Social Shorts: Pinterest users index high on gift giving, TikTok’s brand safety solution, more

Pinterest users are heavy gift shoppers

Compared to other social media, Pinterest users are the top spenders on gifts and holiday shopping. That’s among the findings from StatSocial which looked at the purchases of millions of U.S.-based users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Pinterest. It found that Pinterest users spend 39.2% more on gifts and holiday shopping than the average U.S. consumer.

Why we care. It may be intuitive that Pinterest users would over-index on holiday and gift shopping, but does your holiday marketing plan reflect this finding? If you don’t have a Pinterest strategy yet, this holiday season could be worth a thoughtful test.

Video Story ads drive higher engagement than images

If link clicks is your primary objective for your Instagram Story ads, you should consider using video. The average click-through rate on Instagram image story ads is .29% compared to .59% for video story ads, according to a study from Socialinsider and Wave.video. The study looked at 661,565 stories and 64,571 story ads published between April 2019 and September 2020.

Why we care. Link clicks ranked as the top objective for Story ads in the study, followed by conversions. However, video Story ads also outperformed images on tap forward and exit rates

TikTok debuts brand safety solution

TikTok has partnered with OpenSlate to offer a brand safety solution for advertisers on the mobile video platform. The solution, via OpenSlate, will “verify and filter a variety of content and categories that appear next to branded ads and content. This partnership empowers brands to know and track where their ads are running through pre-campaign solutions as well as with post-campaign analytics,” the company said in a blog post.

Why we care. This solution will give brands more flexibility and control over the content and categories of content their ads can appear alongside. It’s also a notable step as TikTok continues to advance its advertising business.