This Week in Social and Digital (Week of August 14)
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 Crowd Surf
Snapchat has launched a new feature focused on events called Crowd Surf that ties together user snaps from an event based on the audio. The result is a stitched-together video that captures an event from various perspectives and angle. Users can choose different angles by tapping a button.
Snapchat launched the feature with a Lorde concert within Our Stories.
Crowd Surf is a nice differentiating feature for the platform that should give more attention to Snapchat Stories over the Instagram counterpart. That means more opportunities for Snapchat to serve ads. But beyond that, the feature makes Snapchat a potentially very powerful platform for real-time events such as news, speeches and other newsworthy moments. At the moment though, Crowd Surf is limited to select events, so time will tell on if this ever becomes a real-time news sharing feature.
Facebook Allows for More Flexibility in Placing Videos
Facebook is letting brands have more control over where their in-stream video ads are placed. Now, advertisers will be able to choose if their in-stream video ads display within the Facebook Audience Network, on Facebook or across all formats. This means advertisers have more decision-making power in how they split their in-stream video budgets across Facebook’s various options.
The move comes just after Facebook launched its video tab Watch, which features longer-form content that allows for mid-roll placement. That gives Facebook greater mid-roll inventory, which means greater flexibility for advertisers. In-stream ads have proven to be a success on Facebook with more than 70% seeing views of at least 15 seconds.
Watch is meant to steal more time and attention from users, and this move shows Facebook’s confident in the goal that it can do that because it’s selling the inventory around it. Advertisers will have the chance to test creative across the network and within Facebook itself, which will help them get smarter on what creative works where. It’s still early days for Watch, but clearly Facebook’s ready to make it as attractive as possible for advertisers.
Facebook Lets Brands Promote Influencer Posts
Facebook is now letting influencers tag brands they are working with in their content. From there, brands can actually boost those posts without needing to share the content first, which is a much more streamlined approach than what was possible before.
To set this up, brands need to give influencers permission to tag them, but once they do, those brands get information on reach, engagement, spend and CPM to evaluate influencer posts.
On the surface this looks like a simple way for brands to extend their efforts on Facebook, but it could also mean Facebook algorithmically suppressing influencer content and in a sense, forcing brands to pay. One of the primary benefits of working with influencers is reaching their audiences in an authentic and natural way. This shifts that a bit and makes influencer marketing as much of a paid advertising effort as paid advertising itself.
Reddit Joins the Autoplay Video Game
Reddit has announced that it will be showing autoplay video ads that play with the sound off to users. That feature extends to users as well. Up until this point, users had to click on links to view video content on sites like YouTube, but now they can upload videos natively to Reddit. Using the new tools, users can also make GIFs.
These new tools mean Reddit keeps traffic it was previously sending off to YouTube or Imgur.
This is a catch-up move when it comes to video, but in terms of engaging its existing users, video will likely be a welcome addition. The Reddit community is notoriously fussy when it comes to advertising, and autoplay video will likely be met with some hesitation. Still, brands have an opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience, and with the right piece of creative, they could certainly stand out.
News Quick Hits
- Facebook’s made some changes to the News Feed design. First, it updated the comment style to make it easier to see comments that are direct replies to others. It also made the type easier to read, while increasing the size of Like, Comment and Share buttons.
- LinkedIn has launched a new Active Status feature that lets users know when their contacts are currently active on the platform. Users are notified when they go to a user’s profile. If that person is online, a green circle will display showing that the user is using LinkedIn and has push notifications enabled on their phone. The feature can be disabled in user settings because this sounds like it could be very annoying.
- Instagram’s added threaded comments. When users reply to comments from others, those replies will display in a nested thread, making it easier to follow various conversations on the platform. Following conversations on Instagram for posts receiving a lot of engagement can be difficult, so this is a welcome addition.
- Facebook is testing the ability for marketers to target people who have visited their real-world locations with follow-up ads. To use the option, brands must have multiple locations enabled, and advertisers can only target users who have been to a location in the past 30 days. The move is intended for retailers looking to drive holiday store traffic.
- Google Maps is allowing users to post questions and answers within business listings. Questions can be “upvoted” to get more attention and appear at the top of the section. Businesses will be notified when users ask questions.
- Instagram Direct Messages got an update that allows users to reply with photos or videos to someone’s private message. The reply includes a sticker of the photo the person is responding to. The update creates an opportunity for some creativity and fun as the sticker can be manipulated. This isn’t the polished Instagram you grew up with.
- Pinterest users can now pinch and zoom in on pins, which is a nice addition for Pinterest but is also redundant of what other platforms offer. Still, given that Pinterest is used as a visual search service, it has the potential to add more utility to the platform.
- Amazon’s new social network Spark has launched as a way for people to discover content from other users as well as share their own. The platform offers a feed of images, similar to Instagram while adding the ability to purchase items from within the app. Businesses do not yet have a presence on the platform but that will likely come in the future. This could be another flash-in-the-pan social network, but it could also be a black horse. Given Amazon’s passionate Prime users, it could take off.