Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.

Short-form YouTube content continues to see major growth

Social video analytics platform Tubular is out with its H2 2022 Social Video Trends report, and one major takeaway is that short-form video is continuing to explode on YouTube.

Call it the TikTok Effect. Google/Alphabet-owned YouTube has been trying to fend off the Chinese viral-video platform by putting a lot of emphasis on cultivating creators who post short-form content—defined as videos that run less than a minute—while also giving such content more real estate and prominence. A few key stats, per Tubular:

• Short-form YouTube videos saw their total overall viewership rise 135% in Q2 2022 vs. Q2 2021.

• Short-form content on YouTube is driven primarily by creators, with 95% of it coming from individuals (as opposed to media companies and other video publishers).

• Short-form videos accounted for 57% of all YouTube video views in Q2 2022 vs. just 21% in Q2 2021.

Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell

• “U.S. Jobless Claims Rise Slightly to New 2022 High,” per The Wall Street Journal.

• “Inflation is finally slowing down. Will things get cheaper?,” from Vox.

• “What the Inflation Reduction Act does and doesn’t do about rising prices,” per NPR.

Don’t miss: “Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news,” Ad Age’s continually updated blog covering how the marketing industry is bracing for a recession.

How Apple’s data policies are making life difficult for TikTok

In a piece headlined “TikTok advertiser says Apple data rules make sales harder to track,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane relates the experience of a marketing consultant, August Noble, who ran a July test on TikTok for a consumer health packaged goods client. 

“On TikTok, it was massive,” Noble said of the leap in revenue—but unfortunately he couldn’t draw a clear line between the TikTok activation and that sales increase.

As Sloane explains, “Apple’s anti-data policies made it so apps cannot track a consumer from an ad view to a sale. Once a consumer leaves an app like TikTok to make a purchase, the ‘conversion’ is undetectable, unless the consumer allowed the app to track them. That is part of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency rules, which took effect last year. The loss of ‘signal’ on Apple software—iOS—wreaked havoc on marketers’ measurement schemes.”

“Attribution isn’t perfect from any of these platforms, Noble told Sloane, “but the gap that we’re seeing with TikTok is bigger than any other.”

Essential context: “These kinks in the ad machinery are affecting TikTok, Meta and everyone else, according to ad tech specialists,” Sloane adds. “And all platforms are coming up with their own models to measure ads based on the limited data that Apple now shares through SKAdNetwork, which reports broad performance metrics from ad campaigns.”

Keep reading here.

See also: “How Meta is combatting Apple data limits with ad targeting automation and AI,” also from Ad Age’s Sloane.

The measurement mess in depth

If you haven’t yet checked out Ad Age’s newest blog, titled “Media measurement uncertainty—tracking TV, social and digital,” well, here are a couple of stories that we’ve highlighted in it this week:

• “Nielsen reveals national TV panel growth as talks of alternatives heat up” from Ad Age’s Jack Neff.

• “Nielsen-sized TV panel for measurement rivals planned by VAB trade group,” also from Neff.

Keep reading here.

U.S. ad business employment hits an all-time high

Ad Age’s Bradley Johnson reports that ad agency employment has reached an all-time high, per the latest monthly U.S. government employment data.

Essential context: “U.S. employment in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) classification of advertising, public relations and related services came in at 489,400 jobs in July based on figures that are not seasonally adjusted,” Johnson notes. “The gain of 4,700 ad jobs in July followed an increase of 7,100 jobs in June. BLS downwardly revised the June figure from a preliminary gain of 7,300 jobs it reported a month ago.”

Keep reading for Johnson’s drill-downs by BLS classifications.

Just briefly

• “Here are the 10 worst airports in the US for flight cancellations,” from Insider.

• “31 states do not limit who can purchase voter file data,” per Ballotpedia News.

• “Ex-Twitter Employee Convicted Of Sending Private Data To Saudi Government,” Forbes reports.

• “Data Show Gender Pay Gap Opens Early,” from The Wall Street Journal.

Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022

In his introduction to the newly released Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 report, Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson reports that advertisers scored “the second-biggest spending gain on record” in 2021, marking “an extraordinary turnaround from the pandemic plunge in 2020. Spending has continued to grow in 2022, though budgets could come under pressure as marketers grapple with inflation, rising interest rates and slumping consumer confidence amid escalating expectations of a recession.”

There’s a lot to LNA 2022—so the Datacenter team has come up with multiple entry points for you to start your own deep dive. To wit:

• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—10 most-advertised brands in the U.S., ranked”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Will ad spending rise in the (coming) recession? It’s happened before
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—25 biggest U.S. advertisers, ranked”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—U.S. market leaders and category rankings”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Big spending gains and cuts”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—What comes next after 2021's ad spending surge”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Ad spending by medium, category and advertiser”

The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.

Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.

This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.