This Week in Social and Digital (Week of June 26)
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 Gets Hollywood Involved in Long-Form Content
Facebook’s push into original, high-quality content is getting more real than ever as it looks to draw more advertising dollars to its platform. We have a bit more clarity on how things are going to work thanks to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook will be releasing this episodic content following a traditional release schedule versus the approach adopted by Netflix and Amazon, which typically drop a whole season content at once. Facebook will also be closely collaborating with Hollywood and sharing viewership data. One of its upcoming shows will be inspired by “Carpool Karaoke."
Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Snapchat, Twitter and more have all gotten into the original, high-quality content game in an effort to draw more advertising dollars, not only from each other but also from TV. While TV continues to draw massive amounts of eyeballs, statistics from eMarketer show today’s teens are eschewing traditional TV in favor of online digital video. Now, this could change as they get older, but if platforms can get eyeballs on their content while they have a captive audience, loyalty may set in for the long-term.
Facebook Ads Get Slew of New Updates In Time for Holiday Planning
Facebook got busy this week with several new updates to advertising.
The first of which is a new household audience feature that happens to come out just in time for the holiday planning period. This household audience feature allows brands to target ads to an entire family or everyone who lives in a household. In other words, you can target the decision-maker as well as those who influence the decision-maker using familial relationships as a signal on Facebook.
The move positions Facebook to work a lot like TV, which is how brands typically target a household. The feature has large implications for travel, gifting and shared family purchases. Marketers will be able to view how advertising is performing across different household members.
Facebook didn’t stop there. It also launched video for Dynamic Ads, which is a big deal considering they’ve been limited to static visuals up until now. Product videos can be uploaded to Facebook and then be targeted to viewers who have shown interest in those products in the past by, for example, visiting a retailer's website. In addition, advertisers can add overlays to dynamic ads to highlight discounts or prices. These overlays can be customized by shape and color.
The focus wasn’t just on retailers. Facebook also launched a product for game publishers. This time it launched Rewarded Video. Rewarded Video allows developers to give users the option to watch a full-screen video ad in exchange for in-game rewards. This is completely opt-in, but the value exchange is clear.
It’s no coincidence that these ad formats are gearing up just in time for holiday preparations. The ability to target by household as a way to influence the decision-makers is as smart as it is devious, and it let’s Facebook really tap into its trove of connection data in a way that could be very powerful for advertisers. That, paired with dynamic video, could make Facebook even more of a focus for retailers during the holidays than ever.
Snapchat Makes Geofilters Easier to Make
Snapchat Geofilters can now be made directly within the Snapchat mobile app. Previously, you had to go to Snapchat’s website and submit the filter.
On-Demand geofilters are available within the Snapchat settings, and it already has templates for various events that can be customized as desired. From there, users can purchase their filters for $5.99. The cost starts at $5.00 when creating from the website.
Geofilters have proven to be a major focus for Snapchat. They are, in a way, the lowest hanging fruit on the platform for reaching an audience, and this feature makes it just as easy for users to implement them for personal events as it is for brands to build engagement with an audience at a specific location. The turnkey nature of this effort shows how Snapchat sees this as a way to introduce brands to the platform with a low-risk format. Measurement, however, will remain a challenge.
Facebook Messenger Elevates Bots in Discover Tab
One major development coming out of F8 was a new Discover tab within Messenger to highlight bots available on the platform.
The Discover tab is available from brands and developers alike, and it highlights users’ most recently used bots, popular bots and search for more bots. The bots are broken down in a way that’s reminiscent of an app store with categories around news, entertainment, finance and others.
Beyond that, Facebook’s AI-powered assistant M that lives within Messenger also has new capabilities including suggesting and enabling people to save content to view later, suggesting users reach out to friends who are having a birthday and suggesting voice or video calls when they seem appropriate. These skills will join M’s other skills including enabling the paying or requesting of money, sharing locations and others.
Despite challenges in getting through the kinks around bots, Facebook shows no signs of shying away. Facebook’s made bots more usable with a menu-based interaction rather than more open-ended questions and statements that often left users disappointed. Now, it’s working to make them more popular and get more usability. Featuring them in a marketplace of sorts will make discovery that much easier and entice publishers, developers and even brands to think about what role they can play using AI on the platform.
News Quick Hits
- Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube have formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which aims to diminish the spread of terrorism and violent extremism. The efforts from the companies will take the form of technological solutions that detect content using machine learning, research to guide policy decisions and knowledge sharing across the companies as well as other organizations.
- Facebook Messenger’s video chat capabilities have gotten an upgrade. Now, it has animated Facebook reactions that when tapped on will show on-screen animations. It also has Snapchat-like filters that can change the color of the screen and add masks to users’ faces. The goal is to continue to evolve Messenger to be a one-stop platform for all messaging needs.
- Posts on Google is expanding from being limited to celebrities, sports teams, movie studios, museums and sports leagues to local businesses. Posts on Google allow those with access to posts images, GIFs, text and videos that show up in Google Search and Maps. The posts can be created within My Business apps and on the web.
- The YouTube Measurement Program (YTMP) is now live. The program allows businesses to standardize and verify YouTube data using the YouTube API and measurement companies. Currently, those companies are limited to Tubular Labs, Pixability, Socialgist, OpenSlate, Wizdeo and Salesforce.
- Uber has a new feature that allows users to order rides for others. Users can select who is riding by adding in their name or phone number. Uber then alerts that person to the make and license plate of the driver who will be picking them up. The feature could be useful for drunk friends or others who don’t have Uber on their devices.
- Facebook has reached another user number milestone. It now sits at 2 billion monthly users. Facebook is commemorating the milestone with personalized videos for each user in their News Feeds and thanking users for engaging with friends’ posts. Facebook also revealed that 175 million users use a reaction every day, 800 million like something every day and 1 billion use Groups every month.
- Google is testing a cube-shaped ad that creates a three-dimensional space for the virtual reality environment called Advr. The goal of the format is to create something that’s unobtrusive and simple.
- Pinterest has enabled two-factor authentication, a list of devices connected to an account and email alerts when new logins occur from different devices to improve user account security.
- Pandora is pulling out of Australia and New Zealand “within a few weeks.” Instead, Pandora will focus on expanding its business in the United States. In addition, CEO Tim Westergren left the company. Pandora, while incredibly popular, has faced challenges in both licensing and competitive music-streaming services.
- Instagram is testing nested comments on Android. Nested comments would be a welcome feature as it makes threads easier to follow when users choose to “reply” to comments.
- Uptime, the YouTube app that lets users watch content together, is now open to all. Up until this point, it was an invite-only experience.
- For most users who like their Instagram without the hate speech, a new feature will be welcome. It now has comment filters that will block “certain offensive comments” as well as spam in nine different languages. The feature is available in the settings menu.
- The Twitch mobile app has been updated to allow users to live stream from their mobile devices. Users can’t stream games using the app, but it can be used by Twitch creators to stay connected with their audiences in a vlog-like format. The update comes with Twitch revealing that one of the primary ways viewers watch content is through their mobile devices, so this is meant to help elevate creators.
- AMC and Comcast are partnering to launch a subscription, commercial-free service called AMC Premier for $4.99 per month. The subscription is only available to Comcast subscribers. Comcast and AMC will share revenue.