Social Media

Facebook is Expanding its Playable and AR Ad options Ahead of the Holiday Season

Facebook has this week announced the expansion of its interactive ad options, including playable games, and AR tools which let you ‘try on’ make-up. First off, Facebook’s bringing video poll ads to your News Feed, an engaging, interactive way to grab user attention. Video poll ads already grab attention through movement, but users can then also interact with them, and when they do, they’re shown additional information about the brand and/or product. Facebook’s also expanding its AR ad tools, which its been testing with selected make-up brands in the US. Facebook’s now planning to open these ad tools up to more advertisers via its beta program this fall. And finally, Facebook’s also expanding its playable ad format, which enables Facebook users to play a game in order to drive downloads, conversations and other brand objectives. Interactive tools like these can be a great way to maximize campaign performance, and are definitely worth considering, either for current or future campaigns.

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Twitter Provides Option to Hide Replies to Users in the US and Japan

After launching the initial test of its option to hide tweet replies to Canadian users back in June, Twitter has now announced that the experiment is being broadened to users in Japan and the US, a significant expansion of its test pool. The process enables you to hide any reply from your tweet responses, giving you more control over how your conversations are presented. And as per the last frame, users are still able to see any hidden replies, they’ll just have to tap into the options to do so. It’s an interesting experiment, and as noted in the results thus far, it does appear to be having the desired effect, prompting users to reconsider how they respond and engage on the platform. If it works to make Twitter a more civil, welcoming place, or even if it just helps some users feel more comfortable about their interactions, it’s likely worth it, while the capacity to be able to view what’s been hidden should minimize potential misuse.

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Advertising

Store visits now available for Google Ads smart bidding optimization

Advertisers who have store visits measurement in their Google Ads accounts can now incorporate store visits data in their smart bidding strategies. The update allows stores with physical locations to optimize with and for foot traffic in addition to online conversions with smart bidding. Smart bidding strategies use machine learning aimed at predicting when a conversion action is most likely and adjust bids at the time of auction accordingly. Store visits in smart bidding is now available to all advertisers in Search and Shopping campaigns.

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Search Ads 360 rolls out auction-time bidding for Google Search campaigns

Google Search Ads 360, the enterprise-level search management piece of Google Marketing Platform that enables advertisers and agencies to manage campaigns across multiple search engines, has added auction-bidding for bids on Google Search. For Search Ads 360 users, this brings the Smart Bidding capabilities offered in Google Ads to your Google Search campaigns. Smart bidding uses machine learning to make real-time bids based on a number of signals such as device, location and time of day. Auction-time bidding analyzes your account history, conversions registered by Floodlight, Google Marketing Platform’s conversion tracking system, and other signals to predict when a conversion is likely to occur from an ad click. In contrast, a Search Ads 360 bid strategy analyzes campaign performance approximately every 6 hours to set keyword bids and set or recommend bid adjustments.

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Social Media

Pinterest brings Shoppable Pins to visual searches for fashion, home products

Pinterest announced on Tuesday it has advanced its Lens capabilities, making it possible for the visual search tool to now identify more than 2.5 billion fashion and home products. With this latest advancement, the company is adding fashion and home related Shoppable Pins to visual search results. Users will also now be able to save photos from their Lens searches and turn them into a Pin that they can save to a board. Pinterest will then use the “Lens’ed” photos to power future recommendations for the user. Pinterest’s visual platform is a natural fit for home and fashion marketers, and the company’s push to wed its visual search technology with shoppable pins makes it even more so. By bringing shoppable pins to Lens search results and recommendations, the company is giving branded Pins more exposure and helping to shorten the customer journey by bridging the gap between product discovery and purchase.

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LinkedIn Adds New ‘Skill Assessments’ Option to Beef Up Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is adding a new way for users to display their professional competencies, with a new ‘Skill Assessments’ option that will test your knowledge, and provide you with a badge to demonstrate your proven understanding. The option will facilitate expanded capacity to show your competencies, beyond Recommendations and Endorsements. It’s a good option for LinkedIn, which further integrates its LinkedIn Learning platform into the main app. The actual results are kept private to users, and if you don’t pass, you’ll have complete control over the visibility of the results. LinkedIn will also recommend Learning courses you can take to improve your skills, and pass the test at a later stage. And given LinkedIn’s unmatched insights into professional skills and competencies, no one is better placed to keep you updated on the latest in-demand skills, and help you display your capacity in the same.

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Marketing

Snapchat Launches Political Ads Library for Increased Transparency

As reported by CNN, Snapchat has now added a new Political Ads Library, which anyone can view as a downloadable spreadsheet via Snap’s website. And while it’s not as advanced as similar options available on other platforms, the listing includes all the political and issue-based ads on Snapchat, facilitating further research by third-parties. The listings can actually serve two purposes – first and foremost, they’re about transparency, and ensuring political groups are not using digital platforms to manipulate voters. But from a marketing perspective, it’s interesting to also see how, exactly, political groups are using Snap as they seek to connect with younger voters. As noted, it’s not as advanced as similar options on Facebook and Twitter, but given Snapchat’s unique allure with younger audience groups, there’s a lot that can be gleaned from the resource.

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Facebook Outlines Evolving Efforts to Detect and Remove Hate Speech and Extremist Content

This week, The Social Network has provided an update on its ongoing efforts to detect and remove hate speech from its platforms – and in particular, how its focus for such content has expanded beyond known, foreign terrorist groups in order to incorporate more local threats.  Facebook notes that its definition for such content is “based on their behavior, not their ideologies”, which has enabled Facebook to take a more general approach to what can be defined as terror-related material. Facebook is also looking to help people leave hate groups by providing links to specialized assistance, while it also has a team of more than 350 people, “with expertise ranging from law enforcement and national security, to counterterrorism intelligence and academic studies in radicalization”, who are working to develop its policies and enforcement actions. Now that we’ve seen the full impacts of such, and the direct links between online activity and real-life acts, it’s important that the platforms take action, and address such wherever they can.

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Social Media

Facebook Expands ‘Today In’ Local News Section to More Than 6,000 US Cities and Towns

Facebook has this week announced that localized versions of the offering, which is designed to promote increased civic engagement, will now be made available to over 6,000 cities and towns across the US. Today In’, which is available via in-feed prompts, or via your Facebook apps listing, highlights the biggest news stories of interest in your local region, as well as local Page posts which are generating discussion, upcoming events, weather, local groups, school updates, etc. The intention of ‘Today In’ is basically to keep you updated on happenings in your community, in order to prompt increased participation. This new expansion, Facebook says, will also bring more localized content to “news deserts” – places which have a limited supply of local news. Facebook sources this localized content by “supplementing the available local news with relevant articles from surrounding areas”. In addition to this, Facebook’s also expanding the Facebook Journalism Project Community Network grant project, which aims to fund local journalism, while it’s also testing its breaking news indicator with more local news publishers in the U.S.

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LinkedIn Adds New ‘Find an Expert’ Post Option to Connect with Relevant Freelancers

Back in July, LinkedIn rolled out its new services listings for profiles, which enable freelancers and SMBs to list the services that they provide on their LinkedIn profile, and be found for the same in search results. Now LinkedIn’s adding another element to this offering, with a new post option that enables users to fill in relevant fields in order to put out a call for help from experts. The new post type seeks to simplify the process of finding relevant freelancers and professionals, while also making your request for help stand out within LinkedIn feeds. Interested providers can click through for more specific info, helping (ideally) to filter your responses down to more relevant providers for each.  Initially, these tools were only available to a limited subset of users, but LinkedIn says that the new posting option is now available to all users globally, both on iOS and Android, while services listings on profiles are in the process of being expanded to more regions.

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Facebook’s Testing a New ‘Chat’ Post Type to Connect Users to Private Messenger Chats

Facebook is testing out a new Facebook post type which would funnel viewers through to a private chat group on Messenger. The new post type – spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong – would essentially enable users to promote a private Messenger chat group, and link their connections through to it. Given the overall rise in messaging use across all social apps, it makes sense for Facebook to be looking at ways to better incorporate connection to more private discussion. Depending on how its rolled out (if it’s rolled out), it could also provide new ways for brands to spark discussion around their products and offerings with their most dedicated fans. You could ask people for their opinions, or pose a question related to your industry, and start a discussion on key trends. That would be dependent on it becoming a post option for Pages, which we don’t know about as yet.

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Marketing

Google now gives more preference to original reporting in search

Over the past few months, Google has been rolling out algorithmic updates to its rankings algorithms to give more preferences to stories that were the original source. Original reporting will not only rank better in Google Search but soon will also rank better in Google News, including Google Discover. In addition to original reporting ranking better, the stories will stay at the top of the news cluster for a longer period of time, Richard Gingras, the Vice President of Google News told us. Google is now talking about this change because of two reasons. The first is that the company has recently updated its search quality raters guidelines and added specific items around original reporting. The second is Google is now happy with how the new algorithms are working around original reporting being prioritized in search. If you are a publisher and you produce news content, it might not just be enough to do “value add” type of reporting. You may need to work harder to be the original news source of the topic to get real traction and traffic from Google. At the same time, this has rolled out over the past few months and if you saw any significant traffic changes from Google, this may be one of many reasons why.

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Social Media

Facebook Adds New Tools for Public Figures, Including Multi-Contributor Stories and Product Tags

Facebook has this week announced a new set of updates for public figures – and they provide an interesting glimpse as to where we might see Facebook Stories, in particular, headed in the near future. First off, Facebook is adding a new option that will enable multiple public figures to contribute to the same Facebook Story – “giving fans a variety of perspectives around a specific topic or event”. The option is similar to Facebook’s Group Stories option which enables group members to contribute to a collaborative Story in the same way, though this is obviously more focused on events. Facebook’s also adding a new sticker for Facebook Stories which aims to make it easier for fans to engage with celebrities and brands via the option. Interestingly, Facebook notes that this option will be available to Pages, not just public figures, providing another consideration for brands looking to utilize Stories to increase engagement.

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Twitter Officially Launches Option to Drag to Re-Order Attached Tweet Images

After it was spotted in testing back in July, Twitter has now officially launched the capacity for users to rearrange their attached tweet images via a simple drag and drop process. Now, when you attach two or more images to your tweet, you’ll be able to drag and rearrange how they’ll look, saving you the minor headache of having to upload them in the order you’d prefer. I say ‘minor’, but it is annoying. And while it is a simple addition, sometimes it’s the simple ones that end up being the most useful, while the capacity to maintain more control over your tweet presentation is key for brands looking to maximize their performance.

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Marketing

Google Expands Outcome Based Buying and Automated Bidding to More Campaign Types

Google has announced that it’s bringing its outcome-based bidding option to more ad types, while also expanding automated ad bidding to all non-guaranteed deals. First off, on outcome-based bidding – up till now, Google has only enabled automated bidding on a CPM basis, meaning that campaigns where CPM is not your target outcome cannot utilize the option. In order to provide additional flexibility for more campaign types, Google is now adding outcome based buying to Display and Video 360 campaigns. The addition will provide more flexibility in your Google ad campaigns, and expand the capacity for brands to better reach their intended targets. Google is also making its automated bidding option available to all non-guaranteed deals. The capacity will enable more advertisers to utilize Google’s advanced machine learning to maximize their ad results, with automated tools now available for a broader set of Google ad types.

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Google to treat nofollow link attribute as a ‘hint’

Google has announced Tuesday that today the nofollow link attribute (i.e. rel=”nofollow“) will be seen as a “hint” rather than as a directive for ranking purposes. In addition, Google is adding two additional link attributes, in addition to the rel=”nofollow” to provide a bit more context about the content you’re linking to. Today Google will treat the nofollow attribute as a hint for ranking purposes. Meaning Google might count a link as credit, consider it as part of spam analysis or for other ranking purposes. On March 2, 2020, Google will use it also for crawling and indexing. That means will Google use it as a “hint” as to what should be indexed or crawled but it is better to use robots.txt or meta tags for that purpose anyway.  Google told us there should be no significant impact to the search results as a result of the change. If Google starts counting nofollowed links on large and respected sites that simply implemented a nofollow link policy as a blanket rule and now Google counts those links, you might see those links start counting for sites; if and when Google decides to change how it respects the nofollow attribute. The nofollow link attribute has been a staple of the SEO industry for almost 15 years and now it is changing for the first time, in a big way.

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Social Media

YouTube Launches New, Dedicated Fashion and Style Content Hub

With fashion and beauty content seeing significant increases in viewership across its platform, it makes sense for YouTube to give beauty and style videos their own dedicated focus, in order to better showcase what exactly it has on offer. This week, YouTube is rolling out YouTube.com/Fashion, “a single destination for style content on YouTube”. YouTube Fashion gathers together a range of content from popular platform creators, fashion professionals, publishers and the fashion houses themselves. YouTube’s hoping to harness this popularity, and drive even more views, by bringing all of these videos into one place, while it’ll also present new opportunities for advertisers and marketers in the beauty sector by giving them a more specific focus for promotions. The true value of such will, of course, depend on the popularity of the option, but if YouTube Fashion takes off, it may present significant potential for those looking to reach interested viewers.

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Facebook Dating Launches in the US, Along with New Dating Features

Earlier this week, we reported that its desktop refresh is now going live, and now, Facebook Dating is finally being launched in the US market, in addition to the current 19 regions where the option is already available. Facebook Dating is, as it sounds, a match-making tool within Facebook, enabling users to create separate Dating profiles in order to keep their regular profile information separate. Facebook can then use its vast data banks to help match you up with relevant Dating users – and given what Facebook knows about people and their habits, it actually makes a lot of sense, and could, theoretically, provide better matches than other dating apps. Facebook, with 2.4 billion users, has access to the largest database of personal insights ever created, and as research has shown, Facebook data can reveal almost everything about your personality and psychological leanings.

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Marketing

Google Makes Changes to GMB Listings With Distance-Based Service Areas

Google is going to automatically apply changes to Google My Business listings with distance-based service areas. The last remaining distance-based service areas are going to be removed. Going forward, service-area businesses currently based on a distance will be automatically converted to the closest named areas. Google is making this shift in order to accommodate businesses that provide service outside of a set distance from where they’re physically located. This change is also ideal for businesses that do not serve customers at their physical location. This change should not affect how listings appear in search results. Though it would be wise to review Google’s changes in order to ensure your listing still shows up in the area where you serve customers.

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Advertising

Microsoft opens responsive search ads beta to all advertisers

All advertisers can now start testing responsive search ads in their Microsoft Advertising accounts. With responsive search ads (RSAs), first introduced by Google last year, the ad systems automatically serve up a combination of headlines and descriptions provided by the advertiser.  Advertisers can input up to 15 headlines and four description lines in each ad via the web interface, Editor, the bulk API, or you can import existing RSAs from your Google Ads campaigns. The ads are served dynamically in combinations of up to three titles and two descriptions. With Google and now Microsoft enabling, and promoting RSAs, expect the machine-learning powered format to eventually become the standard. RSAs are the direction that text ads and ad testing will continue heading — with the ad systems dynamically determining creatives at the time of auction and adjusting based on historical performance.

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