This week in social media news, Snapchat shares brand-building tips, Meta says it’s developing a privacy-safe ad product, YouTube’s new feature lets users connect their TV to their phone and more.
Snapchat’s New Guide Shares How To Build Brand And Create More Effective Ads
Snapchat partnered with Kantar to deconstruct brand lift studies and offer insights on how variables like ad format, frequency and creative features drove lift across key brand performance metrics. Among three more key findings, the research shows that the best way to plan a Snapchat campaign starts with leveraging multiple ad formats on the platform.
Why it matters: As the digital ad industry recovers from changes to Apple’s Identifier For Advertisers and coping with ad tracking regulations, Snapchat hopes to guide marketers activating their first branding campaign on the platform. To do so, it identified four patterns across these outputs.
The details: Snapchat utilized Kantar’s Balanced Attribution product to study 52 campaigns, which included more than 50,000 respondents and 630,000 Snapchat ad exposures in the US, Saudi Arabia, France and Australia. The four patterns it identified include:
- Contributors to Success: Snap says to remember that a campaign’s performance isn’t dependent on a single factor such as creative or frequency.
- Higher Budget = More Camera Ads: To increase your Snapchat campaign’s performance, the app suggests leveraging multiple ad formats, including content and camera ads. The study found that the reallocation of budget towards Camera Ads maximized lifts in intent and helped build differentiated frequency and incremental reach.
- More Creative = Better Results: An exposure that delivers the same message in a different way compared to other creatives in the mix helps with incremental reach and building differentiated frequency, the data found.
- Room for Higher Frequencies: A frequency of 4x per week drove roughly 75 percent of total possible intent lift, with the model predicting total saturation at 8x per week.
LinkedIn Publishes Transparency Report For The Second Half Of 2021
LinkedIn has released its semi-annual Transparency Report, which addresses its responses to professional community policy violations and government requests for member data and content removal in the second half of 2021.
Why it matters: As of 2022, LinkedIn has more than 830 million members and over 58 million registered companies in 200 countries and regions worldwide, according to its About Us. Like it is for all social media platforms, it’s imperative to LinkedIn’s ongoing growth that it responds to fake accounts, misinformation and other policy violations before they impact or drive away users.
The details: Though most of its content was constructive, LinkedIn witnessed a greater amount of misinformation, fake accounts and other abusive content and behavior. The rise in the amount of misinformation could be attributed to the company’s enhanced automated defense system, which blocked 96 percent of all fake accounts it stopped during the July to December 2021 period. Of the spam or scam content removed in this period, the platform’s automated defenses stopped 99.1 percent and its teams manually removed the rest. Read the full report here.
YouTube Now Lets Users Connect Their TV To iOS Or Android Phone
YouTube is rolling out a new feature that lets users effortlessly connect their TV to their iOS or Android phone, head of design for YouTube on TV, Brynn Evans, announced in a blog.
Why it matters: As of 2022, every single day viewers are watching an average of more than 700 million hours of YouTube content on TV. This growing number challenges the platform’s design team to keep the experience simple, streamlined and intuitive, according to Evans. The function comes 12 years after the YouTube app for TV screens first launched.
The details: YouTube found that more than 80 percent of people report using another digital device while watching TV, sometimes even watching the same video on TV and on mobile while engaging with it only on the latter.
Given remote controls are difficult to use when controlling YouTube on TV and most TVs don’t have a built-in web browser, YouTube decided to launch a feature that lets users connect their TV to their iOS or Android phone so that videos can be engaged with (i.e., liked, shared, commented on, etc.) directly.
To try this, your phone and TV must be signed in to the same YouTube account. Open the YouTube app on TV, then open the YouTube app on your phone and click “Connect” on the prompt that automatically pops up. Now your phone will be synchronized to the TV.
YouTube says it’s starting to test new designs for its video watch page to help incorporate more uniquely YouTube features–like browsing and shopping for products featured in videos–directly to the big screen to help viewers decide when to pick up their phone and engage.
TikTok’s Creative Center Platform Gives Marketers Key Insights
According to Social Media Today, TikTok has added new insights to its evolving Creative Center platform, about trending hashtags, regional performance stats, key influencers and more. Catch a glimpse here.
Why it matters: The new data offers marketers critical research value as they continue to master TikTok advertising. It also marks TikTok’s larger effort to attract ad dollars as the app is projected to grow its net ad revenue in the US to $5.96 billion in 2022, up 184 percent year-over-year, per eMarketer.
The details: Using the new insights, creators and marketers can research trending hashtags by region and the top influencers aligned with each. This adds to the TikTok Creative Center’s current offerings, including an Ad Library that shows the top-performing ads on TikTok. The new update comes on the heels of the app’s launch of its interactive insights platform in May, which allows marketers and influencers to engage with an array of filters to discover key data points on their target markets.
Facebook Is Developing A “Privacy-Safe” Ad Product
As privacy changes limit its targeting capabilities, Meta’s Facebook is in the early stages of developing a “basic ads” product that won’t depend on users’ anonymized personal information, reports Business Insider.
Why it matters: After reporting its first quarterly decline in active users in Q4 2021, Meta is in the midst of navigating a future in which users’ personal info is no longer freely accessible. To sustain its primary source of revenue, the company is attempting to offer ads that deliver scale while also being able to overcome data regulations like The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
According to an analysis by data management company Lotame, Apple’s privacy changes would cause a $12.8 billion hit to Meta’s revenue in 2022. Google also intends on instituting changes that would limit advertisers’ targeting ability.
The details: Facebook’s new product—which is expected to be tested in the US after it launches in the European Union—targets brand advertisers attempting to build awareness and shape perception of products. It would be measured by basic metrics such as engagement and video views, according to Business Insider.
Meta is under pressure to compete with rapidly growing TikTok, which has been a beneficiary of Facebook’s ad challenges. TikTok has been testing capabilities like retargeting campaigns with advertisers, according to anonymous ad buyers interviewed by Business Insider. If TikTok can prove that retargeting is driving performance, brands will likely move more marketing dollars from Facebook to TikTok.
Meta Adds New Creative Tools And Features To Reels
Meta recently announced new Facebook and Instagram Reels creative tools and features—including poll, quiz and emoji slider stickers—to help creators bring their ideas to fruition, get discovered and grow their audiences.
Why it matters: Many of the new tools Meta launched are copycats of those TikTok already offers creators. For example, the new suggested Reels feature is similar to TikTok’s “For You” page while Meta’s new Sound Sync feature is just like TikTok’s auto-sync video option as both let you automatically sync your video clips to the beat of a song.
The details: Among the new tools coming to Facebook Reels include the ability to:
- Create, edit and schedule Facebook Reels on desktop.
- Clip videos on desktop, making it easier for creators who publish long-form, recorded or live videos—and video game creators who want to generate short-form Reels directly from their Live content—to test different formats.
- Narrate videos and use Sound Sync to automatically sync video clips to a song’s beat. The platform will also have a text-to-speech digital voice to read text.
Among the new tools coming to Instagram Reels include the ability to:
- Extend videos to 90 seconds.
- Interact with audiences using poll, quiz and emoji slider stickers.
- Import original audio directly within Instagram Reels.
- Use new templates to create reels using the same structure as another creator’s Reel.
Getting discovered and expanding reach will be further supported by Meta’s new suggested Reels in Feed feature, which will be rolling out globally. In addition, creators on Instagram will now have the opportunity to recommend their Reels on Facebook to expand their content’s reach.
Pinterest Launches “We Belong Here” Campaign For Pride Month
Pinterest is celebrating Pride Month with new opportunities for LGBTQ+ creators, including the expansion of its Creator Fund to two new countries and reduced barriers of entry for these creators to reach new audiences on the platform.
Why it matters: As the platform notes, Pinterest continues to be a forum where all communities go to explore identities, be their authentic selves, build community and find ways to commemorate life’s moments. According to Pinterest, global searches around gender expression, seeking support and creating belonging are trending as searches for “gender identity” are up 55 percent, “genderfluid aesthetic” up 100 percent and “LGBT support” up 300 percent.
The details: Pinterest has recognized the importance of remaining an inclusive space and as part of Pride Month is expanding its Creator Fund to the UK and Brazil. For this first cohort, the UK will focus on fashion and beauty creators while Brazil will combine creators from the food, beauty, fashion and decor categories.
To ensure the creativity that comes from LGBTQIA+ creators is not overlooked, the Creator Fund will also reduce barriers of entry for them to inspire more creativity. During training, creators will learn current and relevant Pinner searches such as rainbow peekaboo hair (up 3x) or pride makeup ideas (up 2x). The goal for the Creator Fund, Pinterest notes, is to foster talent through financial and educational support.
Over the next few weeks, when Pinners globally search for terms related to “Pride” on Pinterest, they’ll see a landing page on Today’s Inspiration with the theme of Pinterest’s 2022 campaign, “We Belong Here,” that will lead them to Pride-focused boards and articles on celebrating belonging.