunities, TikTok is rolling out a new ‘Instant Page’ shopping display option, which will enable brands to connect their TikTok ads through to a lightweight, native landing page, built within TikTok itself, which will load up to 11 times faster than standard mobile pages.

The process is a lot like Facebook’s Instant Articles, with the content built into the app itself, as opposed to referring users off to a third-party website. In the case of Instant Articles, that comes with inherent problems, because it limits the data collection capacity of publishers, where the IA offering is primarily aimed. TikTok’s Instant Pages are a little different, in that they’re focused, ideally, on direct conversion for brands, but it is still a consideration. If people aren’t clicking through to your site, and you’re not getting referral traffic data, that could be a concern.

To set up a TikTok Instant Page, businesses will need to create an eligible ad on TikTok Ads Manager (full eligibility details here) and then build an Instant Page as the destination link for the campaign.

Once you’ve created an Instant Page, you can save it to your TikTok ad library, so you can add it to multiple campaigns.

P.S: TikTok’s Instant Pages are currently in testing, available via a TikTok sales rep, but they’ll likely be rolled out to more businesses soon. Another consideration for your strategy.

3. YouTube Creators to Receive a Separate Account for YouTube Earnings - Google sent emails to YouTube publishers that their YouTube AdSense payments will be separated from their other AdSense payments. So if you get paid through Google AdSense for AdSense ads on your sites and also on YouTube, you will now get payments individually for each.

The issue is, that means each has to hit the $100 payment threshold individually and you might get paid out slower. That is, some publishers take time to hit the $100 payment threshold but when you combine AdSense for Search, AdSense for Content, YouTube, and other earnings together, you can hit the $100 payment threshold sooner. Now that Google is paying YouTube out differently, it may take you longer to get a payment from Google if your payments are small - thus hurting smaller publishers.

4. YouTube Adds New Guided Support Process for Community Guidelines Violations - YouTube’s looking to provide more guidance for creators who’ve been hit with guideline violations via a new, more detailed reporting process that will take them through the specifics of the issue with their content, and what they can do to resolve it.

The updated process will provide more information on the specifics of each violation, and what it means for the visibility and monetization of your content, before taking you through the next steps of how you can resolve the issue.

The review process specifies the element in question and then enables creators to update the clip to address the noted concern/s.

The last element provides an easy way for creators to ask for a second review if they feel the report was incorrect, while they can also add additional contextual info for YouTube in relation to the violation reported.

It’s a good update, with many YouTube creators expressing frustration at the platform’s current reporting process, which has seen a lot of videos penalized incorrectly. Violations are also reported via a general email template that offers little insight on specifics.

5. The Rise of YouTube Shorts And Creator Economy Update - YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has shared an overview of the platform’s key areas of focus for 2022, and where it sees new opportunities, which points to some interesting developments in the platform’s roadmap, and for online video more broadly.

Key elements of focus for YouTube include Shorts, its TikTok-like short video platform, which YouTube reports has now hit 5 trillion all-time views, underlining the potential of the format.

Wojcicki also shared that:

6. Facebook Is Removing Profile Video Feature - Facebook has announced that it’s removing video profile images as of February 7th, with people who currently have a video profile image being reverted back to a still picture instead.

Originally launched in 2015, profile videos enable users to upload a 7-second video clip, which then loops on repeat, adding an animated, engaging element to their Facebook presence.

It hasn’t been a highly used feature, but some people have been able to create interesting, even entertaining profile video clips, which adds to the personality of their profile.

It’s not a major shift, and again, I doubt it will impact many users, nor that many people will care. But if you do have a video profile image, prepare to say goodbye to your clever, 7-second clip that encapsulated your ‘crazy’ personality.

7. Instagram Rolls Out A Live Banner Feature - Instagram has now outlined its new display of scheduled live streams on creator profiles, providing another way to raise awareness of upcoming live broadcasts in the app.

The new display option will enable you to list your upcoming IG live streams on your profile, which, when tapped, will provide additional info in a pop-up prompt, where people can also sign-up for a reminder of when the stream is set to begin.

Users can create as many scheduled lives as they like, with a side-scrolling list then added to your profile display.

8. Twitter’s New Flock Feature Lets You Tweet to Select Followers - Creating a separation between your public and personal lives has become more difficult than ever before due to the rise of social media, and there is no platform in which this difficulty of separation becomes more apparent than with Twitter. Having a large following on Twitter can often result in you being forced to censor yourself for fear of revealing too much to followers that you might not even know. Going private is one way to curb this issue, but many users felt that this left them between a rock and hard place because private Twitter accounts are rather limited in their scope.

Twitter is trying to fix this by taking a leaf out of Instagram’s book. Similar to how on Instagram you can have a circle of close friends that you share more personal or private content with that would not be visible to your regular followers, Twitter is rolling out a new feature called “Flocks”. You can add up to 150 people to your Flock, and anything that you tweet to said Flock would not be visible by anyone else. This gives most users the best of both worlds. We already saw an experiment called Trusted Friends back in July, and it seems that Twitter is now rolling it out properly with a new name that appears to be more or less on brand from most points of view.

9. Twitter Updates Its Ad Platform - Twitter has announced some new updates to its ad platform which are designed to streamline ad targeting, while also providing more insights on campaign performance.

First off, Twitter’s changing the name of its ‘Website Clicks & Conversions’ objective to ‘Website Traffic’, a more generalized header, which will now also include a new ‘Site Visits Optimization’ goal within your available campaign objectives.

Now, when setting up a Website Traffic campaign, you’ll be able to use ‘Site visits’ as the goal, which will then direct Twitter’s system to serve your ads to audiences most likely to visit your website. That will then enable Twitter’s systems to better determine audience objectives, and present your ads to the right users. Twitter says that it’s seen strong results with site visits in testing, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the new goal generates a better direct response to your promoted tweets.

In addition to this, Twitter’s also adding a new aggregated view of site metrics and conversion events within Twitter Ads Manager, which Twitter’s adding as a means to counter data loss as a result of Apple’s ATT update, and more users opting out of in-app tracking.

The process will utilize data gathered via Twitter’s website tag to provide a generalized estimate of key metrics, by Ad Group, at campaign level, by device type (iOS or Android), and placement level, where possible. The data obviously won’t be as accurate as you would get from direct reporting via the Twitter tag on each user response, but by providing some insight into user actions, Twitter will be able to replace a level of indicative insight that’s been lost due to the iOS change.

And finally, Twitter’s adding a new ‘Events Manager’ dashboard to manage your Twitter Website Tag and its associated web-based conversion events.

The new Events Manager overview will provide in-depth insight on tag events, enabling you to better track and utilize the data being gathered from your site visitors.

10. Microsoft Earnings: Search, LinkedIn Advertising Revenue Rise - Microsoft posted the second quarter of its 2022 financial results today, reporting revenue of $51.7 billion and a net income of $18.8 billion. Revenue is up 20 percent, and net income has increased by 21 percent.

Search and news advertising revenue was up by 32% year on year, which is impressive when you consider the fact that Microsoft was not even a major player in this industry not too long ago which represents just how many new revenue streams it has developed over the years.

Another area of growth is LinkedIn. The social media platform geared towards professional networking got a 37% increase in revenue year over year. A lot of that has to do with an increased demand for advertising on the platform, making this one of the most successful acquisitions that Microsoft has managed to complete during its recent history. LinkedIn has gone from being a relative footnote in the social media industry to a major player that is considered one of the top social media sites from an advertising point of view.

Overall, Microsoft earned $10 billion from advertising alone if you include LinkedIn. It has also seen strong growth in some of its more traditional areas of expertise like PC which earned Microsoft well over $17 billion, representing a 15% increase in that area during a time when many other industries are seeing decreased sales.