Social Media is the primary news source for Australian Millennials
Well this news is anything but surprising. According to ABC News, “social media is well on its way to being the primary news source for most Australians”. Our favourite social channels trumped other more traditional forms of advertising and promotional services, with as many as 84% of Aussies reporting activity on a social network. Additionally, nearly a third of people checked their social channels four or more times per day.
Search with Vurb and Snapchat
Snapchat has reportedly paid $100m in stock and cash to acquire a search engine app known as Vurb. According to The Verge, “Vurb markets its app as a convenient tool for searching, discovering trending topics, and carrying out tasks like making reservations and hailing an Uber / Lyft without hopping between several different apps”. Speculation as to what uses Snapchat will have for the technology range from searching messages to incorporating the functionality into future snappy services. Stay tuned, Snappers!
Predictions for Twitter’s US growth plummet
Despite negative user feedback and a minor identity crisis (news? social network? what is it?!?!), Twitter is in fact continuing to grow. However, growth is slow and steady, to put it nicely. eMarketer has significantly downgraded its projections for Twitter, placing it behind Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest for its growth forecast in 2016. By the end of this year, 52.2 million people in the US will access their Twitter accounts at least once a month. That’s a 2.0% increase over last year – but in February, eMarketer had forecasted an 8% increase in US Twitter users for the year.
While the slowdown may seem alarming, the same data predicts that Twitter will grow its user base more than twice as fast as Facebook between now and 2020, even with Twitter’s growth slowing to 3.1%.
However, there’s hope in #Periscope! According to Market Realist, Periscope could be a key factor driving Twitter user growth and engagement, with 110 years of live video being watched on the app every day and over 200 million broadcasts created in the past 12 months.
One out of four influencers asked to keep brand deals secret
Influencer marketing and media platform SheSpeaks found that a quarter of influencers have been asked to keep their brand deals secret. The finding follows a statement from the US Federal Trade Commission saying that it plans to get tougher on paid promotion disclosure. Do you engage influencers in your campaigns? Tell us your experiences in the comments!
Facebook tweaks its newsfeed to make stories more ‘personally informative’
Facebook has just done you a favour! Kind of…the platform recently appointed a “Quality Feed Programme” team to ensure the right stories get prominence on your personal news feed. Stories will now be sorted using a new ranking system that predicts stories that are more important to users. The team will take into account factors such as your relationship with the person or publisher that posted, content you choose to click, comment on or share, etc. Is it just us, or does the algorithm keep getting creepier and creepier?
More ads between friends’ stories on Snapchat
Get ready, advertisers, Snapchat Stories will soon feature more ads! The new placements will appear between strings of photos and videos that users share with their friends, but Snapchat said it will cap placements at three per user per day – one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one at night.
Snapchat engagement numbers drop after Discover redesign
While the Snapchat Discover channel doubled daily users to 1 million two weeks after its redesign, overall engagement dropped. The number of views per user dropped 14% when comparing the two-week average post-redesign and the six-week average pre-redesign. Furthermore, time spent in the app dropped 6% and video completion rates plummeted 32%. Will the influx of new ads drag numbers down even further? We’ll have to wait and see!
Pinterest is changing the way it sells ads
Pinterest said Thursday it is changing the way it sells CPM campaigns, and marketers will now be able to bid through an auction process rather than the previous fixed price model. The company will also allow brands to specify the maximum number of times a person can see their campaign. Do you advertise on Pinterest? Tell us in the comments!
Pepsi splashes out on first #Promoted Stickers Twitter campaign
Twitter has introduced its first “#Promoted Stickers” campaign with Pepsi. Starting Monday, Pepsi-themed stickers will be available for consumers to slap on their photos and tweet out. The stickers, which were introduced in June, are similar to Snapchat’s emojis, stickers, filters and animated lenses, which people layer on their photos/videos before sharing. Who copied who here?
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