We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #343
According to a new study by Cadent Consulting Group, packaged goods marketers are now spending more on digital than all forms of traditional advertising combined. Overall the consumer packaged goods (CPG, or FMCG in British English) industry spends around $225 billion on marketing and the survey found digital beat traditional advertising as a share of total CPG spending for the first time last year – by 15.9% to 15.5%. Cadent has stated that digital’s lead should widen even more this year, with brand marketers planning to spend 19.9% of their total marketing outlays on digital vs only 13.3% on traditional advertising.
WhatsApp launches Status
WhatApp has launched Status, a new tab for sharing decorated photos, videos and GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. Sound familiar to Snapchat by any chance? The biggest difference – it’s end-to-end encrypted like Whatsapp messaging. The Status tab is rolling out worldwide on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Users can watch updates from friends and reply privately, shoot and have some fun with their imagery placing captions and drawings on their creations before sending to the contacts they’ve chosen with a privacy setting.
Instagram introduces carousel feature
Instagram is now letting users post many photos or videos all at once. The app will now let users upload as many as ten pieces of content (video or photos) into the same post. The ‘carousel’ feature has a swipeable format which means that users no longer have to spend hours choosing that best single photo or video to share. Why have one when you can have ten!
Facebook to start showing commercials
Facebook is working towards its grand plan of becoming the future of TV. The platform has announced it will let publishers show ad breaks in the middle of their pre-recorded videos for the first time. Many more Facebook pages will also be able to show ad breaks during their live broadcasts – previously this had only been available to a small number of handpicked publishers.
The ad breaks are Facebook’s first real effort to monetize video. They are mini commercials that may run after a video has played for 20 seconds and must be at least two minutes apart. Facebook will let publishers keep 55% of the money generated from the ad breaks and it’s working with a handful of US publishers currently to test them in non-live videos.
Snap Inc’s Spectacles are finally available for anyone to buy (in the US)
It’s now possible for anyone in the US to buy Snap Inc.’s spectacles on spectacles.com and, although they still pack a price-punch of $129.99, this does mean you no longer have to find a randomly located Snapbot through some stroke of luck. The company’s pop-up store in New York City will also be shut down, but it will, however, still be possible to come across the high-tech vending machines around the United States.
TransferWise launches Messenger bot for global money transfers
Chatbots continue to become more and more functional, with TransferWise introducing a chatbot that lets users send money via Facebook Messenger. The company already provides a money transfer service that bypasses banks to keep costs down. Now, using the Facebook Messenger chatbot, it’s possible for users to send money from the United States, Europe, Australia and Canada. It’s also possible to set up rate alerts through Messenger, so that you can get daily updates on rates between your preferred currencies.
The Oscars on social media
Although the most entertaining aspect of the Oscars is probably watching them and cringing at the “biggest error in the history of the awards“, it can be equally fun to follow how brands made the most of the Academy Awards on social media through their tweets before, during and after the show.