Get ready to see commercials in your live and non-live Facebook videos. If it seems like Facebook has been in the news with several big changes recently, they have been. All of their newest updates are lining up with Facebook’s goal to become the future of TV.
Last Thursday, Facebook announced that publishers are now able to show ad breaks in the middle of pre-recorded videos. Along with allowing ad breaks, more Facebook pages will now be able to show ad breaks during live broadcasts as well. These newest advances have only been allowed to a very small group of handpicked publishers before now and this is the first effort Facebook has extended for monetizing video.
So what are ad breaks? Think mini-commercials that will start in the middle of your videos, and can run every two minutes. I know, you’re sighing, aren’t you? Well, for publishers, this is exciting news because Facebook is allowing publishers to keep 55% of the money generated from these in-video ads. With video being a “mega-trend” for Facebook, monetizing video has become increasingly important and now it appears the social media behemoth has managed to find a way. BusinessInsider
In other big news, Instagram just launched the ability to share a mix of up to 10 photos or videos as one swipeable carousel. Keeping up with its knack for staying on the leading edge, this new Instagram rollout invites users to share an even bigger portion of their experiences in its classic feed, without having to do multiple posts.
How will this work? Now, when Instagram users go to post, they will see a button for selecting multiple photos. After selecting the photos, users can choose to edit or filter each picture individually or with the same filter on all of the photos. The caption will apply to the whole post. Friends will see a set of blue dots on the post which will indicate it is a carousel and then they can swipe back and forth to see all of the photos or videos.
Instagram writes “You no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember.” This is a great advance for brands because it will take the pressure off posting one perfect picture and will lure in more content to satisfy users. Thanks to Larry Kim for sharing this news.
Cool – new #Instagram feature will let you upload 10 photos into miniature galleries! ???????? pic.twitter.com/V18ndvCtJo
— Larry Kim (@larrykim) February 23, 2017
Twitter is now losing its head of entertainment talent and its director of finance. After struggling through 2016, with a $143.6 million loss in Q4, Twitter can’t seem to stop losing management. Laura Cohen, a major figure in leading partnerships with content creators, and David Bicknell, a middle manager, have both left the company. They join seven other management-level individuals exciting, including a CTO, COO, and five other VPs, including leaders responsible for diversity, communication, global business development, commerce, and human resources. Ouch.
Twitter’s downward spiral has slowed product and business development and shakes faith in the company’s future. TechCrunch
According to a recent survey released by Fluent, Snapchat is a fleeting hobby with ads that don’t stick. Not faring much better than Twitter, Snapchat survey results show decreases in the number of people regularly using Snapchat, with almost 50% of respondents believing Snapchat is just a fad and another 33% believing they won’t still use Snapchat five years from now.
Snapchat ads are not faring well, which is part of the problem with the social network—survey results show almost half of its users skip ads always. Seriously, who doesn’t? MarketlngLand
On a buying spree, Hootsuite continues to make great strides by adding analytics provider LeftMetrix. Hootsuite, a Vancouver-based business, purchased AdEspresso two weeks ago and now added New York City-based LiftMetrix into the mix. Hootsuite’s goal is help social media marketers understand return-on-investment (ROI) because measuring ROI has been one of the biggest complaints of most marketers since the start of social marketing. [Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
With all the talk about email marketing, columnist Ray Schultz looked into how well email marketing actually performs for marketers. According to a recent study from Campaign Monitor, reported by PC Tech, email marketers mostly know what they’re doing and are using email with a solid strategic plan in place. While that’s always interesting to read, based on what we see in the trenches, especially in the B2B space, that’s not always the case, and there’s plenty of data to back that up. Nevertheless, this is an interesting read.
How Email Marketing Checks Out: How good are email marketers? A study from Campaign… https://t.co/zaM7rcSLlR
— MediaPost (@MediaPost) February 23, 2017
Photo Credit: Fiona Dawkins Flickr via Compfight cc