We Are Social Asia Tuesday TuneUp #131

Tuneup
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WeChat launched its advertising platform for official accounts
According to QQ Tech, WeChat launched a 10-day closed beta test earlier this year, and now the company has decided to launch the open beta version of its advertising platform for official accounts. WeChat pointed out that advertisers now are able to target audiences by gender, age and region, which provides more accurate targeting services for advertisers to narrow down its relevant target audiences. Meanwhile, advertisers can also get feedback about exposure, click through rate, number of clicks and KPIs from WeChat. However, these ads will only show up if users choose to click through the messages to read full-page posts from the official account. Although the new ad platform is still in beta version, there are nearly 400 million monthly active users who follow these ’subscription’ and service accounts. As such, it will be interesting to see the outcome when the ad platform officially launches.
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Luxury travellers in Asia-Pacific seek, share info online 
In June 2014, ILTM Asia and Brand Karma published a report called “The Luxury Traveller & Social Media 2014: Asia”. This report indicated that Asia is the region where social media matters most to luxury travel brands. According to the research, it is noteworthy that the social media health of a luxury travel brands is strong, as demonstrated by the positivity and large share-of-voice, which it attracts from two major sources: online review sites like TripAdvisor, and social networking sites like Facebook. Interestingly, the research also shows that Asian travellers are enthusiastic about writing reviews for luxury hotel brands, hence brands should be aware of the importance of managing their presence on popular Asian review sites as well as their social media presence.

Here are some key take aways from the report:
– Mobile messaging apps could displace traditional social networks
– Asian luxury hotel brands lead the way in social commerce
– Social guest satisfaction increases
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Indian Prime Minister becomes Twitter’s third most followed world leader 
The use of social media becomes a popular trend for world leaders, since Barack Obama (43.9 million twitter followers) used social media to leverage his influence during the US elections in 2008. As reported previously, Indonesian President SB Yudhoyono was the third influential world leader on Twitter with 5.09 million followers. However, now with over 5.1 million Twitter followers, Indian Prime Minister Modi has surpassed the Twitter fan base of Indonesian President SB Yudhoyono to become the third most followed world leader. It is not surprising that Facebook has also hit a milestone in India with 100 millions active users.

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Advertisers will increase social ad budgets
Most advertisers are planning to increase their ad budgets for social media, according to an Ad Age survey of 1,682 agency executives. Of those asked, 53% will modestly increase their Twitter budget, compared to 48% for Facebook and 43% for YouTube. ‘Significant increases’ are expected by roughly 10% of respondents for all platforms, while hardly anyone plans to ‘significantly decrease’ budgets on any of the three networks.

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Facebook buys LiveRail
Facebook is to further increase its video ad business with the purchase of LiveRail, one of the biggest video ad sellers, which automates the sale of video adverts for the likes of MLB, ABC and DailyMotion. According to Ad Age, a Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the price of the deal. Facebook will use LiveRail’s data when serving ads on its own network, and vice versa. This should help to amplify Facebook’s ‘Audience Network’, which allows advertisers to extend campaigns beyond the social network.

Facebook creates ‘missed call’ ad unit for India
Facebook has produced a new ad unit, the ‘missed call’, exclusively for India. In a blog post, Facebook explained how it will work:

When a person sees an ad on Facebook they can place a ‘missed call’ by clicking the ad from their mobile device. In the return call, the person receives valuable content, such as music, cricket scores or celebrity messages, alongside a brand message from the advertiser — all without using airtime or data.

India has a culture of pre-paid phone contracts, which often include high costs for data and text messages; as such, the missed call is a common workaround. Facebook is hoping to take advantage of this behaviour in the country, which has its second-highest global user base.

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Twitter ups mobile ad offering
Twitter has made two moves to improve its mobile ad offering in the last week. First of all, it is now offering mobile app installation ads, which it has been testing since earlier this year, to all advertisers. Secondly, it has purchased TapCommerce, which helps mobile businesses to retarget ads, for a reported $100m. The two moves display a clear intent by Twitter to focus on mobile advertising.

Tweets appear with ‘buy now’ button
A ‘buy now’ button appeared on several tweets last week, all linked to the @fancy account. The button was only visible on mobile and didn’t actually do anything when clicked, inciting speculation that it was either a test or an accident. However, it looks likely that shopping on Twitter will be here soon enough.

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Vine adds loop count
Vine has added a ‘loop count’, a metric that displays how many times a particular Vine has been repeated. The idea is that this will show which videos are best engaging their audience, which could be big news for brands. We Are Social’s Luke Carrell talked to AgencySpy about the move:

For many marketers, Vine continues to be a bit of an enigma, with its younger audience and tendency to reward quick, quirky humor that can be difficult to get exactly right. While many brands have embraced the platform as an outlet for one-off creative exercises, more robust metrics such as the introduction of content impressions (e.g. Loops) opens the door for gathering insights that can help build smarter content plays over the long term.

Google kills Orkut
Google is bringing an end to Orkut, its original social network, which remains popular in Brazil and India. It released a blog post, which stated that “YouTube, Blogger and Google+ [had] outpaced Orkut’s growth”. September 30th will be the network’s final day.

The World Cup breaks records in social
The World Cup has been one of the most talked-about events of all time online, and there is now more evidence to support that. The total number of Facebook posts, comments and likes relating to the World Cup has reached the 1bn mark, with 11 posts from footballers competing in the tournament each receiving more than 1m likes. Of these, seven came from Neymar, three from Messi and one from Ronaldo. Meanwhile, Brazil’s penalty shootout victory over Chile elicited 389,000 tweets in one minute, thehighest figure of all time. The previous record was held by February’s Superbowl, in which a single touchdown caused 382,000 tweets in a minute.

adidas and We Are Social produce real-time World Cup content
Ad Age recently spent the day at adidas’s real-time marketing hub at the World Cup in Rio, a 40-strong delegation that includes some of the We Are Social gang. Their article about the experience highlights adidas and We Are Social’s extensive pre-World Cup preparation, while also discussing the way in which the team deals with reactive content on the ground. So far, adidas is the most talked-about brand of the entire tournament.

 


We Are Social and adidas celebrate Djokovic’s Wimbledon win
In the immediate aftermath of Novak Djokovic’s thrilling fifth set win over Roger Federer at Wimbledon, We Are Social and adidas Tennis posted a congratulatory tweet and image to celebrate the moment. It was the culmination of two weeks of support for its players, all under the umbrella of #smashthesilence. The tweet itself has received over 1,250 retweets, the hashtag being mentioned 10,700 times throughout the tournament.

We Are Social and evian create #LetsPlay
We Are Social created a campaign for water brand, evian, which encouraged people to live young during Wimbledon. Fans simply had to tweet @evianwater with #LetsPlay. Lucky winners received a personalised Vine, sung by Vive Vocals.

Monster puts job ads in Twitter cards
Monster, the recruitment company, has released a new Twitter card, which displays a full job advert within a tweet. Here it is in all its glory:

 

Barbie joins LinkedIn
Looking for a career as a plastic toy? Better connect with Barbie – she’s just joined LinkedIn. The move is promoting the doll’s latest incarnation, ‘Entrepreneur Barbie’, whose profile includes details on her long and illustrious career, as well as an explanation of her latest venture, ‘Dream Incubator’.

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Ikea creates Instagram ‘website’
Ikea has created an Instagram page that functions like a website. By featuring products from its Ikea PS collection, alongside a product description, it takes advantage of the network’s layout, as explained in the video below.

Vodafone is curating a Twitter play
Vodafone is teaming up with Spanish actor, Raúl Arévalo, to curate a play from tweets. Twitter users will be encouraged to send in suggestions for lines/directions using the hashtag #firstteatrotuits (first theatre tweets), after which the play will be performed to a live audience in Madrid’s Capitol Theatre. The audience, too, will be encouraged to send in their own suggestions.

AutoTrader.com and Overly Attached Girlfriend
AutoTrader.com has enlisted the help of Laina Morris, better known as ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’, in its latest online campaign. The online star is featured in a video, in which she uses the site’s various features to help keep her search hidden from her partner. After watching, viewers are encouraged to take part in a similar online treasure hunt.

Transamerica launches on Reddit
Transamerica has launched a presence on Reddit, through which it hopes to answer personal finance questions. Reddit can prove difficult for brands, but llan Gungormez, director of social media strategy at Transamerica, has made clear that the company will be trying not to push sales too much:

What we’re really trying to work on doing is kind of filling in all the gaps. And at the end of the day, we obviously hope you end up picking Transamerica. But if you are at least able to walk away and make a better, informed decision, that’s really the win, because financial literacy is so low across the board.

CALM launches the Twitter #Mandictionary
Male suicide charity, CALM, has created a Twitter campaign, which asks users to tweet their suggestions for vocabulary to express male emotion, using #Mandictionary. The charity hopes the campaign will help promote discussion of male mental health, and intends to use the submissions in future ads.

Twitter trolls Robin Thicke
Music channel VH1 encouraged Twitter users to tweet questions to Robin Thicke last week, using #AskThicke. Naturally, for such a controversial figure, some of the questions weren’t quite what Thicke might have hoped. Many tweets, such as the below, highlighted Thicke’s questionable history and accusations of misogyny.

 

 

Ukrainian club creates social media bar
The Boom Boom Room, a night club in Kiev, has a set menu of eleven drinks in its newly-launched “Check-in bar”, each of which can be purchased in exchange for a different social media activity. A hashtagged Instagram selfie is worth one shot, a photo with four tagged friends earns you a bottle of Prosecco and there’s a special drink for a mayor’s badge on Foursquare.