Instagram Draws Inspiration From Snapchat With New ‘Stories’

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Instagram is launching a new feature, but many are saying the new feature seems inspired by another popular social photo app – Snapchat. The new feature called Instagram Stories lets users and brands share a collection of moments that disappear after 24 hours.

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If that sounds familiar, it is because the feature is very similar to Snapchat Stories. Not only does it allow users to easily package their best moments of a day into one easy-to-view collection, but Instagram Stories also includes the ability to draw on photos or videos to make them even more exciting.

“With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about over-posting,” an Instagram rep told AdWeek.

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The new feature is already available on iOS and Android mobile operating systems. It can be found at the top of Instagram feeds, where you can either share your own stories or tap icons to look at what others have shared in the past day.

Unlike most Instagram videos, clips included in stories are limited to 10 seconds. There are also no likes or comments on stories.

For now Instagram isn’t saying whether marketers will be able to take advantage of stories by promoting them like normal posts, however, businesses can still use the feature to engage with the community and build recognition for their brand and products.

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Facebook Live Is Going Big With 4 New Features

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Facebook Live is going to become even bigger in the coming weeks. Facebook has been heavily pushing their live video streaming service and now they have announced several new features that will expand how users can livestream their lives.

Some of the new features are already available and the rest will be rolling out in the next few weeks. Let’s go through what you can expect to see from Facebook Live in the near future:

Longer Streams

Facebook Live users have been limited to 90-minute streams in most circumstances since the launch of the service, but Facebook is extending that limit substantially. Now, broadcasters are able to stream continuously for up to four hours when using the Facebook app or the Live API. If you desire, you can also stream continuously indefinitely, but your followers won’t receive notifications and there is no archive of your stream. You can’t share it with followers later or rewind.

Hide Reactions & Comments

Comments and live reactions can sometimes turn into a mess when you have a large enough audience. It can be hard to weed out spammers and trolls on the fly, but Facebook is making it easier to keep things under control by allowing you to hide reactions and comments by enabling a video-only mode. All broadcasters have to do is swipe right on their screen. You can always swipe left to re-enable them.

Full-Screen

Viewers don’t have to watch your streams from the small box in their feed anymore. Finally, you can watch live broadcasts full-screen from any iOS device. Unfortunately, Android users will have to wait until this summer to be able to view streams full-screen.

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Geogating

Want to make your broadcast an exclusive for a specific demographic? Now, you can limit your audience to specific users based on criteria like location, age, and gender. Facebook calls the feature “geogating”, but it basically allows you to set limits on who can see your streams. Currently, the limits are fairly broad, but they may become more refined in the future.

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Google Lets Users Browse Your Inventory From The Search Results

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Google is rolling out a new update to its Local Inventory Ads that let allows searchers to browse in-stock products when they search for a business. That means if a users searchers for your business, they could browse your inventory straight from Google.

So far, the new features are limited to a small number of retailers, such as Macy’s and Ikea. However, it is expected to continue spreading to businesses of all sizes in the coming months.

The update is not a surprise, as Google announced the expanded features utilizing their its Knowledge Graph and Google Maps back in May. However, it was first spotted this week by Nicolai Helling who captured a few screenshots of what it looks like out in the wild.

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With the new features, you’ll see a new line in the Knowledge Panel underneath your NAP (name, address, phone number) information which says: “Search items at this store”. You can also find this in Google Maps underneath the store’s hours.

If a user clicks on this, they’ll be taken to a page hosted by Google where you can refine exactly what item you are looking for. If they select a specific product, they will then be directed to a dedicated page product information as well as information about where to purchase the product online or in store.

To use the feature as it rolls out, you will need to be signed up for Google’s Local Inventory Ads program and be running ads with your products and inventory information.

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Google Tests Ad Extension To Directly Send Texts To Advertisers

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As more people are searching for businesses from a variety of devices like smartphones and tablets, it is important that businesses provide a diverse number of ways to get in touch. Now Google is testing a new AdWords extension that will allow users to contact advertisers in an entirely new way.

In the past, Google has used ad extensions to make it easy for searchers to call businesses they were interested in. With the latest ad format, you can now text or SMS advertisers directly from their ad.

Here is an example of how the ad format looks:

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By clicking the text icon, you will be taken to your default messaging app, where a prefilled text message is started with the advertiser’s information. For example, if you click the icon in the results above, the pre-filled text message reads, “[Zipwip] I’m interested to learn more about Zipwhip.”

Judging by other results like the one below, the text ad extension can be combined with ad call buttons to provide a variety of ways to contact your business.

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Barry Schwarz was the first to report this new ad format. When he reached out to Google for more information, he was provided with this statement:

We’re always experimenting with new ways to connect our advertisers to customers but don’t have further details to share at this time.

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Apple Announces Paid Ads In App Search Results

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Since its launch in 2010, Apple’s ad service known as iAd has seemed largely like an afterthought. In fact, the company had announced earlier this year that iAd’s services were being discontinued. This all makes the iPhone maker’s latest announcement a bit of a surprise.

Ahead of this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced it is revamping its App Store. One major part of this reworking is the introduction of paid search ads for apps in the company’s app store.

Apple is starting small by adding a single paid ad to the top of search results within the App Store for users in the US. However, there already appears to be pushback from users and developers who say they would prefer improvements to the organic search results before including paid ads.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller, explained that the company believes paid search ads will allow developers to focus their marketing budgets specifically in places where people are most likely to download their apps.

“There are hundreds of millions of searches on the App Store every week, and 65pc of app downloads are driven by search,” he said. “It’s a very valuable tool for users and developers. For developers, this will be very efficient marketing.”

The ads will be available in a self-serve auction-based platform similar to Google’s AdWords with no initial minimum spends.

To prepare for the revamp of the app store, Apple is adding ad features like its Search Match feature, which is comparable to Google AdWords Universal App Campaigns. The feature allows advertisers who aren’t familiar with the platform or are limited on time to create an ad campaign in as few steps as possible.

Apple Search Ads will not officially launch until the fall, but the company is allowing developers and marketers to get familiar with the platform through an opt-in beta from Apple’s developer portal.

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Instagram Rolls Out Its Algorithmic Timeline Next Month

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The algorithmic timeline is starting to take over.

For the longest time, the algorithmic timeline was a defining characteristic of Facebook, while sites like Twitter and Instagram used chronologic timelines to keep people up to date as things happened in real time. However, Twitter made the controversial decision to implement an algorithmic timeline earlier this year and Instagram has officially announced they will be making the change next month.

Of course, this isn’t a total surprise. The Facebook-owned platform was bound to implement the algorithmic timeline sooner or later. In March, Instagram started testing an algorithmic which sorts user’s feed based on their interests and activity instead of sorting feeds by the most recent posts.

The announcement of the algorithm tests prompted a collective panic attack among many who bemoaned the loss of one of Instagram’s defining features and worried their posts would be seen by fewer people. However, Instagram says switching to an algorithmic timeline will actually increase exposure for posts, especially from influencers and brands.

According to the photo-and-video social platform, people miss 70% of the posts from people they follow when they use a chronologic timeline. The company says their tests showed the new timeline increases exposure and engagement, which is a win-win for users and brands.

“We found that people are liking photos more, commenting more and generally engaging with the community in a more active way,” Instagram wrote in a company blog post announcing the official rollout.

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Bing’s Latest Statistics Show Voice Search Is The Future

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As smartphone internet use has exploded in the past few years, mobile-friendly pages and search engine optimization have become the standard, but new statistics from Bing suggests the future of SEO may be all about voice search.

During the Search Insider Summit last week, Bing representatives told the crowd that a quarter of all searches performed on Bing are voice searches and the trend looks keep increasing for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, as users get more accustomed to voice search, it is changing how they are performing searches entirely. Voice searches are notably longer, tending to fall between six and 10 words, compared to just one to three words for text searches.

Part of this notable rise of voice search on Bing is likely because the company powers three of the leading voice assistants in the world. Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa are all reliant on Bing to answer voice search queries. However, that shouldn’t discount these findings entirely.

While Google hasn’t released any statistics on voice searches performed on their platform, the company has taken clear steps to invest in voice search for future growth – such as using Google’s AI to recognize conversational speech in voice searches by having it read romance novels.

Clearly, the two largest search engines recognize that voice search will only become more prominent in the future. Likewise, marketers, SEOs, and businesses should start preparing now by investing in long-tail keywords and voice search optimization.

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Instant Articles Now Available For All Facebook Publishers

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Facebook is bringing its Instant Articles to all developers and content producers. The social media platform has been slowly testing its feature, which allows publishers to share content on Facebook mobile that is fast-loading and easy to read.

During Facebook’s F8 conference, the company announced that publishers of any size or kind can now publish via Instant Articles while also sharing some statistics showing how Instant Articles have been performing so far.

According to Facebook’s data, Instant Articles leads to

  • 20% more clicks on links to content
  • 70% reduced likelihood of abandoning content once clicking on it.
  • 30% more shares compared to the average mobile web articles.

Instant Articles are Facebook’s response to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages and other fast-loading content platforms that streamline pages to ensure they load almost instantaneously on mobile devices. Facebook’s Instant Articles are unique though, because they also allow publishers to control ad placements within their content.

Publishers can even publish native ads as Instant Articles, which are distinguished from traditional content through unique styling options and the ability to add your company’s logo.

“Facebook’s goal is to connect people to the stories, posts, videos or photos that matter most to them,” the company says. “Opening up Instant Articles will allow any publisher to tell great stories, that load quickly, to people all over the world. With Instant Articles, they can do this while retaining control over the experience, their ads and their data.”

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Google Amps Up The Impact of Mobile-Friendly Search Signals

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This week, Google announced it will be boosting “the effect of the ranking signals” for its mobile-friendly ranking algorithm. While this means mobile-friendly sites will be prioritized even further in search results “beginning in May,” don’t expect the second coming of “Mobilegeddon.”

As Google said, if your site is already mobile-friendly, you have no need to fear, because “you will not be impacted by this update.”

The update is going to roll out gradually, meaning its impact will be even less noticeable.  Since the mobile-friendly algorithm runs on a page-by-page basis, it could take some time for Google to re-index all affected pages.

Between the slow rollout and the limited expected impact, the update might not seem like much to get excited about. But, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it means you have even more motivation to make the change before May. Even if your audience isn’t particularly likely to convert on mobile, you could be missing out on leads and traffic that is going to your competitors instead.

You can use the Google mobile-friendly tool to make sure your site passes the bar and won’t be impacted by the coming update.

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Try Out Apps Before You Download With AdWords Search Trial Run Ads

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As promised, Google is launching ads in Android search results which will allow users to test out games before deciding whether to download them. Google announced the feature was coming in the next few weeks during its Developer Day at Game Developer Conference in San Francisco on Monday.

With the launch of AdWords Search Trial Run Ads, app advertisers can now create ads with a “Try now” button as well as a download button. If Android users choose to try out the app, they will be able to preview the app for 10 minutes before deciding if they want to download it from the Google Play Store.

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Google has been testing out the feature since December, however, those app previews were limited to just 60 seconds. The longer trial period should allow test-drivers to get a better feel for the app and make a more informed decision.

The new feature is aimed at helping users choose to download only apps that will actually be used. According to Google, just one in four apps are ever used after being downloaded. Hopefully, the test-drive feature will increase the chances a user will stay engaged with the app beyond the time of install.

During the conference, Google also announced that Portrait Video Ads in mobile apps will be coming shortly. The company says 80 percent of video ad views in mobile apps on the Google Display Network are viewed vertically, however, the majority of ads are created to be viewed in landscape orientation. Early tests suggest the new ad orientation significantly improves both click-through and conversion rates. This leads to lower cost per install and more installs overall from Portrait Video Ads.

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