It’s been a busy few months for social platforms with many businesses transitioning to online delivery and curbside pickup. With summer around the corner and looser restrictions on the way, social media channels continue to support businesses with new feature updates and partnership opportunities. Here are all the latest social media news and top stories on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and more for the month of June.
Social Media Updates
Introducing Custom Audiences for Shopping
Want to reach your best customers? You can now create Custom Audiences based on the people who’ve interacted with your products in a shopping experience on Facebook or Instagram. This option can help you re-target these high-intent shoppers in two ways:
- Checkout-Onboarded Businesses: Create shopping Custom Audiences based on the following criteria: People who viewed your product detail page, added your product to their cart and purchased your product. Lookalike audiences will also be available for people who purchased your product.
- Non-Checkout Businesses: Create shopping Custom Audiences based on people who viewed your product detail page.
New Updates to Learning Phase
To help advertisers optimize their performance, Facebook is releasing new updates to the ‘learning phase’ over the next few months.
Faster ‘Learning Limited’ diagnosis: When an ad set becomes ‘Learning Limited’, it’s typically limited by “small audience size, low budget, low bid or cost control, high auction overlap, an infrequent optimization event, or other issues such as running too many ads at the same time.” Previously, ad sets could only become Learning Limited after 7 days.
Facebook can now quickly diagnose these Learning Limited ad sets, lifting the 7-day wait as a result. This allows advertisers to know which ads will not be shown as soon as the ad set is predicted to fail to exit the learning phase, enabling them to troubleshoot issues sooner.
New Learning Limited guidance: To understand exactly what’s limiting the learning of your ad set or the optimization event it’s missing, you can now hover over the learning limited status to see if the ad set is limited by cost control, budget, or auction overlap.
New delivery recommendations: If you’re looking for suggestions on how to improve your active ad sets, head to the Account Overview where Facebook displays recommendations aimed at helping ad sets exit the learning phase sooner to optimize delivery.
New Ways to Start Conversations with Ads That Click to Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp
In an effort to make it easier for businesses to connect with people across their family of apps, Facebook is introducing “destination optimization for ads that click to message,” allowing users to create campaigns that start conversations with people in their app of choice.
Advertisers will be able to select Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct as the messaging destination in the ‘messages’ objective. These ads will then deliver and open conversations in the app people most prefer.
Facebook will be testing this feature in select markets with plans to expand to all advertisers later this year.
Facebook Lifts Ad Ban on Non-medical Face Masks
Since March 2020, Facebook banned ads and commerce listings for masks on their platform. The social network is now scaling back this ban to allow people to advertise and trade non-medical masks in organic posts, ads and commerce listings on Facebook and Instagram. However, Facebook will still maintain a temporary ban on promoting medical masks, such as surgical or N95 masks, to avoid using the pandemic for financial gain.
To take advantage of this ban lift, advertisers must currently be in good standing to advertise non-medical masks with a minimum advertising history of four months. And in countries where Facebook has seen high percentages of policy-violating ads promoting medical supplies during the temporary ban, advertisers will only be able to target non-medical mask ads to people in the country where their ad account is based.
Switch Between Personal and Business Accounts in Messenger
Listen up, business owners. You now can switch between business and personal accounts in messenger, making it easier for you and any page manager to respond to message queries quickly.
As shown above, when you tap and hold your personal profile photo in Messenger, you’ll be given the option to switch to your Businesses account. Businesses can also choose to set reminders in the Messenger app to notify them about getting back to customers in a timely manner.
With many businesses pivoting and moving their business online during COVID-19, this tool is a simple yet effective solution for businesses facing a surge of increasing demand online.
Messenger Rooms
Last month, we announced the arrival of Messenger Rooms for Facebook, a new video chat option for up to 50 people. This month, Instagram, introduced their version of Messenger Rooms.
To use the feature, head to your DMs and tap on the video chat button where you’ll see a prompt to create a Messenger Room. Despite the icon’s availability within Instagram, Messenger Rooms are hosted within Messenger, so you’ll still have to switch to the app to engage in the video chat.
Messenger Rooms is currently available in a few countries and will be rolled out globally within the coming weeks.
IGTV Monetization
After much talk around IGTV ads, Instagram has finally announced the next stage of monetization for IGTV. According to Instagram, IGTV ads will be no longer than 15 seconds and will initially appear when people click to watch IGTV videos from previews in their feed.
Creators will receive a 55% share of the revenue from their IGTV content (which is the same rate offered by YouTube), providing expanded opportunities for creators, along with more content for Instagram.
Instagram is currently testing IGTV with 200 creators in the US and plans to expand globally at a later date.
More Video Ad Options in Response to Evolving Viewing Behaviours
Since the onset of COVID-19, YouTube watchtime on TV screens is up over 250% along with a 70% increase in IG Live views from February to March. In response to the evolving viewer behaviours, Google has announced new video ad options to better align with this shift.
First off, in order to help advertisers find the best deals for their campaign objectives, Google has created a dedicated TV section in its ad Marketplace specifically for publishers and inventory “that let you reach TV audiences across devices.”
Advertisers can search by filters such as geo or streaming device to find the right partner to maximize their campaign reach. You can also gain insight on any publisher by exploring data around performance, audience and inventory, and you can send requests for proposals (RFP) to publishers directly from the website.
In addition to this, Google’s also adding new ‘ready-to-buy’ options, streamlining a brand’s approach to run streaming ad campaigns. “For marketers who want to skip the negotiation process, we’ve worked closely with exchange partners such as Google Ad Manager, FreeWheel and SpotX to bundle inventory from top publishers, along with broadcast and cable networks, into ready-to-execute deals. These deals, known as auction packages, are available to all Display & Video 360 users in Marketplace.”
The packages are assembled by publishers based on genre, popularity, seasonality, formats or audiences.
Shop Tab on Lens Results
Looking to replace your old running shoes with a pair from another brand? With Pinterest’s new Shop tab, now you can access and purchase new products based on an image within the Lens search results.
Users can discover new products by either taking a new photo or uploading a screenshot or an older image from your camera roll. Pinterest will then highlight relevant product matches, with the Shop tab showcasing items that you can purchase. Every Product Pin links directly to the checkout page on the retailer’s site.
Pinterest’s new features are proving platform adaptability as the doors of many retailers are still closed. It also emphasizes Pinterest’s shopping platform and the advancements of their eCommerce capabilities.
Snapchat
2020 Snap Partner Summit
Snapchat announced a host of updates at its virtual 2020 Snap Partner Summit last week. Updates included new product features like an action bar, voice activated lens, new place listings in Snap Map and more.
Local Lenses: Due to the rising popularity of Snapchat’s AR tools during COVID-19, Snapchat is capitalizing on this opportunity by adding Local Lenses which will enable users to engage with a “persistent, shared AR world built right on top of your neighborhood’. This means anyone will be able to virtually paint and edit certain buildings or landmarks and others can see those changes within the app.
New AR experiences: Snapchat is also offering new ways to identify objects and trigger AR responses, within the Snap camera. Snapchat will be partnering with a range of providers to expand scan options, including PlantSnap to identify plants and trees, a Dog Scanner to recognize dog breeds and even Louis Vuitton to enable scanning of the LV logo to link to AR experiences. And soon enough, Snapchat will be able to identify your voice commands via a new Voice Scan option.
Dynamic Lenses: Lastly, Snapchat added Dynamic Lenses which will enable developers to add real-time information from their apps into Snapchat Lenses.
Users can now share custom Lens on Snapchat that can be used to invite friends to join your virtual hangout on platforms like Houseparty with a swipe-up CTA like “Swipe up to add Aherzick on Houseparty” as the one seen below.
Snap Focus: New Education Platform for Marketers
If you want to learn about the ins and outs of advertising on Snapchat, consider yourself lucky. Similar to Facebook’s Blueprint course, Snapchat released a new education platform called ‘Snap Focus,’ which offers a range of courses on the various Snap ad options and tools.
The platform includes overviews, visuals and even tests at the end of each unit to confirm your knowledge. Users can gain access to 6 courses titled “Snapchat Advertising Essentials” which will make you Ads Manager certified upon completion. Get started with Snap Focus here today.
Voice Tweets
If tweeting (a tweet) wasn’t enough for you, you can now tweet with your voice! Twitter has launched the option to add 140-second audio clips to tweets, offering users a new way to reach audiences. To emulate a tweet thread but in audio form, Twitter says that “once you reach the time limit for a Tweet, a new voice Tweet starts automatically to create a thread,” so you can put together longer recordings.
It will be interesting to see who takes advantage of audio tweets in the long run, whether its storytellers like podcasters, activists, journalists or the everyday person. For more information on the new feature and how to use it, visit Twitter’s blog here.
Voice Tweets is currently available to a limited group of Twitter users on iOS but will be rolled out to all iOS users in the coming weeks.
Quick Recap:
- Facebook: Introducing Custom Audiences for Shopping, New Updates to Learning Phase, New Ways to Start Conversations with Ads, Facebook Lifts Ad Ban on Non-medical Face Masks, Switch Between Personal and Business Accounts in Messenger
- Instagram: Messenger Rooms, IGTV Monetization
- Google: More Video Ad Options in Response to Evolving Viewing Behaviours
- Pinterest: Shop Tab on Lens Results
- Snapchat: 2020 Snap Partner Summit, Snap Focus
- Twitter: Voice Tweets
Tune in next month for another round of social media updates!
If you are looking to improve your social media results or have questions regarding the latest platform updates, we’d love to chat!