Happy's marketing news - 20.10.17
It’s been a busy week in the marketing world, here’s what has caught our eye!
Advertising spend on Snapchat soared 73 per cent in the third quarter of the year, driven by features that allow companies to track where customers shop so that they can target their ads more effectively. Companies also spent 55 per cent more on Instagram over the three months, according to new data. Location information from Snapchat features, including Placed and Snap Map, gives companies detailed information on where customers are, and when they enter a shop. This has allowed firms to more accurately measure how effective each ad is, encouraging them to spend more, according to media technology company 4C Insights, which compiled the figures.
Facebook is testing self-destructing messages as a way to encourage users to post more status updates. In a bid to win over users that have moved to more transient platforms such as Snapchat and Twitter, Facebook could add an option for updates that disappear. Facebook has been testing the “temporary profile status” option for the past week, according to Buzzfeed. The feature, which has been described as retro, lets users share 101 character updates that are made from text only. Users can opt to make the temporary statuses permanent. If the social network makes the feature available to all users it could fill news feeds with text updates, making it look more like Twitter or the early days of Facebook.
Twitter this week publicly posted its schedule for instituting fixes and changes to longstanding abuse and harassment issues that have plagued the social network for years. The calendar, first disclosed earlier this week in an internal Twitter email obtained by Wired, details nearly two dozen changes stretching from October 27th to January 10th. They focus on a broad range of topics, from non-consensual nudity to hateful imagery and violent rhetoric to more transparency around account suspensions.
It looks like Facebook is considering barging in on LinkedIn’s turf. Facebook is currently trialling a CV feature, according to screenshots posted on social media — a move that would put it in direct competition with professional social network LinkedIn. The feature lets users list their professional experience and education, as well as their contact details, an image, and other information — just like Microsoft-owned LinkedIn does. It’s not clear how many people currently have access to the resume feature, or what Facebook’s ultimate intentions are here. The social network often tests features on a small number of users before rolling them out more widely.
Earlier this month, Instagram rolled out an interactive sticker within Stories that provides users with the opportunity to poll their audience. Though fashion and beauty brands have been slow to adopt the new feature, influencers have been quick to experiment with it to better engage with their audiences. Sixty-six percent of respondents to an Instagram poll conducted by influencer network BlogLovin’ — which has more than 84,000 followers, a large majority of which are influencers themselves — stated they had already tried polling. Eighty-seven percent indicated that if they hadn’t yet used it, they intended to in the future. The sticker functions by prompting a user to ask a question of their choosing before defining response parameters, and followers can mark their selection at any time over the course of the 24 hours that the Instagram Story is accessible. Account holders can track responses in real time and view the participant breakdown, allowing the to gather insights quickly.
