August 2024 Digital Updates – Meta Allows Offers for Ads, Threads API Expands, TikTok Launches App Center and more!

Krista Neher

Aug 07 2024

Members of our All Access Pass get the first look at the latest digital marketing news updates each month. We cover what matters to marketers during a live, interactive session and answer questions. We spend hours combing industry news sites looking for the most critical updates, so you don’t have to! August 2024 has major updates from Meta, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn.

Facebook and Meta News Updates

• Meta Removes Detailed Targeting Exclusion In Ads – You can no longer exclude detailed audiences from your ads. While this may seem to give you less control, Meta claims advertisers saw a 22% improvement in conversion rate. As AI has become more sophisticated, manual exclusions are becoming less effective.
• Meta Shows User and Revenue Growth in Q2 – The family of apps continues to grow significantly.
• WhatsApp has 100 Million US Users – Showing the platform could start to gain relevance in the US.
• Meta Allows Offers for Ads – This data is pulled directly from webpages and can be incorporated into ads.
• Meta Encourages Users to Integrate GA4 – They claim it leads to a 22% increase in results. This makes sense given that more data allows for the AI to work better.

Instagram News Updates

• Instagram Notes Added to Reels and Feed Posts—Notes are now available for adding to Reels and feed posts. Younger users are making heavy use of the notes features.

Threads News Updates

• Threads has 200 Million Users – Meta Continues to build Threads and the user base continues to grow.
• Threads API Expands to Include Interacting with Profiles and Responding – Look for these features to be included in your social media scheduler soon!

LinkedIn News Updates

• LinkedIn Revenue and Users Up – The Q2 results show a 10% increase in revenue and a 13% growth in users – with record engagements.
• LinkedIn Launches Verified Pages – Similar to verified profiles, this will provide credibility to Pages. It will roll out slowly, so stay tuned.

TikTok News Updates

• TikTok Launches App Center to Help Small Businesses – See recommended apps that can accelerate your TikTok success. There are apps for e-commerce, content creation, and more. 
• TikTok Allows Custom Thumbnails for Clips – This gives users more options for their Thumbnails.

X News Update

• X Works on Payment Features—While the future of X as a social network is uncertain, they continue to work on payment processing. This could signal an eventual strategy shift for the platform, similar to what Musk shared as his initial vision for it.
• X Struggles with Profitability—Data shows a 25% revenue drop in the second quarter and a 53% decline compared to the previous year. The network is struggling to keep advertisers.

Google News Update

• Google Abandons Plans to Phase Out Cookies – This has officially been announced.
• Google Adds Recommendations (AI) to Search Console – Get recommendations of AI opportunities directly from Google. This is a great way to find new SEO opportunities.
• YouTube Adds More Shorts Tools – These creative tools make it easier to create on the platform.

Digital Research and Industry News Update

• SnapChat Grows Users, Flat in the US—Snap continues to grow users globally, but US user growth is stagnant. That being said, the 100 million US users are still significant.
• Reddit Blocks AI and Search Engines – With the exception of Google, other search engines are blocked from Reddit.
• Hootsuite Shares Social Benchmarks for Q2 – Check out how you stack up vs. averages.
• TikTok Grows with Boomers with Facebook Grows with Gen Z – As the social networks grow, their reach is expanding into different audiences. Keep this in mind in your strategy.

Read some more of our recent posts

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• January 2025 Digital Updates - TikTok Trends What's Next, A new "Media" tab on X, and Latest Trends in Social Media