Jabes Twitter Musings - June 3rd
TikTok ToFu
ToFu is a fun acronym for “Top of Funnel,” which is a boring way business folk describe the first stage of the customer journey. Video broadly, and TV specifically, has long been thought of as the ultimate top of funnel experience.
TV eventually evolved into YouTube which is now evolving again into TikTok. The nice people at a16z have a handy chart to show the evolution of video.
TikTok is becoming a top of funnel experience not just for entertainment but for ideas as well. My sister sent me a TikTok recipe the other month and I find myself referring back to the video each week as I make dinner.
This is a long-winded introduction to set up my liked tweet musings.
This is a glimpse into TikTok's FULL FUNNEL FUTURE. They have already made inroads to the top of funnel, and now they are laying the groundwork for the BoFu. (Yes, that does indeed mean “Bottom of Funnel.”)
While they may start with recipes, no space is safe. They are going to go vertical by vertical. Cooking. Fashion. Home Design. You name it, and you’ll eventually be able to shop it on TikTok.
This collapsed funnel, where you get the idea and check out right away, is not new. Instagram has been the Kingpin to date. But they made their bet on Stories. TikTok is making their bet on short-form video.
According to Tal, there is likely room for both.
Buy Cookies or Starve
I’ve touched on it before, but for those unaware, Apple and Programmatic Advertisers are at war. Apple is using its power to redefine how advertising works. Benedict Evans described it as, "a new privacy-based tracking and targeting ad model.” This model is not ideal for programmatic advertising (or Facebook for that matter, though they will be just fine), since programmatic ads relied heavily on cookie tracking. (Cookies are those things that follow your web presence and companies can use that information to target you.)
To be honest, this model is not ideal for anyone that doesn’t have a boatload of 1st Party Data, which is data you collect on your own site or properties. So how are various companies responding if their paid acquisition efforts are getting rekt?
We are seeing a pattern of more businesses starting or acquiring media companies. These media companies, which also include newsletters, are typically targeted and niche. Since they focus on something specific, you generally have a good idea of what the audience looks like. In other words, newsletters are becoming the new “cookies.”
A great example of this happened in the B2B (Business to Business aka Enterprise) world where Hubspot acquired The Hustle.
Another example happened a little while back in the gambling world when Penn purchased Barstool.
This isn’t a new idea. Web Smith, who runs a newsletter himself, has been on this for quite some time. Here is a great take back when Morning Brew was in talks with Business Insider.
So you better start thinking about how you can use media to up your ToFu game to ultimately strengthen your BoFu efforts.
Cheers,
Jabe
P.S. You can expect Chapter 4 of My Internet Thesis next week. I will also be sharing a new Learn With Jabe video on making a Codenames Spymaster Web App with GPT3.