Facebook Announces ‘Your Business Story’ and Advertising Milestone

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YourBusinessStory

Facebook announced a new video offering for small businesses called Your Business Story, which would allow Pages to easily create and share montage-videos incorporating still images and music. At the same time, the company let slip that it now has over three million advertisers.

Your Business Story is a simple tool similar to the previously announced SlideShow offering. The company didn’t say anything about ads being included in the platform, but the note about their recent advertising milestone suggests the new offering will eventually work its way into Facebook Ads.

In the announcement, Facebook said:

To celebrate the businesses that use Facebook to grow, we created Your Business Story — a tool that makes it easy to create a video that shows what your business brings to the world. Because we believe the best way to tell the story of three million businesses is to empower each one to share their own.

Three million advertisers is a significant milestone for the social media platform. In September, the company announced it had reached 2.5 million. Before that, it claimed two million advertisers in February 2015. That means Facebook has been bringing in about half a million advertisers every six months for about the past year.

The announcement also said the majority of the businesses that use Facebook’s ad services are small businesses, also saying “50 million small businesses now use Pages on Facebok.”

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Facebook Brings New Look, Important New Stats To Video Metrics

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Facebook is overhauling its Video Metrics section of Page Insights with several new improvements and features to improve how it allows users to track video engagement. To start with, the company is completely redesigning the entire interface to the Video Metrics section. But, it is also launching a few highly requested metrics to better gauge how users are watching videos on the platform.

Since Facebook has launched the video portion of its platform, it has allowed Page owners to track total view counts on videos. However, it did not provide any information on how long people watched for or if they clicked away at some point in the video.

Now, Facebook will display the total minutes viewed watching a video, so Page Owners can tell if they are losing viewers mid-watch and get a better perspective on the effectiveness of their videos. The company says it was the number one most requested feature.

In addition to this, Page owners are also now able to track views more closely with the new 10-Second Views metric, which shows how many viewers watched for at least 10 seconds. This is big for two reasons. On one hand, Facebook has received criticism for counting any view over three seconds in their video counts, compared to YouTube’s harsher 30 second standard for view counts.

The new 10-Second Views metric is also important because Facebook announced last summer that advertisers will only be charged for ad views if their video was watched for more than 10 seconds.

Alongside these view-length metrics, Facebook also rolled out an interesting new metric that gives Page owners a better idea of exactly how users are watching their videos.

Within the Insights view of individual videos, Page owners can see the amount of people that viewed a video with the sound on vs with the sound off. This lets Page owners get an idea of their audience and how their videos are being interacted with.

For example, if the majority of views are coming from users with the sound off, there is a good chance your audience is primarily watching videos at work, school, or in another public space where sound shouldn’t be turned on. You can take this into account with your future ads by being sure to optimize sub-titles and perhaps take a more visual approach with your content.

These changes allow Page owners and advertisers to gain a much deeper insight into how their ads and videos are performing, and that means allowing them to make even better ads and videos for their audience. If you want to make sure your ads are really successful, you should consider giving these new video metrics a look.

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Instagram Rolls Out View Counts For Video

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It has been almost three years since Instagram stretched its legs and expanded to video, but in all this time it has been missing a crucial feature – view counts. While the other giants in social video like YouTube, Facebook, and Vine have let users see how many times a video has been played, Instagram has been slow to add any view count feature to their platform. Until now.

Instagram has announced it will soon be adding a counter that includes everyone who has watched at least three seconds of a video.

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The company says the feature will be rolling out over the “coming weeks” and will show alongside the existing like and comment counts.

The feature could be beneficial for advertisers on two fronts. On one hand, it will be greatly useful to simply be able to see what their most popular content is in a more direct way than with like and comment counts. While those show engagement levels, a view count will be a much better indicator if video reach.

Secondly, as Twitter has recently seen, when users see that others are watching and interacting with content, they are more likely to view, engage, and share that content. By letting other users see that your videos are popular with other users, you also see a chance at increasing your total view counts overall.

For more information on how Instagram will roll out view counts in the next few weeks, check out the official announcement from Instagram.

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Twitter Announces New “Improved Timeline”

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Source: Shawn Campbell

Source: Shawn Campbell

Twitter is calling its latest new feature an improvement to their timeline, but many users disagree. The new Improved is an algorithm-based feature which uses data collected from a user’s previous activity on Twitter to show them the tweets that are of most interest to them at the top of their timeline.

The goal, according to Twitter, is to make sure users see all the most “important” tweets for them as soon as they log in. Directly below this section of most important tweets, users will find the traditional reverse-chronological timeline they’ve come to know and love.

While Twitter is hailing the new feature as a move forward, the social media site has been in open rebellion since rumors of the feature started swirling over the weekend. The site saw #RIPTwitter trending as many said the site was losing what made it special in order to be more like Facebook.

The furor over the changes has quieted down somewhat as the company shared more details about the new feature, including its opt-in nature and somewhat non-intrusive design.

This isn’t the first controversial rumored feature from Twitter in recent weeks. The platform faced similar freak-outs when word got out that it was testing significantly longer tweets than the traditional 140-character limit.

That feature has yet to be put into effect, but Twitter is trying hard to walk a very thin tight-rope. The purpose of these new features is to attract new users to the stagnating service. However, losing Twitter’s existing audience in the process may set the company back even further.

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How To Get People To Share Your Brand’s Videos

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How do you get people to share your brand’s video? That’s the question posed by a recent survey from Wyzowl. The findings show people are very open to sharing, but you have to connect with them the right way.

An absolute majority (97%) of US consumers said they would be willing to share a video from a brand with their friends on social media, while 70% said they have already shared a brand’s video in the past.

The survey collected data from 150 consumers and 140 marketing professionals.

Source: Wyzowl / Marketing Profs

Source: Wyzowl / Marketing Profs

The best way to get people to start clicking the share button is by entertaining them, with 76% of respondents saying they would be open to sharing entertaining videos, but that’s not the only approach you can take.

Almost 70% of respondents say they would be willing to share a video if it is of interest to their followers, 65% were willing to share informative videos, and 55% said they might be open to sharing inspirational videos.

The findings make it clear the real trick to making branded videos that people want to share is by pleasing them first and advertising your brand second. If you can get their interest, pull at their heart strings, or make them feel like they’ve learned something, people are likely to start sharing.

For the full study from Wyzowl, click here.

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Is Facebook The New King of Super Bowl Ads?

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The war between YouTube and Facebook for the most popular online platform for sharing and watching videos is heating up, and Facebook may win a major victory this weekend.

With the Super Bowl upon us, everyone is gearing up for one of the greatest competitions of the year – the fight for the most watched Super Bowl ad. But, more Super Bowl ads and teaser videos are being shared online ahead of the big game, and TV ad analytics company iSpot.tv says may be the new place for watching the biggest ads of the year online.

It is a close fight, with Facebook barely pulling ahead of YouTube, but it is a big win for the company either way. YouTube dominated online Super Bowl ads last year, but Facebook has pushed their video platform heavily over the year and seen massive increases in both views and shares.

Source: Marketing Land

Source: Marketing Land

According to iSpot.tv’s data counting video views through Tuesday, February 2, approximately 75 million super bowl ads videos have been viewed on Facebook, compared to 74.9 million on YouTube. As the published report on Marketing Land shows, the numbers are neck-and-neck. But, it is a huge change from last year where YouTube received 87.6 million to Facebook’s 45.5 million.

In most cases, an argument can be made to explain the discrepancy. Facebook counts video views when a user watches for just three seconds, but YouTube doesn’t count until “around” 30 seconds in. However, iSpot.tv says it uses a three-second standard for counting views on both platforms.

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Twitter Lets Users Customize How Long Polls Run

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Since the launch of polls on Twitter in October, the feature has been a hit. The company recently announced users have cast over 1.7 billion votes to date, and now Twitter is improving the feature by allowing users to set how long they want their polls to last.

When polls were launched, they came with a default lifespan of 24 hours. While this may work for some, a full day can be a long time to expect people to stay interested in one of your Tweets. Now, users can customize their polls to run for much shorter or longer than previously.

Users can now tweak their polls to run anywhere from just 5 minutes to 7 days, allowing you to get instant results or a more comprehensive response.

The move to bolster polls on Twitter couldn’t come at a better time. The feature has been widely adopted and users seem excited to participate. While the change isn’t likely to completely stop Twitter’s stock price from freefalling, it could help please users who are still disgruntled over a rumored upcoming feature which would allow users to share long-form posts on the platform known for its 140 character limit.

Creating a poll works as it always has. The only difference is users will now see a tiny clock icon near the tweet button, which allows you to quickly establish how long you want a poll to run.

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Periscope Videos Are Now Viewable In Twitter Timelines

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Periscope

Periscope has been gaining popularity as a social live video streaming service, but it has been limited by requiring its own app to join in the fun. Now, the Twitter-owned streaming platform is getting some help by finding a place on one of the largest social platforms available.

Twitter users can now share and promote their Periscope videos directly on their time-line, opening up a huge new audience to the service. Users can embed and view Periscope videos directly in the timeline of Twitter’s iOS app. Just as with the Periscope app, broadcasts can be rewatched for up to 24 hours before automatically vanishing.

Twitter has been struggling to expand their market, as the recent 10,000 character tweet controversy and plummeting stock price shows. The company is most likely hoping this move will help both platforms expand their utility and user base, though only time will tell if that is the case.

The new feature is currently only available through the iOS Twitter app, but Android and web versions are expected in the near future.

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Twitter May Expand Tweet Limit From 140 to 10,000 Characters

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Source: Shawn Campbell

Source: Shawn Campbell

Rumor has it that Twitter will be extending the character limit of Tweets from 140 characters to upwards of 10,000 characters. The news comes from a report in Recode, which cites multiple sources claiming the longer tweets should be expected by the end of the quarter, but public reaction is mixed at best.

Descriptions of the new feature say the longer tweets wouldn’t clutter up feeds. Instead, up to 140 characters of any tweet will appear in user’s timelines, but a new call to action would allow users to read more.

The sources also say the company is already planning for how users might attempt to spam timelines so they might be able to combat it. For example, there may be limits to the number of other users that can be mentioned in tweets.

Unfortunately for the company, response to the rumor has already been overwhelmingly negative. Many say the 140 character limit has been the defining feature of Twitter and without it there is little to distinguish the platform.

The hashtag #Twitter10k has already taken off as users both mock and lament the rumor. Here is just a sampling of what users are saying:

Given the reaction to the rumor, it is hard to predict whether Twitter will follow through or go back to the drawing board for the next big feature. The best indication will be if we start seeing tests for different character lengths in tweets in the coming month.

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Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins To All Advertisers In January

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After months of waiting, advertisers will finally be able to start buying Promoted Pins, starting in January.

The company officially announced Promoted Pins, its first advertising unit, last January, however it has limited access to a small number of partner advertisers. It has gradually given access to the service to more businesses, including some small and medium businesses, but most have been left waiting for a widespread rollout.

Well the wait is nearly over, according to an announcement made yesterday by Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s monetization chief.

“The business is scaling very rapidly,” Kendall told USA Today.

The company also announced it has reached over one million active business accounts globally yesterday.

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