For years, Twitter has shined during big events – whether they be scheduled events like The Oscars, Super Bowl, or Grammys, or breaking news. Twitter’s fine for the mundane day-to-day, but when something big is happening, more people flock to Twitter to see what everyone (friends and the famous) are saying.
It makes sense then, that Twitter would allow marketers to target ads based on events. Well, it does. Now.
In how-was-that-not-already-a-thing news, Twitter has just unveiled event targeting.
“Millions of people rely on Twitter to discover and engage with a variety of live events. Whether it’s a presidential election, Coachella, Mother’s Day or the Super Bowl, if it’s happening in the world, it’s happening on Twitter. Starting today, advertisers will be able to reach audiences interested in these events with a new feature called event targeting,” says Twitter’s Dinkar Jain. “With event targeting, you can activate around live moments, quickly and easily. We’ll help you discover and plan for these moments, learn more about the participating audiences through valuable insights, and with one click, create a campaign that delivers the right message to just the right users as the event unfolds.”
Marketers now have something called the “event calendar” (seen above) that shows upcoming events across the world on any given day. Twitter says the event calendar will show events related to sports, festivals, holidays, TV, music, and politics on five countries – the US, UK, France, Japan, and Brazil.
Once marketers have determined on which event they want to target users, they can see a detailed breakdown of past tweet activity for said events so they can better choose secondary targeting like gender or device.
This new ad targeting based on events seems to be timed well, as Twitter is gearing up to unveil a new feature that highlights events and puts them front and center on Twitter.com and its apps – for both logged-in and logged-out users.
Have you logged on to Twitter.com today? If so, you were probably greeted with a much whiter background than you remember setting.
That’s because Twitter has decided to remove your custom backgrounds from your home page and notifications page.
Here’s a statement the company:
We’re removing background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users. Now, background images are only available where logged-in users will see them publicly (Tweet pages, list pages and collections pages). You can find help center content about customizing your design and where it’s visible on Twitter here.
So you will see your backgrounds on some pages, but not the ones you visit the most.
If you go to your settings and change your background to another color other than last-day-of-winter-thigh white, it’ll work. You can turn your home page background back to what it was (custom of solid color). But navigate away from the site and you’ll see white when you return.
Maybe Twitter just thinks your custom backgrounds are ugly. To be fair, they probably were. Maybe it’ll change its mind and bring back custom backgrounds eventually. Maybe Twitter is looking for a clean slate to place ads.
Considering Twitter’s recent money struggles, I’d go with the latter.
Twitter-owned Vine’s videos autoplay in users’ timelines, unless you turn off autoplay in your settings – so it’s pretty hard to avoid them unless you’ve made a real effort to. Twitter just got in a bit of trouble over some of these Vine videos that featured flashing lights and colors.
Why?
Because they could have triggered seizures.
Epilepsy awareness group Epilepsy Action took issue with a couple of Vines advertising Twitter’s #DiscoverMusic posted by TwitterUK. According tot he group, the ads were “massively dangerous to people with photosensitive epilepsy.”
.@TwitterUK Your #DiscoverMusic Vines are massively dangerous to people with photosensitive epilepsy. Please take them offline now.
It didn’t take Twitter long to realize its mistake and pull the ads.
“Eighty seven people are diagnosed with epilepsy every day and that first seizure can often come out of nowhere,” said Epilepsy Action’s deputy chief executive Simon Wigglesworth. “For a huge corporation like Twitter to take that risk was irresponsible.”
Irresponsible, of course. But did you know that Twitter was also running afoul of the UK’s main advertising authority?
The Advertising Standards Authority told the BBC that “marketing communications”, even those uploaded on a company’s own website, should not include “visual effects or techniques that are likely to adversely affect members of the public with photosensitive epilepsy”.
It said both online and broadcast adverts in the UK had to adhere to rules made by the Committees of Advertising Practice.
“We take very seriously ads in online media that might cause harm to people with photosensitive epilepsy,” an ASA spokeswoman told the BBC.
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage, Facebook was ablaze with status updates, link shares, and photo uploads. If you were on Facebook in the hours following the landmark decision, it sure seemed like the entire world was sounding off – or at least you and your friends.
The tool allowed users to rainbow-ify their profile pictures with a filter overlay. Simple enough.
Mark Zuckerberg did it. Arnold Schwarzenegger did it. Your mom probably did it. Everyone was doing it.
In fact, in about three days, Facebook says that 26 million users rainbowed their profile pictures – and these received over a half a billion likes and comments.
But it didn’t take long for some to question Facebook’s motivations. Had Facebook simply capitalized on an emotional, highly-charged moment to run yet another experiment on its users? Was this all just a big data grab?
“All this raises a serious question: Is Facebook doing research with its “Celebrate Pride” feature? Facebook’s data scientists have attracted public scrutiny for conducting experiments on its users: tracking their moods and voting behavior. Much less attention has been given to their ongoing work to better understand collective action and social change online,” asked The Atlantic
Social testing? Data tracking for ads? Exactly what was Facebook up to?
None of that, really, says the company.
“This was not an experiment or test, but rather something that enables people to show their support of the LGBTQ community on Facebook,” said the company in a statement. “We aren’t going to use this as a way to target ads and the point of this tool is not to get information about people.”
But of course, Facebook has the data. How else would it know how many people changed their profile pic? How else would they know the level of interaction on said pics?
Is Facebook tracking your every move? Of course. Is every bit of tracking for the purpose of ad sales? It’s hard to say. Facebook says this was simply an exercise in giving the community a way to show pride. Do you believe them?
When it comes to advertising, Pinterest says it’s about “mapping your business goals to the steps Pinners take to plan their futures.” With that in mind, Pinterest is now offering some new types of ad solutions to “give businesses a unique way to get in front of more people” on a path to purchasing. These new advertising options were rumored to be in the works a couple of months ago.
Sure to be more eye catching, Pinterest is debuting Cinematic Pins. Calling them “thumb-stoppers”, Pinterest says these Cinematic Pins are its “most beautiful type of Promoted Pin” yet.
Cinematic Pins, at first glance, appear to be Pinterest’s answer to video ads on sites like Facebook and Instagram – but that’s not entirely accurate. Cinematic Pins move when a user scrolls by them, which is pretty much the opposite of a Facebook video ad, for instance, which plays when you stop on it and stops playing (audibly as well) when you start scrolling. It’s clear that Pinterest’s goal here is catch eyes with that motion in the hopes it’ll make people stop and click or repin.
Is Pinterest part of your business plan? If so, how’s it working out? If not, do you think you’ll turn some attention to Pinterest in the near future?Let us know in the comments.
Pinterest is starting to roll out Cinematic Pins with a handful of big-name partners like Gap Inc. (Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic), L’Oreal USA (L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline and Garnier), Nestlé, STX Entertainment’s new movie The Gift, Target, Unilever, Visa Checkout, Walgreens and Wendy’s.
Apparently it’s worked in testing, at least according to Pinterest.
“Users want to feel like they’re in control, and we’ve done a bunch of user testing—users are delighted by this experience,” said Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s gm of monetization, to AdWeek. “They wind up scrolling back and forth. They love controlling the motion.”
Pinterest is also unveiling targeting options for Promoted Pins, allowing brands to target to specific subsets of users based on interests like millennials, foodies, gardeners, and travelers.
These new ad options – Cinematic Pins and audience targeting – are what Pinterest is describing as its “Awareness” tier of a three-pronged approach to advertising.
As you can see on level two, Pinterest is rolling out a new Cost-per-engagement model.
To know if your audience thinks your content is save-worthy, it’s best to measure their engagement through repins, closeups and clicks. In addition to our existing premium CPM and CPC Promoted Pins, we’re now rolling out a cost-per-engagement (CPE) model that’ll help you track future intent.
Also, if you spend enough on Promoted Pins, Pinterest will help you craft them with a new “Pin Factory”.:
We want you to have a great start with Promoted Pins, which is why we’re offering a few new services that make it easier to create great, promotable content. The Pin Factory is our Pin creative studio for brands. For a minimum spend, we’ll create beautiful, helpful Pin images and descriptions that get you results.
Pinterest has been taking steps as of late to look better to businesses. Last month, Pinterest announced its new Marketing Developer Partners (MDP).
“The program helps businesses optimize and scale their Pinterest marketing and improve Pinterest for Pinners,” a spokesperson for Pinterest told WebProNews. “The initial MPD program is made up of a limited, carefully selected group of developer partners who meet the needs of existing businesses on Pinterest and align with Pinterest’s core value of putting Pinners first.”
This program is designed to make it easier for marketers to find content to pin, and ultimately to pin said content in the best way possible.
The company also just launched its Developers Platform, a suite of APIs for building apps and integrations that Pinterest says will “bring pins to life.”
“The Platform will enable developers to tap into the Pinterest interest graph of more than 50 billion projects, places and products to build and grow their apps,” Pinterest spokesperson told WebProNews at the time. “With the new APIs, developers will be able to reach millions of Pinners with apps that make Pins actionable and help people take their ideas offline.
With these new options for advertising and with Pinterest making steps to make its platform more efficient for marketers and users alike, it’s just another reason why businesses shouldn’t ignore the power of Pinterest.
The other reason? Traffic.
Here are some recently-shared stats from Pinterest:
The stats:
50 billion Pins collected by people onto more than 1 billion boards
80% of traffic comes from mobile
Each year, Pinterest serves more than 1.5 trillion recommendations
Recipes: Over 1.7 billion recipe Pins
Shopping: Every day nearly 2 million people Pin product rich Pins
Articles: More than 14 million articles are Pinned each day
⅔ of all the content people Pin is from a business’ website
If you’re a business, the last few points here should make you take notice – two million product pins daily and the fact that two-thirds of all content is from a business website. Hard to argue with that proportion.
For about a decade, Blendtec founder Tom Dickson has satisfied his urge to destroy something beautiful by placing expensive things inside one of his blenders and pulverizing them. This exercise, which has been performed for products dating as far back as the original iPod all the way through every generation of the iPhone, has also satisfied his urge to sell blenders – or at least get some positive PR.
Yeah, the Will It Blend? series is a giant commercial. Duh. But it’s also a series in which you get to watch Apple products get ground up into black dust. So it certainly has a lot going for it.
I probably haven’t watched a Will It Blend? in a while – but for some reason the thought of watching Dickson destroy an Apple Watch was intriguing. More so than the thought of other devices.
Don’t you want to watch a perfectly good Apple Watch get shredded to pieces? I’m not disappointed in my choice.
On April 20, a holiday for people who like appetite enhancers, Ben & Jerry’s is debuting an ice cream-filled burrito in its scoop shops.
Sorry, I meant “BRRR-ito”,
“We’re always on the hunt for new ways to eat our ice cream. What better way than wrapped in a BRRR-ito?!? Your two favorite flavors, topped with a fudge drizzle and cookie crumbs, all wrapped up in a soft and chewy waffle wrap. It’s how we roll! Coming April 20th to Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops!” says the company.
And to promote this creation, with which I have no problem, Ben & Jerry’s have created an ad that parodies one of the most famous ads of all time.
Your regular ice cream sandwich sucks, bruh. You need to be freed from the groupthink.
Looks familiar, right?
Once again, I have absolutely no issues with Ben & Jerry’s stuffing ice cream inside a waffle burrito and shoving it in stoners’ faces. Absolutely no problem with this.
Spotify’s ad offerings for brands have included audience targeting for some time – based on age, gender, location, platform, and genre preferences. Now, Spotify’s turning to playlists to unlock users’ current moods, so advertisers can know if users are in chill mode or turn-up mode.
The company has just announced playlist targeting for brands, set to kick off May 1.
“Music is an integral part of life, day in and day out,” said Jeff Levick, Chief Revenue Officer, Spotify. “Our new targeting solutions based on rich behavioral insights combined with our global footprint in 58 markets give brands unprecedented ways to reach streaming consumers.”
Spotify is leveraging all of its playlist data – based on more than 1.5 billion playlists – to provide advertisers with a glimpse into a user’s mood.
“We leverage first-party data to identify user-generated and Spotify-curated playlists aligned with popular activities and moods. We create audience segments by identifying users that listen frequently to playlists in each category. We refresh segments daily based on new playlists, new users, and overall streaming activity,” says Spotify.
Out of the gate, brands will be able to reach users based on a handful of activities and moods, signaled by playlists. These include workout, party, focus, commute, relax, travel, dining, and romance.
So, a coffee brand could play an ad to a user on his/her way to work, or a cruise line could play an ad for someone in the “travel” mood.
According to Ad Age, Spotify has been testing playlist targeting for a few months with eight brand partners.
“This is not something that’s just randomly thrown out there. It’s a strategic evolution of the Spotify ads business going back a year and a half ago with the mobile licenses,” said Spotify’s VP-North America advertising and partnerships Brian Benedik.
Playlist targeting will be available for brands at the start of next month, targeted to Spotify’s free-tier users. Earlier this week, Spotify began running a “tweet the beat” promotion, which basically amounts to an ad for all users – even those paying for premium.
If you pay $10 a month for Spotify premium, one of the major reasons you do that is to avoid ads. But Spotify’s new in-app ads, which act more like suggestions for you to tweet out an ad on Spotify’s behalf, are being served to all users – premium subscribers included.
The new pop-up ads are appearing on both desktop and mobile, and are called “Tweet the Beat’. The ads focuses on Rihanna and her new single “Bitch Better Have My Money”. The ads prompt users to tweet a thank you to Rihanna for the new single.
No I will not tweet the beat. I pay for premium. I shouldn't have to put up with these advertisements. @Spotifypic.twitter.com/pYy2alr6I6
Spotify confirmed the new feature to The Verge, saying,
“What you’re seeing is a new feature called Tweet the Beat which lets listeners express love and appreciation towards the artists they follow or listen to often, and has been designed as a great way for fans to get closer to their favourite artists.”
Right now it’s only Rihanna, but from Spotify’s statement it’s clear the streaming company wants to expand this to more artists.
Apart from Justin Bieber videos and comment trolls, ads are the most annoying thing about YouTube. But most of us have come to accept that we’re going to have to watch five, 15, or god forbid 30 seconds of an ad before our video plays – and even during our video plays if the video is long enough. It’s just a fact of life – death, taxes, and YouTube ads.
But if there were a way to remove ads from the equation, what would you pay?
If your answer is around 10 bucks a month or something, then you’re in luck. YouTube’s long-discussed ad-free subscription plan is on the horizon, and it looks like that’ll be the price point.
YouTube confirmed the offering in a letter to its partners, saying the new ad-free paid subscription will “generate a new source of revenue that will supplement [thier] fast growing advertising revenue.”
“We’re confident this latest contract update will excite your fans and generate a previously untapped, additional source of revenue for you,” said the YouTube team in the letter.
According to YouTube’s updated Terms of Service, that will amount to 55% of total net revenues from the new subscription fees. Partners must participate in the subscription program, or risk their videos being set to private – according to source quoted by The Verge.
“YouTube will pay you 55% of the total net revenues recognized by YouTube from subscription fees that are attributable to the monthly views or watchtime of your Content as a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube). If your Content is included in and viewed by a user in multiple subscription offerings, YouTube will pay you based on the subscription offering with the highest amount of net revenues recognized by YouTube, as calculated by YouTube.”
No official word on when YouTube will begin offering users the option to make the ads disappear or how much it will cost exactly. The Verge says it’ll cost around $10. Bloomberg says it should be coming in the next few months. The new terms for partners take effect June 15.
YouTube would only give this standard response:
“While we can’t comment on ongoing discussions, giving fans more choice to enjoy the content they love and creators more opportunity to earn revenue are always amongst our top priorities.”
Ad-free sounds great. But who would pay for YouTube? Aren’t we all just used to YouTube being free?
The question then becomes … who would pay for YouTube?
You may or may now know that YouTube has already been experimenting with paid subscriptions on a smaller scale. Since May of last year, YouTube has offered paid channels. YouTube lets the channel creator set their own price (which could be anywhere from $0.99 a month to a few dollars a month), and then takes a cut of the profit. Paid channels started with a few dozen partners and soon expanded, but the initiative hasn’t really taken off – at least not as much as YouTube would’ve hoped.
And the problem that befalls paid channels could also affect YouTube’s move into offering a site-wide paid subscription service.
Is the content really worth paying for?
It’s one thing to pay a monthly or yearly fee to watch Game of Thrones or to listen to Led Zeppelin. It’s a whole different thing to pay money to watch babies laugh, cats chase laser pointers, and drunk people falling down stairs.
I know there’s much better content on YouTube than that – but you get the point.
YouTube caricature aside, a lot of people would likely have a problem justifying a monthly payment for YouTube. We’re all so used to YouTube being free. You know what we’re also pretty used to? Ads. It’s just a part of the experience now. Are you really that annoyed by ads to warrant paying for YouTube?
YouTube has already made a move toward paid models. You might recall its music service, YouTube Music Key, is currently in beta. It’s an interesting concept, for sure – one that would put YouTube in the same breath as streaming platforms like Netflix.
But will people play for YouTube? And is going “ad-free” enough of a carrot to dangle? Maybe if YouTube made a show like Game of Thrones and put it behind a paywall.
Last month, Instagram announced a new ad unit called Carousel. It lets brands add multiple photos to a single post, which users can cycle through by swiping left. The Carousel ads also feature a link to a site of the business’ choice, making it easy for them to get users from Instagram to their official product pages.
Now, Instagram is announcing its first wave of brand partners. The first Carousel ads began appearing this weekend, and Instagram says we should expect to see more and more brands utilizing the new format soon.
The first brands adopting Carousel ads are Showtime, Banana Republic, Old Navy, L’Oreal Paris, and Samsung.
Showtime is promoting the new season of Penny Dreadful.
“The Instagram carousel expands our ability to showcase the richness and complexities of Penny Dreadful and the series’ multi-dimensional characters,” said Donald Buckley, Executive Vice President, Program Marketing, Media, Promotions and Digital Services, Showtime Networks Inc. “As the series delves deeper into the psyches of the family, this new feature will allow us to further engage with fans.”
Banana Republic is advertising its new Spring collection.
“With a carousel, our customers can discover more if they want as we spotlight some of our favorite products and share styling ideas across multiple images,” Aimee Lapic, Banana Republic SVP and GM of Customer Experience. “Creating relevant content for our customers, while also making it easier for them to shop, is a win-win.”
As is Old Navy.
“Instagram is distinctly visual medium, and the carousel function enables us to deliver richer, more cohesive storytelling,” said Taylor Bux, Old Navy’s Director of Digital & Social Strategy. “Additionally, the direct linking to OldNavy.com creates a seamless experience for fans to purchase the items that they love without having to hunt.”
As you can see, brands are especially excited about the ability to link users directly to their product pages at the end of Carousel ads.
Like Instagram ads in general, this should be a slow and calculated rollout. Instagram, if anything, has been cautious about flooding your feeds with ads.
And as I said before, I’m sure your average user would love to be able to Carousel multiple photos in a single post. The company didn’t rule it out, but stopped short of saying this sort of photo feature would roll out wide. For now, it’s a limited brand offering – but and interesting one for sure.
One of Twitter’s main goals – just like Facebook or any other social network – is the find that perfect balance between advertising and a pleasant user experience. That’s why the company is reportedly torn on whether or not to implement autoplay videos in users’ timelines. That’s why you hear Twitter execs discussing “ratios” all the time (one sponsored tweet per 20 organic tweets, for instance).
Now, Twitter’s running a test that likely toes that line for many. As of now, Twitter is experimenting with putting ads in your profile.
Twitter is bringing promoted tweets, the app’s signature ad unit, to people’s profile pages as part of a new test. That means when you visit the page of another user, you may find a targeted Twitter ad waiting for you a few tweets into that user’s stream.
The ads are separated from other tweets by a small bumper that creates a break in the stream, and a label that reads “Suggested by Twitter” — you can see an example at the bottom of this post. A company spokesperson confirmed Twitter is testing the new ad placement.
These “targeted” ads are only appearing on a small fraction of profiles for now, and only showing up for logged-in users.
Of course, as Twitter gets further into this test, that could change. Not everyone that uses Twitter is an actual Twitter member – and the percentage of non-logged-in users visiting the site could increase greatly as real time tweets are reinserted into Google search results.
If you don’t pay attention to the incredibly odd promo image above, Samsung has done something pretty cool – for the first time (it’s claiming), someone has watched a birth live-stream in virtual reality.
Make no mistake, this is a six minute ad for Samsung’s Gear VR. But it is a neat use of the technology. It might pull at your heartstrings a little bit – if you’re inclined to have those tugged on occasion.
The story goes like this: Jason and Alison were about to welcome their third child, but Jason’s work took him all the way across Australia and made it impossible for him to be there at the birth. This was terrible and depressing, naturally. Then, Samsung swooped in and saved the day by setting up multi-directional cameras in the delivery room and giving Jason a Gear VR headset.
“Sometimes barriers like distance keep people from being part of experiences that no one wants to miss. So we decided to help two people come together in a completely new way to let them share one of life’s most profound moments. Welcome to the world’s first live virtual reality birth using the Samsung Gear VR,” says Samsung.
You can watch a father watch the birth of his son in virtual reality below:
At this point, brands probably feel like it would be more effective to don dinosaur costumes and shout on the street corner than to post stuff to Facebook. Brands’ organic reach has been murdered by the social network – a devastating blow almost two years ago and small cuts ever since. For those who refuse to pay-to-play, Facebook certainly feels like an echo chamber.
Most of the time you’re lucky if ten – maybe 15 – percent of your Facebook followers see your posts. Unless you pay to promote them of course, but even then results can vary.
Instagram, at least for the time being, offers brands a respite from this. If you’re a brand and you post a photo to Instagram, there’s a 100% chance that it’ll at least appear in your followers’ feeds. Whether or not they’ll engage is another story and completely up to how effective you can be – but at least your post has a fighting chance.
One hundred precent organic reach is a beautiful thing – but in the end it could turn out to be a sirens’ song.
“Facebook’s News Feed algorithm restricts the organic reach of content on the platform, and is particularly punishing for brands with large followings (500k+),” says L2 in its Instagram Intelligence Report. In contrast, Instagram communities defy gravity, with no negative correlation between a brand’s follower count and engagement rate.”
L2 looked at the top 250 brands and found post frequency on Instagram is up 23 percent since the beginning of 2014.
On average, brands post 9.3 times per week on Instagram, up from 7.5 times a week a year ago. On the other hand, brands are posting to Facebook less and less. Over the same period, average posts a week feel from 11.1 to 8.8.
Plus, Instagram is growing rapidly. Brands’ follower counts grew 26 percent overall last year.
A growing user base plus unlimited reach is enough to make any marketer swoon.
Of course, there could be a storm on the horizon.
“Enamored by 100 percent organic reach, brands have dialed up efforts on Instagram – post frequency has grown 23 percent over the last five quarters. Unlike the pay-to-play ethos of Facebook, pure sweat (namely, content testing and optimization) still drives meaningful results on Instagram. For brands, these are the salad days – motivated to both preserve user experience and create scarcity value, Instagram has kept advertising on the platform to a minimum,” says L2.
And that’s true. Instagram has been purposefully cautious about crowding everyone’s feeds with sponsored posts. This gives brands’ regular, non-promoted content more visibility. When Instagram ramps up the paid ads efforts, and it’s inevitable, brands will be competing for eyes more than they’re used to doing.
And then there’s the other issue – the one that could really hurt brands’ reach on Instagram. Algorithmic interference.
Facebook owns Instagram, and you have to imagine that it’s at least a possibility that the company will adopt a similar feed strategy with Instagram as it’s done with Facebook – limit organic reach to force brands to buy ads.
L2 agrees, and warns of this very thing:
“Brands should expect that organic reach will be supplanted by pay-to-play (see: Facebook) on Instagram, and ensure the assets and skills being erected will stand when muscle (money) replaces sweat.”
Ultimately, Instagram’s 100 percent organic reach and booming user growth could be a sirens’ song for brands. A long time ago, brand pages got used to relying on Facebook traffic and engagement – as it was free and easy. Then, Facebook pulled the rug out. Now that brands are heading to Instagram and beginning to rely on the visibility and high engagement rates is provides, could the same thing happen?
Pandora is looking for ways to increase revenue, and it’s come up with a way to get users to pay for music, without actually forcing them to commit to a full-on subscription to the premium service.
Pandora confirmed to GigaOm that it will soon unveil a “day pass” option, which will allow users to buy a small period of ad-free listening. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you don’t want to pay $5 per month for constant ad-free music and let’s say you’re having a party tonight. The option to buy a chunk of ad-free time sounds pretty attractive in that scenario.
Early thoughts are that the day pass could be offered at $0.99 for 24 hours, or maybe a bit more for a three-day pass. Pandora says it’s currently exploring its pricing options.
Here’s the statement from Pandora:
Pandora is committed to delivering an effortless, personalized experience and we recognize some consumers may want an ad-free experience but don’t necessarily want to commit to a subscription. This offering will allow consumers to choose and explore what is right for them or suits a particular event or experience. Pricing and exact timing are yet to be determined but we expect it to be available later this year.
It’s an interesting way to generate additional revenue for a company that’s had to increase prices in the past to keep up with rising costs. About a year ago, Pandora hiked the price of its premium offering, Pandora One, from $3.99 to $4.99. The company cited rising royalty rates as one of the reasons.
Instagram is testing a new way for brands to deliver ads on the network, and it’s something that the average user would probably kill to have access to.
The company has just announced a new format called Carousel ads. It lets brands add multiple photos to a single post, which users can cycle through by swiping left. The Carousel ads will also feature a link to a site of the business’ choice.
“One way to look at it is carousel ads bring the potential of multi-page print campaigns to mobile phones – with the added benefit of taking people to a website to learn more. For instance, a fashion company could use the carousel to deconstruct the individual products in a ‘look.’ A car company might share an array of different features of a vehicle and provide a link to learn more about the new model. Or, an advertiser could showcase how multiple ingredients come together to make a delicious meal,” says Instagram in a Business Blog post.
Instagram is right. The possibilities for this type of multi-photo post are endless.
And I’m sure your average Instagram user would love to explore that.
Instagram has always been about posting that one perfect shot, but people sometimes have more photos they want to share at one time. There are basically two ways to do this. First, you could just post each photo as its own individual post, back-to-back-to-back, annoying the hell out of everyone who follows you. Or, you can use a third-party app like Pic Stitch to craft photo collages.
But a “carousel” of images within one post would let people see all of the photos you want them to see at the time in all their glory.
Of course, this may never happen. This is just a small test Instagram is running with a handful of brands.
“We are introducing this new format on a limited basis. In the coming weeks, you may see carousel ads and might notice variations of the format as we learn what people are most interested in and what performs best,” says Instagram.
But a company spokesperson did tell The Verge that its at least thinking about making this a wide feature.
“Once we iterate and see how people engage with the content, [we] may explore the possibility of bringing it to other types of users on Instagram,” said the spokesperson.
Back in February of 2014, reddit promised that at the end of the year, it would total up its ad revenue and give ten percent of it to charity. Charities, actually – reddit said it would “hold an election” based on community-nominated charities and split the ten percent of ad revenue with ten lucky charities.
Well, now’s the time. Reddit has announced that it made $8,276,594.93 in ad revenue in 2014, so $827,659.49 will be going to charity.
That’s $82,765.95 for each of the ten charities selected.
“Here at reddit, one of the things that gets us out of bed every morning is knowing that we have the ability to help the world at a scale that was, until very recently, only imaginable,” says a post on the reddit blog.
Reddit users can now vote on where the money will go. To vote, you have to already be a reddit user. You can’t just create an account today in order to vote.
Here’s how it works:
We have partnered with Charity Navigator, who has graciously given us access to their charity database. This database includes all charities they have reviewed, as well as all charities that have a US tax identification number (EIN). If you’re unable to find a particular charity by searching by name, just type in the charity’s EIN. This number can usually be found on the charity’s website.
So how do you vote? Head over to reddit.com/donate and make sure you’re logged in. Your account will have to be created before 10 am today in order to reduce any potential shenanigans. You are allowed to vote for as many different charities as you like, but you are limited to one vote per charity.
You can discuss the merits of each non-profit here. Voting closes on February 25.
Facebook, a company that makes its money selling ad space, has the same problem that everyone who deals in advertising has. How do I capture the consumer’s attention? Or, more aptly put, how do I make people stop and give a damn – if just briefly?
Advertising on Facebook has evolved over the years to include the rather in-your-face tactic that’s currently being employed – autoplay, in-feed videos. First, there were sponsored photo posts – which were static. Then, there were videos – which move about at an often startling pace.
It’s the kind of jarring assault that makes the average user want to scroll, and scroll away as fast as they can.
But could there be another type of in-feed ad, one that moves enough to capture the eye but is subtle and – dare I say – pleasing? Apparently, Facebook is putting its weight behind the cinemagraph.
You’ve likely seen cinemagraphs floating around the internet for years now. Basically, cinemagraphs are still photographs that feature a very small, controlled element of movement from one aspect of the frame. Like this:
The technique of creating cinemagraphs has been around for some time, but the term was coined (and trademarked) by photographers Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg in 2011.
And apparently, that’s who many high-profile companies are tapping to create their cinemagraphs. Adweek reports that Burg and Beck have been in talks with Facebook about cinemagraphs, and that Burg and Beck have “had all kinds of new inquiries [from brands].”
Here’s what a cinemagraph ad could look like on Facebook. This is a cinemagraph that Burg and Beck’s Ann Street Studio created for Ecco Domani wine:
Much more aesthetically pleasing than an autoplay ad, you have to admit.
“You’re going to start seeing a ton of these on Facebook,” an advertising executive told Adweek. They say they know this because they’ve seen “a guide produced by Facebook for marketers called ‘Hacking Facebook Autoplay.’”
Facebook’s autoplay feature in the News Feed is a powerful one for marketers – but right now it’s only being used bluntly. Something like a cinemagraph could make use of the autoplay feature and still keep users from scrolling by in abject horror.
Good news, everyone! Unless you’re one of the unlucky few publishers on the wrong end of the spectrum, chances are good that the vast majority of your traffic is living, breathing humans.
Among the top 85% of publishers comScore looked at, the instance of NHT, or Non-Human Traffic, was under 5 percent.
“There are many high quality publishers who deliver inventory that is virtually free of NHT, while a very small percentage of poor-performing publishers are giving the rest of the ecosystem a bad name. In fact, the Top 50 percent of publisher websites ranked by lowest incidence of NHT have less than 1 percent NHT. The Top 80 percent of publishers have less than 3 percent NHT, and the top 85 percent have less than 5 percent NHT, indicating that the vast majority of sites perform well in limiting this issue. It is only in the lowest-performing 15 percent of publishers where NHT is a sizeable problem greatly in need of serious mitigation efforts.”
Of course, bot traffic is still a huge concern for publishers and marketers alike, but this is promising news. ComScore recently looked at hundreds of digital ad campaigns and found that 79 percent of them had less than 5 percent NHT.
There’s a new version of Instagram out, and with it comes a small but important change to videos.
Videos on instagram will now auto-replay in your feeds. According to Instagram, this will not affect how much data the app uses.
Vine has been doing this since the beginning, and the constant looping is part of the app’s appeal. Case in point:
Apart from making it easier for users to rewatch videos, why would Instagram make this change?
Advertising, of course. It’s not just your buddy’s videos that will now loop on an endless repeat if left to do so, it’s also the video from major brands.
Pinterest’s “promoted pins” have been appearing on the site since fall 2013, but until now they’ve only shown up in search and in specific category feeds.
Today all that changes, as the company has just announced an expansion of the ad initiative. Now, users will begin to see promoted pins pop up in their home feeds, the most visible area of the site.
“Your home feed is the first thing you see when you come to Pinterest, so we want to make sure you’re always welcomed with Pins that are beautiful, relevant and tasteful – and that includes Promoted Pins. Of course, if you don’t like a Promoted Pin, you can always hide it from your feed and tell us why you didn’t like it. We’ll use your feedback to improve what you see in the future,” says Pinterest’s Annie Ta.
Pinterest has been cautious in rolling out their ad product. Not only did they take well over a year before moving it to the most-trafficked element of the service, but it was just last month that the company announced an imminent expansion to all partners. For most of 2014, promoted pins were only available to select partners.
At the time, Pinterest dropped some stats that make a pretty compelling case for the efficacy of promoted pins, from a marketer’s perspective.
“Brand advertisers achieved about a 30% bump in earned media (free impressions!) from their campaigns,” says Pinterest Head of Partnerships Joanne Bradford. “That’s from people who saw a Promoted Pin and thought it was good enough to save to one of their own boards. Engagement is strong— the average Pin is repinned 11 times, and that remains true for Promoted Pins (if not higher).”
“Promoted Pins perform long after a campaign ends. Since Pins are evergreen and last forever, we often saw an extra 5% bump in earned media in the month following the end of a campaign,” she adds. “Brands both in and out of our core categories found success. From financial services to food to auto, brands from a wide array of industries saw results. Auction-based Promoted Pins (CPC) are seeing success, too. Many of our self-serve beta partners are seeing major gains in traffic and impressions. We’re still making tweaks to the product and want to make sure we get it just right before we roll it out to all businesses.”
Third-party data confirmed that Pinterest’s promoted pins are really good at getting clicks. According to eMarketer data, 30% of U.S. Pinterest users between the ages of 13 and 64 said they clicked on promoted pins at least weekly
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