Facebook Hits Its Mid-Life Crisis

📰 The News You Missed

Facebook plans ‘discovery engine’ feed change to compete with TikTok

In an internal memo from late April obtained by The Verge, the Meta executive in charge of Facebook, Tom Alison, spelled out the plan: rather than prioritize posts from accounts people follow, Facebook’s main feed will, like TikTok, start heavily recommending posts regardless of where they come from. And years after Messenger and Facebook split up as separate apps, the two will be brought back together, mimicking TikTok’s messaging functionality.

Combined with an increasing emphasis on Reels, the planned changes show how forcibly Meta is responding to the rise of TikTok, which has quickly become a legitimate challenger to its dominance in social media. While Instagram has already morphed to look more like TikTok with its focus on Reels, executives hope that a similar treatment to Facebook will reverse the app’s stagnant growth and potentially lure back young people. // via

If I was a Mazda Miata dealer, I would be calling Facebook because it feels like they are hitting their mid-life crisis.

I can't imagine any change that would lure young people back to Facebook. It's not a feature problem. It's an audience problem.

What advertisers need to know about the federal privacy law

Here are some of the key details in the bill for marketers to be aware of:

People can file a private right of action

The ADPPA gives Americans the right over their privacy, including the right to sue tech companies that violate it. This comes as a blow to the tech industry that has long fought such provisions in state-wide privacy laws. However, this doesn’t go into effect until four years after the law is passed.

...

People can opt-out of targeted ads

The bill gives people the right to control their data and opt-out of targeted advertising, preventing their data from being sold without their permission.

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Companies to adopt privacy by design framework

Under the ADPPA, businesses are mandated to implement a privacy by design framework that entails “reasonable” practices and procedures for collecting, processing and transferring data, something that lacks in the statewide privacy laws.

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Firms need to designate data privacy officers

The ADPPA includes corporate accountability mechanisms, which are not found in state laws, such as the requirement to designate privacy and data security officers, which agencies are starting to lean into, as well as executive certifications of compliance.

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Walled gardens enjoy more power

Small businesses and nonprofits are not exempted from this bill. But businesses that do not have more than $41 million in annual revenue can enjoy certain exemptions, like having to export data in a machine-readable format or designating privacy officers.

Moreover, the targeted advertising section of the bill favors walled gardens, including social media networks and ecommerce companies such as Amazon, notes Kapur.

For example, if a person visits Amazon and searches for a pair of sneakers, Amazon can retarget the person for those sneakers. // via

The march to one million siloed ad networks continues.

A new ad type for Pinterest

Now, advertisers have a new way to inspire on Pinterest through a brand new ad format: Idea ads. Idea ads are a creative multimedia, multi-page format that combine videos and images for immersive storytelling. Audiences can view your inspiring content, visit your site and follow step-by-step DIYs or demos all within the ad. Idea ads don’t just spark inspiration, they deliver results: In a recent study, people who saw Idea ads were 60% more likely to recall the brand that they saw. // via

Someone woke up PayPal

In speaking to an investor conference last week, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said the company aims to reduce the time it takes for merchants to take customers through a transaction; to eliminate its reliance on passwords; and to draw more consumers to its buy now, pay later services, among other moves. // via

Quick Hits 🥊

• You can now display your business location, hours, and additional contact methods on your Twitter profile. // via
• Google Ads may start to crack down on these third party consultants who are outsourced by Google to push advertisers to spend more by blindly increasing their budgets. // via

If you need me, I'll be over here holding my breath.

Just For Fun 🤪

A Warming Arctic Emerges as a Route for Subsea Cables

Subsea cables, bundles of fiber-optic lines, carry about 95% of intercontinental voice and data traffic. There are currently over 400 such cables, with speed of communications roughly proportional to the length of each cable.

Because the geographical distance between continents is less at the Arctic than further south, a cable through the region would promise faster communications, experts say. The possibility of a route has become more feasible as accelerated warming has opened the area to development. // via

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