Social Media
Facebook Launches Facebook News, a Dedicated Tab for News Content
After months of testing, and after reportedly securing multi-million dollar agreements with publishers, Facebook’s new, dedicated – trusted – News tab has arrived. Facebook is adding a new tab to the top navigation bar within the app which will take you through to its News content listing. From there, users will be able to view the latest news by topic, hide sections or publications, get a general news update – basically, the tab is designed to cater to your personal news needs every day, with a curated listing of content from approved providers, many of whom, as noted, Facebook has signed partnership agreements with. Thee News Page Index is a listing of Facebook verified news pages, and Facebook says that any Page which primarily creates journalism should seek this verification. And if they want to make it to the News tab, they’ll have to. From a business standpoint, the tab will ideally help Facebook build a better engagement eco-system, encouraging people to discuss these latest news stories on platform, thereby enabling Facebook to serve more ads. It might also help Facebook develop relationships with publishers which could lead to them publishing more exclusive video content on Facebook Watch – with news content potentially a key opportunity for online video providers. The new Facebook News tab will be tested with a subset of users in the US before a broader roll out in the near future.
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Marketing
Voice assistant study: Microsoft’s Cortana offers most answers, Google Assistant proves most accurate
Perficient Digital released the latest version of its now annual Digital Personal Assistants accuracy study. It compared responses to roughly 5,000 queries on seven devices including Amazon’s Alexa (Echo and Echo Show), Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant (Home, smartphones), and Siri. At the highest level, Google Assistant performed the best, but Cortana attempted to answer the most questions. Alexa also showed improvement in answer attempts. But accuracy declined on all devices, according to the study. Google served up the most snippets, with Google Home beating out the Assistant on smartphones. However, Google Assistant on the smartphone also saw a significant decline use of snippets. Perficient Digital concludes in its discussion of the data that “progress has stalled to a certain degree.” The company explains, “We’re no longer seeing major leaps in progress by any of the players,” adding, “The next significant leap forward will likely require a new approach.” Google may have found that approach in BERT, which helps the search engine better understand the meaning of more conversational queries.
For the full article click here
New Study Seeks to Determine When Consumers are Most Open to CTAs and Ads in Content
Nielsen and Taboola recently partnered on a new study to determine the ‘Moments of Next’, the key points at which consumers are most responsive to different elements when consuming content, and what that means for marketers. The study specifically tested people’s attentiveness and emotional response to various content encounters, and it used AI and virtual reality to analyze unique eye measurements, in order to identify people’s reaction to the content. One of the unique items in this work is the concept of cognitive load – the entire quantity of mental effort used by the working memory. The higher the cognitive load, the harder it is for a consumer to take in new content – however when cognitive load is low, it becomes easier for consumers. The research shows that there’s an 8% lower cognitive load at the end of an article, thus making the consumer more likely to engage with a next action (or CTA) at the bottom of a piece. This is a Moment of Next. The study provides definitive evidence of the value of below the fold space on content, specifically at the end of an article after it’s been read.
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Amazon ad revenue tops $3.5 billion in third quarter, expecting strong holiday season
Amazon advertising revenues hit a new high in the third quarter, reaching $3.6 billion. Overall, the company reported lower-than-expected profits of $2.1 billion on $70 billion in revenue for the third quarter of the year on Thursday. Amazon doesn’t break out advertising revenue, but advertising makes up the majority of an “Other” revenue category in its earnings reports. The other category grew by 45% year-over-year, but the advertising segment of that category actually grew at a rate higher than 45%, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the earnings call. While performance advertising comprises the bulk of budgets going to Amazon, brand awareness campaigns accounted for 42% of spend on Amazon’s DSP in the third quarter, up from just 26% in the first quarter of the year, performance agency Tinuiti reported this week. Amazon’s advertising growth rate underscores the threat it is presenting to Google and Facebook in attracting ad dollars from brands and merchants. The company has been steadily investing in solutions for branding and performance advertising including inventory, ad formats and targeting capabilities.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 31, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Bans All Political Ads in Response to Concerns Around Misinformation
While the debate around how social platforms should address political speech and misinformation intensifies, Twitter has made the major announcement that it will move to ban all political ads on its platform, in order to distance itself from such concerns. Dorsey says that the power of targeted social media advertising brings significant risks to politics, “where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions”. Dorsey’s stance comes in stark contrast to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently gave a public address in which he championed the role of social platforms in facilitating free speech – which, in Zuckerberg’s view, includes enabling politicians to not only advertise on Facebook and Instagram, but to essentially say whatever they want in their ads.
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Snapchat Adds New, Free Drawing AR Option Within the App
Snapchat is rolling out a new option which will enable users to paint their own 3D AR effects over their face, or anything else, from within the app itself. The option will enable users to use free form drawing tools, which will then be attached as 3D objects within your frame. With World Lens objects, users could virtually attach a 3D image to whatever they wanted in the frame. This new update adds more creative capacity through free-form drawing, but the idea is fairly similar. Despite the ongoing challenge from Instagram, Snap has arguably managed to remain one step ahead on the AR front, and facilitating community involvement has expanded on its creative options. Facebook, of course, also offers AR creation tools, but Snap, at least thus far, has held its lead in this respect, continuously coming up with new, innovative and trending AR options to keep its audience interest – and attract new users.
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Marketing
Shorter holiday season won’t dampen e-commerce sales with revenue expected to surpass $143 billion
With a head start on this year’s shorter-than-usual holiday season, e-commerce sales should remain robust, according to Adobe’s predictions. The company expects online holiday revenue to reach $143.8 billion this year, a 14.1% increase over last year. The 20% lift in e-commerce sales expected on Thanksgiving will account for $7 million more than was generated last Thanksgiving. Adobe also expects Cyber Monday to see record-breaking sales this year, climbing to $9.4 billion for the day — an 18.9% increase over last year. Adobe expects mobile shopping to account for nearly 50% of the overall retail holiday growth in the U.S.: “Americans will spend $14 billion more this holiday season on their phone compared to last year.” Christmas Day sales will also see more purchases happening on phones than on desktops — the first time ever mobile devices will own more sales than desktops for the day. This year’s shortened holiday season (there are six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas) means marketers will likely need to start their campaigns earlier than usual to reach their holiday goals. Fortunately, according to Adobe’s predictions, the shortened holiday isn’t going to have much impact on how much revenue is up for grabs.
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Google Merchant Center updates rolling out ahead of holiday push
Google is out with its holiday updates for merchants. The company recently rolled out interface and navigation updates for Google Merchant Center. On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new and updated features aimed at simplifying the process of getting your product information on Google properties for the holidays. Starting in November, automated feeds will be available in all Shopping ads countries. Merchants can opt to let Merchant Center crawl their websites for schema structured product data and extract it into an initial feed. Earlier this year, Google announced it would begin showing product information from Merchant Center in areas outside of Shopping Ads, free to merchants. With Surfaces across Google, any merchant can upload their product feed to Google Merchant Center and opt-in to enable their products to show up on Google platforms, including rich product results and Google Images. These options are aimed at making it easier for merchants to get their products showing on Google, whether in ads or free listings. For Google, removing friction for merchants helps make the search engine a better resource for searchers looking for products (it’s competing with Amazon, after all).
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 30, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Won’t Stop Lies in Political Ads – Here’s What it Should do Instead
Facebook has been under fire in recent weeks over its decision to exempt political ads from its fact-checking process and rules, which essentially means that politicians will be able to run ads on the world’s largest social media platform and say pretty much whatever they want. That could enable candidates to amplify the reach of lies and rumors – which some are already doing – and potentially manipulate voters and influence critical votes. So in all other instances, Facebook would ban ads found to be spreading false or misleading claims. But for political ads – within which false claims arguably have the most impact – Facebook will not check, and will not censor them, at all. Some have suggested that Facebook should ban political ads outright, which might work – but again, as Facebook says, where do you draw the line? And if Facebook isn’t willing to do that, isn’t willing to mark a threshold of what’s acceptable, then providing better tools for educating users as to how they could be being targeted, and giving them some alert on potentially questionable claims, seems like a better compromise than doing allowing a free-for-all.
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Marketing
Parse.ly looks to solve content marketing attribution challenges
Content marketing and analytics provider Parse.ly has rolled out the first generally-available release of Parse.ly Conversions. The solution seeks to help marketers address content attribution challenges of conversion reporting. It allows users to select different attribution models for assigning credit to content. The release also includes features such as labels that can be applied to categorize conversion actions. Determining how and which content is contributing to conversions is a challenge for many marketers. Some even have teams dedicated to stringing together data to understand the impact content has on their businesses. As marketing campaigns become more complex and spread across multiple channels — and create data siloes — it can become unclear as to what content or touchpoint actually drives conversions. Parse.ly’s conversion report aims to provide clearer insight into how users interact with a brand’s content, from a high-level overview of all conversions to a detailed breakdown of its content performance and top referral sources.
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42% of shoppers will buy most (or all) of their holiday gifts on Amazon, survey finds
About 42% of holiday shoppers will buy most or all their gift purchases on Amazon this year, according to a global survey of 4,500 shoppers in the U.S., U.K. and several other countries. During holiday shopping, 32% of consumers will start on Amazon, followed by Google (18%) according to the survey. Episerver adds that social media will play “a larger role than ever in influencing product purchases this holiday season,” pointing out that social media traffic to e-commerce websites has doubled in the first half of 2019 vs. 2018. Specifically, Episerver argues influencer marketing will have a tangible impact retail sales, finding that 52% of shoppers have clicked on influencer posts. Only 23% percent of survey respondents said they don’t follow influencers. The report also says the top three communication channels consumers are most receptive to are email, social media and “a brand/retailer’s mobile app,” The report emphasizes being “customer-centric,” which extends to the holistic customer experience. Amazon offers massive inventory, speed and convenience. That’s very challenging to compete with.
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SparkPost acquires eDataSource, adding inbox insights to its email platform
Email marketing platform SparkPost has announced plans to purchase reputation management, email deliverability and analytics provider eDataSource. The acquisition is expected to provide SparkPost and eDataSource customers the combined abilities to create, send and measure email performance and inbox placement analytics. The announcement also included plans to launch new capabilities, including automatic seeding and real-time blacklist alerting. Integrating deliverability insights into the platform could have a strong impact on email marketers’ understanding of deliverability. With one in five emails never reaching the intended inbox, the integration between SparkPost and eDataSource could signal a coming change in how we can leverage martech and data to better understand and manage our relationships with subscribers.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 29, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Launches New Option Which Enables Advertisers to List Ad Text Variants
Facebook has added a new option which will enable advertisers to include multiple text variations for their ad copy, which Facebook’s systems will then be able to choose from when displaying the ad to different users. the new option – called ‘Multiple Text Optimization’ – is similar to Google’s ‘Responsive ads’, which give advertisers the ability to include alternative text options, which its systems can then test and optimize the generate the best results. The option essentially expands on Facebook’s Dynamic Ads, which enable Facebook’s systems to showcase your products based on connected inventory listings – as opposed to you having to create individual ads for each. In order for Facebook’s systems to determine what works best, it’ll need the ad budget to be able to run its own tests of the various text elements – which could mean that you need to spend more in order for it to be effective. There’s no word, at this stage, on where exactly Facebook is making the option available.
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Marketing
Facebook Launches ‘Preventive Health’ Tool to Raise Awareness of Personal Health Concerns
Facebook has this week launched a new ‘Preventive Health’ tool, an optional process within its main app which can prompt users to undergo regular health check-ups, based on their age and gender information. To address this, the new Preventive Health tool, which is now available within Facebook’s extended apps, will take account of your personal information and suggest that you undertake check-ups relative to your age. Facebook says that the initial focus of the Preventive Health app will be on heart disease and cancer, along with the flu, with reminders of flu shots to help maximize awareness. Facebook has also gone to expanded effort to underline the fact that any information shared within the tool will not be used for ad targeting, and that user privacy is at the heart of the initiative.
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What does Google Maps ‘incognito mode’ mean for businesses?
Google recently announced Android users will have the option to do incognito searches on Google Maps starting this month with iOS to follow soon. When users activate Incognito mode, they can navigate Google Maps without having their activity saved on their Google accounts – just as Google Search’s incognito mode works. For people wanting to protect their privacy while they use Google Maps for wayfinding, incognito mode should prove to be useful. Once the incognito mode is activated, Google won’t be able to offer personalized recommendations such as restaurants or things to do based on their usage history. Should businesses that have diligently built up their location information on Google Maps be worried that incognito mode will hurt their visibility in Google Maps to search? I’d suggest business owners not see incognito mode is a threat but more of a “cover the bases” response to a post-GDPR heightened interest in privacy that has increasingly defined the technology industry.
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Squarespace gets into social content creation with Unfold acquisition
The web development platform Squarespace has acquired Unfold, an app used to create Story content on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. For SMBs and marketers without the design resources of a major brand, having a tool like Unfold to create Stories across Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat can help elevate their social content at a relatively small costs. This is Squarespace’s second acquisition this year. The company bought Acuity Software in April, an online appointment and booking tool for businesses. Squarespace had previously integrated Acuity’s capabilities into its development platform, but the acquisition allowed for a more integrated solution. The company’s recent moves, first with the Acquity Software purchase and now the Unfold acquisition, demonstrate it’s goal to be a comprehensive platform that goes beyond web development tools, now offering a social creation app for marketers.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 28, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Launches Facebook News, a Dedicated Tab for News Content
After months of testing, and after reportedly securing multi-million dollar agreements with publishers, Facebook’s new, dedicated – trusted – News tab has arrived. Facebook is adding a new tab to the top navigation bar within the app which will take you through to its News content listing. From there, users will be able to view the latest news by topic, hide sections or publications, get a general news update – basically, the tab is designed to cater to your personal news needs every day, with a curated listing of content from approved providers, many of whom, as noted, Facebook has signed partnership agreements with. Thee News Page Index is a listing of Facebook verified news pages, and Facebook says that any Page which primarily creates journalism should seek this verification. And if they want to make it to the News tab, they’ll have to. From a business standpoint, the tab will ideally help Facebook build a better engagement eco-system, encouraging people to discuss these latest news stories on platform, thereby enabling Facebook to serve more ads. It might also help Facebook develop relationships with publishers which could lead to them publishing more exclusive video content on Facebook Watch – with news content potentially a key opportunity for online video providers. The new Facebook News tab will be tested with a subset of users in the US before a broader roll out in the near future.
For the full article click here
Marketing
Voice assistant study: Microsoft’s Cortana offers most answers, Google Assistant proves most accurate
Perficient Digital released the latest version of its now annual Digital Personal Assistants accuracy study. It compared responses to roughly 5,000 queries on seven devices including Amazon’s Alexa (Echo and Echo Show), Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant (Home, smartphones), and Siri. At the highest level, Google Assistant performed the best, but Cortana attempted to answer the most questions. Alexa also showed improvement in answer attempts. But accuracy declined on all devices, according to the study. Google served up the most snippets, with Google Home beating out the Assistant on smartphones. However, Google Assistant on the smartphone also saw a significant decline use of snippets. Perficient Digital concludes in its discussion of the data that “progress has stalled to a certain degree.” The company explains, “We’re no longer seeing major leaps in progress by any of the players,” adding, “The next significant leap forward will likely require a new approach.” Google may have found that approach in BERT, which helps the search engine better understand the meaning of more conversational queries.
For the full article click here
New Study Seeks to Determine When Consumers are Most Open to CTAs and Ads in Content
Nielsen and Taboola recently partnered on a new study to determine the ‘Moments of Next’, the key points at which consumers are most responsive to different elements when consuming content, and what that means for marketers. The study specifically tested people’s attentiveness and emotional response to various content encounters, and it used AI and virtual reality to analyze unique eye measurements, in order to identify people’s reaction to the content. One of the unique items in this work is the concept of cognitive load – the entire quantity of mental effort used by the working memory. The higher the cognitive load, the harder it is for a consumer to take in new content – however when cognitive load is low, it becomes easier for consumers. The research shows that there’s an 8% lower cognitive load at the end of an article, thus making the consumer more likely to engage with a next action (or CTA) at the bottom of a piece. This is a Moment of Next. The study provides definitive evidence of the value of below the fold space on content, specifically at the end of an article after it’s been read.
For the full article click here
Amazon ad revenue tops $3.5 billion in third quarter, expecting strong holiday season
Amazon advertising revenues hit a new high in the third quarter, reaching $3.6 billion. Overall, the company reported lower-than-expected profits of $2.1 billion on $70 billion in revenue for the third quarter of the year on Thursday. Amazon doesn’t break out advertising revenue, but advertising makes up the majority of an “Other” revenue category in its earnings reports. The other category grew by 45% year-over-year, but the advertising segment of that category actually grew at a rate higher than 45%, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the earnings call. While performance advertising comprises the bulk of budgets going to Amazon, brand awareness campaigns accounted for 42% of spend on Amazon’s DSP in the third quarter, up from just 26% in the first quarter of the year, performance agency Tinuiti reported this week. Amazon’s advertising growth rate underscores the threat it is presenting to Google and Facebook in attracting ad dollars from brands and merchants. The company has been steadily investing in solutions for branding and performance advertising including inventory, ad formats and targeting capabilities.
For the full article click here
Daily Minute Master Series – October 25, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
LinkedIn Engagement Continues to Rise, as Per Microsoft’s Latest Performance Report
This week, as part of Microsoft’s FY20 Q1 report, the company included a brief update on LinkedIn’s current status. 22% growth in user sessions, continuing the trend of ‘record engagement’ levels which Microsoft has reported in its past few updates. That also adds to the 645 million members LinkedIn now sees globally, which has grown from 575 million a year ago. The platform has been working to increase user engagement through various means, including improving its feed algorithm to give more user updates a greater of a share of overall attention, and showcasing more engaging, relevant news stories from the day, via its expanding team of 65 journalists who work to maximize user activity. That’s facilitated new growth on the platform, and new opportunities for engagement. As noted, Microsoft has reported LinkedIn seeing ‘record levels of engagement’ in each of its updates over the last year, and the platform continues to boost those numbers.
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Marketing
Welcome BERT: Google’s latest search algorithm to better understand natural language
Google is making the largest change to its search system since the company introduced RankBrain, almost five-years ago. The company said this will impact 1 in 10 queries in terms of changing the results that rank for those queries. BERT started rolling out this week and will be fully live shortly. It is rolling out for English language queries now and will expand to other languages in the future. Google said BERT helps better understand the nuances and context of words in searches and better match those queries with more relevant results. It is also used for featured snippets. Google has told us SEOs can’t really optimize for RankBrain. But it does mean Google is getting better at understanding natural language. Just write content for users, like you always do. This is Google’s efforts at better understand the searcher’s query and matching it better to more relevant results. We care, not only because Google said this change is “representing the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search.” But also because 10% of all queries have been impacted by this update. That is a big change. We did see unconfirmed reports of algorithm updates mid-week and earlier this week, which may be related to this change.
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E-commerce ad spend on search and social product ads keeps growing
E-commerce advertisers spent 39% of their search budgets on Shopping campaigns and 37% of their social budgets on product ads in the third quarter of the year, according to new Kenshoo data. Spending on social product ads among Kenshoo e-commerce advertisers accelerated in the third quarter, increasing 42% compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, product ad spend on search grew by 17% year-over-year in the third quarter – a deceleration from the previous quarter. E-commerce advertisers continue to increase spending on Shopping and product campaigns, and that growth is set to continue in the fiercely competitive fourth quarter. This holiday season will also put the new Google Shopping experience in the U.S. to the test. Kenshoo Senior Director of Marketing Research Chris Costello said that the Prime Day-related promotions in July “drove overall spending for the month to levels just shy of last November, which sets the table for another new high going into the holidays.”
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Featured snippets display on desktop 13% more often than mobile, study finds
Google showed featured snippets on desktop 86.6% of the time compared to 73.3% on mobile, according to a 30-day study conducted by Rank Ranger. The study looked at a dataset of 265 keywords known to produce featured snippets on desktop. It found that, on any given day, publishers are more likely to land a featured snippet on desktop than they are on mobile because there is a higher chance that Google will show a desktop snippet. Assessing whether the keyword you’re targeting for featured snippets appears more consistently on one device or the other can inform your content strategy. Further, researching which device your desired snippet is more likely to surface on can inform your user experience decisions.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Zuckerberg Faces US Congress on Libra, Privacy and More
This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was put to the test on Libra before the US House Financial Services Committee. And while Zuckerberg’s testimony was primarily focused on Libra, Zuckerberg also faced questions about a range of other issues related to Facebook and its operations. Zuckerberg explained that Facebook’s cryptocurrency would “extend America’s financial leadership, as well as our democratic values and oversight around the world.” Zuckerberg explained to the House that Chinese-backed groups are looking to extend services like AliPay into new regions, essentially forming their own, separate currency that would be controlled by the Chinese government. Zuckerberg framed Libra as something of a defender against this, but the representatives seemed less than convinced about the viability of a Facebook-controlled payment and banking system. Essentially, Facebook still seems to have a way to go in convincing the House, and others, that it can be trusted with people’s money. And it now seems increasingly likely that this will cause a delay in the planned launch of Libra in 2020.
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LinkedIn Rolls Out New Format for its ‘Daily Rundown’ Professional News Updates
LinkedIn is looking for more ways to facilitate discussion, and get professionals connecting over key topics. LinkedIn has this week announced that it’s making some changes to its Daily Rundown professional news listings, which users can opt-in to, in order to be sent a key business news overview each day. The idea here is to get more LinkedIn users conversing around the latest trending topics, by connecting you through to key conversations. LinkedIn’s dedication to human-powered moderation has seen it produce a more beneficial, focused stream of news updates than other, algorithm-defined listings. LinkedIn has more capacity for benefit in this regard, as professional news stories are less likely to verge into divisive, politically-influenced topics, but clearly, based on the engagement stats, there is a need for a level of human intervention to ensure such listings remain focused and relevant.
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Marketing
Google Ads Rolls Out 2 New Tools for Responsive Search Ads
Google is introducing two new tools for responsive search ads, which are now available to all advertisers in all languages. In addition, responsive search ads can now be set up from Google Ads Editor, the Google Ads API, and the mobile app. Google recommends getting started by adding at least one responsive search ad and two expanded text ads per group. Other Google-recommended best practices include monitoring ad strength, and pairing smart bidding with responsive search ads.
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Survey: 97% of online adults transact with businesses they find on Yelp
Almost all (97%) of online adults spend money with businesses they find on Yelp, according to a Yelp-commissioned study conducted by SurveyMonkey, And 93% of people using Yelp compare businesses before making a buying decision. Yelp cites both the 2016 and 2019 studies to argue that Yelp is the “most influential and trustworthy” site to find a local business, beating out “Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor and HomeAdvisor.” However, Google now has considerably more reviews than both Facebook and Yelp. According to an independent study by FreshChalk, Yelp shows up in the top five results for 92% of local queries on Google consisting of a city and vertical category. So it remains a critical directory for ranking in addition to its high purchase intent use case. The company is has been busy this year rolling out new products and features (e.g., personalization) to differentiate from Google and to diversify revenues away from advertising alone.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 23, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds IGTV Series Option to Categorize Videos
Instagram Adds IGTV Series Option to Categorize Videos
Instagram has added a new IGTV ‘Series’ option which will enable creators to segment their videos into dedicated collections. The new Series option will help creators better brand their content, and encourage return viewing, by giving their series a dedicated label, along with an on-screen tab which viewers can tap to get notifications of new episodes. Creating an IGTV series is reasonably straight-forward, and the additional categorization options could help guide users to specific content, enabling creators to diversify their channels. YouTube enables similar categorization through its Playlists, though IGTV’s option is more aligned with repeat viewership of specific programs. As noted, IGTV still hasn’t really taken off, and it’s not clear that it ever will, but with the added promotional power of Instagram, which can pump more IGTV content into Expore or home feeds, there’s still a way to go in dictated the platform’s fate.
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Pinterest Begins Rolling Put an Updated Pin Format
Pinterest has begun rolling out a new Pin format, which includes some minor functional tweaks, and separates each Pin element more specifically. The new Pin format was actually spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, who tweeted about it back in April. The change is also aligned with Pinterest’s updated business profile format, which it announced last month. The new business profile layout will enable brands to use custom images, or even video, in their header section, and will include a new ‘Shop’ tab. The rounded, separated elements will make it clearer as to what users can do in each section, which could help Pinterest encourage more user activity.
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Marketing
Microsoft Advertising unveils interface redesign
Microsoft Advertising is redesigning the interface to better align with the update Google Ads rolled out in full a year ago. The new user experience will feel familiar to Google Ads users. You will recognize the left-hand oriented navigation menus that anchor the Google Ads interface and Overview pages with visual charts, for example. The redesign will bring relative parity between Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads interfaces. The Google Ads redesign may not have gone over that well with a lot of users, but it’s what people are now used to. Microsoft Advertising is well aware that the closer the user experience is to Google Ads — the more it can reduce friction for users — the more likely it is advertisers will use it.
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Google begins testing Duplex internationally
Google is testing its Duplex technology internationally for the first time, the company announced on Tuesday. The service will be used to confirm holiday operating hours for a pilot group of New Zealand businesses. “Businesses in this pilot group will receive an automated call from Google asking to confirm their hours for the upcoming Labour Day public holiday on October 28,” wrote Scott Huffman, Google’s VP of engineering. Updating holiday business hours on Google Maps and Search is a considerate feature for users, but it’s still a long way from the almost-conversational, multi-step hair appointment and restaurant reservation booking capabilities that Google teased at I/O in 2018. If this particular test rolls out to more markets, it could make managing Google My Business information a bit more passive for business owners. Google’s limited test will likely be used to further train and develop Duplex’s capabilities ahead of a wider international rollout. Duplex powers some Google Assistant features, and as more of Duplex’s capabilities get developed and released, it may allow the Assistant to differentiate itself from other voice assistants, such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon Alexa. This may entice more users to stay in or switch to Google’s ecosystem and the more users Google has within that ecosystem, the more important it will be for businesses to have a presence on Google’s services.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 22, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Tests New Following List Categories to Help Manage Your Content Feed
Instagram is testing out a new process which would categorize your ‘Following’ list into both topic categories and listings based on your engagement with each, in order to help users better manage what content appears in their main feed. Instagram would essentially be recommending profiles to unfollow, as you clearly haven’t shown much interest in them. That would then better enable Instagram’s algorithm to understand what you want to see on the platform, improving the user experience – but it also seems to go somewhat against the past social media ethos of getting users to follow as many people and profiles as possible, in order to keep their content stream flowing. The shift away from content volume, and towards relevance, is actually part of what’s fueled Instagram’s rise, and seen it become the fastest-growing social platform, now with over a billion active users. There’s no word on whether this test will ever go live. But it seems like a positive addition – so long as users are aware of its utility.
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Advertising
Google Launches ‘Adaptive Anchor Banner’ Ads to Better Cater to Varying Screens
Google is launching a new banner ad type which is able to adapt to varying screen size, helping to maximize performance in line with evolving consumption behaviors. The new option, Google says, will mean that your banner ads look better, while also alleviating the need for custom coding to handle different devices. The option is currently in beta, and is only available for anchored placements (banners locked to the top or bottom of the screen), with Google still working on full implementation. But it may provide another consideration for your Google ad placement options, more aligned with varying device usage.
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Google Ads now showing cart metrics for Shopping campaigns
Merchants running Google Ads Shopping campaigns can now see e-commerce cart data in the UI to gain a clearer sense of which products are driving profitable cart transactions. We are just over a month out from the holiday shopping surge that kicks off with Black Friday. With this data available in Google Ads, merchants can get a better sense of the profitability of their Shopping campaigns and how to optimize for greater gross profit. erchants capturing cart data with Google Ads conversion tracking will be able to see additional revenue and profitability data attributed down to the product level. The new metrics, currently in beta, take cross-device conversions into account.
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Capture leads with Google Ads latest ad extension test
Google is beta testing a new ad extension for advertisers looking to capture leads from their text ad campaigns. Searchers can submit their information to request or download information from Google Search ads through the new lead form extension. The lead extensions look similar to promotion extensions, displaying in a call-out box with an icon, in this case a clipboard. After you select the campaigns, you choose the call-to-action and enter extension text which can be up to 30 characters. The ease of using lead extensions could help advertisers generate more leads from their search ads. Advertisers will want to closely monitor the quality of these leads, however. Some advertisers may balk at the limited amount of data that can be captured in the latest version of the leads form extension, but the integration of webhooks should help reduce the friction of transferring lead data to sales systems, and the new option is designed for mobile experiences.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Snapchat Launches ‘Dynamic Ads’ Which Will Create Ads Based on Uploaded Product Catalogs
Snap ads in vertical view format. Advertisers will be able to choose from various templates, which will guide Snap’s systems in building the relevant ads. You then select an audience for prospecting or re-engagement, and then enable Snap’s system to deliver your ads in real-time. There is a question as to how effective that can be, especially as more brands take up the option, and more of the displayed ads start to look the same. But it does have potential – and for businesses that have been struggling to find a way to tap into Snapchat, and reach its young audience, this could be an ideal solution, or an introduction that can help to measure your advertising potential on the platform.
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Facebook opens search ads to all advertisers
Facebook is rolling out search ad placement more broadly to all advertisers. The ads will appear in results for search terms that have commercial intent, such as searches for commercial products connected to the e-commerce, retail or auto vertical. Currently, search ad placement is available on mobile only. To have ads appear in search results, advertisers can either select “Automatic Placement” for their News Feed ads, or choose the “Facebook Search Results” placement in Ads Manager when creating a News Feed ad campaign. (Search ad placement is not a standalone option — advertisers must be running a News Feed ad to have the ad also show up in search results.) Facebook’s search ad placement is a boon for any advertiser running a product sales or conversion-focused campaign. By opening up this ad placement to more advertisers, Facebook is giving marketers direct access to users who are actively searching for their product or service on the platform.
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Marketing
European News Lose Google Snippets Per French Law
Google recently announced that in response to a new French law they are removing snippets and images from news sites from displaying in French search results. Showing images and text snippets will be opt-in. This change affects European journalistic sites that are included in Google News. All sites not currently displayed in Google News are exempt (at this time) and will continue to display text and image snippets. According to Google, this change affects more than just French news sites, it affects all European news sites.
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Advertising
Affinity audiences coming to Google Search campaigns
Google announced Wednesday that it will be rolling out the two new audience targeting options for advertisers over the coming weeks. These interest audiences have been available for Google Display Network and Video campaigns for years. The audiences are built around interests determined by browsing behavior. Advertisers can drill into broad interest areas like Banking & Finance and Food & Dining to select audiences. Audiences are built based on buyer intent signals such as recent search queries and browsing activity. Now, ahead of the holiday shopping season, Google is adding in-market seasonal segments such as Black Friday and Christmas to Search and YouTube. These options can be used to help expand your prospecting campaigns to reach people based on their search and browsing signals rather than just specific query intent signals that you’re already targeting with keywords. Affinity audiences tend to be used for higher-funnel awareness campaigns while in-market are aimed at helping you reach people deemed to be lower in the funnel and preparing to make a purchase.
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Daily Minute Master Series – October 10, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram is Looking to Bring Direct Messaging to its Web App
According to a new finding by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is looking to bring its Direct messaging functions to its web interface. That would make Instagram’s messaging tools more widely accessible, with specific benefits for those in regions where mobile connectivity is not always present, or possible, due to data limits and the like. It would also, as noted, make it easier for those looking to use Instagram Direct for customer service queries to integrate them into their broader social workflow. This new variation appears to be further along, with Wong able to recreate the Direct messaging functionality in more detail. But given that it’s been in development for at least the last six months, it could still be a little while off.
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Advertising
Quora adds 3 new targeting options for advertisers
Quora has recently added additional targeting options for advertisers on the Q&A platform. Keyword history targeting is a blend of the existing keyword targeting and question retargeting options on Quora. You can reach people who have shown an interest in subjects related to your business based on the keywords you’re using. Your ads will target who have visited groups of question pages in a given time period, such as the past 20 days, for example. Ads display on users’ feeds, topic feeds, and question pages. Quora already offers the ability to target by device and mobile platforms, but now you can now target ad sets to specific desktop browsers, including Chrome, Safari and Firefox. In the two years since Quora launched its self-service ad platform, it has been steadily adding new features, formats and capabilities. The platform claims more than 300 million monthly users, putting it in the realm of Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest.
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Nextdoor’s ‘Local Deals’ ads let SMBs target specific neighborhoods
Nextdoor is launching a new ad product called “Local Deals.” While the company has shown ads from local businesses for some time those have come largely through partners; this is the first broad-based self-service offering for small businesses (SMBs) on the site. Pricing right now is fixed (impression-based) and depends on the number of neighborhoods targeted and the population density of those areas. There’s no bidding and competition doesn’t impact pricing, according to Nextdoor’s Head of Product, Tatyana Mamut. Local Deals will appear in several places on Nextdoor: in residents’ feeds, on Business Pages, in the Business section and in search results. Nextdoor is also in a position to be disruptive, to varying degrees, to Facebook, Google and Yelp from a local advertising standpoint. Google Ads are too complicated for many small businesses; Facebook never developed a culture of search behavior and many business owners are profoundly ambivalent about Yelp. Nextdoor has a culture of local business recommendations and, increasingly, local search. It’s also highly trusted because its members are verified neighbors. It will be fascinating to see where the site goes from here and how it tries to further monetize its audience and traffic.
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Influencer Marketing
What I Learned from Surveying Over 400 Influencers
With influencer-brand relationships becoming increasingly important in digital marketing strategy, I wanted to get a better feel for how the influencers themselves view influencer marketing. To do this, I surveyed over 400 influencers and got their take on the current state of the industry. Influencer marketing is becoming more commonly used, and with the right strategy in place, it is still just as effective as ever. But in order to implement a viable strategy, it’s critical to uncover effective ways to work with influencers, so that their recommendations of your brand don’t get lost in the mix. The survey uncovered that the majority of mid-level influencers charge between $250-$400 per blog post, with full social shares including Instagram. Almost 100% of the influencers in the survey said that they prefer to be paid by monetary compensation, not just product. This aligns with my experience conducting influencer marketing initiatives for brands – most influencers these days won’t post for product unless it’s at a very high price point. On the same note, influencers don’t like to be paid by commission either. The pay-per-post model will get you the most, and the best, influencers. Many brands worry that posts labeled as “ad” or “sponsored” impact the credibility, and thus, the success of that earned post. 95% of the influencers in the survey reported that they think their audience still trusts their brand recommendation, even when in a post marked as sponsored. About half of the influencers in the survey field reported that they actively reach out to brands as part of their strategy to find partnerships. A key takeaway here is that brands should make sure they’re “influencer friendly” and have a way for influencers to easily contact them if they want to form a partnership. You can do this by having a link in your menu on your homepage just for influencers which can take them to a landing page to learn more about how your brand works with influencers.
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