This Week in Social and Digital (Week of January 30)
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.
Facebook Testing for Launch of Promoted Animated Masks
Facebook hasn’t been shy in copying features from Snapchat, and in its latest move, it’s in talks with Hollywood studios to develop animated masks to promote movies. The feature would launch in coordination with a new camera-centered redesign for the Facebook app, which is likely coming in March.
Facebook’s effort to copy Snapchat is part of an overall strategy to copy Snapchat features and then make them available to advertisers, who can use the features to reach a much larger audience than they can with Snapchat. Still, Snapchat has equity in being a platform meant for younger users because of its innovation and unique approach to messaging. Copying features is no way for Facebook to shake a reputation of being a Snapchat follower with an older user base.
At the end of the day, this is a move that ultimately benefits marketers. It’s good to see both Snapchat and Facebook in a race to create new ways for brands to deliver unique experiences to users. Masks like these are a way for consumers to play with brands, and they tend to use them for a more extended period of time.
Pinterest Rolls Out New Search Product
Pinterest has a new search advertising product being launched with a dozen new advertisers. The ad product leverages keyword search to display results in a way that appears similar to Google’s product listing ads. Resembling Google is exactly what Pinterest aims to do.
With digital ad dollars consolidating to the likes of Facebook and Google, Pinterest is looking to carve just a bit into search advertising spends. What would be a small cut to Google could be big for Pinterest, which has worked to redefine itself from being a social platform to being one much more focused on search and reaching users closer to making a decision.
What sets Pinterest apart from Google is its visual nature, so the creative matters as 97% of the searches done on the platform don’t include a brand.
The new advertisers using the product will join Home Depot, Target and others who have been testing it.
Pinterest has rolled out multiple features, including video advertising, but it seems poised to do its best in reaching users searching for information. More than 2 billion searches take place on the platform each month, and its users start using the platform three months in advance of making a big purchase decision. That makes this an upper funnel play.
Pinterest isn’t ready to open this up to all brands, but it seems to be poised to place a greater emphasis on search than it ever has before. That’s what Pinterest needs. It currently lacks focus as it’s been described in many different ways from being a scrapbooking site to a way to reach key demographics like millennial females, but at the end of the day Pinterest search, specifically offers a way for marketers to be incredibly helpful on the Pinterest platform.
Snapchat Makes Ad Buying Easier
Snapchat’s expanding the ways advertisers can buy self-serve ads. Now, many more advertisers can get involved on Snapchat. Previously, they had to work directly with the Snapchat team, but that is no more.
While this move opens the app up to all advertisers, it’s challenge now is to ensure quality remains a priority. This is a battle Instagram recently came up against and Facebook before it when they opened up their platforms to all advertisers.
To help with the transition, Snapchat is working with sixteen new partner companies, which include targeting firms, creative software firms and ad buying platforms. This will likely mean a massive increase in ad revenue for the mobile messaging app.
Ahead of an IPO, Snapchat’s looking for scale, and technology is the best way to do that. Opening up its platform will bring in a slew of new advertisers and revenue. This marks a pivotal point for Snapchat to remain a company loved by its users that is also loved by investors.Those two are often at odds with what they want from a platform.
Facebook Launching Video App in Bid for Revenue, Coinciding with Q4 Earnings
Facebook is looking to launch an app for set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV. The app would show TV-quality shows licensed by Facebook that are about ten minutes in length. The move comes after nearly of year promoting live streaming on its platform, which has proven to be a strong feature in terms of providing engagement.
The challenge with live is it’s difficult to place ads within it. That’s where the potential for an app comes in. It coincides with moves by Facebook to emphasize long-form content from creators that leave room for mid-roll ads. The app’s ultimate goal would be to generate ad revenue, but Facebook is still in talks with studios to produce the content.
This move coincides with Facebook’s Q4 earnings report, which showed a 53% jump in revenue over last year, reaching $8.6 billion and generating $10 billion in profits.Beyond that, it saw daily active users rise 18% over last year, reaching 1.23 billion people. Monthly active users rose 17% to 1.86 billion people.
Facebook’s success isn’t a surprise, and it wants to keep it that way. That’s where the potential for an app comes in. There are two ways for Facebook to grow and that’s in growing users and increasing the number of ads. Facebook’s user numbers are astronomical, but user growth is slowing. It’s hard to grow when you reach everyone. Expanding to a TV app opens up a new revenue stream for Facebook. It’s another place for ads to live without cluttering its other experiences with more advertising, which could turn off users.
Instagram Testing Multi-Photo Albums
Instagram is currently testing the ability for users to upload multiple photos into one album in an Android beta release. This would mean, Instagram would take the ability currently only available in paid carousel ads and expand it to all users. Other than carousel ads, the only other way to share multiple photos in a single image is to create a collage using an app like Layout.
This is a test at the moment, but Instagram is getting to the point where it sacrifices standing for something by losing its focus. Instagram became known for being the place where users would share the best photos from a trip or an outing, while Facebook was a place to share albums of multiple photos.
Instagram’s focus on sharing the “greatest hits” has been its strength. Stories has offered a way for users to share multiple images of varying quality, but it’s that feed of quality pictures that keeps users coming back.
The platform needs to evolve and develop new features for its expanding user base. That lack of evolution is part of what held Twitter back, but focus may be key for Instagram as it plots out its future, which will include an post-IPO Snapchat.
Snap Inc. Files for IPO
Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has filed for an IPO, which will raise about $3 billion. The IPO is expected to be one of the largest in tech history as Snap will trade under the ticker SNAP on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading on SNAP will begin in March, following meetings in which Snap Inc. will present its company to Wall Street.
It’s going to be interesting because Snap Inc. has been very secretive up to this point, but now, it needs to open up its books and share how the company is doing. That has revealed some interesting facts.
First, Snapchat now has 158 million daily users, which is more than Twitter but far less than Facebook. The challenge Snapchat faces is it was only at 153 million in September, which is relatively flat growth. Snapchat has warned that competitors mimicking products, as Instagram has done, may hurt growth and user engagement. It also warned that its user base is made up of 18 to 34 year olds, which isn’t a surprise as it’s been known as a way to reach younger users. The challenge with that is that age group is rarely loyal to any one platform and tends to do a lot of app switching, so loyalty is a concern.
Snap Inc. also said that it is still working to secure long-term advertising deals, and it faces the challenge that some advertisers may use it to experiment with features but actually pay to use similar features on other platforms, like Instagram.
Snapchat brought in $400 million in 2016 but lost $500 million, which Snap Inc. said was related to research and building its ad technology platform. That research appears to be paying off. They shared that 30% of their users swipe up on ads to view longer-form videos, which means spending about 30 seconds with the content on average. Snap Inc. has tied that behavior to doubling search traffic to advertiser websites.
Snap Inc.’s IPO is a typical mix of risks and positive news for the company. It’s entering an incredibly competitive environment with Facebook watching and copying its every move. Now, Snap Inc. is going to make a big pivot from one about building up its user base and catering to them to one that balances user needs with the demands of Wall Street.
News Quick Hits
- Twitch saw a viewership record broken this past weekend when more than 1 million concurrent viewers watched the end of the ELeague Major. The viewership peaked during the grand finals of the 10th CS:GO Major. It’s another major milestone for e-sports.
- Walmart’s Amazon Prime competitor that charged users $49 per year for free two-day shipping is no more. Now, it is offering free-two day shipping to any order of at least $35. The move is meant to compete more strongly with Amazon Prime’s offering. That, however, also includes access to other services like Amazon Video, which Walmart does not offer. Either way, the e-commerce competitive landscape just got a bit more interesting.
- Apple revealed in its Q4 earnings that it sold more iPhones than ever before in one quarter, generating its highest quarterly revenue ever. The tech company sold 78.3 million iPhones, up from 74.8 million the year prior.
- Twitter is testing video view counts on videos in users’ timelines. As video consumption increases, Twitter’s seeing just how helpful video popularity context will be for users. The move coincides with efforts across the social landscape to continue to a focus on video.
- Facebook is expanding its relationship with third-party ad tech companies to improve data quality and to give advertisers a better idea of how their ads on Facebook compare to ads in other media, like television. Facebook is also expanding partnerships with Nielsen and ComScore to better evaluate when ads were seen and by whom. These two join other third-party firms, including Moat, DoubleVerfiy and Integral Ad Science. Facebook also launched Market Mix Modeling, which allows advertisers to gather data from Facebook, Instagram and the Facebook Audience Network to understand how ads are delivering on business objectives. The announcement comes as Facebook is under greater data scrutiny after several measurement errors shared late last year.
- Google is working with Cloudflare, a digital security company, to deliver ads as quickly as Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). These speedy ads load in 700 milliseconds, down from 2.2 seconds. The partnership is intended to help the advertising experience, which often slows down web pages, creating frustration for users and leading them to install ad blockers.
- Lego is getting into the social networking game with Lego Life, an Instagram like platform that lets kids share photos and videos of their lego creations. The network has taken precautions to protect kids, including not allowing them to use their real names and offering randomly generated names for them and limited personalization options for their avatars. They can also only communicate through carefully curated Lego emojis. Moderators are vetting every post and comment made.
- Snapchat is allowing users to create Snapcodes for any link. The feature is available through a new Create Snapcode option. Once a site has a Snapcode, users can navigate to the site without exiting Snapchat to view the content.
- Facebook’s adding new ways to bury fake news on its platform. Now, content that people have found genuine will appear near the top of News Feeds. This value will be determined by the source page to ensure it doesn’t regularly share spam or fake content. It will also look at other signals that point to authenticity, which Facebook did not specify.
- Snapchat Lenses may be getting an update that would add world lenses to the scenery around you. The implications are significant for advertisers as these world lenses could include ads and other branded content over real-world objects. Snap Inc. has been focusing a lot of its efforts on AR (augmented reality) as it looks to differentiate itself from Facebook, which has been copying many of Snapchat’s features on its own platforms.