Tag: social media

Instagram To Start Showing Video Views

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram is starting to display video views as it revs up for more video ads. Starting Thursday, select accounts on the popular photo-sharing network now show how many times their videos has been viewed at where the “likes” used to be (users can still click through to see the like counts), with global rollout planned for the following weeks. This marks the latest change the Facebook-owned platform has been making to make it more brand-friendly. Last week, it extended the length of video ads from 30 seconds up to one minute.

Instagram view count

What Brands Need To Do
Although this may seem like a fairly small tweak, displaying view counts can be a kind of morale booster for brands publishing videos on Instagram – video boasts a huge number of views may encourage more people to give it a look. Moreover, this change can help the popular video creators stand out, making it easier for brands to discover and evaluate the social influencers to work with via content partnerships or product placements.

One thing that brands need to keep in mind when it comes to video ads on Instagram is that it follows Facebook’s viewability criteria that counts three seconds of playback as a view. To learn more about the impact of viewing time on ad effectiveness, be sure to check out our new Viewability study here.

 

Source: AdWeek

Image courtesy of Instagram Blog

Twitter Introduces Algorithm-Powered Timeline

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Despite CEO Jack Dorsey’s denouncement of a new Twitter timeline earlier this week, Twitter has officially added the “top tweets” at the top of users’ feeds, using an algorithm based on user interest and popularity of tweets (based on retweets and favorites) to curate the tweets that users will see before the traditional reverse-chronological feed. Launching on the heels of Twitter’s debut of “First View” video ad product yesterday, the new feature is a natural extension of the “While You Were Away” feature that Twitter launched last year, which also surfaces some of the best tweets that users may have missed.

What Brands Need To Do
Although the new timeline doesn’t entails any immediate, major changes for marketers, it could help extend the organic reach of brands’ tweets. Given that brands with established Twitter presence tend to have large followings and receive a lot of retweets and like for their posts, their unpaid tweets could be more likely to appear in the top tweets feed. As the algorithm only ranks tweets based on organic engagement, any retweets or likes that a promoted tweet receives will not factor into that ranking. This means brands will have to up their game in creating engaging content in order to reach a bigger audience.

 

Source: AdAge

Twitter Introduces New Ad Product To Help Brands Stay On Top (Of Timelines)

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Earlier today, Twitter debuted a new video ad unit called First View, which allows brand to claim the top spot in Twitter’s ad network for 24 hours. Those who use First View will have their branded video placed in the front of the ad queue, ensuring that their video will be the first ad that users see when they open twitter.

Last week, reports suggest that Twitter is working on an algorithm-based news feed to replace the chronologically-ordered one, but CEO Jack Dorsey quickly dispelled the idea, saying that Twitter has no immediate plan to reorder the timeline. However, with the launch of First View, it seems that Twitter does want to tweak its ad placement a bit to give the top spot to brands willing to spend a little more.

What Brands Need To Do
Following its million-dollar custom emojis, Twitter serves up another premium ad product in First View, as the company continues to experiments with new ways to surge up ad revenues. For brand advertisers, First View offers them a coveted position at the top of the news feed, amplifying the reach of their branded videos. This new ad product should be especially helpful for brands launching time-sensitive campaigns, such as video ads promoting upcoming events and movie premieres.

 

Source: AdWeek

Best Of The Lab 2015: Social Commerce Is Heating Up

Posted on by Lab Team

Welcome to the Lab’s year-end review, looking back at some of our best and most popular posts from 2015.

One of the key trends from this year was the surge of social commerce, i.e. ecommerce on social media channels. All big social channels came out with some variations of “buy buttons” and made a play for ecommerce dollars. Besides, brands have also been experimenting with new ways to engage with consumers on social channels, either through custom emojis or messaging apps. Is your brand ready to sell on social channels?

On Trend: Social Commerce Heats Up Again With “Buy Buttons”

ABC Uses Custom Hashtag-Emoji Combo To Unlock Previews On Twitter

Chinese Jewelry Retailer Deploys In-Store Beacons Via WeChat

 

Facebook And Instagram Wrap Up Holiday Shoppers For Advertisers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
As Black Friday draws near, Facebook and Instagram are ramping up their ad products for the upcoming holiday shopping season. In fact, the two social networks will offer advertisers and brands the option to target holiday shoppers, based on their posts and interactions with others containing holiday-related keywords. The new segment is available within Facebook self-service ad dashboards in the “Behaviors” section under the “Seasonal and Events” category. Macy’s is one of the brands that are already utilizing this new targeting option, running a holiday campaign using Instagram’s new multi-video ad format called Marquee.

What Brands Need To Do
Even though Black Friday is becoming less and less relevant due to the impact of ecommerce, holiday shopping as a whoel will still count as a big portion of retailers’ annual sales. Therefore, for brands that are interested in making a big push for holiday shoppers, this new targeting tool from Facebook may prove useful.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Google+ Revamped To Focus On Brand-Friendly Features

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
For a while, Google’s social platform Google+ looked like it was heading towards the sunset, as Google pulled out its key features like Hangouts and Photos and promoted them into separate services. But with an overhauled site that debuted on Tuesday, it seems like the Alphabet company is not giving up on Google+ just yet. The redesigned site runs on Material Design, which helps to boost its performance on mobile devices.

More importantly, the new Google+ puts two features, Communities and Collections, front and center. Communities, first introduced to Google+ about 3 years ago, is functionally equivalent to Facebook Groups, allowing users to come together and form groups based around a specific interest, organization, or cause. Collections, on the other hand, was added this May to give users a way to build Pinterest-like curations around certain topics and share them with others.

What Brands Need To Do
Both Communities and Collections are very brand-friendly features, allowing businesses and brands to leverage their content to reach Google+ users with specific interests. For instance, a restaurant can post pictures of their dishes in the foodie community, or a travel brand can start a Collection called “Coolest Places To Visit.” The redesign puts an emphasis on giving users designated spaces to share content and browse curations around their specific interests, an emphasis that brands can utilize for targeted content marketing.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image is a promotional image from Google’s Official Blog

How Izze Hacked Instagram To Create A Gamified Experience

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Beverage brand Izze has found an interesting new way to market on Instagram. Working with Omnicom’s The Integer Group, the brand built a choose-your-own-adventure type experience on Instagram. Users tap through multiple themed accounts, each posing a question with six clickable answers in the photos that are linked to corresponding accounts using Instagram’s tagging feature. Users will eventually arrive at one of three destination accounts based on the answers they choose. Each of the endpoints represents a special holiday recipe and a link in each account bio will redirect users to a web page with links to Amazon and Pinterest, where they can buy Izze products and kitchen goods, and find the corresponding recipes.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram has long been a favorite social channel among marketers and brands for its visual-heavy, tailored-for-mobile aesthetic. But its restriction on hyperlinks – no links in captions or comments, only one allowed for each account, save for sponsored posts with call-to-action buttons – has left some marketers frustrated, inspiring them to come up with hacks such as this new Izze campaign and a similar one launched in July for Adult Swim’s animated series Rick and Morty. For brands seeking new ways to engage their audience and move them down the sales funnel, this Izze campaign provides a great example in doing so by building a fun and interactive experience on Instagram.  

 

Source: AdWeek

Twitter Testing Multiple Emojis For Nuanced Responses

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter users may soon be able to respond to tweets with more than just “hearts,” which replaced its star-shaped “favorites” just two weeks ago. The social network is reportedly testing a new reaction feature that contains dozens of emojis for users to express their reactions in a more nuanced way. In early October, Facebook introduced a similar emoji “Reaction” feature allow users to react to posts beyond a simple “Like,” which is often inappropriate for posts expressing sadness or other negative emotions. The same reasoning applies to Twitter as well, which at the moment offers no details on the roll-out of this new feature.

What Brands Need To Do
If this feature does become available to the public, brands on Twitter can expect more quick responses of emojis replacing comments expressing similar reactions. This expansion of reactions can provide brands with a valuable tool to gauge customer feedback and measure their sentiment in a more granular way, enabling brands to adjust their communications strategy accordingly.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image from @_Ninji on Twitter

 

Instagram Beefs Up Its Ads With 41 New Tech Partners

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a bid to improve its ad products, Instagram announced new partnerships with 41 new ad and marketing tech vendors, hoping to leverage their diverse offerings to complement its existing ad tools. For instance, the list of new partners includes popular mobile ad networks such as Nanigans, Adaptly, and SocialCode, which can help boost spending from advertisers that are used to planning and measuring campaigns through these platforms. Meanwhile, vendors that provide content management solutions, such as Tongal and Percolate, can help brands on Instagram ramp up their content marketing capabilities.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram already launched its ad API this summer for ad tech firms to easily plug into its ad products, and this new partnership program will no doubt further improve its ad products and encourage more ad spending. Moreover, some tech vendors can provide new targeting options, such as a House of Blues campaign that targeted people with similar musical tastes using CitizenNet’s ad tools. If your brand is advertising or plan to advertise on Instagram, it would be smart to tap into the proprietary tools by those third-party tech vendors to figure out the most efficient ways to spend your ad dollars.

 

Source: AdWeek

Why Sprite Is Putting Snapchat’s “Snapcodes” On Its Cans

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Sprite is experimenting with an interesting way to market on Snapchat in Brazil, with the help of IPG Mediabrands agency Cubocc. Instead of going the traditional route of advertising on Snapchat’s ad-supported Discover channels, the soda brand opts to put Snapcodes, the QR-code that Snapchat generates for its users to help them grow followers, on Sprite cans, in hopes of getting the attention of Snapchat users.

To kick off the campaign, Sprite handpicked 15 local Snapchat influencers to create Sprite-themed “Snaps” and have their Snapcodes printed on cans. The Coca-Cola-owned brand is encouraging consumers to submit their Snapcodes via a microsite for the chance to be featured on limited edition cans of Sprite. Since its launch, the featured influencers’ snaps have amassed over 1 million views.

What Brands Need To Do
While Snapchat is still looking to ramp up the ad revenues on its Discover channels, Sprite’s approach here presents a new way to leverage Snapchat’s popularity among the coveted Millennial and Gen Z demographics to increase brand awareness. By incentivizing Snapchat influencers with the promise of reaching more followers, Sprite is essentially getting those influencers to do native content marketing for free. Other brands with similar marketing efforts can learn a thing or two from Sprite’s experimental approach to Snapchat and the way it ties the digital components of its campaign to its physical product.

 

Source: AdWeek

Header image courtesy of Sprite’s promotional video on YouTube