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.

Reddit Announces Content Distribution Deal with Snapchat

Reddit and Snapchat have come to a deal that involves Reddit content being shared within Snapchat. The content will be shared through a new sticker that features the Reddit logo. Users who tap on the sticker to view more will be driven to the Reddit app if they have it or the app store to download it.

The move is a niche play as it’s most relevant for users of both Snapchat and Reddit, but it does have the potential of expanding Reddit’s footprint to new users. Reddit currently has 330 million global monthly active users, while Snapchat has 83 million daily users in North America and generates 10 billion video views per day. That’s an engaged audience Reddit can tap into. It also gives Reddit a bit more mainstream cache in the minds of advertisers. Aligning with Snapchat potentially gives Reddit an argument that it’s able to reach younger consumers who are attractive to advertisers.

For Snapchat, Reddit can bring some of the Internet’s most engaging content to its platform, driving user interaction and possibly time spent with the app.

Libra’s on the Ropes

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency is not looking so good. A new report form the G7 warns that Libra, as well as other cryptocurrencies, pose a risk to the global financial system. That concern means Libra may not get the approval from regulators it seeks, and that concern was revealed off the heels of MasterCard, Visa, eBay, Stripe and PayPal pulling out as backers of Libra.

It is important to point out that Libra is a stablecoin, meaning it’s tied to an established currency like the euro or the dollar. That makes it different than cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are not. This gives Libra some legitimacy, but the G7 warns of potential losses of confidence in financial stability because of Libra’s potential to stifle completion and hinder policymakers abilities to set interest rates. The net result of that is introducing a stablecoin like Libra is fraught with regulatory challenges.

The Libra Association argues that introducing the currency could help 1.7 billion people who are unbanked by giving them access to currency.

Libra is and always has been a long shot, as one would expect from the launch of a new global currency. Facebook has committed to allaying any regulatory concerns to get Libra off the ground, but the concerns are mounting and support is waining among both regulators and members of the Libra Association. Libra’s a huge swing, and it’s looking like a huge miss.

Still, it’ moving along. Just this week the 21 companies still in the Libra Association met in Geneva, signed a charter and elected its Board of Directors. Libra officially has governance in place, and Facebook, while still involved, is no longer the entity pushing this forward alone. It’s now its own organization in charge of its own destiny.

Amazon Stealing Share of Search Ad Dollars

A new report from eMarketer shows that Amazon is poised to generate more than $7 billion in search advertising this year, which is significant because it's eating into Google’s revenue share.

Google is expected to generate $40 billion or roughly 73% of the search advertising market this year. But Amazon is expected to grow from where it is now with 13% to 16% of the market by 2021.

The growth is coming off of Amazon’s efforts to make itself a worthy competitor to the Facebook/Google digital advertising duopoly. Amazon’s been building up its automated ad platform capabilities for advertising across the web as well as on Amazon properties. That paired with the fact that consumers are growing more accustomed to starting their searches on Amazon has made it a viable third player.

While this could be viewed as a negative for Facebook and especially Google, a little competition isn’t a bad thing. Both are in the middle of anti-competitive investigations.

News Quick Hits

Fornite became unplayable when it went down on Sunday, October 13 when the game world was sucked into a black hole. All players were able to do at the time was stare at the black hole. The move was a sendoff in the most dramatic way possible to season 10 of Fortnite content as the game rebooted with a brand new game map. It was big. It was bold. It was dramatically Fortnite in every way, and it sent the Internet into an expected collective frenzy.
Disney+ went to Twitter this week to announce all of the titles that will be available on the service when it launches November 12. The platform is relying heavily on nostalgia with 600 titles spanning Disney’s decades of content creation.
Netflix worked to allay investor fears of more competitors entering the streaming space in its earnings report by saying it’s been preparing for this moment its entire existence. It was able to beat earnings expectations but slightly missed revenue expectations.
Facebook is testing ads placements in Groups for a very small set of advertisers. Currently, 400 million Facebook users are members of groups, and Facebook has said that it plans to do more with groups in the future. This effort allows advertisers to run their single-image News Feed campaigns within that space.
Giphy launched Giphy Arcade, a new platform that lets users make and play games made out of gifs. The games are easy to make with simple templates users can customize with GIFs of their choice and then share instantly.
Facebook’s been the target of criticism for its policy of allowing false information to be shared and promoted by politicians on its platform. Mark Zuckerberg spoke about this, defending his platform’s policy as a protection of free speech.