Let’s see what this week’s numbers say about online advertising, shall we?

• Recent research has found 6 in 10 marketers believing that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will transform their roles. A new study from The Conference Board delves into this. In this survey of marketing and communications professionals, The Conference Board discovered that the most enthusiasm around AI’s impact is for productivity, with 82% of respondents believing that it will improve, versus just 4% believing it will deteriorate to some extent. The professionals surveyed are more likely to believe that AI will result in an improvement than deterioration of work quality (43% and 27%, respectively) and creativity (42% and 29%, respectively). Additionally, more believe that enjoyment of the type of work will improve (39%) than deteriorate (20%).
• Millennials around the world are still spending plenty of time with various media, such as social media, streaming TV, and podcasts. However, their “time spent online has long passed its peak,” according to a report from GWI. The report indicates that daily time spent online by Millennials (born 1983-1996) has been on a steady decline from a peak of 7 hours and 36 minutes in 2017, with the average now sitting at 6 hours and 48 minutes this year. It’s worth noting that time spent online is calculated as a combination of time spent with mobiles, PCs, laptops, and tablets, and appears to exclude connected TVs, which have grown substantially in usage in recent years.
• According to eMarketer, TikTok has introduced an advertising feature called the Search Ads Toggle that allows advertisers to place their ads within TikTok’s Search results page. The feature is now available broadly in the US, with testing underway in other regions. It targets high-intent users who are actively searching for content relevant to a specific product or brand.Advertisers can enhance brand safety by adding “negative keywords” to their ad groups, ensuring their ads only appear in search queries that align with their brand. TikTok’s internal data shows that 70% of ad groups with the Search Ads Toggle “on” experience a lower cost per action (CPA) due to more efficient conversions from the search ad placement. TikTok reports brands like Clinique and DIBS Beauty have already seen success with the Search Ads Toggle: Clinique achieved a 441% boost in conversion rates, 51% rise in click-through rates, and 7.4% lift in ad recall, while DIBS garnered an 8% higher conversion volume, six-times jump in conversion rate, and 22% drop in CPA against nonsearch ads. US search ad spending will amount to $147.4 billion this year, per our forecast. While any budgets spent on this offering would fall under our social network ad spending forecast, the fact remains that TikTok can now be a viable place for search marketers to consider placing some of their budgets. The new feature could ramp up competition against Google, in particular, which accounts for $57.49 billion of that US search ad spending pie.