The digital industry has shown us once again, in July, how much there is that can still be done to up our digital marketing game!
Facebook and Instagram announced new features, TikTok launched a new ad format and we’ve seen some new live commerce updates. Read about these new features and updates below:
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Facebook Launches ‘Campaign Ideas Generator’ to Help Businesses
Need inspiration for your next social campaign? We bet this might help! Facebook has launched ‘Campaign Ideas Generator’, which aims to spark creativity for your social campaigns. The mini-website helps you through different insights, templates, and recommendations specific to events and business types.
Facebook quotes the update as – “The Campaign Ideas Generator provides campaign ideas, pre-made assets, and resources that are specific to your small business needs.”
It’s super easy to get started! Just head over to the Campaigns Generator website and choose your business domain and promotional objective.
Select the relevant details, then click ‘Get Campaign Ideas’ and Facebook will pop over a range of pointers and notes to help you in the right direction.
We think this is a very useful update by Facebook to help content creators develop their strategy based on data sourced directly from the platform they are posting on.
Additionally, Facebook has also come up with “Organic Posts Pack” that offers a range of post templates that you can use on your page. Pretty interesting, right?
You can now make a minute-long Instagram Reel
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the popularity of Instagram Reels, that’s growing massively! Building on the popularity, Instagram has now updated the duration of Reels to 1 minute, that’s similar to Feed post videos.
Using AR effects, top trending music, and transitions, Instagram Reels gives your content a creative makeover while increasing its organic visibility. If you aren’t using Reels yet, you are missing tapping into new audiences, better engagement, and more!
Instagram can now automatically translate text in stories
Want better engagement within your global audiences? Well, this is exactly what’ve been wishing for! Instagram has now added an option to automatically translate text in story posts. Meaning when Instagram detects a foreign language in a story, it will display a “See Translation” option on the top left of the screen, which users can tap to see a quick translation.
The new translation feature will be accessible globally, and currently supports over 90 different languages to make sharing content with an international audience is easier and quicker.
Clubhouse Moves Out of Invite-Only Beta, Now Open to All Users
It has been long-awaited and now it’s finally here! Clubhouse has announced it’s moving out from the BETA version. The App is now open to everyone who wants to join a Club and tune into the latest audio chat rooms. Clubhouse has added 10M people to the community since it launched Android in mid-May 2021. Data reveals an average listener spends over an hour a day on Clubhouse, and a huge percentage of people actively talk on the platform too.
Watch out for live commerce
“Live-commerce sales could account for as much as 10 to 20 percent of all e-commerce by 2026.” Welcome to the new wave of marketing revolution!
Bringing together entertainment and instant purchasing, live commerce offers retailers, brands, and digital platforms a whole new channel with enormous scope for creating value and meeting audiences.
Key benefits:
- Better conversions
- Entertaining and immersive
- Telescopes customer decision journeys from awareness to purchase
- Helps in additional pulling web traffic, especially younger audiences
Reportedly, Live Commerce conversion rates are approximately 30 percent—up to ten times higher than in conventional e-commerce.
What’s new?
Expansion into new sectors: As live commerce expands its reach, many industries such as healthcare, engineering, and finance are likely to move in. Companies within these sectors could use live-streaming to provide health-related content like consultations and appointment scheduling. This would be extremely useful for global commerce and expansion.
Innovative formats: Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are also enhancing the shopping experience for users by making it even more immersive and real-time. This offers more stability to businesses that are still dependent on in-store shopping.
If done well, live commerce increases a brand’s appeal and distinctiveness. It can strengthen a brand’s positioning among existing customers and attract new ones. We think this is the next big thing for commerce and brands should definitely start to test and learn in this space.
TikTok launches Spark Ads, a new ad format based on content from brands and creators
Although display ads are a good way to achieve conversions, sales and attract the attention of the public, they can also be annoying for users. Faced with this problem, the best option is to use ads in a native format, i.e. ads that are displayed as organic content on the platforms, as this way you can guarantee a greater reach while respecting the user experience. Following this line, TikTok has just launched its new native ad format, Spark Ads.
Spark Ads, a new way to advertise on TikTok
TikTok is characterised by the fluidity and originality of its short video content, and therefore the integration of organic ads gives brands an opportunity to join this trend while promoting themselves at the same time. This ad format launched by the Chinese app promises to offer brands a new way to consolidate their presence on this social network.
Spark Ads are advertisements made from the brands’ own profile publications or from other users’ organic content, with their authorisation. In other words, this new ad format is, in principle, a conversion of the usual content of the page into advertising content. In this way, the videos could be integrated as featured or In-feed ads in the discovery section of TikTok, called For You.
Spark Ads will also provide more interaction possibilities for users by offering various destinations through the different sections of the post. For example, by clicking on the video description or the call-to-action button, the user will be taken to a specific landing page. Swiping the screen to the left, clicking on the image or profile name will take them directly to the account. Finally, by clicking on the name of the audio inserted in the video or the disc icon at the bottom right, users will be taken to the audio page, where they will be able to see other content made with the same audio track.
As the social network explained in a statement, “TikTok is made up of creators who are redefining entertainment, creating trends and sharing their take on popular products and services with the world. Now brands can tap into creative and diverse content and connect with creators to help them bring these products and services to life.”
How Spark Ads work
Spark Ads are a hybrid between conventional display ads and organic in-app content, and therefore have a particular process for their creation. As such, content creators must first authorise their posts to be used in the ads. To do this, they must log into their profile and click on the menu (three dots on the top right) > Privacy > Ad authorisation. Once this has been done, the content of the account can be used by third parties, or the profile itself, to generate advertisements.
Creators must then select the video(s) they want to authorise to be promoted. In this case they must enter the video and click on Menu > Ad settings > Accept terms and conditions.
From here they will be able to generate a code from the ad configuration section, which they can share with advertisers so that they can use their content. In this same settings section you can determine the authorisation time for the use of the publication, whether it is 7, 30 or 60 days. Once this is done, the only thing left to do is to manage the ads on the TikTok Ads Manager platforms, a process that the company explains in detail in its business help center. The future is already here!
