This Week in Social and Digital (Week of May 20)
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. Note: This week’s update is condensed due to the holiday weekend. I want to go outside.
News Quick Hits
Pinterest revealed plans to offer a self-serve ad platform for advertisers to launch and manage their own campaigns on the platform without going through Pinterests’ sales staff, similar to Facebook’s and Google’s self-serve ad model. Pinterest has no plans to scale back its sales team, however. It just increased the number of international sales offices from seven to 13, but the offering of self-serve may allow Pinterest to appeal to a broader base of advertisers.
Google has updated the look of Google search results. Now, website branding and name will be displayed in search results, allowing users to see quickly what website the result is driving to. Search ads will now be identified by blocked ad labels at the top of search cards. Google plans to use this new layout to allow for action buttons that let users to do things like buy movie tickets, play podcasts and preview websites from within search results.
Facebook announced that ads are coming to WhatsApp Statuses (WhatsApp’s version of Stories) in 2020. The ads look just like they do on Instagram with full-screen takeovers. Users will be able to swipe up on the ads to get more information.
IGTV is moving on from offering vertical-only video to offering horizontal video as well. The move is seen as a precursor to ads making their way onto IGTV because it will bring more content to IGTV and, with that, more users. Content creators have been less motivated to create content for IGTV because of the extra costs and production needed to cater to the vertical video environment. IGTV has yet to be monetized.