Well as it turns out, Microsoft are looking to tap into the Stories trend – not through Excel, but through an almost equally unlikely platform, Skype. Everyone knows of Skype as a video calling tool, but newer platforms like Snapchat and Messenger, along with the rise of live-streaming, have gradually encroached on the video calling market. (Source: Social Media Today)
YouTube has updated its advertising policy for content creators to prevent content with hate messages or discrimination of any type from featuring ads and monetizing the content. This is an update on the initial set of guidelines YouTube had announced in March this year. (Source: Medianama)
Whilst the social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook have become an integral part of the marketing strategies, not many marketers are using these platforms to its fullest capacity. With the new video-only feed feature on the Facebook mobile app, it has opened up a whole new avenue for marketing. (Source: Logicserve Digital)
Today, AOL is announcing a beta launch of a header bidding solution for native apps. The company says that, to its knowledge, this is the first header bidding for apps that employs software development kits (SDKs), instead of a few solutions that require customized coding built into the app. (Source: MARTECH TODAY)
Bing is expanding its image search toolset with a new product that lets users search for specific items shown within a larger image. They’re calling it Bing Visual Search, and it’s available now as part of the Bing’s existing image search tools. It’s pretty simple to use and pretty impressive, too. (Source: Search Engine Land)
The ads measurement system that Google initially created for analyzing YouTube campaigns now includes data from the Google Display Network and DoubleClick. Google announced the expansion and the beta release of Ads Data Hub this week. (Source : MARTECH TODAY)
The analysis on snippets also brought to the fore the fact that without the featured snippets, the first result page got nearly 26% CTR (click through rate). Ahrefs assessed nearly two million featured snippets and it found that the first organic results showed a massive drop in the click-through rate when the featured snippets are present. (Source: Logicserve Digital)
The new, free solution can pull in data from Google Analytics, AdWords or DoubleClick Search to provide a more holistic view of conversion actions across channels and devices for attribution modeling and bidding information. (Source : Search Engine Land)
In order to maintain their position as the leading social media platform in the world, Facebook’s constantly trying out new measures and testing new tools in order to boost user engagement and keep you inside Facebook’s digital walls for longer. (Source: Social Media Today)
Facebook continues to find ways for its three major brands — Facebook, Instagram and Messenger — to complement one another. In the latest example, brands can now buy ads from Facebook to run on Facebook’s photo-and-video sharing app that link to a marketer’s account in Facebook’s messaging app. (Source: Marketing Land)
Expert opinion
Q. How is mobile changing the way we market today?
Today’s consumer is more empowered in decision-making thanks to everything going mobile. Now, the term, “waiting” doesn’t exist in their purchase cycles. They turn to a device to get data, make a decision and buy their product. As smart devices emerge, consumers want to find more natural ways to interact. They prefer content that is personalised, relevant and adds to the assistive experiences that consumers want.
As per a report, 76 % of locals who do a local research on their smartphones visit the store in a day. Data similar to these show how mobile has also changed the way how content is consumed. Marketers need to apply the data available on user behaviour and ensure that every micro-moment tended to. – Manav Sethi, Chief Marketing Officer, ALTBalaji
