Facebook Finally Extends GIFs Support To Brand Pages

What Happened
After years of restraint, Facebook finally caved and started supporting animated GIFs in regular user posts back in late May. Yet brand pages were shut out of GIF support. Until today, that is. The social network seemingly relaxed its no-GIFs-from-Pages policy, allowing brands like Wendy’s and Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat to post GIFs.

What Brands Can Do
As a fun, short-form visual communication, GIFs have long been an Internet favorite across social media. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a GIF is at least a short novel. Well-crafted GIFs are practically silent, autoplay videos on loop, which makes them a suitable form for digital ads. Plus, they provide a good alternative to the dying Flash ads, and enjoy universal support across nearly all platforms. If your brand is looking to grab some eyeballs without being too disruptive, GIF ads would be one great way to do so.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Video Ads Coming To Instagram

The image network with 200 million users has begun testing video ads on their platform. Like their image offerings, Instagram is being quite selective about the advertisers and creative, encouraging more lifestyle imagery opposed to traditional product shots and ads. The same will likely be the case for the 15 second video, so don’t expect to see repurposed video ads.  While Instagram has a highly engaged audience, one has to wonder how long this tailor-made approach will last. With programmatic on the rise, one wonders when Instagram will go self-service.

The Problem With Pinterest

Image-based platform Pinterest can drive a lot of brand interest as users share upwards of 250 million photos a day, most of which include wedding dresses, sweets, makeup and more wedding dresses. Brands can also gain a lot of insights into their audience and which images are most engaging. But there’s a catch. Pinterest is a blackbox for marketers without a public API. As a result, an entire cottage industry has surfaced with companies like Pinfluencer and Triple Lift which crawl the site to collect some of this data. We anticipate brand tools coming to the site, but until then, you’re best bet is giving these guys a call.