Welcome to Wednesday! We’re already halfway through an already short week, so let’s not waste any more time.

Twitter Gifts Ad Spend to Seduce Brands Back

Marketers aren’t sold on Twitter alternatives—and many are simply waiting on the sidelines to see how (if) Twitter will bounce back. And Elon Musk is trying to facilitate that comeback by exploring new ways to monetize (which don’t involve paying for blue checkmarks). But Twitter needs users for any of this to work.

In an attempt to seduce businesses back, Twitter is offering free ad space, worth up to $250,000. But this giveaway, coming not long after Twitter’s last attempt to woo brands back by offering to match $500,000 worth of ad spend, doesn’t exactly show a clear way back to rebuilding Twitter.

In the immortal words of The Steve Miller Band: Take the money and run. Or, rather, take the free Twitter ad space and run with it. To qualify for the free ad spend, brands need to use particular Twitter products like the keyword-avoidance tool to make sure ads don’t appear in conjunction with designated words.

TikTok Still Tops Short-form Video—For Now

Instagram is ditching the Shop tab but not Shops. The platform has altered its navigation bar to prioritize Reels and content creation. Similarly, Meta has decided to merge its Creator Studio into its Business Suite, creating one hub for all of its tools and streamlining the content process for creators to spur them to create more.

And, although Meta still does best with paid ads, it’s looking like TikTok will surpass them in the coming year, especially since they’ve slashed ad prices. Make sure your paid-social team is ready. Meanwhile, YouTube Shorts is competing with TikTok, helping brands like Betches achieve over 40% growth year over year in 2022.

In the fight for ‘best vertical video platform,’ Meta’s Instagram is feeling the squeeze and is almost desperately rolling out features and platform changes to compete with TikTok’s extreme growth. And if you aren’t taking advantage of YouTube Shorts, now’s the time—monetization is coming.

Around the Web

• TikTok is talking algorithmic transparency to stay in the U.S. market.

• The NYTimes podcast explains exactly how ChatGPT works.

• Artists are getting litigious about AI scraping their work.

• Kids and teens watch more TikTok than YouTube.

• Get prepared for 2023’s growth marketing trends.

Just Can't Get Enough

Twitter is developing a feature called ‘Coins,’ powered by payments giant Stripe, for users to tip and award one another. And Twitter isn’t alone in joining the payments space.

• JP Morgan Chase “is quietly building financial tools” to streamline payments made within TikTok, even claiming to have made “a real-time payments infrastructure.”

• In the words of Angela Strange from the 2019 a16z Summit: “in the not-too-distant future, nearly every company will be a financial services company and will get a significant portion of their revenue from financial services.”

Are you going to take advantage of those Twitter ad dollars or have you completely jumped ship? Reply and let us know, or just share your brand’s best short-form video for a chance to be featured in an upcoming Raisin Bread.

Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you Friday!