Category: General Content

Instagram Adds Ephemeral Live Video And Messages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its relentless chase after the Snapchat users by adding live videos and disappearing messages to Instagram. Starting today, users can start live broadcasting within Instagram Stories. Unlike other popular live-streaming platforms such as Facebook Live and Periscope, which allow users to save live videos for later viewing, the live videos on Instagram will become unavailable as soon as the broadcast ends. Besides live video, Instagram is also adding ephemeral messages to its Direct Messages, which appear in a dedicated horizontal message bar atop the permanent message threads.

This major update comes on the heels of Facebook’s several big moves to copy Snapchat features in the past month, including testing Snapchat-like features in its main app, buying a facial recognition startup that can help it develop smart selfie lenses, and even launching a Snapchat clone in emerging markets. It is safe to say that the social network giant is feeling the heat of the fast-growing messaging app.

What Brands Should Do
Nevertheless, Instagram’s 300 million daily monthly active users still double Snapchat’s user base at the moment. For brands, the addition of live video and ephemeral messages to Instagram opens the door for new types of customer interactions on one of the most popular social platforms. As Facebook continues to court young Millennial audience with Snapchat-inspired features, brands should consider incorporating these new features into their existing social strategies and choose the live-streaming platform that best suits their campaign objectives.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Ebay Tests Sponsored Replays And Skips On Pandora For Holiday Campaign

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Brands can now sponsor replays and skips on Pandora, features that its free-tier users only have limited access to, to get their brand messages across. Ebay is among the first brands to test out this new native ad product for its two-week-long holiday campaign. Pandora first started testing brand-sponsored replays and skips back in September, and is now allowing brands to sponsor them based on music genre, such as holiday music, workout music, or latino music, so as to more effectively reach their target audiences.

What Brands Should Do
By providing users with functional value, this ad product from Pandora should help brands grab listeners’ attention and get their brand messages across. For brands seeking more effective ways to reach today’s ad-avoidant consumers, this type of native advertising should be worth a try.

For more information on how brands can leverage branded content and sponsorships to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

BP Creates Interactive Gas Pumps That Chat With You While Filling Your Tank

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
BP has started testing a so-called “personality pump” at select gas stations in New York City and Chicago that will talk with customers. Created in partnership with Pandora and The Onion, these interactive gas pumps can chat with customers, play music for them, and tell jokes to keep customers entertained as it fills up their tanks. Customers can also play music trivia games and record shareable video “e-cards” while they wait. Once they are done, they can opt to text themselves a message with a “special return offer.”

What Brands Should Do
This innovative take on conversational interfaces broadens the scope in which brands typically think of engaging customers via conversations. By incorporating the chat function into gas pumps, BP is able to transform a physical utility product into a digitally enhanced touch point to capture audience attention and leverage that into possible future engagements.

The rise of conversational commerce points to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction. Therefore, brands should take note and develop a strategy for conversational commerce. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Lead image courtesy of BP’s press release

Lowe’s To Host Facebook Live Event To Promote Black Friday Deals

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Lowe’s is set to reveal eleven Black Friday deals during an upcoming Facebook Live event on Saturday. The home improvement retailer has been running video ads on the social platform for the last two weeks to push the 20-minute livestream event named “Mystery Box Bonanza.” This is not the first time Lowe’s has run a social video campaign on Facebook as the brand tested Facebook 360-degree video in July to teach viewers DIY home improvement skills and drive sales.

What Brands Should Do
This campaign marks the latest example of brands using live video to promote their products and drive sales. Brands such as Birchbox, Popeyes, McDonald’s, and GE have experimented with Facebook Live to reach customers while brands like Carl’s Jr, Coca-Cola, and Geico have sponsored livestreams on eSports sites. All these examples listed showcase the versatility of marketing opportunities that live streaming offers, which brands should leverage to connect with their audiences in innovative, exciting ways.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Testing Multi-Click Shopping Ads In News Feed

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Facebook has reportedly started testing a new ad product in News Feed that let retailers feature multiple products in a multi-click format. Retailers including the Lowe’s and Michael Kors are already testing the new ads, which features a primary image or video supported by a row of product images underneath. A click on this type of ad opens an in-app page showcasing additional products whereas a second click redirects shoppers to the retailer’s website.

Facebook continues to diversify its News Feed ad products as the holiday season draws near. This new shopping ad comes just a few weeks after Facebook-owned Instagram debuted shoppable posts that allow brands to include product information and direct links in their photos. Last week, the social network introduced News Feed ads that can direct users to start a conversation with a Messenger chatbot.

What Retailers Should Do
With these direct-response ad products newly available on Facebook and Instagram, retailers will have more options to choose from as they leverage these more sophisticated interactive formats to drive sales or conversations.  With worldwide mobile internet usage officially surpassing time spent on desktop, retailers wishing to reach the holiday shoppers need to take advantage of the in-app shopping ads available to effectively engage with them on mobile.

 

Source: AdWeek

Hyundai Extends Alexa Integration To Its Connected Car App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Back in August, Hyundai became the first mainstream auto brand to integrate with Amazon’s digital assistant service with an Alexa skill for its Genesis models. Now, the South Korean automaker is extending the Alexa integration to all Hyundai models compatible with its Blue Link connected car app. With this expansion, Hyundai owners can now ask Alexa to carry out most of the remote control functions that Blue Link app serves, such as starting/stopping the car, setting in-car AC temperatures, and locking/unlocking the doors.

In related news, Hyundai is also teaming up with a car-sharing startup WaiveCar for an ad-supported car sharing pilot program in L.A. that allows interested consumers to drive the IONIQ, Hyundai’s first electric vehicle, for free.

What Brands Should Do
With this Alexa integration, Hyundai has found a way to plug their connected cars into the smart home space and open up new possibilities for them to connect with customers at home. As automakers experiment with smart home device connectivity to expand the reach of their services, other brands should take note and start exploring this space to reach customers at home as well.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Engadget & TechCrunch

Pinterest Debuts Autoplay Video Ads In Explore Tab

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest is ramping up video ads as it starts testing autoplay video in the Explore section on its website and mobile apps. When one autoplay video ad plays to completion, Pinterest’s video player will automatically loop into other videos from that brand. The addition comes just a few months after the social scrapbooking site introduced click-to-play video ads on mobile. Brands such as American Express, Home Depot, Macy’s, and Sony Pictures are among the first to try out Pinterest’s autoplay video ads.

What Brands Should Do
Last month, Pinterest announced that it has reached 150 million monthly active users, up 50% from last year thanks partly to a substantial increase in male signups. While its user base still lags behind its rival social platforms, its unique visual aesthetic has proven popular with certain consumer segments. While Pinterest may seem a bit late to the auto-play video party, the way it incorporates the continuous video playback into the mobile user experience should provide some add-on value for brand marketers looking to catch the eyes of Pinterest users.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Snapchat Teams Up With Foursquare For Better Targeted Geofilters

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat is set to improve its location-based ad products by striking a data deal with local discovery and recommendation service Foursquare. This deal will provide brand marketers with access to Foursquare’s location data, allowing them to serve branded Geofilters in a more targeted manner. According to Snapchat, the deal will open “thousands” of locations and categories, such as parks or museums, for brands to buy ads against.

In related news, Bloomberg reports that Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has confidentially filed for its IPO after months of speculations. The company is reportedly seeking seeking to raise as much as $4 billion at a valuation of between $25 billion and $35 billion, making it the largest U.S. technology IPO since Facebook’s debut in 2012 with a value of $81.2 billion.

What Brands Should Do
With this partnership, Snapchat has shown once again it is keen to partner with ad tech companies in order to meet brand marketers’ increasing demand more data and measurement for digital campaigns. With improved location data, Snapchat advertisers can now better tailor their campaigns in more granular way to reach their targeted audience. For example, a retailer may zero in on a specific store location inside a mall with an on-premise exclusive Geofilter to encourage store visits.

As Snapchat continues to improve its ad products to match its rapid growth, brands need to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users via not only standard video ads, but also more unconventional ad units such as custom Geofilters and branded selfie lenses.

 

Source: AdWeek & Bloomberg

Amex and JBL Harman Sign On As Sponsors For Twitter’s Original Live Shows

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter has found two brand sponsors for its upcoming original live shows. Brand messages from American Express and JBL Harman will appear in and around The Starters and The Warmup, which are both athletic-minded shows produced by Twitter partner Turner Sports in conjunction with the NBA. The shows were first announced in July and will be broadcasted weekly via their designated Twitter pages as well as the NBA’s Twitter page.

What Brands Should Do
This announcement underscores Twitter’s aim to monetize its live video content and attracting sports fans who are also cord-cutters. As more and more consumers choose time-shifted viewing over linear TV, brands should follow the viewers and work with content creators to explore new TV ad formats on connected TV devices and engage with the audience in their living rooms.

According to a new report from eMarketer (paywall), US connected TV users is projected to reach 202.1 million in 2020, up from 181.8 million this year. To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT platforms with ads and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Google AMP Adds Support For Native Video Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google is expanding Accelerated Mobile Pages, its open-source effort to speed up the mobile web, to support native video ads. This enables publishers to serve their premium video ads in a speedy manner on mobile through Google’s ad platform DoubleClick. Google recently reported quick growth of its video ads business, with monthly video ad impressions doubling across platforms since January.

Why Brands Should Care
This addition marks the latest development in Google’s continuous efforts to make nice with publishers by offering monetization options in AMP. By extending the AMP ads to include native video ads, Google is giving advertisers a valuable tool to deliver a faster, leaner mobile ad experience to consumers without losing an important part of their ad revenue. With more and more people consuming content on their smartphones, marketers need to be conscious of the choices they have when it comes to mobile ads.

 

Source: Digiday