US digital ad revenue soars to triple digits
Here’s some big digital stats from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to get your week off to a good start. In the US, digital ad revenues hit triple digits for the first time in 2018 at $107.5 billion, up from $88 billion, or a pretty significant 22 percent on 2017. TV ad revenues were $71 billion for the same time period. Mobile surpassed a dwindling desktop for the first time and search captured nearly half of all digital ad revenues. As for social – it grew to $29 billion, nearly 31 percent y-o-y. IAB says story formats such as those on Instagram, Snapchat and the rise of direct-to-consumer brands fuelled social’s growth.
Facebook co-founder calls for its breakup
Exes are hard work, even more so when they write letters in the New York Times calling for a break up. That’s what’s happened to Facebook as one of its co-founders, Chris Hughes, penned a rather personal attack on Mark Zuckerberg and co for the Facebook ‘monopoly’ having “unprecedented and un-American” amounts of power (he’s got a point).
Hughes’ solution is to break up the Facebook family and therefore dilute its overall power, but unsurprisingly the platform’s not super keen on the idea. None other than Nick Clegg, champion of monopolies and Facebook’s vice president for global affairs and communications came to the platform’s defence, stating that size isn’t the real problem, and that its success as a platform shouldn’t be punished.
Facebook announces Birthday Stories
News Feed, what News Feed? These days Stories are where the views are at. As such, Facebook has announced a new feature: Birthday Stories. It’s designed to get us all wishing each other a very happy birthday once again, as we have apparently stopped doing it on one another’s timelines (that’s so 2015 – and don’t get me started on cards). When it’s live, you’ll see a tile in the Stories tray inviting you to post a greeting. Tap it and you can take a picture or short video and personalise it with your birthday wishes.
Facebook launches new small business tools
Look, here’s Facebook helping out small businesses, with a set of new
tools. First up, an Automated Ads platform complete with targeting and budget recommendations, as well as the ability to automatically create up to six different versions of an ad that can run across Facebook’s platforms. Next, Facebook’s Ads Manager platform is getting three new video editing tools: automatic cropping, video trimming and image and text overlays. This will make it easy to create a video ad with a low budget.
Finally, Facebook said it is rolling out a feature that allows users to book appointments directly through Instagram and Facebook. Customers will be able to hit a ‘book now’ button on a business profile, after which they’ll be directed to a calendar to select a date, time, and the service they want, then hit “Request Appointment.”
Instagram refreshes approach to misinformation and account abuses
It seems as though Instagram is following in Facebook’s footsteps when it comes to halting the spread of posts containing misinformation. Rather than removing said posts, the platform will reportedly start using a similar fact-checking process to Facebook to demote them. This comes as Instagram revealed it’s working on a new policy for account removals. The platform recently banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (and other far right extremists) and soon it will change how it determines when an account should be removed. It’s not giving exact details away, only that accounts will be removed after an undisclosed amount of violations and an undisclosed window of time. And it’ll be the same bar for every user, regardless of how often (or not) they post on Instagram.
Avon turns reps into social marketers with Avon On
Cosmetics company Avon is helping its six million representatives better market themselves via social media. Avon has released a new app called Avon On, which will allow reps to manage product orders as you’d expect. However, it also has the added bonus of a ‘social media hub’ containing assets, brand and product content they can use for marketing on social platforms. It’s been trialed in the UK and is now being launched in 17 markets, with a further 25 to follow in July.
