The Friday Five: Meta's new search engine index, Bluesky hits 13 million users and the UK's ad spend to reach £43.1 bn in 2025

Hello and welcome back to this week's Friday Five!

For November’s first edition, we have a packed edition filled with the most interesting digital marketing stories.

Today we look at Google’s strong revenue growth, Meta’s new search engine index, why Instagram is reducing video quality for low-performing videos, X’s latest competition and how the UK’s ad market has experienced the ‘best year’ since the millennium. 

So with lots to cover, let's get started.

1. Google's financial success: Strong revenue growth in the face of legal struggles

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have reported Google’s revenue as being $65.85 billion in Q3. This performance is ‘topping expectations’ with the earning statement also showing strong growth for both Google’s core search and ad business. However, despite exceeding expectations, Google has ‘never been in a more uncertain position’. 

In August 2024 Google was faced with a ruling that claimed the tech giant was illegally dominating search; Google is set to appeal the ruling as a way to protect its strong market position.

Separate from this, Google is also facing an antitrust case concerning its ad tech network and could face regulatory intervention. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has spoken out saying ‘We plan to vigorously defend these cases’ and suggests that these interventions could have ‘unintended consequences’ for the tech sector. 

Despite these advancing pressures, Google is continuing to increase revenue and successfully integrate more AI tools across its services.

To read more on this story, visit Marketing Dive

2. Meta takes on Google with new AI-powered search index initiative

Meta is said to be creating a search engine index for its AI chatbot, so the platform can generate its own AI summaries, rather than relying on Google. 

Meta began crawling the web using a user agent, ‘Meta-ExternalAgent’, and forums quickly reported ‘excessive amounts of crawling’ by the agent; one person is said to have recorded 50,000 hits. While the bot reportedly respects robots.txt, early issues suggest it may not have accessed these files properly, though this seems to have stabilised over time.

Meta’s chatbot interface resembles a search engine but currently still sources Google’s index for some summaries. This new indexing effort suggests Meta’s intent to create an independent search index that could pose a real challenge to Google.

Discover more at Search Engine Journal

3. The quality cut: Instagram reduces video clarity in the latest update

Instagram has recently admitted to reducing the video quality of content with less engagement and views. This disclosure has been met with upset as users and creators have deemed the approach as ‘disheartening’ and ‘harmful to the creative’s art’. 

The head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, disclosed Instagram’s approach by saying ‘We bias those to higher quality … for creators who drive more views’. Mosseri said that the platform reduces the quality of videos that have not generated a high amount of views based on the idea that most views are seen soon after posting. He also stated that Instagram can improve the quality of content if an increase in views is recorded. 

As well as the creator’s disappointment, social media expert Matt Navara stated that the approach is contradictory to ‘Instagram’s earlier messages ... to encourage new creators.’ 

To discover more about this story, please go to BBC News

4. Bluesky hits 13 million users: new platform poses a threat to X

After recent frustrations with X, due to changes in the platform’s leadership, a decentralised social app Bluesky is seeing a large growth in users. 

Funded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Bluesky has announced it has now reached 13 million users and gained 2 million more users over the last week after X made platform changes to 'profile blocking'. The growth indicates the potential for the emerging platform to compete with the leading social media platforms. 

The platform is receiving significant support with investments; Blueksy has raised $23 million in funding so far. The investments have enabled Bluesky to continue development and the platform is currently working on a subscription model and monetisation paths for creators.

Learn more on Social Media Today, LLC

5. A record year: UK advertising market set for strongest performance of the century

According to the Advertising Association (AA) and WARC, UK ad spending reached £10 billion in Q2 of 2024. The 13.4% increase year on year is driven by digital growth and the UK is on track to have its strongest advertising year since the millennium. 

£4 out of every £5 spent on advertising has been allocated to digital formats, with significant gains in online display (up by 21.6%), search (up by 12.7%) and out-of-home advertising (up by 17%). 

In addition to online advertising, television advertising has also seen an increase. Because of the Men’s Euros, television advertisements saw a 9% increase, making this the best quarter in the past 2 years. 

Because of the high growth, the AA and WARC expect UK ad spending to reach over £40 billion in 2024 and £43.1 billion in 2025. The UK’s ad market growth currently outpaces other key European markets.

Read more on Marketing Week

... and that's a wrap!

We hope you enjoyed this week's Friday Five and be sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with the latest digital marketing news!

We hope you have a great Friday and an even better weekend. We will be here next week with another jam-packed Friday Five.

See you then!