We Are Social’s Tuesday Tune Up #186

News
michael.batistich

Social ad spend to hit $23 billion globally
New figures from eMarketer show that advertisers will splash out a huge $23.6bn on social networks this year, a 33.5% increase on 2014. The publication estimates that, by 2017, this figure will rise to $35.98bn, or 16% of digital ad spend globally. Unsurprisingly, a lot of this investment is finding its way to Facebook. eMarketer estimates that the social giant will collect $15.5bn in ad revenues this year – that’s 65.5% of all social network ad spending worldwide.

Facebook owns four of the five largest social networks
Facebook has rather a lot of users. Projected Q1 2015 figures from Business Insider show quite how many, especially when you take into account the other platforms it owns. Of all social networks and messaging apps, Facebook is the largest with 1.43 billion projected monthly active users, followed by WhatsApp with 725 million. In third place we have Facebook Messenger (600 million) and fifth Instagram (300 million). In fact, WeChat is the only member of the top five that Facebook doesn’t own.

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Teens still care about Facebook
A new study by the Pew Research Center has found that Facebook is still the most-used social network among American teens aged 13-17, as 71% of respondents admitted to using it. This was followed by Instagram (50%) and Snapchat (40%). Boys use the site marginally more than girls, though respective figures of 72% and 70% show that it’s pretty close.

Twitter homepage attracts logged-out users
Twitter has a new homepage, designed for those who either aren’t signed in or are not using the platform at all. Users can click one of a selection of topics to be shown popular tweets around that subject, with categories including Pop Artists, TV Shows & Stars and (of course) Cute Animals. It’s only available in the US at the moment, but expect a broader roll out soon as internet users demand an easier way to find images of puppies in knitwear.

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Twitter suggesting tweets you may like
Twitter is testing a ‘you may also like’ feature on the right-hand-side of individual tweet pages on Twitter.com. The functionality, which you can see below, is currently only available to certain users. Sadly, I’m not one of them.

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Periscope is winning the live-streaming war
Twitter-owned Periscope is growing more quickly than its rival, Meerkat, which has actually seen a dip in its monthly active users since the start of April. Twitter’s superior resources are proving decisive, as are some potentially sneaky tactics, such as cutting off Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph.

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On another, possibly unrelated, note, if you google ‘Meerkat vs.’, it autocompletes with ‘cobra’ ahead of ‘Periscope’. So there you go.

LinkedIn announces Marketo partnership
LinkedIn has partnered with marketing software company, Marketo, which specialises in automating digital marketing across email, social and the wider web. Its software will be combined with LinkedIn’s ‘Lead Accelerator’, which marries data about visits to brand websites with LinkedIn’s own demographic data. It’s essentially aimed at making adverts more relevant and (you guessed it) more profitable.

Snapchat overhauls its ad offering
Snapchat is changing the way it does ads. First of all, it has announced the withdrawal of ‘Brand Stories’, its first ever ad unit, which essentially allowed brands to put photos/video content in front of users that aren’t following them. It’s hinted that this ad format may be coming back in a different form, but for now the focus shifts to ‘Our Story’ and ‘Discover’. The former is set to be renamed and refocussed on live event feeds, as the platform sets to position itself further as a traditional media outlet for the social age.

Tumblr releases version 4.0 of its iOS app
Tumblr has unveiled version 4.0 of its iPhone/iPad app, along with a number of updates. Some of these are aesthetic, including a new icon, new notification widget and gifs that load in a ‘much more pleasing fashion’. Some allow easier blog management, including the ability to start secondary blogs, delete blogs and more easily include videos. To celebrate, here’s a gif. It doesn’t explain much, but it is very pretty.

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Tumblr adds ‘Sponsored Day’ to its ad offering
Tumblr has launched a new ad unit, called a ‘Sponsored Day’, which allows brands to post an ad that will appear at the top of users’ feeds for, well, a whole day. Nike is the first advertiser to get involved, encouraging us all to embrace our ‘uncomfort zone’. Maybe tomorrow, Nike. It’s Monday.

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Foursquare unveils location data ad feature
Foursquare has unveiled a new feature called Pinpoint, which uses its location data for ad targeting across mobile devices and the web. Location data is almost certainly Foursquare’s strongest suit, so this could well be a powerful move by the network.

Add Instagram to your Tinder profile
You can now sync your Instagram and Tinder profiles to show potential partners how much fun your life is, or at least that you can choose a good filter.

First Direct and We Are Social launch #SavingCup
First Direct and We Are Social took to Twitter to promote the bank’s SaveApp product, which helps users swap small purchases to save for big ones. They hired illustrator Mr Bingo to personalise coffee cups with people’s saving goals, including this for a follower who wanted to fly to Disney in Tokyo.

Lenovo and We Are Social create #LightandSeek exhibition Lenovo and We Are Social created a one-day-only art exhibition, powered entirely by the brand’s Yoga Tablet 2 Pro. Dubbed #LightandSeek, users were encouraged to take photos of their favourite pieces and upload them to Twitter using the hashtag. The event was accompanied by a live Instagram guide.

A virtual Instagram run with Reebok
Reebok took Instagram users on a virtual run around San Francisco last week with ‘Hunt the Pump’. Users who followed @zpump_startingline saw a grid of photos, one of which contained a hidden Reebok Pump logo. Liking the photo and clicking the panel took users to the next destination on their ‘run’, where the quest continued. If only it burned calories at the same time… reebokpump2

Nars adds a twist to Twitter competitions
Fashion retailer Nars ran a Twitter campaign last week, in which it encouraged users to tweet about its latest collaboration with Christopher Kane. Every tweet triggered a hammer to knock on one of two orbs located in Nars HQ, depending on whether it came from the UK or US; the two tweets that eventually broke the orb won the prize inside, the complete Nars and Christopher Kane collection.

Sport and entertainment get us tweeting about TV
When it comes to tweeting about TV, sport is what’s capturing the Brits attention, according to Kantar. It found that 42.3% of UK tweets about TV were related to sports, followed by 38.1% about entertainment. Second screeners were common (63% of respondents) but a large majority of them said what they were doing was unrelated to the TV content they were watching.

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Paddy Power tweets joke about police brutality
Paddy Power took its “TOP BANTZ” Twitter strategy a little far last week, making a joke that referenced police brutality against young African American men. It’s the latest in a string of intentionally controversial marketing attempts so, while other brands might apologise and remove the tweet, it’s still sat proudly on the Paddy Power Offers page.