September 18, 2018: We’re proud to announce we’re an official Marketing Partner of Pinterest AND a winner of the Best Influencer Marketing Platform at the Digiday Awards! We’ll be signing autographs later.
And now — for the news: Forbes interviews Jeff Bezos, Glossier set to launch social-selling website, YouTube releases vertical ad format and Facebook image recognition software now understands text in images
Here’s what’s worth knowing this week:
Mavrck Selected As An Official Pinterest Marketing Partner
The Story
Mavrck has announced new capabilities for influencer collaboration on Pinterest as the result of the launch of Pinterest’s new influencer marketing program and API under the Pinterest Marketing Partner’s Content Marketing specialty.
The deets.
As an official Pinterest Marketing Partner, Mavrck will be able to better understand and measure how people interact with influencer-generated content on Pinterest. The new API will make it easier for brands to collaborate with influencers and share performance metrics on the platform.
Your move
“Pinterest’s new API enables us to look more deeply and accurately into Pinners’ behaviors, as well as the responses from people who interact with the content that those Pinners create,” said Lyle Stevens, Co-Founder & CEO of Mavrck. “Additionally, real-time analytics about Pin engagements–including views, close-ups, and click-throughs–will help us to better understand Pinners’ abilities to drive customer behaviors for brands. We’ll also be able to view, via the Mavrck influencer marketing platform, how interactions with a piece of creator-generated content have affected downstream behaviors such as views, likes, and eventually purchases. This will prove to be invaluable to brands looking to select and activate content creators on Pinterest.” To learn how to create, amplify and measure influencer-generated content on Pinterest, check out our 2018 Influencer Marketing on Pinterest playbook.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Jeff Bezos
The Story
In a new interview with Jeff Bezos, Forbes deep dives into where Bezos’ focus is, what’s next at Amazon, and what makes it so successful.
What makes Bezos so successful?
Many, many things. However, Forbes points to one of Bezos’ greatest strengths being his ability to “shape-shift” Amazon into adjacent businesses on a massive scale. With the billions in sales Amazon has produced combined with Bezos’ market credibility, he has the power to reinvest the money in any way he wants. Additionally, by dominating retail and digital industries — both of which touch almost every other industry — he’s positioned to move adjacently into about any business where he finds added value.
How does Bezos decide to shift into another industry?
Three things. Originality, scale and Silicon Valley-worthy ROI.
Your move
Amazon’s great at a lot of things — but one of its weaknesses is in delivering personalized experiences to consumers. Why? Because Amazon hasn’t gained the credibility to do so. For many specialized retailers, there’s an opportunity to establish leadership by combining commerce, content and expertise — in other words, there’s an opportunity to gain dominance in areas where Amazon is lacking. Leading beauty brands are using personalization to create a customer experience far more specific to beauty than anything offered at Amazon. Spoiler alert: we can help you do that.
Glossier’s Social Commerce Play
The Story
After securing an additional $52 million in funding back in Feb, Glossier is set to enter what it calls “phase two” of its social commerce game plan: the launch of a social-selling website for beauty.
Tell me more
Planning is still in very early stages. Glossier founder & CEO Emily Weiss wants to “build her own version of a social media and shopping mashup, something that will allow shoppers to get feedback from other users to find beauty products that are right for them.” Weiss has hired Keith Peiris – a developer who led teams at Instagram, Facebook and Oculus – as Glossier’s product chief and has tasked him with spearheading the new initiative.
What else?
Despite all the changes, Weiss says that when it comes to the beauty industry, “the customer experience is pretty broken.” To search online, women still primarily must navigate a rabbit hole of reviews. “In many ways, we are placing women’s search in the land of 15 tabs on the internet,” she says. Influencers play a vital role in evolving and transforming a brand, reinventing and evolving the business.
YouTube Adds Vertical Video To Its Ad Arsenal
The Story
Go on…
The format — similar to the ads served by Instagram & Snapchat — allows advertisers to “snap up slots that fill up a users’ screen when they’re viewing content on YouTube’s mobile app.” It’s not exactly surprising YouTube has adopted this format — with the growth of the vertical Stories format, more and more users are becoming accustomed to viewing content without having to turn their devices sideways.
What’s YouTube saying?
“Vertical video ads provide a big, beautiful canvas to deliver your message on mobile and allow engagement with your customers in a way that fits their viewing preferences. And, they’re a great way to complement horizontal videos – we recommend adding both vertical and horizontal video assets to the same campaign for maximum Brand Lift impact.”
Your move
If you don’t have a video strategy yet, it’s likely time to start developing one. When it comes to your video strategy on YouTube, for vertical videos, YouTube advises advertisers to avoid core messaging in the top 10% and bottom 25% of the video (those are the areas that are most frequently cropped).
Meet, Rosetta — Facebook’s Image Recognition Software
The Story
Facebook’s image recognition software can now understand text in images. The Rosetta system, Facebook says, is already extracting text from “more than a billion public Facebook and Instagram images and video frames (in a wide variety of languages), daily and in real time.”
What’s FB saying?
“Understanding the text that appears on images is important for improving experiences, such as a more relevant photo search or the incorporation of text into screen readers that make Facebook more accessible for the visually impaired,” Facebook explains, adding that reading text in images is important in identifying “inappropriate or harmful content and keep our community safe.”
Your move
For brands, the technology could also have significant value. On the one hand, it could be used to analyze influencers already engaged with your brand based on products purchases and featured, as well as insights to gain more perspective on influencers and the trends they see, as well as target consumers.
ICYMI
Automated Fake Account Detection at LinkedIn
Snapchat Launches New Program Which Will Enable Publishers to Source User-Generated Content
Conde Nast is launching a new content studio dedicated to beauty
