Say g’bye to Facebook likes Facebook began hiding visibility on likes, reactions and video views on September 27 in Australia, including on ads. After testing the approach on Instagram earlier this year, the social media giant is now trialling the same on Facebook in order to make the platform a ‘place of meaningful interactions with friends and family.’ Facebook has ensured this test will not affect any metrics in Ads Manager, Pages Insights or third-party tools.
Off-Facebook, on-brand From October 1, Facebook will begin rolling out another global initiative billed Off-Facebook Activity. First introduced to select markets in August, Off-Facebook Activity grants users access to a summary of the apps and websites activity sent to the platform via its Business Tools (for example, pixel or SDK). If they so desire, users will be able to clear this information from their account, or choose to have the data disconnected from their account in the future.
Facebook assert that their measurement and analytics tools will remain unchanged, as each has been designed to protect users’ identities. It’s another way that Facebook is looking to provide users with greater transparency around and control over their data with a view to improving sentiment toward the ads and the businesses they interact with.
Facebook announces Horizon, a new VR social network At its Oculus Connect event last week, Facebook announced the upcoming launch of its own social Oculus-based VR platform, called Horizon. Positioned as an ‘interactive world’, people will be able to create their own VR avatars and hang out with other players, play games and even build their own virtual environments. To help ensure that Horizon remains a welcoming environment, Facebook is also establishing new safety tools and providing human guides, called Horizon Locals, to answer questions and provide assistance to players. Facebook Horizon launches in 2020 but applications to join the beta are now open.
Facebook buys wearables company CTRL-labs Facebook is in the process of purchasing CTRL-labs – a startup building an armband that translates movement and the wearer’s neural impulses into digital input signals. When the deal is finalised, CTRL-labs will join company’s Facebook Reality Labs division and it’s thought that its products will boost Facebook’s plans for non-invasive brain input devices (i.e. being able to do stuff just by thinking about it). Along with the talent joining the business from CTRL-labs, the acquisition will bring a number of new patents and IP rights to Facebook, as it looks to build out its augmented reality products.
Snapchat beefs up its video ad offering At Advertising Week in New York, Snapchat announced that it will be relaxing its time constraints for ads, allowing marketers and brands to use videos of up to three minutes long. Previously, video ads had a 10-second cap, which has been the case since the platform first started showing ads in 2014, and users had to swipe up if they wanted to watch a longer version. As with the platform’s other video ad formats, the new three-minute ads remain skippable.
Pinterest promotes shopping on its platform with new updates Pinterest is going hard on its e-commerce offering, introducing several new updates including a new Collections format for Shop the Look ads on mobile. The new format enables retailers to feature up to 25 products in a single ad and it will roll out in the US over the coming months.
Pinterest is also rolling out dynamic business profiles (complete with new video or image profile covers), a dedicated Shop tab, and catalogues and shopping ads, which will begin rolling out to select partners in France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
YouTube adds ‘Video Reach’ campaigns YouTube has announced a new Video Reach campaign format which will enable advertisers to upload three different asset types — six-second bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads — to a single campaign. Google will then use machine learning to determine the most efficient combination of the ads to maximise the audience reach. Early access brands have reported that the format lowered campaign costs by more than 20 per cent compared to previous YouTube benchmarks. The Video Reach campaigns are available to all advertisers and currently run on YouTube’s desktop and mobile platforms.
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