This Week in Social and Digital (Week of January 6)
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.
Bitmoji TV Coming to Snapchat
Bitmoji is taking centerstage for Snapchat as it kicks off 2020. Starting this February, Snapchat is launching Bitmoji TV, a cartoon series within the platform the will feature users’ customizable, personalized Bitmoji avatars, as well as the avatars of their friends. The content will allow users to see themselves featured in a fully animated series, and because it features Snapchat-owned Bitmoji characters, the content will be difficult, even impossible, for competitors like Facebook to copy and implement for themselves.
The storylines will cover multiple genres, including a Star Trek-like episode. All episodes will be available within Snapchat Discover.
Snapchat acquired Bitstrips, the makers of Bitmoji in 2016, and has taken some steps to leverage the asset, including letting users create 3D versions of their Bitmojis, allowing users to have their avatars as their profile pics and even integrating them within Fitbit and Venmo. All of these efforts have allowed Bitmoji avatars to gain deep penetration across the Internet.
Bitmoji TV allows Snapchat to take asset’s potential to the next level. By appealing to users’ egos and desire for short-form, mobile-friendly content, Snapchat’s creating an experience that should earn user attention that can eventually be monetized. All of this could make Snapchat Discover a more desirable entertainment destination for users and advertising opportunity for brands.
Twitter Launches Explore Takeover
Twitter is giving brands the ability to take over the Explore tab, the section of the platform that highlights trending topics and hashtags. The offering is called Promoted Trend Spotlight. It will display as a six-second video, GIF or static image that will run edge-to-edge at the top if the Explore section. It will display no more than two times per day per user to make the new high-profile unit less obtrusive.
The offering ups the ante of Twitter’s Promoted Trend offering by giving advertisers a more prominent placement. That more prominent placement has been credited by Twitter as increasing the time users spend looking at a Promoted Trend Spotlight over a Promoted Trend by 26%. That led to a 113% increase in ad recall. These results aren’t all that surprising. After all, Promoted Trend Spotlight is a lot more exposure within the Explore tab than Promoted Trends ever were. Still, the new offering gives brands an opportunity to reach users in a high-profile way, and if a brand backs up that reach with an activation or effort worth discussing, this tactic could prove valuable.
Spotify Launches Podcast Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI)
Spotify’s continuing to go big on monetizing podcasts with a new product called SAI or Streaming Ad Insertion. The product will allow Spotify to place targeted audio ads within podcasts. That means users listening to the same podcast may hear completely different ads, making the medium more targeted and more scalable as advertisers are able to reach a wide audience across many podcasts rather than just relying on one or a few.
Initially, SAI will only be available for Spotify-owned podcasts. Spotify will be having hosts read all ads, so when the ads are inserted into the content, it will be the hosts’ voices. However, as this scales beyond the podcasts Spotify owns, that intimacy could get lost and the intimacy and connection listeners have with podcast hosts could stop being a benefit podcasts offer. Instead, there will basically be commercial breaks within the podcast content when the ad plays.
Now, that loss could be overlooked as the technology has the potential for some major gains. The biggest of which is accountability and measurability. Because the podcasts are streamed and not downloaded, advertisers will know which of their ads were listened to, by whom and how much of the ad was completed.
Twitter Announces More Tweet Control Options
Twitter used CES to announce new tools it plans to give users to have greater control over their conversations on the platform. In Q1, Twitter will be testing four new options for users when they compose a tweet.
The first is called Global. This works as Twitter typically works—the tweet will be viewable by anyone on Twitter. The second is Group, which will limit who can reply to a tweet to those followed by the person tweeting or those mentioned in the tweet. The third is called Panel, and this tweet enables only those who are mentioned to reply. The final option is called Statement, and this will prohibit all users from replying.
Twitter aims to clean up its platform and make platform “health” a top priority. This means minimizing the likelihood a Twitter conversation goes off-course. These options give users who start a conversation and control over where that conversation might go. This test clearly benefits authors as it will help them maintain some level of control when they compose tweets. However, this does run the risk suppressing valuable dialogue that can occur on the platform, and in that case users can still quote tweet someone if they’d like to share a rebuttal or add to an idea.
News Quick Hits
Instagram’s US user growth rate is slowing according to eMarketer. For the first time, growth has dropped into single digits from 10.1% in 2018 to 6.7% in 2019. That trend is expected to continue through 2023. This decline is attributed to a slower-than-anticipated adoption rate from older demographics. While uptick has been strong among 25-to-34 year-olds; their growth hasn’t been enough to overcome shortcomings among other age groups.
Ecommerce has been a major focus for Instagram throughout 2019, and we can expect those efforts to ramp up. Its first move for 2020 is the launch of the @Shop account. @Shop will feature products from small businesses in both Feed and Stories content. All of the products will be stoppable within the Instagram platform. Ecommerce made up 15.8% of interactions on Instagram in Q3 2019, which is up from 13.7% in Q2.
Snap Inc. spent $166 million to acquire the Ukranian company AI Factory. AI Factory was the partner behind one of Snapchat’s latest features, Cameo. Cameo uses image and video recognition to put users into deepfake-like content, such as making them dancing chickens. AI Factory will continue to play that role for Snap Inc. in developing unique experiences to drive platform engagement.
Facebook announced that it’s going to take a more hands-on approach to managing content, specifically deepfakes on its platform. The company shared it will now remove any deepfake video content that “would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say.” Parody and satire will be exempt from the ban. The announcement is notable as Facebook refused to take down an altered video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year.
TikTok patched a number of security vulnerabilities discovered in its app by security company Check Point Research. The exploits could give hackers the ability to take control over someone’s account, delete videos, upload content, make private calls and gather a user’s personal information. Check Point notified TikTok of the vulnerabilities and gave developers time to patch them before announcing their discovery. There’s no evidence the vulnerabilities were exploited.
TikTok’s getting more specific with its community guidelines. While the updates are mostly more specifics added to existing rules, there are some notable additions. First, TikTok will no longer allow “underage delinquent behavior,” meaning teens won’t be able to post content of themselves drinking alcohol, for example. Second, TikTok now bans false content that is intended to mislead or incite hate. 2020 is about TikTok growing up in the eyes of advertisers, and these steps are meant to make the platform more attractive.
Twitter is removing its Audience Insights tab from Twitter Analytics. The useful feature allowed advertisers o identify demographic, purchase behavior, mobile device usage and other data points on their followers. Twitter has not given a reason for the removal of the data.
Mark Zuckerberg skipped his annual New Year challenge tradition to set an ambition for the decade. His focus is on bringing augmented reality glasses to the masses. Of course, he’s not alone. Apple is also working on such tech as are others. Zuckerberg stated, “While I expect phones to still be our primary devices through most of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get breakthrough augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology."