It’s your weekly dose of social media news! Read on to find out more about how your favorite social media platforms are taking their advertising features up a notch.
A Twist to Instagram’s Call-to-Action Bars
Instagram is introducing a subtle change to their CTA bars. So what happens when you scroll over an ad for a promoted post or tap on the profile name? The CTA bar turns blue, right? Not anymore. The button’s color will be automatically generated based on the main color in the image or the video on the ad.
This change may be subtle but significant. Having the ads in a color complementary to the ad image or video makes it look more integrated and a less intrusive factor to users’ experience. This means that the content will be the main focus, as it always should be. Also, making the ads seem like a natural aspect for users can help boost post engagement.
Over the past year, Instagram has been working to enhance its ad format. Last year, the company added a full-width CTA button at the bottom of the post instead of a single (and smaller) button at the bottom right of the page. With two million advertisers competing for Instagram’s 800 million users, the company is working to ensure a smooth and fruitful experience for all.
Now that ads have become more subtle, an important question arises: Will this change allow Instagram to maintain (or even increase) the current click-through rates for advertisers? We’ll have to wait and see.
New Custom Audience Options to Enhance Facebook’s Ads
To make its ad targeting features more focused, Facebook plans to add new custom audience creation options, namely ‘Dwell Time’ and ‘Link Sharing.’
These options will allow advertisers to hone and narrow down their ads for more responsive groups. For instance, the ‘Dwell Time’ allows advertisers to create a list of users who have spent time viewing the ads, allowing them to be re-targeted.
The ‘Link Sharing’ options helps advertisers identify the users who have actively engaged with the content and were compelled enough to share it. This will make the ads more focused on people who engage with the brand and have a level of trust in it.
Since Facebook has access to a wide range of data, it makes sense that they try to utilize and improve their ad features as they go. It is estimated that conversion potential can increase by almost 70% with retargeting ads.
Nevertheless, it is still unclear when Facebook will officially roll out these updates yet.
Get the Full Picture with Snapchat’s ‘Context Cards’
The Snapchat experience is about to get more inclusive! With their new ‘Context Cards,’ users can now find more details about the Snaps shared by others, such as restaurant reviews, contact information and car hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, to name a few.
When you are watching a story, you will see a “More” button at the bottom. Upon swiping up, you will see information generated automatically from Snapchat’s partners as Foursquare, Uber, Opentable, TripAdvisor and more.
But no worries, this feature will not be available for all Snaps (information overload much?). It will be for those that are tagged with the company’s geo-specific filters or ones that have been submitted to ‘Our Story’ public feed, which appears on Search or Snap Map.
This feature will greatly enhance the efficiency of paid campaigns on Snapchat because all the needed information will be readily available in one place. It will also position Snapchat as a visual-first contextual marketing platform.
What are your thoughts about social media advertising in general? Do you think they could someday replace the other forms of advertising? Share your opinion with us on our Twitter page @SOCIAL_EYEZ.
Sources
http://www.adweek.com/digital/instagram-tweak-call-to-action-bar-sponsored-posts/
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/10/snapchats-new-context-cards-use-snaps-for-spontaneous-discovery/
