This Week in Social and Digital (Week of April 3)
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 Launches Search for Stories
Snapchat has introduced search for Stories. Now, users can go to a new search page and type in a topic to bring up video Stories related to the search term. This allows users to see Snaps uploaded to Our Stories, which is public content. Private content is not searchable.
The feature’s been built to work off of machine learning technology, which involves using artificial intelligence to categorize pieces of content based on text and photos. Snapchat has said it has no plans to monetize search at this time, which means no ads or sponsored content.
Snapchat’s move is focused on driving engagement with the platform, and it certainly helps Snapchat be a bit stickier as it makes content consumption less reliant on friends and publishers creating content. Now, users can search for whatever interests them. This has the potential to keep the users on the platform more often and longer than before.
Perhaps the biggest threat this poses is to Twitter. Because Snaps are only available for 24 hours, it’s likely users will be searching for timely content, which is exactly what Twitter is positioning itself for.
Amazon Inks Deal to Stream Thursday Night NFL Games While Twitter Focuses on Its TV Future
Last year, Twitter shocked everyone when it revealed that it would be live streaming Thursday Night NFL games during the upcoming season. The deal allowed Twitter to showcase its real-time video streaming capabilities and draw new users to the platform. Now, that torch is being passed to Amazon, which will now be streaming ten Thursday night games for Amazon Prime users thanks to a deal worth $50 million.
Amazon’s paying five times what Twitter did last year, and one significant difference in its approach is it will be limited to paying Amazon Prime users. Twitter live streamed to everyone for free.
Despite, losing the NFL, TV is still a top initiative for Twitter. Anthony Noto of Twitter has been reported saying that the platform would like to integrate pay TV channels into its service by having users log into their existing TV services. That would blend TV content with the real-time content feed of Twitter.
There are a couple things going on here. First, the move by Amazon just shows how much upheaval media is in the midst of. With Netflix competing with movie studios and television, and Amazon creating award-winning movies, the content creators aren’t who they used to be. This shift of the NFL to Amazon is just another piece of that shift.
For its part, Twitter sees real-time interaction with live content as part of its future, and TV has the potential to play a part in that. Through a series of both niche streaming deals and mass-appeal ones like what it had with the NFL, Twitter’s shown its streaming capabilities. This could give TV providers confidence in allowing their subscribers to sync their TV accounts with Twitter and interact in real-time. That could reposition Twitter for a very different future.
Facebook Rolls out More Features for Digital Assistant M
Facebook’s much-discussed, not-much-used digital assistant M has been in testing since August 2015. Now, it’s making its debut in a limited sense.
Facebook has launched suggestions for iOS and Android users. Suggestions will use artificial intelligence to make suggestions based on the conversations users are having. It will highlight relevant stickers you might want to send, give the option to send or receive money from friends, share your location during a conversation, coordinate schedules, start a group poll and allow you to book a Lyft or Uber.
The goal is to make conversations “more useful, personal and seamless,” according to the team behind the digital assistant.
The digital assistant space is pretty flooded at this point, but M is about more than digital assistants. M is about Facebook defending and continuing its growth in the one-to-one messaging space. M allows Facebook to make Messenger a more useful platform for its users, and it creates a point of differentiation as users continue to diversify their social behaviors with personal messaging behaviors.
Facebook Updated Delivery Insights Dashboard
Facebook has updated its delivery insights dashboard as it looks to curb criticism that it is too opaque for advertisers. This is the first of several updates Facebook plans for this year.
Now, advertisers can better understand auction activity and performance and also get estimated daily results for impressions, spend, results and cost-per-result. Beyond that, the dashboard provides interpretations on why performance might be fluctuating.
This dashboard is more about the why behind the numbers. Facebook’s behaved a lot like a black box, but reporting mishaps late last year put Facebook under greater pressure to explain itself to advertisers. This dashboard is meant to explain why certain trends might be happening. If there’s a big dip, this might be why. Or if something’s doing great, it might be because of this.
Snapchat Makes Moves to Court Advertisers
Snapchat has two new tools aimed at bringing more advertisers onto the platform.
Now, it is offering goal-based bidding for app install ads. This will allow advertisers to target users who are likely to install an app with ads that ask them to swipe up on videos to generate a conversion. The move comes after many platforms, particularly Facebook have generated significant results for direct response advertisers looking to grow app installs.
Along with this update, Snapchat is allowing advertisers to target users who have interacted with their ads run previously. This would mean, advertisers could, retarget users with Snap Ads after, for example, interacting with a Lense the advertiser launched in the past.
Now that Snap, Inc. is a public company, this is likely to be the first of many updates by Snapchat to court advertisers. This more granular targeting certainly makes Snapchat a more attractive buy for advertisers, and the ability to retarget users who have interacted could allow advertisers to launch more sophisticated campaigns with early ads designed to grow awareness and retargeted ads more focused on driving conversions.
As of late, it’s been Facebook playing defense by copying Snapchat features and crowding its territory. It looks like Snapchat’s ready to do some copy-and-paste work itself.
News Quick Hits
- The Twitter egg profile pic is going away. The egg was meant to be a stand-in profile pic for accounts that didn’t upload one, but they became synonymous with bots and trolls. Now, the image has been replaced with a grey silhouette of a person. Critics have stated that this does little to discourage the trolling behavior, if at all.
- YouTube is partnering with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to make sure brand ads don’t show up adjacent to offensive content. There is no timeline with when this will be available, but YouTube has been working with companies accredited by the Media Ratings Council. According to DoubleVerify, no details on the approach to protecting brands has been presented by Google at this time. The move comes after multiple brands pulled advertising amid reports of ads showing up with unsavory content.
- YouTube has updated the number of categories advertisers can block their content from showing up next to. Up until now, the two options were “sensitive social issues” and “tragedy and conflicts.” Now, there are five options, including “sexually suggestive,” “sensational and shocking” and “profanity and rough language.” Beyond that, YouTube has taken steps to “demonetize” content from some creators.
- Amazon has launched a new way for users to buy on the site with cash. The service is called Amazon Cash. It requires users to go to retailers and pay cash which is then added to their Amazon accounts. The goal is to open Amazon up to an audience without a credit card or bank. Customers can load up their accounts with up to $500 in a single transaction at retailers like CVS, Sheetz, Speedway, Kum & Go and others.
- Twitch is now allowing gamers to purchase games while watching related streams. So, while a gamer is watching someone play a new title, that gamer can make a transaction directly on the stream. Developers can also offer deals and discounts to stream viewers. Twitch will also reward purchasers with Twitch Crates, which will be random gifts.
- Twitter is now allowing brands to request that users share their location data over direct message. That way social customer service teams can see where someone is and help them get help faster by, for example, directing them to the nearest store location.
- Reddit has updated its self-serve ad platform with something that is more user-friendly, offers post-pay billing, lets advertisers upload multiple pieces of creative per campaign and has better analytics.
- Facebook is working to protect users from revenge porn. Images shared without permission can be flagged. Those are then reviewed by “specially trained representatives” who check the content, remove it and disable accounts sharing images without permission. Beyond that it offers an appeal process for images posters claim were “taken down in error.” Facebook’s also employing photo matching technology to stop images from being re-shared after being removed.
- YouTube TV is now live in select markets. The service offers users the ability to stream live TV channels, record shows to limitless DVRs, access to YouTube Red originals, the ability to add up to six accounts and streaming across multiple devices.YouTube TV offers more than 50 channels with more on the way.
- In an effort to roll into developing markets, Twitter has launched Twitter Lite, a version of Twitter that works on slower networks. The service works by compressing media content up to 70% and caching tweets by default. Both Facebook and YouTube have followed a similar strategy to gain a foothold in other markets.
- Facebook’s making its workplace product more competitive. It announced that Facebook Workplace is getting a freemium version. The service is aimed at smaller organizations without the budget to support a rollout for Workplace Premium. The free version cuts out analytics and administrative tools, but for businesses looking for an inter-office communication solution, this free version may be what they’re looking for.
- Pinterest has hit another user milestone. It is now at 175 million monthly active users, which is a 25 million user increase since October 2016.