Social Media

Twitter’s Testing a New Option to ‘Stream’ Tweets in Real-Time

Twitter is testing out a new option which would enable users to ‘stream tweets’, meaning that their timeline would be updated as tweets happen. Functionally, the option doesn’t appear to add anything new – while the other option listed in the new pop-up window is the ‘Top Tweets First’ algorithm feed, you can already opt-out of the Top Tweets feed and switch back to the latest tweets first via the existing toggle, which itself was updated with the new star icon in the top right of the feed back in December. But it would provide the capacity to switch to a more active, real-time update mode, which would keep your tweets flowing through, without any manual intervention. The option is currently in testing with a small group of users, with prompts like these set to become a part of the broader tweet discovery process.

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Instagram’s Now Testing New AR ‘Try On’ Ads with Selected Advertisers

As Instagram shifts further into eCommerce, it’s also looking to provide more advanced ad options, in order to help retailers maximize engagement and response. Instagram has now launched a new test of AR ‘try on’ ads with selected brands, through which users will be able to actively engage with the advertised product virtually and see how it looks. The feature is essentially an extension of Facebook’s version of the same, which The Social Network also launched with selected brands last year. The new AR try on tools will be available via selected ads from the noted partners, and users will be able to share these experiences via Instagram Stories, helping to spread the word. It’s an interesting addition, particularly on Instagram, given the audience’s interest in Stories and associated advanced visual tools. That could make it a great option for Instagram campaigns. It will require additional platform expertize to create such experiences, but you can imagine that they will prove popular, expanding your Instagram ad potential.

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Advertising

Google Takes Aim at Pinterest with ‘Style Ideas’ and Improved Google Shopping

It seems that Google is indeed keeping tabs on Pinterest’s growth, as this week, it’s launched a new tool which replicates Pinterest’s ‘Shop the Look’ Pins, offering relevant product matches based on an image captured through Google Lens, or via screenshot sample. In addition to getting similar product matches via Google listings, you’ll also see a new ‘Style Inspiration’ selection, which highlights how other people have added that item into their outfit. Pinterest is still developing its Complete the Look recommendations, so in some ways, Google’s looking to get ahead of the platform with the tools that it has been leading the way on. But it’s not just through Google Lens that it’s looking to hit Pinterest. In addition to style recommendations, Google has also announced a redesign of Google Shopping, via Google search, which will boost Google’s eCommerce potential.

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Marketing

Google to update GoogleBot’s user agent

Google announced that starting in December Google will update Google’s user agent to represent the version of Chrome that GoogleBot is running. It is important to update any code you may have that may look at the user agent of GoogleBot to support this change going forward. . If you have any user agent detection scripts that are hard coded for GoogleBot, you need to make sure to support this new user agent pattern. Google said, “We’ve run an evaluation, so are confident that most websites will not be affected by the change.” “If your site looks for a specific user agent, it may be affected. You should use feature detection instead of user agent sniffing. If you cannot use feature detection and need to detect Googlebot via the user agent, then look for “Googlebot” within the user agent,” Google added. GoogleBot is getting a new user agent, and that is exciting. But it can impact your site if you had any user agent detection methods for GoogleBot. Make sure to test your site to see if it supports the new user agent. Most sites probably do not need to worry about this but you have done any advice GoogleBot detection, you may need to take steps to update those scripts.

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Social Media

Facebook Adds ‘Click to Messenger’ CTA for Stories Ads

The Social Network is this week rolling out an expansion of its ‘Click to Message’ CTA to include Stories ads across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. The option will enable businesses to drive direct conversations from their Stories ads with a ‘Swipe up’ prompt that will take them through to a Messenger conversation, without the user having to leave the app they’re in.The expansion of the same to Stories seems like a logical progression, especially, as noted, given the growth of both Stories and messaging usage across Facebook’s family of apps. The option also aligns with Facebook’s ‘C-Commerce’ – or ‘conversational commerce’ – push, which underlines the rising value of messaging as a connective platform between brands and consumers. With more people looking to get a more personal brand experience via messaging, it makes sense to consider your options to link people through to your business. 

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Twitter Rolls Out New DM Search Option to iOS Users

After testing it out over the last month or so, Twitter has now confirmed that its new DM search option is being rolled out to all iOS users. The option will enable you to search your DMs by name. That will then bring up any and all DMs from users with that name in their profile, including any group messages they’ve been included in. The functionality is fairly limited, in that you can’t search by message content – but then again, in combination with another Twitter DM search test currently underway, which would enable you to locate any content, including tweets, images and links, that’s been shared within your direct message conversations, it could end up being fairly valuable. These new additions are not specifically aimed at brands, but they definitely do have value from a brand usage perspective. Having the capacity to more easily sort through your DMs by customer name, or by content shared, will make it a much more appealing option for customer care. The ‘Shared Content’ option hasn’t been rolled out just yet, but it is worth keeping tabs on such developments, and considering where Twitter’s messaging tools might fit into your broader platform strategy moving forward.

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Marketing

Google Assistant in Chrome testing Duplex to help users buy movie tickets

Duplex, Google’s automated concierge feature, has made its way to Chrome browsers. The company has confirmed that the test is currently being applied to movie ticket booking sites as part of Google Assistant in Chrome. Google is already testing ads in Assistant, but handling transactions looks to be a key part of its monetization strategy for the virtual assistant. The ability to book movie tickets, and presumably eventually other things such as car rentals, may get more people to engage with the Assistant, bringing more users into Google’s ecosystem and presenting the company with more revenue opportunities. This technology may also play into Google’s broader e-commerce strategy. By streamlining shopping on Assistant-enabled devices, the company may be able to make more headway in the retail sector.

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Shopify Marketing now integrates with Microsoft Advertising

Shopify Marketing, launched last year to enable merchants to set up marketing campaigns across various ads platforms, announced an integration with Microsoft Advertising this week. Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) powers search advertising on Bing, Yahoo and AOL as well as a network of partner sites. Shopify already supports Google Smart Shopping campaigns, carousel and dynamic advertising on Facebook and Story Ads on Snapchat. Shopify Marketing aims to offer merchants an all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Shopify is not alone in pursuing an all-inclusive sales and marketing hub approach to help merchants simplify workflows and entrench customers in the platform. BigCommerce has integrations with Amazon, Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest among others, for example.

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Social Media

Instagram Adds Branded Content Tags for IGTV

While Instagram’s Branded Content Tags are still not available to all users, for those that can access them, they are now also being expanded to longer-form IGTV content. Business and creator accounts in regions where the tag is available can now set them up for IGTV. When applied, they will ad a ‘Paid Partnership with…’ note in the header of the video post. While IGTV hasn’t yet become a key destination for video consumption, viewership has been growing, particularly since the addition of previews of IGTV videos within the main Instagram feed, which the platform rolled out back in February. The capacity to utilize branded content tags within IGTV videos will be of particular relevance to brands seeking to work with influencers to promote their products, an area which Instagram has been working to better facilitate.

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Instagram in-stream video ads driving more purchases than Story Ads: Report

Advertisers wanting to drive more purchases on Instagram may want to focus on in-stream video ads over Story Ads, according to a recent report from Wibbitz. The online video editing platform surveyed 1,000 consumers in the U.S., UK and France to get a broad overview of user behavior on the platform.  Of the 73% of respondents who said they were Instagram users, 31% said they had purchased a product directly after watching a video on the platform. When digging into the types of video ads that resulted in a purchase, 27% of the respondents reported they bought something directly after watching an in-feed video ad, while only 12% said they had done the same after watching a video ad within an Instagram Story. Of the 73% of survey respondents that said they use Instagram, 69% said they spend most of their time on the platform watching videos. In other words, brands seeking more organic engagement on Instagram should be investing in more video content and sharing later in the evening when users are more likely to be scrolling through their feed. 

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Marketing

Google Sept. 2019 Core Update ‘weaker’ than June core update

A Google core update is when Google adjusts its core search ranking algorithm with the goal of returning more relevant and useful search results to the searcher. Google does these updates every quarter or so, and for the past few updates, Google has confirmed them. We have data from various SEO toolset providers. In aggregate, the data show that this September update was not as strong or impactful as the June core update, which we had data on as well. Overall, the September core update appears to have had a stronger impact on the YMYL, your money – your life, category. With any Google update, a core update, quality update or even some user interface updates, the search results change. Some result in sites ranking higher for their prime keywords, others may see a drop in their positions, while others may see no change. Also, click-through rates may be impacted by updates, and you may notice more or less traffic after any of these updates. The rollout may be finishing up very soon, but this is all early data and things may still change over the next couple of days. So far, it appears this update was not as big as the previous update. So keep an eye on your traffic, keep making your web site better, and keep working on driving traffic and conversions on your site.

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In response to Google change, Yoast SEO will opt users into all snippet features by default

On September 24, Google announced new snippet settings to provide site owners with options to limit the content included in their search listings. These new settings are part of Google’s response to the first implementation of the European Copyright Directive by France, which was in part aimed at getting Google and other internet giants to pay for use of publishers’ content in its results. Google says it won’t pay publishers in France (or other EU countries that follow France’s lead), and they must opt-in to have their snippets presented in Google results. Yoast SEO users will be opted into all of its snippet features by default, the WordPress plugin developer announced Thursday. The update containing this change, version 12.2, will be released on October 1.

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Social Media

Twitter’s Testing a New Way to Easily Locate Content That’s Been Shared in DMs

Twitter is working on a new option which would enable you to more easily locate any content – including tweets, images and links – that’s been shared within your direct message conversations. It could be a handy way to keep track of discussions, or find that thing you were talking about with your friend a few days back. And given the rise in messaging on every social platform, it makes sense for Twitter to add in another way to better manage your private discussions – in fact, this is just the latest in a line of more recent Twitter DM updates, underlining the platform’s efforts to facilitate more direct conversation within the app. The emphasis would suggest that Twitter is seeing increasing DM usage, which could also lead to more messaging options and tools coming in the near future. There’s no word on any official launch date for this new feature, or for DM search function, but with Twitter looking to focus on DM improvements, you can likely expect to see them ‘in the wild’ sometime soon. 

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Reddit rolls out mobile landing pages, standard sizes, optional referral URLs for video ads

Reddit announced three new video ad updates on Wednesday, launching a new mobile landing page experience, adding two more aspect ratios for ad sizes and offering optional referral URLs for CPV (cost per view) campaigns. After launching an entirely overhauled site last year, Reddit, reports an increase in page views and time spent on its website and app, along with user engagement growth. With the redesign complete, Reddit now has a platform on which it can build out more comprehensive ad offerings, something it has been steadily accomplishing over the past year. In addition to giving brands more video ad options this time, Reddit also reported it is forming its first video engineering team to test and improve its video ad products.

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Marketing

Google won’t pay French publishers copyright fees, will limit content in search results instead

Last year, after an extended public debate, the European Parliament passed a controversial and sweeping new Copyright Directive. In part, it was intended to harmonize and modernize EU copyright law. However, it was also intended to generate licensing revenue for authors and publishers from big internet companies such as Google and Facebook. France was the first country in the EU to implement the new rules domestically. Google now says it will not pay French publishers the expected copyright licensing fees. Google News VP Richard Gingras said, “[W]e don’t accept payment from anyone to be included in search results. We sell ads, not search results, and every ad on Google is clearly marked. That’s also why we don’t pay publishers when people click on their links in a search result.” He added, “To operate in any other way would reduce the choice and relevance to our users—and would ultimately result in the loss of their trust in our services.” Google will giving publishers the ability to explicitly opt-in to have more content presented on the SERP. It has created a set of webmaster guidelines that French and ultimately all European publishers can use to communicate how much of their news content to show in the SERP. This will effectively function as a waiver of their licensing rights under the Copyright Directive.

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Sidecar launches Amazon Advertising campaign management solution

E-commerce marketing technology firm Sidecar has launched a new solution for managing Amazon Advertising campaigns. Through a mix of managed service and technology, Sidecar for Amazon aims to streamline management of sponsored products, sponsored brands and product display ads and provide optimization and reporting features currently lacking in the Amazon Advertising platform. Amazon’s advertising products have advanced, but the platform is still relatively nascent. Technology solutions are popping up to help advertisers manage their campaigns with more sophisticated features. Sidecar for Amazon is one of the few to support all three of Amazon Advertising’s e-commerce ad formats.

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Social Media

Pinterest Announces New Business Profile Format, Shop the Look Collection Ads

This week, Pinterest has added some new considerations into the mix, with the addition of Shop the Look collection ads, along with an updated profile format which enables users to include video as their cover image. First off, on Shop the Look collections – Pinterest is expanding its shoppable post format into paid ads, enabling businesses to showcase multiple, buyable items within each Pin. Shop the Look collections will essentially expand into product catalogs, with the capacity to display a range of products. Advertisers will be able to tag up to 25 items in a Pin image, while a preview showcase of four items will be shown along the bottom of the Pin. The addition of these expanded Shop the Look ad options will provide more ways for brands to drive direct purchases from Pinterest, which could help maximize shopping potential among browsing consumers. Pinterest says that the new Shop the Look ads will be rolling out in the U.S. “over the coming months”. The addition of these expanded Shop the Look ad options will provide more ways for brands to drive direct purchases from Pinterest, which could help maximize shopping potential among browsing consumers. Pinterest says that the new Shop the Look ads will be rolling out in the U.S. “over the coming months”. 

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Twitter Launches Lists as Alternate, Swipeable Timelines on iOS

After first announcing its experiment with adding lists as alternate, swipeable tweet feeds back in June, Twitter is now rolling the option out to all users on iOS. Users will now be able to pin up to five selected lists from their ‘Lists’ settings and have them appear as swipeable feeds from the home timeline. This will give users more ways to access specific discussions on the platform, which may make it a more engaging, interactive experience. Twitter lists have long been considered an underrated feature – something Twitter itself has even acknowledged in the past – with many ‘power’ users exclusively utilizing lists to curate their on-platform experience. Given this, it makes a lot of sense for Twitter to provide more options on this front, while the capacity to be able to separate tweet discussions by topic will also make it easier to maintain context within each discussion, and may improve engagement as a result. Overall, this seems like a good update for Twitter, and it’ll be interesting to see how if and how users take up the swipeable streams option.

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Marketing

Google September 2019 core update to roll-out later today

Google announced this morning on Twitter that it is releasing the September 2019 core update later today. Core updates impact how Google ranks web sites and how Google determines what is the most relevant web page for a specific query.  Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google does these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your web site or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update.

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Advertising

Google Adds New Video Campaign Options, Including Home Screen Ads on YouTube

Google is launching some new options to help marketers better manage their video ad campaigns, and reach consumers where they’re most active. First off, Google’s adding new TrueView ads in the YouTube Home feed, “a tremendous opportunity for any advertiser looking to drive more, high-value conversions”. In addition to these new YouTube ad formats, Google is also adding ‘Video Reach Campaigns’, which will enable brands to upload a range of video assets and have Google’s systems determine their placement. It’s essentially automated placement for video ads – while traditionally, marketers have maintained control over each element, by utilizing Google’s machine learning processes, it may be possible to optimize your video ad delivery for better results. As we head into the holiday period, you can expect almost every digital ad platform to be offering new tools and processes, and these video ad tools definitely provide a lot of potential, particularly the new opportunities to gain exposure in YouTube’s main feed.

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