This Week in Social and Digital (Week of January 23)
This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.
Snapchat Gears Up for IPO
Snapchat’s IPO is imminent and the platform is gearing up for it.
To start the week off, it announced stricter editorial guidelines for publishers creating content for Snapchat Discover. This includes banning any images that are risqué or questionable or even provide no editorial value. It also noted that any news stories need to be properly vetted and verified. Beyond that, publishers will be able to restrict certain content if users are too young.
This move appears to largely be an anticipatory one as publishers have kept their content pretty safe. Most of Snapchat’s current publishers stick to a PG-13 or safer model when it comes to content, but as Snapchat grows following an IPO, these guidelines may be important to protect Snapchat and advertisers who are placing content amongst Discover content. It also appears to be a reaction to Facebook’s troubles with fake news as Snapchat leans on keeping that to a minimum as much as possible.
Snapchat's also in the process of meeting media-buying units of several ad agency holding companies in an effort to secure 2017 ad commitments ranging from $100 million to $200 million.
It hasn’t taken long for Snapchat to evolve from being a place that was actively aggressive toward advertising to fully embrace it. Not only is Snapchat working to secure deals, it’s also implementing pro-advertiser policies to police content a bit.
Snapchat’s IPO is going to be a significant one, and it’s doing what it can to raise its value ahead of it. It’s going to be interesting to watch as it works to move from being incredibly popular among its core user base to attempting to be adopted by the masses by pairing the aforementioned efforts with a new user interface designed for approachability that’s been rolling out over the past couple of weeks.
Snapchat Lets Advertisers Buy Ads Based on Nielsen Digital Rankings
Snapchat is now letting advertisers buy ads on the platform based on TV-style ratings using Nielsen digital ratings. The move comes as social platforms are under pressure to implement third-party measurement tools for independent ad verification.
The partnership has the potential to allow advertisers to better integrate video measurement and campaigns across both online and offline executions, and it points to Snapchat growing up into the shoes of a public company.
Nielsen is joining Oracle Data Cloud, which Snapchat is using to improve ad targeting. The partnership with Nielsen will allow advertisers to select an audience by demographic and then receive guaranteed delivery, which Nielsen measurement will confirm.
Video is obviously a huge part of Snapchat’s future plans and partnerships like these not only help advertisers make better use of the platform, it also adds credibility to Snapchat. Facebook has come under fire for inaccurate measurement recently, so anything Snapchat can do to provide third party verification and validation is a competitive advantage at this point. If Snapchat continues to move in this direction, Facebook will be left without a choice but to respond with some form of verification of its own.
Facebook Updating Trending Topics
Facebook’s Trending Topics are getting an update. Now, everyone in the United States will see the same news stories.
The goal is to make the content in the Trending Topics more timely but also make the section harder for fake news to break through. The stories will be chosen based on a survey of what is being covered in the media, as well as what people are sharing and and engaging with. This two-fold approach is designed to rely on what is being reported across multiple outlets, instead of solely focusing on single pieces that may be receiving a lot of engagement.
Beyond that, Facebook will show all users the same content, regardless of preferences or previously engagement. Personalization in the Trending Topics section is completely gone, and the headlines featured there will be pulled from publishers. All of these changes will also make Trending Topics more responsive to breaking news.
For many users, Facebook is their primary source of news, and as became evident last year, it became anything but news. Now, it appears Facebook is taking a bit less complicated approach to it by making everyone receive the same, factual information. This is a good thing.
People have walled themselves off in content gardens with sources that agree with their world views. Now, Facebook is surfacing content that is just newsworthy without taking into account personalization, which should expose everyone to the same facts that they can then interpret as they choose.
Facebook Testing Prominent Ads on Messenger
Facebook is testing ads on Messenger’s home screen for a small set of users in Australia and Thailand. The ads display at the top of the home screen just below users’ recent conversations. They do not display within conversations, unless users happen to tap on them to begin conversations with the advertisers being featured.
According to Facebook, the benefits are two-fold. First, it shows users what brands are active on Facebook Messenger, and second, it lets brands target users with relevant messaging.
Facebook’s been relatively slow in monetizing Messenger with a series of of efforts, primarily one that lets brands promote Messenger bots within Facebook News Feeds.
Today, Messenger has one billion active users each month, so it’s no surprise that it wants to monetize that massive user base. The approach has been pretty responsible in making the rollout slow and deliberate with each step aiming to make users feel like their conversations between friends aren’t being tainted. That’s important because Messenger has no shortage of competitors in the messaging space.
Still, this is only a test at the this time with no firm rollout, so if there’s anything to take away from this it’s that Facebook sees Messenger as a meaningful way for brands to connect with consumers. The ways in which that will be done are still to be determined.
Explore Tab Makes Debut on Twitter
Twitter has a new tab, Explore, on its iOS and Android apps. Explore replaces the Moments tab within the app.
As Twitter explains it, Moments was meant to to capture the most popular stories happening on Twitter, while another tab, Search, was meant to help users find “anything and everything.” Twitter felt these two experiences drove users to different places to find similar content, so the two are combined in the new Explore tab. That tab contains trends, Moments, search and live video.
Twitter’s positioning Moments as something that isn’t going away, but its prominence is certainly diminished. It is now at the bottom of all the features being integrated into Explore, which is significant because Moments launched in 2015 to much fanfare as a way to bring casual users onto the Twitter platform to see what is going on in the world.
That being said, Moments will continue to produce the the same amount of content every day, about 250 different pieces.
The goal of the Explore tab is really to surface some of the best content being shared on Twitter, a similar approach taken by Instagram to spark engagement on the platform as well as Facebook, which has a dedicated a tab for video.
Facebook Updates News Feed Algorithm to Emphasize Long Videos
Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is getting another update, and this time it’s emphasizing longer videos that have a high percent-completion rate. It’s emphasizing this content over short-form videos, as well as long-form videos that viewers don’t watch for very long.
The changes are not drastic, as the update will likely mean a “slight increase in distribution” for videos that are longer with high-completion rates. Short videos may see a “slight dip.” Facebook’s viewing these completion rates as a positive signal for the algorithm because they are compelling enough to keep users engaged. But it also has an ulterior motive.
Facebook is currently testing mid-roll ads that can appear after 90 seconds. Longer, more premium video is more lucrative for Facebook.
Facebook hasn’t specified what it means by long videos, but it just points to the need for marketers to tell the story they need to tell to communicate the idea and engage the audience. Facebook algorithm updates should be viewed as a guide for what Facebook’s looking at, but ultimately, marketers should strive to tell stories audiences will care about.
Still, this should serve as an invitation for marketers to experiment with various forms of video assets to find the right balance for them. The rule of thumb in which shorter is better, isn’t necessarily true anymore in this video-rich environment.
News Quick Hits
- After five years without really any changes, Google Voice has finally gotten an update with a resigned layout. In addition, it now supports group and photo messaging, voicemail transcription and easier navigation. Google Voice lagged behind other voice apps for some time, but its quickly caught up. Still, it raises questions about Googles’s real focus as it now has multiple messaging and communication platforms, including Allo, which launched to much fanfare last year.
- Twitter has turned on Vine.co, a searchable archive of Vines created from 2013 through 2016. The site launched once Vine shut down to become a pared down app called Vine Camera on January 17.
- Tumblr is adding stickers and filters to its iOS and Android apps. The update will allow users to add stickers to their photos as well as different color filter options.
- Instagram live stories are being rolled out globally after launching in the U.S. late lat year.
- Speaking of Instagram Stories, Facebook is testing what is essentially an imitation of the Instagram feature in its flagship mobile app for users in Ireland. The experience being tested is exactly like that of Instagram, which is almost exactly like that of Snapchat.
- 200 websites have been removed by Google from its advertising platform after an announcement last November that it would remove fake news publishers. Along with the announcement, Google shared that it blocked 1.7 billion fraudulent ads last year, almost double what it did the previous year.
- To celebrate Data Privacy Day on January 28, Facebook launched a new version of its Privacy Basics page. The mobile-friendly site is designed to help people understand what information they are sharing on Facebook. Beyond that, Facebook has partnered with state attorneys general and privacy experts to compile 32 guides available in 44 languages to help users better understand how to protect their privacy online.
- Facebook is now supporting physical security keys as a second factor for logging into Facebook. USB keys that support universal second factor can be used like a key to unlock a Facebook account in combination with a password. Users also have the ability to use their phones as a second factor option.
- Twitter is among the latest brands to create a presence on Instagram. Twitter joined the platform as part of its marketing efforts to get in front of more people. Twitter’s emphasizing its news capabilities through content that features the hashtag with images of major events from around the world. Twitter and Instagram once had quite the rivalry, but as Twitter’s struggled and repositioned itself as a news app, the move could be a smart one to reach mobile users.