June 14, 2016: Snapchat tries to make its users AND its advertisers happy, Pinterest puts your money where its mouth is, & Microsoft has a suitcase full of cash for LinkedIn:
Do You Want to Ad This To Your Snap Story?
Having conquered the photo sharing landscape, Snapchat is looking to reach new heights with its latest round of ad opportunities. To start, it’s asking advertisers to produce shorter versions of ads (about six seconds max) that will be run between individuals’ snap stories.
The main worry? That even a 10 second ad may appear extremely disruptive to users accustomed to consuming the already bitesize content on Snapchat. Snapchat’s hoping that the volume of ads will increase, but the strain on the user will appear to decrease with these shortened ad formats.
Pinteresting Data for CPG Marketers
Pin this: Pinterest just announced a relationship with Oracle Data Cloud this week that will work to measure the platform’s impact on in-store sales. Along with these projected intentions, it gave us a little teaser of results that it has already found: “A study that measured in-store sales for 26 Pin campaigns revealed that Promoted Pins drive 5x more incremental in-store sales per impression vs. other online advertising.”
Another, more tangential piece of data that this same study revealed: nearly 40% of Pinners make over $100k a year. Jackpot.
Mind Your Banners
Instagram just made it that much easier for brands to get customers to the purchase point. Facebook’s little sib is rolling out banner ads that will appear at the bottom of the screen whenever someone clicks on an ad from the news feed.
The call-to-action is Instagram’s latest move towards establishing itself as a direct response channel for marketers, but the jury’s out on how effective a “click here!” button will be on Instagram.
Microsoft Gives the Ultimate Endorsement
Microsoft is about to buy LinkedIn in cash, and it might kick down more than a few doors for advertisers looking to hit their key demographic. Microsoft’s expanse of user data from both personal and work accounts, when combined with LinkedIn’s platform, could be a jackpot for ad targeting.
According to MarketingLand, there are two main opportunities that the acquisition will provide to advertisers: first, it could yield more refined targeting for B2B advertisers, and second, it could provide more reach for advertisers within the LinkedIn user base.
Facebook Pretends It Cares About Desktop
In the latest episode of “Facebook tries to make its ads look pretty”, the social network is testing a redesign of Desktop Pages that omits right-rail ads in order to make room for larger cover photos.
The goal of the redesign is to make it easier for people to learn about and interact with businesses on their Facebook pages, such as buttons more prominently displayed for people to click on and open the brand site. None of this is too much of a concern to Facebook, since desktop ad revenue isn’t a major player for Facebook’s income.
