Consumers are split almost evenly in their attitudes towards personalized marketing. Frontier Communications found that nearly half found targeted advertising annoying (46%) and invasive (36%) while a similar sized group find it useful (42%) and enjoyable (39%). Along the same lines, 28% said they’d pay $50 per month or more for ad-free social media while 27% wouldn’t pay a penny.
Google will give consumers more control over the ads they see, replacing current Ad Settings and About this Ad options with My Ad Center later this year . The unified offering will let users specify the brands and topics they want to see, change personal information used to target ads, and make it easier to see who paid for an ad they are viewing. It’s doubtful many consumers will bother with the settings but the features give more control to those who care.
We haven’t written much here about the growth of TikTok as an advertising channel, but it’s a big story. One subplot has been more TikTok tools for advertisers. The latest twist is integration with Foursquare Attribution, which will enable marketers to measure the impact of TikTok ads on retail foot traffic.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.