Daily Minute Master Series – May 24, 2019

Social Media

Instagram Adds Support for Landscape Videos in IGTV

Instagram has announced that IGTV publishers will be able to upload horizontal format videos to IGTV, straying from its initial focus on more immersive, vertical viewing. IGTV was essentially built to tap into the rising consumption of vertical video, largely popularized by Snapchat. And while catering to audience demand makes sense, it does feel like a compromise. That could see more content uploaded to IGTV, as YouTube creators won’t have to reformat their posts, but it won’t necessarily help IGTV differentiate. More content on IGTV will likely lead to more viewers, so Instagram could well win out with this update.

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Twitter Permanently Bans Prominent Political Commentators Over Use of Fake Accounts

In its latest efforts to rid its platform of bots, fake profiles and general misuse, the micro-blog giant has banned prominent anti-Trump personalities Brian and Ed Krassenstein, over their alleged use of fake accounts and purchased interactions to boost their presence and reach. Twitter has previously banned prominent right-wing commentators under its hate speech policies, while it’s also implemented reach restrictions on ‘anti-social’ tweets. Ideally, by making an example of misuse in this way, Twitter will be able to make such processes too risky, as the damage to a users’ credibility can be difficult to recover from after they’re caught out. The more than can be done to remove the fakers, the better – which, hopefully, will eventually extend to those looking to market themselves as ‘influencers’ based on artificially inflated follower counts.

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Facebook Employees Are No Longer Receiving Commissions on Sales of Political and Issue Ads

Global elections public policy director Katie Harbath told Emily Glazer and Jeff Horwitz of The Wall Street Journal that the social network’s sales employees are no longer compensated based on goals related to the purchase of political and issue ads, both in the U.S. and globally. Harbath also pointed out that the tools that potential political and issue advertisers must use are predominantly self-service, with Facebook employees only providing help with the registration process those advertisers are required to undergo, as well as when ads are stalled in the review process and other customer-service tasks. “It doesn’t matter if you’re running for president or running for city council: You have access to the same tools and level of support” – said Harbath. The company has considered doing away with political ads altogether, but decided against doing so, with Harbath telling that Facebook views political and issue ads on its platform as a civic responsibility.

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Marketing

Google brings ‘end-to-end’ food ordering to Search, Maps, Google Assistant

Google’s unofficial new mantra is “helping users get things done” (GTD). To that end, Google is making its many channels, properties and ads much more “transactional.” Transaction fees are part of Google’s strategy to monetize the Assistant.  One manifestation of this GTD ethos is bringing food ordering into Google Assistant, Google search and Maps. For some time Google has linked to third-party ordering and delivery services in the Knowledge Panel online. This experience proceeds directly from the GMB profile on both Android devices and iPhones. Users click on the “Order Online” button and then choose delivery or pick up. If they choose delivery, they select a provider and then menu items. Payment happens with the default credit card the user has set up in Google Pay. From a user-experience perspective, the new food-ordering process is an incremental change from what was already available. And the move is part of a larger effort by Google to reduce consumer friction, remove steps between discovery and purchase and control more transactions directly, rather than handing them off to (slower) third parties.

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