2021 October
Going deeper into autumn, social media giants are keeping us busier and busier with their updates. Soon, Black Friday and the Holiday season is upon us, therefore advertising platforms are introducing more and more updates. TikTok just held its first ever TikTok World business showcase event, but there are updates on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest as well! Let’s dive into them.
Every news starts with a short summary with the key points, however, if you are willing to dive deeper into a certain topic, you can always find an additional link for further reference.
1. Google is updating the Search experience
Search Engine Journal
Google will implement its MUM (Multitask Unified Model) into its search results page, providing a whole new search experience for its users. While users currently search for answers, this new way of searching will make users able to explore more complex tasks, while presenting answers in a completely new way, particularly with images. The Search Engine Results Page will include a things to know (tries to understand all the ways users search for a certain topic and then provide the most popular and relevant ones to the user), a topic exploration (lets users ‘zoom in and out’ of a topic) and also visual exploration (not for all searches).
2. Updates on TikTok
Social Media Today
Tiktok has held its first ever TikTok World business showcase event, and has announced many news coming to the platform in the near future:
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- Creator Marketplace
The previously existing platform, where creators and brands can find each other, has been updated: from now on, it includes more performance insights and better sorting tools. Brands will have the opportunity to oversee the creative process and monitor their campaign performance real-time. They also introduced the ‘Open Application Campaigns’, enabling brands to list their campaigns for interested creators to self-apply. - The TikTok Creative Exchange
It’s a new initiative, a self-serve portal, that will match brands with vetted creative service providers to help them produce high-performing ads, suited to their brief and objectives. - Creative Center
A new feature to help advertisers understand what’s working on the platform, in real-time. Brands and advertisers will be able to explore a showcase of the top-performing ads on the platform, view details on the latest trends, and also search through TikTok’s audio library to get inspired. - Dynamic Scene
It’s a new creation element that will use machine learning to break the videos into multiple scenes – it will create TikTok clips, based on existing assets. This could help those who are not as familiar with the platform trends and video editing techniques. - Dynamic Showcase Ads
For those eCommerce brands who are not familiar with TikTok yet, the platform will offer a new option called Dynamic Showcase Ads, enabling brands to automatically promote their products, with ads aligned to specific user preferences and interests.
- Creator Marketplace
Read more updated form TikTok.
3. Google is Improving its Shopping Experience
Google The Keyword
Google has also announced many updates to its shopping possibilities. From now on, Chrome will have a ‘Search images’ button, with which users can find similar products than what they see on an image, on any site. Users are also able to search in-stock inventory for shops from their home.
4. Facebook launches new tools for brands and retailers
Business of Apps
From now on, advertisers on Facebook can choose their desired platform in which their customers can reach them from an ad – WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger. This means that a Facebook ad can direct the users to WhatsApp or Instagram Direct as well! They are also testing quote requests – meaning that customers can automatically answer 5-6 questions in order to get an automated quote from brands. They also work on possibilities to use Instagram in the lead generation process more effectively.
5. Facebook Experiments with Additional Business Context Elements in Ad Display
Social Media Today
Some users have noticed that under ads, they can access further information about the advertiser: how many people follow the page, how many people have checked in there, where it is located. While pages with a lower follower number can be also impacted negatively, all in all the update is aimed to create a certain level of trust towards the advertiser and reduce scammers.
6. Google’s updates this month
Google Ads Help
- New Budget Reports.
In order to help advertisers keep track of their monthly budget, they have introduced a new budget report focusing on monthly spend. Besides helping to understand how much an advertiser is projected to pay at the end of the month, it also aims to make it easier to understand how past changes to the daily budget impacted the campaign performance.
Read more. - Enhanced conversions
Google is rolling out with enhanced conversion in a beta version to all eligible advertisers. It allows tags to use consented, user-provided data from your website to give a more accurate view of how people convert after engaging with your ads. The data is hashed to ensure security and protect user privacy, and advertisers only receive aggregated and anonymized conversion reporting. For example if somebody just sees your ad, but doesn’t click on it, but later visits your website – this event would have been really hard to attribute to your ads. But with Enhanced conversions, you can better understand your customer’s journey by tying more conversions to your ads in a privacy-safe way.
Read more. - Better measurement for video ads on Display
In an effort to improve non-click measurement metrics, Google has introduced engaged-view conversions – it counts more than 10 seconds of watching a video ad as a conversion.
Read more.
7. Updates on Pinterest:
Pinterest Business
- Slideshow for collections
It pulls products from a merchants catalog an automatically generates an attention-grabbing collections ad. This automatically creates a video-like content that’s tailored to every shopper. The two main ideas behind it: customers love videos and they are actively considering more than one product at a time, leading to bigger baskets.
- Merchant details & Verified Merchant Program
Lot of customers don’t fall in love with products, but with brand. Inspired by this attitude, Pinterest now enables merchants to showcase their values on their profile – eg.g. Responsibly sources, invested in good, inclusive, or add details that highlight a community that community belongs to – e.g. Black-owned, Latinx-owned, Woman-owned, LGBTQ+-owned, Disability-owned, etc.
- Idea Ads
Building on the already existing Idea Pin format, Pinterest is testing an Idea Ads with paid partnership. This is a collab between creators and advertisers – a creator makes an Idea Pin and tags a brand partner. The advertiser can promote that pin as an Idea ad. This helps both reach a broader audience.
8. Instagram is bringing likes to Stories
Social Media Today
Instagram has been reportedly testing a ‘like’ option for Stories – a button appearing next to the message option, and the reaction would only be visible to the creator. This way a reaction wouldn’t clug up the inbox of the creator but they could still get valuable feedback on their content. So far users could react to Stories by selected emojis, or by a message of their own. This updates comes after Instagram made it possible for users to choose their preference on hiding like counts.
9. Side Search panel coming to Chrome
Business of Apps
Google is working on a new side panel for their Search Engine Results Page. So far, users either needed to navigate back, or open multiple pages at once if they wanted to check out more results. With this new addition, after clicking on a result, users have the option to put the results page into a sidebar, similar to a mobile version. It will definitely have an effect on search experience, but we are yet to see it – probably the update won’t be available before mid-November.