Google’s Strategy for Coexisting With TikTok
We are at the point where discussions taking place among the giants regarding TikTok need to be about how to survive against the company. It is too late to try to stop or slow TikTok’s momentum. Attempts at outflanking TikTok are also off the table.
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An Advertising Pivot Is Beginning
In just the last week, there were two high-level and noteworthy departures at the giants:
Meta’s advertising head (who served as COO)
Amazon’s consumer retail chief
Earlier in the year, two noteworthy departures were found among smaller companies striving to one day become giants:
Spotify’s chief architect of its podcasting strategy
Roku’s head of platform business
At first, the four departures may seem unrelated to each other.
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The Spotify and Roku Squeeze
Spotify and Roku have a lot more in common than meets the eye (and ear). Both companies are fascinated with advertising-driven business models in which listener and viewer time and engagement is monetized via delivering ads. Roku is much further along in its advertising pursuit. Nearly 90% of Roku’s revenue is generated by ads while just 10% of Spotify revenue is from ads. However, both companies have signaled that advertising is where their growth and momentum will be found.
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Streaming Video’s Ongoing Revolution
There continues to be something that I call the “iPhone mentality” in tech. A singular product or service is positioned as quickly transforming a market or industry. A byproduct of this thinking is the tendency for consensus to prematurely declare that first movers are winners.
Netflix was declared the winner in paid video streaming back in 2018.
Spotify was declared the winner in music streaming in 2015.
Tesla was declared the winner in electric vehicles in 2017.
In each example, a winner was declared before we even knew what it meant to win in that respective industry.
New data out from Nielsen suggests that streaming video remains in a different place than what consensus assumes.
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