Welcome to the Wolves Den, where we poke fun at the drama among rich guys and their companies. Well, technically we discuss digital marketing news here, providing the updates that you need to know, but sometimes the tea is just too piping hot to ignore.
What can this week’s headlines (and gossip) tell us about where digital marketing trends are headed? What about the latest recession news? Here are the topics that stood out to us this week.
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Turns Out Employees Still In Demand Despite Recession News
The tech layoffs and hiring freezes of the summer have had an effect across many industries, as we looked at last week. Within the tech-sphere itself, workers are reporting a drastic drop in confidence about job security, especially given the rumors of an impending recession.
However, there is one area of tech that revealed an increase in hiring over the course of July 2022, and that is the internet of things (IoT). To be honest, this is about retail companies bringing on IoT professionals more than it is tech companies deciding to take their hiring managers out of the freezer. And it makes sense, because retail businesses are still much more likely to have a shortage of employees on their hands.
Plenty of companies are still hiring amid recession fears, the reality being that there are still overall more jobs available in the United States than there are people to fill them, leading to a bit of a paradox in our economy right now.
An Ad Giant too Big to Fail: Amazon Squashes the iOS Privacy Hurdle
That’s right, Amazon is now the leader in the digital ad space, proving that with enough influence over, like, everything, you really can do it all and leave the competition in your wake. Facebook’s ad business faces its first ever decline, and Snap is seeing its ad dollars per user fall deeply into the red. Google, while still seeing a 12% growth rate, failed to outpace Amazon who saw an increase of 18%.
Both Facebook and Snap have been adamant about the iOS privacy update having a catastrophic effect on the direction of their ad business. But Amazon – thanks to its strong, independent data silos that don’t need no Apple – has managed to steamroll any setbacks this update could have caused. Given the chance of more recession news on the horizon, things could still take a turn for the tech giant, but if not, it wouldn’t be the first time a corporation saw massive profits while workers and consumers struggled.
Influencers Have Taken Over TikTok… Or Is It the Other Way Around?
When it comes to influencer marketing, Instagram and Youtube are the main platforms that come to mind. But TikTok is officially rising in the ranks when it comes to influencer spend, surpassing Facebook and poised to overtake Youtube by 2024.
We know Instagram has already agreed to roll back some of the changes that would make their app function more like a knock-off version of TikTok (largely because of–you guessed it–the influencers on the platform themselves speaking out). But with TikTok continuing to encroach more and more into the monopoly that Meta’s brands have boasted for so long, who knows what tactics will appear next throughout their competition?
When It Sucks to Zuck: Bad Press for the Metaverse
Not only is Meta facing a HIPAA violation lawsuit for – allegedly – using sensitive patient information to create targeted ads (i.e. Not a Great Look Guys!), it’s also getting bullied publicly by leaders in the Web3 industry for – allegedly – having dreams and going after them too hastily.
The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, issued a statement this week about how Zuckerberg is jumping the gun on his heavy investment in blockchain despite not having a clear picture of what consumers actually want. Essentially, the criticism indicates that Meta’s endeavors are doomed to fail without performing more research and slowing waay down.
The company formerly known as Facebook is big, but maybe not on the same level as the clearly-too-big-to-fail Amazon we looked at above. Zuck would do well not to take Buterin’s advice lightly if he doesn’t want to crash and burn.
Tune in next week for the latest news in digital marketing from the Wolves Den.
