Social Media
Facebook reveals Libra cryptocurrency, with lofty goals
Facebook Inc revealed plans on Tuesday to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, the latest development in its effort to expand beyond social networking and move into e-commerce and global payments. Facebook has linked with 28 partners in a Geneva-based entity called the Libra Association, which will govern its new digital coin set to launch in the first half of 2020, according to marketing materials and interviews with executives. Facebook has also created a subsidiary called Calibra, which will offer digital wallets to save, send and spend Libras. Calibra will be connected to Facebook’s messaging platforms Messenger and WhatsApp, which already boast more than a billion users. In recent years, cryptocurrency investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars through hacks, and the market has been plagued by accusations of money-laundering, illegal drug sales and terrorist financing. Markus Feber, a senior German lawmaker in the European Parliament, called for the European Union to begin work on regulating cryptocurrencies. Facebook hopes it can bring global regulators to the table by publicizing Libra, said Kevin Weil, who runs product for the initiative. The Libra Association plans to raise money through a private placement in the coming months, according to a statement from the association. Partners in the project include household names like Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc, Spotify Technology SA, PayPal Holdings Inc, eBay Inc, Uber Technologies Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horow.
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Facebook to remove ‘Company Overview’ and ‘Biography’ fields from Pages
Facebook is alerting Page owners that it is removing a number of fields from Page info starting August 1, 2019. The fields to be removed include Company Overview, Biography, Affiliation, Personal Interests and maybe more, according to a tweet from Matt Navarra. Anyone managing a Facebook Page will need to revisit information listed in the fields scheduled to be removed, and add the information they want to remain visible to the Page’s description. The fields being removed are listed under a Page’s “About” section and, most likely, will not impact a Page’s performance. SMBs and public figures whose primary online existence are their Facebook Pages may have important information in those fields. Editing the Page description to include the soon-to-be deleted information will make sure those details remain intact.
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Pinterest Announces New Third-Party Partnerships to Expand its On-Platform Shopping Options
Pinterest’s aim is to become a key hub for online shopping, with advanced product discovery and matching features that align with user needs, and help to guide them to relevant products. Pinterest has this week renamed its third-party partner program, and added new technology partners to facilitate expanded product listing capacity. The new focus for Pinterest Partners is shopping, with a range of tools that will be able to help connect businesses direct to the platform, streamlining their product listing and promotion processes. This aligns with Pinterest’s broader push to integrate direct shopping options, including product catalogs, automated ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and the coming addition of ‘Complete the Look’ listings, which will recommend complementary products based on automated matching. These new partnerships will help Pinterest build upon this, and continue its ongoing growth strategy.
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Facebook’s Working on a New ‘Preview’ Option for Page Posts
Facebook is currently testing a new ‘Preview’ option for Page posts which would enable you to see what your update is going to look like before you hit ‘Share’. The option could help Facebook Page admins to better manage their posts and output, ensuring that what they aim to publish, and what actually appears, match up. It would also help highlight errors and mistakes before they happen – if you get into the habit of checking the preview, you’ll be able to catch errors and/or formatting problems before you go live, which could help reduce clumsy looking slip-ups. Of course, you can already do this, in large part, via the existing Page publishing tools – if you schedule a post, you can view it from your scheduled list and see what it’s going to look like to your Page fans. But if you’re publishing live, you’ll often skip that step. This would enable you to maintain awareness of how your posts are going to look in all instances.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 2nd, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Updates Search Results with Additional Contextual Info
You may have noted that there’s more information there, relating to trends, mutual follows – additional context to help guide you to the results that you’re actually looking for. This week, Twitter has officially announced this update, which is now being rolled out to all mobile platforms. The idea, as noted, is that by showing you more information about your search, it’ll better guide you towards the results you’re after, and help you better understand whether this profile is worth following, in order to get you to tap through for more info. It’s not a major shift, but the additional information markers are helpful, and could better inform your usage – while it’s also worth noting that the activity from your brand account may also now appear in relevant searches, which could influence whether users tap through to see more or not.
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Marketing
Google to stop supporting noindex directive in robots.txt
Effective September 1, Google will stop supporting unsupported and unpublished rules in the robots exclusive protocol, the company announced on the Google Webmaster blog. That means Google will no longer support robots.txt files with the noindex directive listed within the file. Yesterday, Google announced the company is working on making the robots exclusion protocol a standard and this is probably the first change coming. In fact, Google released their robots.txt parser as an open source project along with this announcement yesterday. Google has been looking to change this for years and with Google pushing to standardize the protocol, it can now move forward. The most important thing is to make sure that you are not using the noindex directive in the robots.txt file. Also, look to see if you are using the nofollow or crawl-delay commands and if so, look to use the true supported method for those directives going forward.
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Hootsuite integrates Yext Reviews into its dashboard
Yext and Hootsuite have teamed up to enable businesses with physical locations to monitor and respond to their Yext reviews within Hootsuite’s social media management dashboard. The Yext integration will pull in both online reviews and review data, including review metrics related to average ratings, response count, response time and keyword-based sentiment analysis. Effective brand management is more than simply paying attention to what is being said about your company on social channels. Online reviews play a major role in a brand’s reputation and conversion outcomes. The Yext Reviews integration into Hootsuite is designed to help marketers track and respond to what is being said about their brands beyond social and connect the dots between reviews in search channels and social media engagement, all in one place.
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Google: Updating a Page’s Publishing Date Won’t Make it Rank Better
Google’s John Mueller recently advised that updating the publishing date of a page won’t have an impact on rankings. Mueller said there’s no harm in displaying the last updated date. However, there’s no benefit to changing the last updated date of a page as far as SEO is concerned. Mueller gave the example of weather forecast pages, which are consistently updated throughout the day. Those pages do not suddenly rank better as a result of the last updated date always changing. From the perspective of users, it may make sense to inform people of when the page was last updated, but it will not play a role when it comes to search.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 28, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
YouTube Rolls Out New Tools to Enable Customization of Video Recommendations
This week, the platform has announced some new changes which will put more power into the hands of users in regards to the videos which are recommended to them. First up, YouTube’s adding new topic tags within recommendations listings which will help users find more specific recommendations based on their chosen area of interest – as opposed to the system assuming the next likely topics itself. That could help stop users clicking into more concerning segues off certain topics, and keep them aligned to the topics they’re most interested in. YouTube’s also giving users more control over their personal recommendations by enabling them to remove selected channels from their recommendations. And lastly, YouTube is also adding a new information marker on videos it recommends for you based on what “other viewers with similar interests have liked and watched in the past”. It’s difficult to predict the potential impact of these additions – and whether, in fact, they’ll be able to stop users sliding down the aforementioned rabbit holes that lead them to more concerning content.
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Instagram is Rolling Out New Ad Units in its Explore Tab
Instagram has announced that it’s adding a new ad unit to its Explore feed. Kind of. It’s not like you’re going to start seeing ads popping up all over your Explore feed directly. But indirectly, within specific, chosen listings, there’s a new place that Instagram can now show you ad content. Instagram says this is an opportunity for advertisers to “be part of what’s culturally relevant and trending, while reaching new audiences who are looking to discover something new”. Advertisers will be able to extend their on-platform ad campaigns to Explore by using automatic placements and opting into the new ‘Explore’ option.
Given that more than half of Instagram’s billion monthly active users visit Explore each month, there’s definitely opportunity there, and it may be another way to generate additional exposure, and reach people likely to be interested in your products.
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Twitter’s Implementing New Warning Labels on Controversial Tweets from High-Profile Users
After outlining its potential plans to add warning labels to controversial tweets from high profile users back in March, Twitter has this week announced that these new labels are now going live, which will provide more clarity as to why and when Twitter has chosen not to remove a tweet that violates its rules. The new warning will state that, despite the tweet violating Twitter’s rules, the company has chosen not to remove it, with a tap-through ‘View’ option to see the actual tweet. That will address the user concerns around the spread of anti-social, and concerning messages on the platform, while still enabling Twitter to share the original content, and host the subsequent discussion. It seems like a good compromise – the controversial tweets of high-profile users have become an uncomfortable battleground for Twitter in recent months.
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Marketing
Google aims to make it easier for SMBs to start using its products
Google announced a new website Thursday with resources aimed at helping small businesses get started with Google products. Google for Small Business, includes “personalized plans” with recommendations of Google products based on a company’s answers to several prompt questions such as whether the business is online, offline a hybrid and its selected goal to either stand out online, reach more customers or work more efficiently. The recommendations include a mix of free and paid solutions, such as setting up a Google My Business profile, trialing G Suite and creating a YouTube channel. Cracking the small business sector well and at scale has been a challenge for Google. The products can feel confusing to business owners and staff just getting started. Kim Spalding, global product director for Small Business Ads at Google, and former small business owner herself, was brought on a couple of years ago to help reframe the company’s approach to working with SMBs.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 27, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Adds ‘Top Fans’ Targeting Option for Organic Page Posts
Facebook is rolling out a new option which enables Pages to publish updates targeted to their top Page fans specifically. The option enables Pages to create posts exclusively for Top Fans, in order to ‘thank them or share exclusive content’. Some users have had the option available to them for the last few months, so it may already be active on your Page. y working to reach your most passionate advocates, you could help to keep them more active on your Page, and expand your reach through increased activity and interaction. The requirements are somewhat restrictive – but helpfully, Facebook has also, seemingly, lowered the barrier for entry for Top Fans of late, which could make more members of your community feel more connected and linked to your Page.
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LinkedIn Adds New Custom CTA Buttons for Pages, Helping to Direct Visitor Actions
LinkedIn has been working hard to add in new features and tools to help businesses make best use of its platform, including the recent additions of associated Page hashtags, ad transparency tools, improved video metrics and more. LinkedIn is adding some new options to help businesses, in the form of custom call to action buttons for company pages, which will help brands drive more desired action from visitors. Those five new CTA options are: Contact us, Learn more, Register, Sign up and Visit website. This will provide another way for businesses to drive direct traffic and response from their company page visitors, while LinkedIn will also provide analytics data for your custom CTA button in the dashboard on the left-hand side of your Page Admin home, or at the top of your “Visitor Analytics” tab.
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Marketing
Google adding features for advertisers to promote deals, drive in-store purchases
Google is announcing new updates for retailers and emphasizing that consumers are “on the lookout for deals year-round.” If you know you’ve got a sale or promotion coming and anticipate a jump in conversion rates, you can now use seasonality adjustments to signal Google’s Smart Bidding system to prepare for the increase and adjust more quickly. Google has added more in-market segments in categories such as beauty, sports, education and real estate, including 30 new retail categories. In-market audiences for search are grouped based on purchase intent signaled by users’ search and browsing behavior. Local campaigns, launched last year, are one of Google’s automated campaign formats and expressly aimed at driving traffic to physical locations. Google is also rolling out asset reporting for Local campaigns so you can see how your creative elements — ad headlines, descriptions and images — are performing. Google is bringing promotions to local inventory ads (LIAs), the Shopping ads that feature products available in stores located near the searcher. Promotions can be used to highlight special offers and promotions. Creating solutions for physical retailers is an area Google is focusing on that also happens to provide a counterpoint to the e-commerce giant. Local campaigns, in particular, are aimed at brick-and-mortar merchants that don’t have the resources to dedicate staff or an agency to campaign management.
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Google Search Console adds mobile-first indexing features
Google announced Wednesday that it made a “few tweaks” to Google Search Console to help webmasters and SEOs understand how Google is indexing their sites. Specifically, you’ll be able to see if and when Google switched a site to mobile-first indexing or not. Under settings for a property, Google can now show you which Googlebot is indexing the site. In addition, if it is Googlebot smartphone, Google will give you the exact date it switched from desktop to smartphone crawling. This data helps SEOs, developers, publishers and webmaster clearly understand when a site was moved from desktop to mobile-first indexing. It helps us figure out any indexing or crawling issues and see if any rankings changed after the switch-over now that we can look at the exact date Google made the switch. Previously, the notifications didn’t specify the exact date a site was moved to mobile-first indexing.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 26, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Expands Political Ad Transparency Tools to All Regions
Facebook has announced that it’s now bringing its political issues ad transparency tools to all regions, after initially rolling them out in fifty nations systematically, based on when each region had been running a local election. Facebook first introduced its ‘Issues Ads’ tags last May, and as noted, it’s been rolling them out to more regions over time. The system means that all advertisers looking to run ads in relation to political issues will need to go through an authorization process, and that all related ads will be kept in Facebook’s publicly available Ad Archive for seven years, which also includes information on who saw each ad and how much was spent on promoting it. Anything that can be implemented on this front is a bonus, and Facebook’s ad archive could prove to be a valuable tool in the fight against political misinformation.
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Marketing
LinkedIn Has Outlined its Recent Algorithm Updates, Which Focus on Broadening Engagement
LinkedIn has this week outlined some of the specific changes that it’s made to its feed distribution algorithm in order to maximize member response, and boost activity among users. LinkedIn has built in an element which rewards content creators (‘audience builders’) on the platform, as opposed to merely showing users the most engaging content to maximize response. The idea of this is to encourage more activity from across the board, and make LinkedIn, in general, a more engaging and active place of discussion. That, ideally, will keep members coming back more often – more users seeing more response equates to them posting more often, essentially re-distributing all that top-level engagement that was going to the top 1% and spreading it more evenly to foster broader participation.
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Yelp offering more paid profile upgrades for business owners
Yelp is introducing a range of new paid-promotional tools for business owners to give them more control over how they appear to users. They are also non-advertising, revenue-generating products for Yelp. The new products are intended primarily to help business owners but also bring more value and utility to consumers as well. The first of the Yelp offerings, Yelp Verified License, was actually introduced in March. Yelp manually checks whether companies are licensed in their respective categories and in good standing. Listings with a verified license carry a prominent blue badge, which appears on their profiles. The other two new profile features being introduced are “Business Highlights” and “Portfolio”. Business Highlights enable owners to pick from roughly 30 icons that describe or help promote their businesses. The idea here is to help the business differentiate and enable newer businesses without many reviews stand out and gain consideration. The third new product is Portfolio, which allows business owners to showcase projects they’ve done, such as home remodeling or landscape design. Google and Yelp are both enabling more customization for business owners. As more business owners opt for paid customization to stand out, it will put pressure on their competitors to do so as well.
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Advertising
Parallel tracking, more custom parameters coming to Microsoft Advertising for improved tracking
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is going to be making several updates in the coming months to improve page load for users and provide better tracking for advertisers. When parallel tracking is enabled, a user is taken directly to the landing page after clicking an ad, while the ad click measurement process happen separately in the background. Microsoft Advertising currently has it available as an option in some accounts, and the company says it expects to make it available to all advertisers soon. If you want to participate in the beta, reach out to your ad rep. Soon to be located in the “Campaign URL options” section of campaign settings, a Final URL suffix field will enable you to specify the parameters you want attached to your landing page URL for tracking. Now you can set up to eight pairs of custom parameters for URL tracking. The character limit has also been expanded to 250 characters. This will be available at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels, and support for additional levels is coming soon.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 25, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Says its Smyte Acquisition has Helped it Significantly Reduce Crypto-Spam Tweets+
Last June, Twitter announced that it had acquired Smyte, a company founded by former Facebook, Instagram and Google team members which specializes in webspam and fraud detection. The acquisition is part of Twitter’s ongoing efforts to clean up its platform by better detecting bad actors, and removing their profiles and tweets before they have any impact. One of the most positive signs of this initiative is it shows that Twitter is improving its systems, and may be able to use Smyte to better detect various forms of spam and junk on the platform. It may also enable Twitter to address some of its larger concerns with abuse and harassment, which have plagued the app for years. There’s no way of knowing exactly how much of this Smyte might be able to eliminate, but the results reported here certainly show some good signs.
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Marketing
Google Won’t Display Multiple Featured Snippets For One Page
Google’s John Mueller stated only one set of structured data will be used in search results when a page contains multiple types. When multiple types of structured data are included on one page, Google will automatically determine which type of markup is most appropriate for search results. The decision of which rich result to display in search is based on the searcher’s query. So, using both sets of structured data won’t make you eligible to appear in two different featured snippets.
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Google Search Console adds search within markup and copy with tweaking
Google announced two new features for Google Search Console’s testing tools Monday. Within the Google URL testing tools, such as the AMP test, rich results test and URL Inspection tool, you can now search within your markup to find code, and also you can copy the code and tweak it. Google said this makes checking your rendered markup and adjusting it easier. Ultimately this feature should make debugging issues with your markup for structured data issues faster. It should make it easier to locate the issues you may have with your markup, then test the changes you make to see if it will pass validation by Google.
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Shopify launches machine learning powered network for US merchants
Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify launched its brand new Shopify Fulfillment Network for US-based merchants. The new network uses Shopify’s machine learning-driven smart inventory allocation technology to determine the closest and most efficient fulfillment centers for your business. For SMBs being edged out by giants like Amazon, accessibility to an inventory fulfillment network — and the integrated technologies — could play a key role in helping small businesses stay competitive and allow them to grow. According to Shopify, the new system does not require advanced technical skills. Thanks to this, the system can be used by busy digital marketers operating with limited resources to market products and drive e-commerce sales.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram’s Working on a New ‘Stop-Motion’ Tool for Stories
According to reverse engineering maverick Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is developing a new ‘Stop-Motion’ camera option for Instagram Stories, which would provide another way to create interesting video updates, without having to record any actual video at all. The new tool would assist your creation process by ghosting the frame you’re capturing with the previous, so you can ensure that your placement and movement is correct. This, ideally, is intended for a phone camera on a tripod or similar stable device, as the image would then remain exactly in-set, enabling you place the object how you want it in the next movement. As noted, by shooting in stop-motion, you can create video Stories without having to actually create any video. That not only opens up your creative options, but it will also make it easier for more businesses to add engaging movement to their posts. Instagram is yet to announce the feature, but it looks to be developing fast.
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YouTube’s Running a New Test Which Hides Comments on All Videos
The video platform is now testing a new option which would see all video comments hidden by default, with users needing to tap a button to view any comments on a video. All comments on all videos, in this iteration of the app, would be hidden behind a specific ‘Comments’ button. That would mean that if users chose to view them, they would need to make specific effort to do so, which could help reduce issues with spam, abuse, and the spread of concerning content. YouTube comments have always been concerning, the comments section has long been known as a questionable area of the app, which is why YouTube has essentially de-emphasized it by moving it further down from the actual content, and out of view without scrolling. It shows that the platform is looking at more options to protect users, and that it is experimenting with advanced options, which could have a significant impact on the platform’s overall functionality.
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Marketing
Millions of fake Google Maps listings hurt real business and consumers
Google Maps carries approximately 11 million illegitimate local listings, with hundreds of thousands more getting created each month, the Wall Street Journal reported. These fake listings push real businesses further down the local search results, impacting their ability to reach customers and make unsuspecting users easy targets for scammers. Google says it is aware of the problem and that it has plans to do more to combat spammers and scammers taking advantage of local listings. It’s not in the company’s interest to jeopardize user trust, yet as many marketers point out, it stands to profit as local businesses turn to paid ads to regain search visibility. Google’s failure to take down fake business listings and verify real ones is a frustration for many business owners and marketers. The company added that it’s developing new ways — both manual and automated — to fight scammers, but kept specifics under wraps.
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Advertising
Google testing carousel of text ads on mobile
It’s already hard to tell how your text ads will render these days — two headlines or three, how many extensions, etc. Now, Google is testing a carousel of text ads on mobile. Spotted by SEMrush, the ads carousel appears under a “People also considered” heading below the first ad. The ads in the carousel appear with two headlines a truncated description line and no ad extensions. This likely looks pretty scary to a lot of advertisers thinking this could tank performance for ads that aren’t in the absolute top position — particularly with the carousel ads getting served in this truncated format. Google will be watching the impact on click volume and click-through rates with this treatment. And it’s not clear if this is also being tested on non-brand terms. The removal of average position metric makes even more sense now. Shopping ads have appeared in a carousel format for some time now — as have various text ad extensions. All of the Shopping ads are in the carousel, though, and you’ve likely noticed they’ve gotten much, much bigger over the years.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Will Now Keep All Content Captured in the Stories Camera for Seven Days
nstagram is rolling out another small Stories tweak, this time giving users more options on the content they capture within the Stories camera. The option will make it easier for users to curate their best Stories content – which is often what Instagram is criticized for (promoting shiny, highlight reels of people’s lives, as opposed to real experiences), but is also how users continue to post to the platform. For brands, it could come in handy – now, you’ll be able to take a heap of photos and videos at once, then select the best options to edit and post to your Stories after the fact. You could already do this to some degree by Camera Roll uploads, but this will be native to Instagram, making it a little easier to do.
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Facebook and TikTok Lead in Overall App Downloads in May
Facebook remains the most popular social app, even in terms of new downloads, while TikTok and Snapchat also continue to hold attention. These are the key trends of note in the latest app download rankings for May 2019, as provided by SensorTower. Facebook sits atop the overall chart, showing that privacy concerns and misinformation issues are not slowing The Social Network’s ongoing expansion, at least in terms of audience growth. Facebook’s quarterly reports show that, despite reports of lower usage overall, Facebook has continued its growth momentum. What’s more interesting is the sustained popularity of TikTok, and the resilience of Snapchat – though the latter’s download numbers have reportedly been propped up significantly by the popularity of its ‘Baby’ and ‘Gender Swap; Lenses. TikTok remains the trending app of the moment, and is maintaining its growth momentum – which may be a surprise to many. It’s very difficult to predict which app is a fad and which will stick. These stats show that TikTok is holding, it’s still popular, despite its main surge in notoriety coming some eight months ago.
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Marketing
Google Adds More Social-Like Options to Google My Business Listings
Google is rolling out a new range of Google My Business tools which will provide even more options for brands to maximize their exposure through Google search – and even promote their Google presence through physical stickers, helping to drive traffic. Google will now enable businesses to offer new rewards to customers who follow their business within Google apps, with new ‘Welcome Offers’. In addition, Google will now also enable brands to claim a short name and URL for their business. Google’s also adding new options for cover photos and photo displays, with newly uploaded images showing instantly on Google My Business profiles. Google’s also launching a new website where businesses will be able to download and order custom assets for their business – like physical stickers – in order to help promote bookings, prompt reviews and encourage follows for their Google My Business profile. The tools, as noted, add more social platform type elements for Google My Business profiles – and given the dominance of Google search, they’re definitely worth a look.
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Advertising
Google Ads portfolio bid strategy changes: Removing eCPC, average daily budget replacing target spend
In an effort to help simplify settings, Google said, it is making changes to two portfolio bid strategies. Portfolio bid strategies can be applied across multiple campaigns in a Google Ads account. Starting in July, the target spend setting will no longer be an option when setting up new maximize clicks portfolio bid strategies. Instead, the strategy will use the average daily budgets of the campaigns in the portfolio. The maximize clicks strategy automatically adjusts bids to try to get as many clicks as possible within your budget — or target spend, if you’d set one. Target spend is defined as: “the amount you’d like to spend each day on all campaigns that use this bid strategy. Unlike your budget, target spend isn’t a hard limit. Your daily spend may exceed your target spend at times.” Also in July, enhanced CPC will no longer be available as a portfolio bid strategy. There is no added benefit to using eCPC as a portfolio strategy as opposed to at the campaign level, and Google says they’re “far more widely used” on individual campaigns. These changes follow the announcements that target search page location and target outranking share bid strategies are going away — at the campaign and portfolio levels — this month.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 20, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook’s digital wallet Calibra: What it could mean for marketers
Facebook announced it is launching a financial subsidiary in 2020 called Calibra that will include a digital wallet offered as a standalone app and built into Messenger and WhatsApp. The digital wallet will enable global users to make financial transactions using Libra, the newly formed currency powered by blockchain technology backed by Facebook and a number of leading financial, technology and venture capital organizations, including Mastercard, Uber, PayPal and Andreessen Horowitz. Marketers are paying attention to the cross-border payment capabilities Facebook’s Calibra will offer. “It’s a way for Facebook to bring e-commerce into developing countries, where they don’t have stable currencies or means to pay,” said Steve Weiss, president of the digital marketing agency MuteSix. Whether or not Facebook will be able to drive global e-commerce within its apps via Calibra depends entirely on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency it is helping develop. Creating a way for worldwide users to engage with brands — and purchase from them regardless of their geographic location — could dramatically impact Facebook’s business model and further cement its dominance as a social platform. Much is riding on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency for Facebook. But, should it succeed, marketers are ready for the added e-commerce and customer experience possibilities it could provide.
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Facebook Adds 22 New, Free Training Modules to Facebook Blueprint
The Social Network has announced the addition of twenty-two new digital marketing training courses as part of its free Facebook Blueprint education platform. This new update, as noted by Facebook, will include additional Instagram insight, which will no doubt be of interest to the many marketers looking to build their presence on the rising platform. In addition, Blueprint also offers official, Facebook ads certification courses to help prove your skills and expertise. The new Blueprint courses will be available at facebook.com/blueprint at the end of the month. Facebook says the new courses will initially only be available in English, but it’s looking to add support for more than 30 additional languages by the end of the year.
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Twitter is Removing the Option to Tag Your Precise Location in Tweets
Twitter has announced a small, but interesting, update, with the removal of the capacity to tag your precise location within your tweets. It likely won’t have any significant impact – as Twitter notes, most people don’t use the option anyway. But it is still worthy of note, particularly as a data tracking tool, as it could lessen the platform’s capacity to track location data. At least, it could in theory. Given that the option is built into Twitter’s back-end code, the app will still be able to track your exact location anyway, if you have the capacity switched on. Location tracking isn’t on by default, but even if it’s no longer an option for your tweets, if you’ve chosen to switch it on in the past, Twitter can still use it. With users increasingly concerned about the information they share, the platforms themselves are now taking more steps to reassure people that they are not being monitored, and their data is not being logged every moment.
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Advertising
Price extensions now supported in Microsoft Advertising Editor
Price extensions launched in Microsoft Advertising a little over a year ago, allowing advertisers to show products and pricing in-text ads in mobile and desktop search results. Now you can manage those extensions in Microsoft Advertising Editor. That means you can manage them in bulk and much more quickly. From the Shared LIbrary in Editor, you will be able to add headers, descriptions and prices, including currency.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 19, 2019
/by Corey PadveenAdvertising
Google Announces New 3D Ad Creation Tools and New Live and AR Ad Options for YouTube
Google is looking to provide more advanced ad tools, with the addition of a new platform for creating 3D ads, and new AR and Live options for YouTube promotions. First off, Google has announced its new ‘Swirl’ 3D display ad format, which will help brands provide a more interactive, engaging experience. Swirl ads will enable brands which have existing 3D assets to build them into their ad units. Over on YouTube, Google is also rolling out another immersive ad format, though this time through AR, with an opportunity to virtually try on make-up when viewing related content. Called ‘Beauty Try-On’, the new format will enable video viewers to check out related looks while following along with YouTube creators. And finally, YouTube is also looking to help live-stream creators maximize their live content, by rolling out a new ad option which will enable creators to run their YouTube live stream content within display ads, which will prompt the user to click through to see more. Each of these new tools offers unique considerations for advertisers, and will facilitate more engaging campaign types, which will likely help to boost campaign performance, and, eventually, raise consumer expectation.
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Spotify has expanded its ads capabilities with podcast listener targeting
Advertisers can reach Spotify Free podcast listeners, and in select markets, they’ll also be able to narrow their campaigns to certain podcast categories, such as “Comedy,” “Lifestyle & Health” and “Business & Technology.” .S. podcast ad revenue grew 53% in 2018, according to the IAB, and with 32% of Americans (age 12+) having listened to a podcast in the past month, according to Edison Research, marketers and platforms are seeing untapped potential. Spotify is looking to entrench itself early to become a leading platform in the sector. Insufficient campaign conversion data has been a barrier to growth for podcast advertising. Marketers have attempted to overcome this by using direct response calls to action (such giving listeners a unique code or URL) or by launching campaigns aimed at awareness. Targeting at scale has also been limited. Spotify’s newest capabilities help begin to address those limitations.
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Marketing
Google Search Console drops preferred domain setting
Google announced it is no longer supporting the preferred domain setting in Google Search Console. In short, this feature is not moving from the old Google Search Console to the new version. Google is removing this feature because it is now able to pick the preferred domain for you based on various signals Google ingests. You can now communicate to Google your preferred domain through good site architecture. If you are currently depending on Google to select your preferred domain through this setting, you can no longer depend on that. You will need to ensure that your canonical URL listed in Google has not changed with this announcement. Google did not say if it will communicate in any way to webmasters, publishers or developers through Search Console if this resulted in your site switching its canonical URL in Google’s index. Instead, you need to audit your Google results to ensure no changes were made.
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Google is Reportedly Adding Timestamps to YouTube Videos in Search Results
Google has been spotted testing the addition of timestamps for certain types of YouTube videos in search results. The timestamps allow users to jump directly to key moments within the video without having to sit through content they’re not interested in. This may prove to be quite a useful feature for searchers, especially in today’s world of monetization where the length of YouTube videos is extended for the purpose of inserting a greater amount of mid-roll ads. At the same time, it could be argued that Google is taking viewing time away from videos by inviting users to skip to specific parts. While that may be the case, the video creators are inviting users to do the same by publishing timestamps in their own video descriptions.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 18, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook reveals Libra cryptocurrency, with lofty goals
Facebook Inc revealed plans on Tuesday to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, the latest development in its effort to expand beyond social networking and move into e-commerce and global payments. Facebook has linked with 28 partners in a Geneva-based entity called the Libra Association, which will govern its new digital coin set to launch in the first half of 2020, according to marketing materials and interviews with executives. Facebook has also created a subsidiary called Calibra, which will offer digital wallets to save, send and spend Libras. Calibra will be connected to Facebook’s messaging platforms Messenger and WhatsApp, which already boast more than a billion users. In recent years, cryptocurrency investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars through hacks, and the market has been plagued by accusations of money-laundering, illegal drug sales and terrorist financing. Markus Feber, a senior German lawmaker in the European Parliament, called for the European Union to begin work on regulating cryptocurrencies. Facebook hopes it can bring global regulators to the table by publicizing Libra, said Kevin Weil, who runs product for the initiative. The Libra Association plans to raise money through a private placement in the coming months, according to a statement from the association. Partners in the project include household names like Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc, Spotify Technology SA, PayPal Holdings Inc, eBay Inc, Uber Technologies Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horow.
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Facebook to remove ‘Company Overview’ and ‘Biography’ fields from Pages
Facebook is alerting Page owners that it is removing a number of fields from Page info starting August 1, 2019. The fields to be removed include Company Overview, Biography, Affiliation, Personal Interests and maybe more, according to a tweet from Matt Navarra. Anyone managing a Facebook Page will need to revisit information listed in the fields scheduled to be removed, and add the information they want to remain visible to the Page’s description. The fields being removed are listed under a Page’s “About” section and, most likely, will not impact a Page’s performance. SMBs and public figures whose primary online existence are their Facebook Pages may have important information in those fields. Editing the Page description to include the soon-to-be deleted information will make sure those details remain intact.
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Pinterest Announces New Third-Party Partnerships to Expand its On-Platform Shopping Options
Pinterest’s aim is to become a key hub for online shopping, with advanced product discovery and matching features that align with user needs, and help to guide them to relevant products. Pinterest has this week renamed its third-party partner program, and added new technology partners to facilitate expanded product listing capacity. The new focus for Pinterest Partners is shopping, with a range of tools that will be able to help connect businesses direct to the platform, streamlining their product listing and promotion processes. This aligns with Pinterest’s broader push to integrate direct shopping options, including product catalogs, automated ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and the coming addition of ‘Complete the Look’ listings, which will recommend complementary products based on automated matching. These new partnerships will help Pinterest build upon this, and continue its ongoing growth strategy.
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Facebook’s Working on a New ‘Preview’ Option for Page Posts
Facebook is currently testing a new ‘Preview’ option for Page posts which would enable you to see what your update is going to look like before you hit ‘Share’. The option could help Facebook Page admins to better manage their posts and output, ensuring that what they aim to publish, and what actually appears, match up. It would also help highlight errors and mistakes before they happen – if you get into the habit of checking the preview, you’ll be able to catch errors and/or formatting problems before you go live, which could help reduce clumsy looking slip-ups. Of course, you can already do this, in large part, via the existing Page publishing tools – if you schedule a post, you can view it from your scheduled list and see what it’s going to look like to your Page fans. But if you’re publishing live, you’ll often skip that step. This would enable you to maintain awareness of how your posts are going to look in all instances.
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