Restrictions around crypto advertising on TikTok could ease up for some brands soon, thanks to a program that’s currently in beta testing, a company insider recently confirmed to Marketing Brew.

The beta—which is currently running tests in the US and Canada—is a program that, if rolled out widely, could allow crypto advertisers to bypass some of the red tape they currently face on the platform, as long as the companies are registered with an approved regulatory body, the TikTok source explained.

• In the US, that regulatory body is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and in Canada, it’s the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). If rolled out, the program would let crypto companies registered with the appropriate approved regulatory body run paid advertisements.
• Their ads must include a disclaimer about investments and can only target those 18 and older. Marketing Brew was not able to confirm a timeline for the beginning and end of this beta test.

Post this, not that: Ashley Nash-Hahn, who works in SMB and ad policy comms at TikTok, told us that crypto companies can currently post organic content about crypto on TikTok (as long as it complies with TikTok’s Community Guidelines). But crypto brands cannot currently run paid advertisements on TikTok, she said.

Why it matters

Although Nash-Hahn told us crypto companies have never been allowed to run paid advertisements on the platform, some marketers that Marketing Brew spoke with say that’s not necessarily true.

Breaking it down: “It’s not the case that there’s no advertising,” Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer for Mekanism—who has experience with crypto clients interested in advertising on TikTok—told Marketing Brew, pointing to recent TikTok ads he saw from cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. Marketing Brew reached out to see if Gemini is part of the beta test but did not receive a response.

Take Aubrey Strobel, advisor at bitcoin rewards company Lolli, for instance. She told us that Lolli was able to run “one or two” paid ads on TikTok “almost a year ago.”

• “They were allowing it at one point,” Strobel said of TikTok. She said that it went from being “totally fine” to “all of a sudden, it was not.”
• “Then we were kind of all just screwed,” Strobel explained, clarifying Lolli could post organic content, but not paid ads, on TikTok.
• Strobel told us that getting the ads to run in the first place was “very difficult,” saying that Lolli had to be “very careful” about the “verbiage” it could use (for instance, using words like “cash back” instead of “bitcoin” or “crypto”).

Read more here, including how the beta test, if it moves forward, could impact crypto advertisers and TikTok itself.—PB

Trade groups representing US, UK, and Canadian publishers think companies offering contextual advertising services might be overstepping their bounds.

The Ozone Project, Local Media Consortium, and the Association of Online Publishers—groups representing The Guardian, Vice, the BBC, McClatchy, and others—have raised concerns that some ad-tech firms may have scraped and sold publisher data unfairly, possibly infringing upon a publisher’s “intellectual property.”

The beef: Publishers are saying, “Hey, wait a minute, you didn’t ask if you could do that,” accusing these firms of using the content on their sites to create contextual advertising segments for clients without their permission and outside the bounds of their contracts. Meanwhile, publishers are pitching advertisers on direct contextual advertising deals themselves.

Why is this important? The briar patch of programmatic advertising has created distrust between advertisers looking for scale and publishers complaining of an ad-tech tax.

Now that third-party cookies are dying and some ad dollars are shifting to contextual advertising—ads based on the content of the media, not on personal information—publishers want a (better) seat at the table and stronger terms as the industry adopts new technologies.

“Regardless, if it’s contextual content or third-party audiences, it’s the same manifestation of somebody in the middle taking something from the publisher,” said Scott Cunningham, a consultant for the Local Media Consortium, which represents US publishers like Slate and McClatchy, and a founder of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab.

Click here to read more about why publishers are saying this is an issue.—RB

The universe is full of mysteries. What’s at the bottom of the ocean? What killed the dinosaurs? When will Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson run for (and win) a political office? How did Bang Energy make $780 million in sales in 2020?

Morning Brew’s Ashwin Rodrigues took a deep dive into Bang’s elaborate influencer marketing strategy, starting with a look at CEO Jack Owoc, who has “catapulted” to social media fame, thanks to Bang Energy.

“On TikTok and Instagram, he struts around a mansion and lifts weights, all in noisy and colorful Bang-branded apparel, while wearing a gold chain with a Bang Energy pendant, often signing off from his dispatches with a ‘bang’—by punching the camera,” Rodrigues writes.

Alongside an army of “Bang Energy Ambassadors,” Owoc can be credited with creating an obnoxious yet memorable brand that’s taking influencer marketing to its most extreme conclusion.

Bang “wrangled up as many potential talents [and] influencers,” which initially appeared to be focused on a demographic of men, and “they pumped the living crap out of it,” Jonathan Chanti, chief growth officer at Viral Nation, told Rodrigues, describing Bang’s strategy as a bottom-up approach to influencer marketing.

Other highlights from Bang’s history include:

• Monster Energy’s lawsuit, alleging that Owoc claimed Bang could help cure “Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.”
• A diss track as part of Bang’s beef with Monster Energy.
• A “mandatory” company dance party during the initial Covid surge in March 2020.

Click here to read the full story.—RB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Sweet spot: Hootsuite breaks down the ideal lengths for videos across social platforms.

Secret sauce: Since we’re always up for some healthy competition, here are some pointers on how to grow your newsletter through a referral program.

Put a pin in it: Save yourself some time by learning how to schedule Pinterest content.

Flex your (digital) muscles. 97% of executives said the pandemic sped up their digital commerce transformation—so if you don’t already have a plan for going digital, you’ll have to sprint to keep up. Get started with this CMO’s guide from inriver.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Pinterest is out with its Pinterest Predicts report for 2022. Released today in conjunction with Pinterest Presents, its second annual advertiser summit, the report leverages global Pinterest search data from October 2019 to September 2021 to predict “not-yet-trending” topics that can be filtered by audience and category, including auto, beauty, tech, and travel.

The report has tons of insights to sift through if you’ve got the time. If not, here’s a handful that piqued our interest.

Gen Z: As we all know, marketers love Gen Z, but the group can be hard to connect with via advertising. According to Pinterest’s search data, this year Gen Zers will embrace “shaved head dye designs” and mullets for their hair, plus lots of gems and crystals to accessorize. Oh, and spiritual awakening and aura colors.

Plus, people of all ages are expected to seek out vibrant colors for their clothes, goth and Ancient Greek aesthetics, and decked-out cars, tea, and pearls.

If all that isn’t enough, the Pinterest data indicates that consumers are getting into satin pajamas and lazy workouts (did someone say oxymoron?), as well as spaces Pinterest has deemed “emotional escape rooms.”

Good luck targeting in 2022.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Why more agencies are investing in social impact roles and practices
• HubSpot campaign offers a redemption arc for unlikely CEOs
• Instagram rolls out enhanced tags