Takeover Reddit With New ‘Trending Takeover’ Ads

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Reddit is launching a new ad type which allows brands to “takeover” the discussion site’s trending section.

The new “Trending Takeover” ads let companies run prominent ads on both the desktop and mobile feeds of the Trending Today area for 24 hours. The ads will be slotted in the second position of one of the site’s most popular areas and will be identified with a simple “promoted” text in bold letters.

 

When clicked on, the ads take users to a landing page featuring the latest conversations, posts, and communities related to keywords specifically selected by you.

Due to the high-profile and limited nature of the ads, Trending Takeover promotions are sold on a reservation basis by contacting Reddit Advertising.

The ads signal the latest push by the platform to be more friendly to brands and advertisers, joining several other recent ad formats. As Vice President of Ads Product and Engineering, Shariq Rizvi said:

“With millions of searches taking place every day and over one-third of users coming to Reddit’s Popular feed daily, brands can now be part of where cultural trends are born online — Reddit. For Reddit, a large focus for 2020 is about maximizing new and premium opportunities for brands to authentically engage with Reddit users.”

Still, brands will need to pay close attention to the site’s communities and only highlight the most engaging content to reach the typically ad-averse audience.

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Facebook Launches Creator Studio App To Manage Content On The Go

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Facebook is launching a mobile app version of its Creator Studio which helps users monitor and manage their page and content on the go.

While the iOS and Android apps will allow you to keep better in touch with your content while out of the office, the mobile version is still intended to be a companion to the more comprehensive desktop version.

As the company says in its announcement:

“The app is an evolution of and mobile complement to Creator Studio, the desktop hub dedicated to helping creators and publishers manage their content, track performance, and connect meaningfully with their audiences on Facebook. The new experience offers the same actionable insights and meaningful engagement metrics, all from the ease of a mobile device.”

Although the Creator Studio app does not provide the full suite of features available in the desktop version, it does include some of the most popular and informative tools for page managers, such as:

Facebook Creator Studio Insights

  • Rich Insights: Data and engagement metrics about how content is performing, like “1 Minute Views” and “Avg. Minutes Viewed”

Facebook Creator Studio Content Management

  • Post-Uploading Edits and Fixes: Ability to edit video titles and descriptions, delete and expire posts, publish drafted posts and reschedule scheduled posts, enabling easy content adjustments

Facebook Creator Studio Messaging

  • Connect with Audiences: Reach fans and followers in real-time, from anywhere with the ability to read and respond to Facebook messages and comments using Inbox directly in the app

Facebook Creator Studio Manage Multiple Pages

  • Multi-Account Support: Manage multiple Pages on Facebook and toggle between them from the same app in the same session–no need to log out of one to log into another to access multiple Pages
  • Notifications: Immediate in-app notifications for key milestones

The most obvious omission is the ability to upload content or create new posts. At the moment, the Creator Studio app only allows you to manage or edit content that has already been posted or scheduled.

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B2B Decision-Makers Consume 13 Pieces of Content Before Purchasing

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New analysis from market research firm FocusVision shows that the average B2B buyer consumes 13 pieces of content before making a purchase or signing a contract.

That finding and more comes from a large survey of executives at companies with at least 500 employees and $50 million in annual revenue. Additionally the participating companies had purchased a marketing technology solution within the past year.

What Content Do B2B Buyers Consume?

Of the 13 pieces of content that B2B purchasers explore, the majority (8) tend to be marketing pieces delivered directly from the company, while the other five consisted of third-party content.

The content also takes a wide range of shapes, including video, blog posts, reviews, customer testimonials, and market analysis.

The B2B Purchasing Journey Through Content

FocusVision’s report suggests it takes an average of two to six weeks and three or four internal decision makers for B2B buyers to make the big decision. Much of this time is spent researching by connecting with content that might inform their purchase.

When asked how they found content, the majority said they found it directly on a vendor’s website or through search and social media.

The complete responses were:

  • Directly through vendor website — 70%
  • Internet search — 67%
  • Social media  — 53%
  • Sent to me via email — 41%
  • Word of mouth — 33%

The study also identified four unique buying stages with specific types of content present during each phase:

  1. Understanding the problem
  2. Looking at vendors
  3. Short-listing
  4. Final decision

The most useful types of content according to B2B buyers were

  • Product specifications and functionality — 67%
  • Product comparisons — 65%
  • Product success stories — 60%
  • Content specifically showing value to internal stakeholders — 54%
  • Product tutorials — 49%
  • Troubleshooting and problem solving — 48%

Notably, the study found some variance in how companies with higher revenues used content to inform their decisions. Those with revenues above $250 million tended to rely more on third-party content and market analysis, rather than first-party content.

What This Means For You

If you provide products or services to other businesses, the findings make it clear that content is essential for marketing your brand to other professionals. Without it, influential buyers may not hear about your product or have enough details to make an informed decision.

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LinkedIn Reveals Three New Features For Users and Brands

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LinkedIn is launching three new features for users aimed at encouraging the community to engage more and form deeper connections with followers.

The new features are part of an initiative to bring new updates to LinkedIn’s 50 million organizations using the site to reach customers, prospects, employees, and potential collaborators.

To start of 2020, the site is making it possible for users to invite others to follow their page, stream using LinkedIn Live, and post to their page in new ways.

Invite New Followers

One of the hardest parts of getting a social metwork page off the ground is gaining new followers. Now, LinkedIn is giving page managers the ability to invite users who share a first-degree level of connection to your page.

Users can also choose to entirely opt out of these invites if they prefer to not receive invitations to follow pages.

LinkedIn Live Integration

LinkedIn is also working to better integrate their streaming platform by allowing pages to broadcast live streams.

In the past, live streaming was strictly only available to personal profiles on the site.

This could prove to be a boon for pages on the site, as the company says live streams generate up to 7 times more reactions and 24 times more comments compared to typical video posts.

To get access to live streaming on your brand’s page, page managers can apply on the LinkedIn Live website.

Post as a Page or Member

When posting new content, users can now select a conveniently located switch on the homepage to choose between posting as yourself or an organization you represent.

Previously, the only way to post as your page required you to visit your organization’s page and post directly from that page. Now, users can easily post to their preferred page from one place.

You can see what the new features look like in action in the video from LinkedIn below:

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Take Over Twitter With Promoted Trend Spotlight Ads

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Twitter is launching a unique new ad unit which lets brands take over a section of the Explore tab – giving you massive reach with nearly every Twitter user.

The Explore tab is where users can find the latest trending topics and other popular Tweets, making it one of the most visited sections of the site.

In fact, Twitter users might recognize the Promoted Trend Spotlight ads as the same ad format used by Disney shortly before the launch of Disney+. The media giant was given early access to the ad format to help drive early awareness of their streaming platform.

Twitter Promoted Trend Spotlight Ad

While the ad format has now been expanded to all advertisers in the US, UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, and Thailand. However, running the ad still requires contacting a Twitter Partner to ensure consistently high-quality ads on such a prominent area of the site and manage scheduling.

When running a Promoted Trend Spotlight, all users who visit the Explore tab on a given day will see the ad on their first two visits to the tab. After those two visits, they can still see the ad in the standard Promoted Trend ad placement.

Based on their own early data, Twitter says the new ads are a powerful tool to get more attention to your ad and better drive awareness:

“[P]eople spent 26% more time looking at the Promoted Trend Spotlight as compared to the standard Promoted Trend unit. These longer dwell times generated impact throughout the funnel: from +113% higher ad recall and +18% higher brand consideration to +67% lift in stated likelihood to use a brand in the future. In addition, according to internal Twitter data, people were three times more likely to click through an ad in the Spotlight unit than the standard Promoted Trend.”

 

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Instagram announces a new crackdown on controversial branded content

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Instagram is cracking down on influencers and brands publishing content relating to a few controversial topics.

While the company has had policies restricting branded content related to vaping, tobacco products, and weapons, the company is introducing a new policy which will more vigorously enforce these restrictions.

 

The ramp up of enforcement will come over the coming weeks, giving brands and influencers a small amount of time to plan their future marketing efforts.

Instagram also says it will be enacting more rules related to branded content promoting alcohol and diet supplements in the coming year.

Details on the initiative are limited, but the company says it is building new tools to help enforce age-based content restrictions which will help creators ensure adult content is not seen by minors.

While the site may be restricting a few types of branded content, the company says its overall goal is to help creators grow and connect more with their audiences.

As the policy announcement concludes:

“Creators on Instagram are a vital part of our community, and we will be investing even more resources in 2020 to help them build their businesses on Instagram.”

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Facebook owns 4 of the 5 most downloaded apps of 2019

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Facebook’s dominance of the internet continues, as reports say the company owns 4 of the 5 most downloaded apps in the world this year.

App Annie’s year-end report shows that Facebook helped drive a worldwide record for app downloads with 120 billion apps downloaded between iOS and Android in 2019 – a 5% year-over-year increase.

According to App Annie’s data, the top 5 app downloads of the year are:

  1. Facebook Messenger
  2. Facebook
  3. WhatsApp Messenger
  4. TikTok
  5. Instagram

10 Top Downloaded Apps in 2019

TikTok is the only app in the top 5 not owned by Facebook.

Breakout Apps

In addition to the top app downloads over the past year, App Annie also detailed the top “breakout apps” which showed the largest growth in downloads between 2018 and 2019. While most are still relative unknowns, they could potentially be chart-toppers in the near future.

  1. Likee
  2. Noizz
  3. Helo
  4. Hago
  5. YouTube Music

Top 10 Breakout Apps of 2019

Based on the its current estimations, App Annie believes 2020 is posed to be even more lucrative for app downloads and consumer spend. Excluding games, the report predicts spending to reach more than $30 billion in the coming year.

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Pinterest Trends provides a new way to track the most popular keywords

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Pinterest is launching a new tool called Pinterest Trends which will help you see what the hottest search terms have been over the past 12 months, along with info showing when the search terms peaked.

As the company announced, the new feature is in beta, but began rolling out earlier this week.

How Trends Can Help Your Marketing

Marketers and brands have been relying on Google Trends for years to track what the most popular search terms over time, especially surrounding seasonal events. Although Pinterest’s version of this feature doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel, it does provide another set of compelling data which could be particularly useful for businesses in the fields Pinterest tends to cater to – such as cooking, decorating, fashion, and self-care.

As Pinterest continues to grow into one of the most dominant social platforms available, insights like this will be useful for brands looking to plan their campaigns ahead of time.

The company said as much when describing their goals with the tool:

“Pinterest Trends will help brands get deeper insights into planning behaviors on the platform, and allow  them to allocate budgets to campaigns during various planning stages. It will also validate assumptions about emerging trends, refine search queries with the aid of auto-complete suggestions, and help advertisers find a list of keywords to include or avoid while planning media campaigns.”

For example, the company says that Tastemade and Albertsons were given early access to the tool and have both used the data to create successful boards and campaigns on the site.

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5 Online Marketing Trends You Need To Know Ahead of 2020

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If there is anything that has remained true about online marketing over the past decade, it is that online marketing is always changing. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that Google makes around 9 changes to their search engine algorithm every day.

To stay ahead of the curve, businesses can’t just understand where online marketing and SEO is today. They have to be able to look forward to predict the next wave of updates they can expect in the coming months and years.

With that in mind, I wanted to spend some time today talking about some of the biggest trends you can expect to see in 2020 and beyond:

1) Snippets Become The New “Number 1 on Google”

For years, Google has been using Featured Snippets to highlight quick information that may answer your query without ever having to click on a search result. You can see these when you search for recipes, look for lyrics to your favorite songs, or ask questions with relatively simple answers like “How big is the sun?”

Brands have long avoided targeting these snippets which typically appear above all other search results, believing that they reduce the chance of a person clicking onto their website or otherwise converting. However, growing evidence suggests snippets actually drive higher click-through rates and engagement by quickly establishing a single site as the authority.

Over the next year, the competition for these snippets is likely to continue rising, making them the next big fight for search engine results dominance.

2) Mobile Really Comes First

We’ve been talking about this moment for years. We officially use our smartphones and tablets to access the internet more desktop devices.

As such, Google has announced that its ‘Mobile-First Index” would become its primary search index. That means Google is now looking at the mobile version of your site before it ever considers the desktop version when ranking search results.

With this in mind, having a stripped-down mobile version of your site or not having a mobile site is no longer a viable option if you want to succeed online.

Site speed will also continue to be a major ranking factor because of its importance when accessing sites on the go from mobile devices.

3) Visual Search Gets Serious

Visual search has existed as a novelty in online marketing for some time now, slowly improving with each iteration. Now, we are reaching the point where visual search is becoming a major player in search.

While we don’t have statistics from Google Lens or Bing’s Visual Search, Pinterest’s Lens has been a revealing foray into the viability of visual search.

Within a single year of launch, Pinterest Lens was receiving more than 600 million visual search queries every month. This September, the company announced the tool was able to identify over 2.5 billion unique objects within the fashion and home industries.

With this in mind, it is easy to imagine a day in the near future when people regularly find it easier to snap a quick picture than come up with a precise text query when trying to find a specific item online.

4) Voice Search

Speaking of convenience, people are quickly turning to their Alexas, Echos, Siris, and Dots for their casual search needs – whether it is checking the weather or quickly ordering a product.

Out of all the coming changes, this may have the largest effect on how brands optimize their websites and content. This is because voice queries tend to be almost completely different than the types of queries we make when typing into a browser form.

With some estimates suggesting voice search could account for nearly half of all searches by the end of 2020, brands will have to begin optimizing for more conversational “long-tail” search queries and the unique capabilities of voice assistants.

5) Video Rules The Content Landscape

This is another online marketing trend that has been growing for years, but shows absolutely no signs of slowing down in the coming years.

The simple truth is that videos are more engaging than almost any other form of media, providing both audio and visual information in a quickly consumable package. Thanks to faster internet speeds and improved search indexing, they have also been an increasingly effective tool for sharing your content and driving actual engagement.

To give you an idea, some statistics suggest that videos can increase engagement by more than 80% compared to sharing the same information in simple text or audio clips.

Despite this, many brands have still avoided investing in video marketing because they believe it is inherently expensive or ineffective in local markets. Ironically, most users say they often enjoy videos shot using “authentic” methods like shooting selfie-style using a smartphone as much or more than slickly produced commercial videos.

 

Waiting for the “next big thing” to blow up before you jump in is a surefire way to always be a step behind your competition online. You don’t have to invest in every whim or indulgence of the digital marketing landscape, but focusing on these five surefire trends is sure to have you starting 2020 at the head of the pack.

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Snapchat’s new Extended Play Commercials run up to 3 minutes long

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Snapchat is launching a new format for video ads called Extended Play Commercials which allows advertisers to run ads up to three minutes long.

The video ads are skippable after six seconds and will be shown as mid-roll ads – similar to how Snapchat handles shorter ads.

The goal behind Extended Play Commercials is to let advertisers tell longer, more engaging stories to users who are already actively engaged with the platform. As the company tells AdWeek, Snapchat believes these ads will help capture a greater share of the video ad market:

“The company believes the flexibility that extended play commercials provides to video advertisers will help it gain more share of the overall online video advertising market.“

While the new ad format is currently only available in closed beta, advertisers can request access by making a request through Ads Manager or contacting a Snapchat advertising representative.

David Router, Snapchat’s VP of Global Agency Partnerships, says the ads are a great way for advertisers to connect with shoppers this holiday season:

“We’re committed to building high-impact, long-form video ad formats, and extended play commercials are a great option for online video and TV buyers. Heading into the holidays, this format is a powerful new way to reach our Generation Z and millennial audience in Snapchat’s premium, brand safe Discover content.”

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