X CEO Linda Yaccarino introduced the social media platform’s new Trend Genius tool as ‘the Holy Grail of advertising products’ at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week.
Trend Genius automatically posts preprogrammed ads when the topics they relate to start trending on X. As such, it allows advertisers to send out the right ad at the right time, said Yaccarino. The tool also turns the ads off when the discussions taper down.
Yaccarino gave two examples of how Trend Genius was used by LVMH during the beta testing stage. In one instance, the luxury conglomerate deployed a campaign with Bradley Cooper when he went viral for being a ‘Swiftie’ during a Taylor Swift concert. In another, it automatically launched a campaign featuring actor Zendaya when rumours that she was engaged to Spiderman star Tom Holland became a trending topic during the Golden Globes.
Brittany Wickerson, global head of media at We Are Social, told MediaCat, that trends demand ‘fast, custom creative responses from brands,’ adding that ‘while X may boost visibility, the onus still falls on brands to understand and create resonant content.’
Wickerson also said that while some topics can be planned for (eg, the Olympics Games), trends are ‘fluid and harder to harness’ (eg, Charli XCX’s Brat marketing campaign), meaning that preprogrammed ads may work for predictable trends, but can’t anticipate the bulk of them.
‘Harnessing trends drives more cultural capital — when done right — than promoting content associated with a topic. Compounding the challenge, platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and LinkedIn offer features to engage a variety of audiences around trends and topics,’ she added.
Hyper-relevance or entertainment?
But do social media users want hyper-relevant ads, or do they just enjoy creative and entertaining content?
‘Around one in five Brits want ads to be relevant to them or their identity, so a tool like Trend Genius will naturally put X on marketers’ minds,’ Shauna Moran, customer trends manager at GWI, told MediaCat. Nevertheless, she added that many advertisers will still approach the product ‘with a healthy dose of scepticism.’
‘More consumers want ads to be entertaining than hyper-relevant,’ said Moran, ‘and people are generally more receptive to marketing on video-based apps than text-based ones. Ten percent of UK X users say they’ve clicked on a sponsored ad on the app in the last month, which compares to 17% of UK Instagrammers on Instagram.’
She also pointed out that brands may ‘be wary about the kind of content their ads might be shown alongside’, referring to the instances of advertisers abandoning X in the wake of Elon Musk acquiring the platform in 2022. The Guardian recently announced that it would stop posting on X due to the rise of ‘disturbing content’, ‘far-right conspiracy theories and racism’, for example.
Another reason why advertisers should be wary of X and its new ad product is AI. Wickerson expanded on this, saying: ‘Brand safety looms large. For example, are trends organic or the result of AI-driven feedback loops? Without clear answers, X’s proposition risks becoming a liability. For advertisers, ensuring creative control is key to protecting brand equity in an increasingly complex social landscape.’
Something only X can do?
Yaccarino claims that Trend Genius is ‘something that only X can do’ and that there is ‘no surrogate’ for the platform.
But other social media platforms are ramping up efforts to track trends. On the same day as Yaccarino’s keynote at CES, Reddit unveiled its Reddit Pro Trends tool, which allows advertisers to track trending topics and search by keywords or phrases to find out what users are saying about them. And at the end of last month, X-rival Bluesky announced that it is testing its own version of trending topics, allowing users to join popular discussions.
‘I’m sure [X’s] move has got other platforms thinking,’ said Moran. ‘It may encourage them to focus more on the comment section, for example, as valuable conversations are happening there, too.’
Featured image: Fachrizal Maulana / Unsplash
