This Week in Social and Digital (Week of March 6)
This Week in Social is a weekly digest of some of the biggest stories in social media marketing news. These stories are the show notes for the Brave Ad World Podcast. Each story is discussed at a deeper level on the podcast.
Facebook Potentially Launching “Spotlight Module"
Facebook is in the process of pitching a new feature called spotlight module to prospective content partners. The feature lives within the video tab, and it serves up a handful of original shows from Facebook and other content partners for 24 hours. After 24 hours a new slate of shows is served up.
The goal of the feature would be to draw more people to the video tab with some exclusive content, creating more opportunities for ad breaks.
Facebook has not confirmed the feature, but reports of it are well within Facebook’s current strategy of pushing to add more high-quality, long-form and original video content to its slate. This means getting content that is anywhere from three to thirty minutes long, creating plenty of opportunities for Facebook to leverage its mid-roll ad units and generate additional revenue.
This move marks one more step in Facebook’s evolution to being a video-first platform.
It now has a set-top box app, and it has its sights for the moment set on cutting into YouTube’s advertising dollars by attracting users to exclusive, high-quality content.
Facebook Updates How Messenger Bots Work
Messenger chat bots are getting an upgrade thanks to new features added to Messenger Platform 1.4.
The update allows developers to include menus to highlight bot features. The menu is persistent and it allows people to see all of the features a bot has to offer, instead of interacting with the bot via conversations to see what it does. Everything is right there, so there’s a little less chatting and a lot more of a menu-based experience. In fact, the option now exists to block out free text completely and to just use predetermined options.
We’re at a point with bots that everyone is still learning, so this update is essentially a way to simplify the process. Fewer choices means fewer ways the bot can go wrong, which is why a menu makes sense. Still, it begs the question on what the real value of bot is then, and if it becomes a series of menus, how can we learn how to make the AI smarter by answering unexpected questions?
It may slow down innovation, but the simplicity for both developers and brands to use these new tools will make bots much easier to handle and, by proxy, make them less expensive to create.
Facebook Provides Advertisers Cross-Platform Stats in New Dashboard
After shutting down its Atlas ad-serving platform, the team from that has been working on Facebook measurement. Now, we’re starting to see the results of that work with a new measurement dashboard, which integrates Facebook, Instagram and publisher partner site ads into a single resource.
The update, called advanced measurement, brings what was once exclusive to only a select group of advertisers to all within the self-service business-manager software. While in the dashboard, advertisers can see how efficient a buy is across platforms as well as get monthly campaign reports focusing on attribution (checkouts, clicks, conversions) and reach (unique viewers, impressions, frequency), both of which break campaigns down by age, gender and device.
All of these changes need to be looked at through the lens of several measurement snafus that were shared late last year. Facebook’s working to improve its transparency in reporting, which has also included an audit by Media Rating Council as well as more updates on measurement.
Twitter Allowing Advertisers to Buy Video Like TV
Twitter has taken a hint from marketers and is now offering at least some guarantees on video ads. The offering lets advertisers buy a set, guaranteed amount of pre-roll video ads that will be seen by a specific target audience. The guarantee will be evaluated based on Media Ratings Council standards and verified by third parties, including Integral Ad Science and Moat.
The ads run before premium video content and require a minimum investment in the “low six figures.”
Video is a key piece for just about every video platform out there, but unlike other social networks, Twitter has taken a page out of YouTube’s playbook by offering pre-roll video ad content. The fact that Twitter is placing more ads before this premium content is a good sign for existing video partners, including the NFL, NBA and others to keep creating video.
That’s in addition to the fact that Twitter is letting a group advertisers buy in a way that suits them better. Both of which bode well for Twitter as it looks to reestablish its place in the hearts and minds of advertisers.
Facebook Launches Messenger Day
Facebook’s Messenger Day is now out of testing and open to the general public. Messenger Day is Facebook’s version of Snapchat Stories, and it’s been in testing in Poland and Australia since last year.
Users can create a collection of photos and videos in a section of Messenger called Messenger Day and share those collections with their friends. After 24 hours, everything is gone. The feature allows users to add more than 5,000 effects, stickers and frames. Users are also given the option to share their days with everyone or limit the sharing to a select few. Even after something’s been posted to Messenger Day, it can be deleted.
The feature is available through the camera icon on the Messenger app or through an “Add to your day” option in the upper left-hand corner of the app.
This is essentially another blatant copy of a Snapchat feature, but it does offer one big difference and that’s more control over who sees your Messenger Day than you have with a Snapchat Story. Snapchat allows users to exclude people pretty easily, but the fact that a Day can be shared with just a handful of people easily is a point of difference.
Still, this is Facebook doing what it’s been doing, copying Snapchat. There’s nothing new here that is novel. It’s just Snapchat on Messenger, and Facebook is completely okay with that.
Their plan to copy Snapchat features has worked so far as Facebook continues to grow and Snapchat user growth has leveled off. That is going to be Snap, Inc.’s biggest hurdle as it looks to make its way as a publicly traded company.
News Quick Hits
- Facebook’s revamped approach to fake news is finally being rolled out. Facebook is now identfying links to sites that have a reputation for spreading misinformation, tags them and cites fact-checking organizations for why the site has been flagged. Users can also mark stories as fake news to have them reviewed by an independent panel.
- Facebook is testing Reactions in Facebook Messenger, and one of the exclusive reactions includes a thumbs-down one. A dislike button has been requested from Facebook for a long time, but to no avail. This is the closest we may ever get to such a button.
- Twitch has launched Pulse, a Facebook-like news feed that highlights content posted by broadcasters. The content displayed has either been shared by friends or broadcasters followed by the user. Pulse is on the front page of Twitch for logged-in users.
- Instagram is at it again. It’s copied another feature from Snapchat. This feature is called “geostickers,” which works exactly the same way as Snapchat’s geofilters. The stickers allow users in specific locations, be it a landmark or neighborhood, to add overlays to their photos representative of the location. These geostickers live in the stickers section of Instagram Stories.
- Microsoft is shutting down its social network, Socl. The site was originally launched as a way to create collages and Pinterest-like “mood boards.” The news of its shutdown was met with plenty of people wondering if this network ever really existed in the first place.
- Twitter is giving Moments analytics to show opens, unique opens, likes, shares and completion rate. Moments never really took off the way Twitter hoped, and since launch its made changes, including allowing anyone and everyone to create Moments of their own. This is yet another sign that Twitter has not given up on the feature and aims to keep on pushing forward.
- Pinterest is now the proud owner of Biz Stone’s app Jelly. Stone will become a special advisor at Pinterest, and the the future of Jelly remains unclear.
- Facebook has launched the Facebook 360 app for Gear VR. The app lets users access Facebook 360 content in virtual reality, while also viewing other content, including the Facebook Timeline.