1. TikTok is Accepting Applications for Next Cohort of Support Black Businesses -  On June 7th, TikTok announced that they are accepting a the next cohort of Support Black Businesses! In partnership with Vimeo, Support Black Businesses aims to give Black small business owners critical skills and resources to help them not only rebuild, but grow stronger. The second round of Support Black Businesses builds on the program that TikTok launched last year and gives participants tools and resources to better advertise on digital platforms and drive sales. 

Here's what to know about the program: 

- They're selecting 40 black owned businesses for the cohort 

- The program will run from July 2021- December 2021; there will be at least one event to attend a month. 

- Participating in this program is free of charge. 

- The events and programming will be held virtually and will be a mix of educational content, thought leadership, mentorship and culture + community. 

To apply to be part of this program, your business must have the following: 

1) ​Less than 100 employees 

​2) Public facing website representing their business ​

3) Offering a product or service ​

4) Current social media presence (does NOT need to have a TikTok account) 

5) ​Commit to attend at least 75% of the programming offered 

Deadline to submit the application is June 23rd at 11:59pm. You can find the application here.

2. Instagram Shared How the Algorithm Works & Shadowbanning - This week, Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri wrote a blog post to clear up one of the main misconceptions about the Algorithm. According to his post, IG uses a variety of algorithm, classifies, and processes, each with its own purposes. The main goal of these algorithms is to make the most of our time by personalizing our experience. Thus each part of the  app - Feed, Explore, Reels - uses its own algorithm tailored to how we use it. 

Feed and Stories - are places where people want to see content from their friends, family, and those they are closest to so they show all the recent posts shared by the people we follow. Next they take all the information they have about what was posted, the people who made those posts, and our preferences. IG call these “signals”, and there are thousands of them. They include everything from what time a post was shared to whether we’re using a phone or the web to how often we like videos. 

Explore - was designed to help us discover new things. The grid is made up of recommendations – photos and videos that IG goes out and find for us – which is very different from Feed and Stories, where the vast majority of what we see is from the accounts we follow. Again, the first step they take is defining a set of posts to rank. To find photos and videos we might be interested in, they look at signals like what posts we've liked, saved, and commented on in the past. Once they’ve found a group of photos and videos we might be interested in, IG then order them by how interested they think we are in each one, much like how they rank Feed and Stories. The best way to guess how interested we are in something is to predict how likely we are to do something with the post. The most important actions they predict in Explore include likes, saves, and shares.

Reels - is designed to entertain us. Much like Explore, the majority of what we see is from accounts we don’t follow. So IG goes through a very similar process where they first source reels they think we might like, and then order them based on how interesting they think the reels are to us. The most important predictions they make are how likely we are to watch a reel all the way through, like it, say it was entertaining or funny, and go to the audio page (a proxy for whether or not we might be inspired to make our own reel.)

“Shadowbanning” - is a broad term that people use to describe many different experiences they have on Instagram and people consider their posts getting fewer likes or comments as a form of “shadowbanning”. They can’t promise us that we’ll consistently reach the same amount of people when we post. The truth is most of our followers won’t see what we share, because most look at less than half of their Feed. But they realized that they can be more transparent about why IG take things down when they do, work to make fewer mistakes – and fix them quickly when we do – and better explain how their systems work. So now they are developing better in-app notifications so people know in the moment why, for instance, their post was taken down, and exploring ways to let people know when what we post goes against their Recommendations Guidelines.

3. FB/IG Introduce New Ways for Creators to Make a Living - Zuckerberg & co wants Instagram and Facebook to serve as a home base for creators to tell their story, grow and make a living. Whether they are just starting out or are further along in building their business – they want to support creators and give the creator ways to accomplish their goals. So On June 8th, they announced new ways to help creators make a living as they build their personal brands across the platforms. 

Affiliate & New Shops Features on Instagram - a native affiliate tool that will allow creators to discover new products available on checkout, share them with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app. When people come across an affiliate post from a creator featuring a tagged product, they will see “eligible for commission” at the top of the post, so it’s clear that their purchases help support that creator. 

This will make it easier for people to shop directly from the creators they love and give brands a new way to partner with and reward creators who share their products.

For creators who want to sell their own merchandise, they're making it easier to add an existing shop or open a new shop on their Instagram profile.

Stay up to date on new shopping features for creators here.

More ways to earn from Badges and Stars - Badges on Instagram Live and Stars on Facebook give creators ways to earn from their supporters. As they see more and more creators use these tools to engage directly with their fans, they want to reward the creators for the impact they’re bringing to FB & IG communities. That’s why they ’re launching ways for creators to make extra money for hitting certain milestones with badges and Stars. 

Starting June 8, 2021, creators on Instagram are eligible to earn an extra payout when they meet certain milestones while using badges in Live, such as going Live with another account.

Also, Facebook launched the Stars Challenges. Creators in the program can earn payouts from Facebook in the form of free Stars if they meet certain milestones, such as broadcasting a certain number of hours or earning a set number of Stars within a designated time period.

4. YouTube Now Detects Copyright Violations During the Upload Process - YouTube has rolled out some new options to give users more capacity to stop copyright violations in uploads, and detect potential IP infringements within the app. First off, YouTube added a new element in the copyright claim process which will enable creators to tick a new box when reporting a copyright violation in order to 'Prevent copies of these videos appearing on YouTube going forward' in the detection/removal options.

When this box is checked on a successful copyright claim, YouTube will then work to stop any other users from uploading the same video, using its Copyright ID detection and video matching tech. The same process will also enable YouTube to alert creators when any similar content is uploaded if this box is ticked, with these additional, potential violations then displayed in the 'Copyright Match' tab within YouTube Studio.

5. YouTube Now Allows Creators To Add Midrolls, End Screens and Captions While Their Video Is Processing - YouTube has rolled out a new update which will enable creators to place add-on features - like midroll ad breaks, end screens, info cards, etc. - while their video is processing, The new process will save creators time by enabling them to incorporate these processes into their upload flow, rather than having to wait till the video is fully available before adding in these features.


6. YouTube Shorts, TikTok’s Rival Launches in 3 New Countries - Shorts will soon be available to users in the UK, Canada and Latin America, in addition to India and the US. The full list for the expanded rollout also includes the Cayman Islands, Aruba and Bolivia - you can check all the nations in which Shorts is now available here.


7. YouTube Ads is Replacing TrueView with  Video Action Campaigns - People are turning to YouTube to help them learn new skills, connect with others, and discover their next purchases with 70% of YouTube viewers saying they bought a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube. A few years ago, they began to see YouTube’s role shift from being a singular entertainment destination to a prominent knowledge hub that inspired action. This insight led them to build TrueView for action, tehir direct response video solution that helps brands engage with prospective customers on the watch page.

As customer journeys became more complex, it’s important to reach customers in moments of exploration and evaluation. That’s why they have evolved TrueView for action and scaling its best features to more places on and off YouTube with Video action campaigns. Per YouTube, Video action campaigns drive 20% more conversions per dollar compared to TrueView for action.

Starting early 2022, all existing TrueView for action campaigns will automatically upgrade to Video action campaigns. To get ahead of this change and start driving conversions immediately, they recommend creating new Video action campaigns by using the responsive ad group type during campaign set-up. If you’d like to continue creating TrueView for action ads, you can do so until September 30, 2021 and any existing TrueView for action ads will continue to run until early next year. To make this process easier for you, they will also launch a copy and paste feature in Google Ads over the next few weeks, which allows you to copy existing TrueView for action ads and paste them as Video action campaign ads.

8. Related Video Extensions Now Available Globally - Related video extensions are now globally available to all advertisers who use Google Ads. With related video extensions, you can show a list of 2 to 5 related videos below your video ad on the YouTube mobile app. Related video extensions extend your message beyond your primary video ad, keeping viewers engaged with your creatives (including other videos on your YouTube channel).

Learn how to implement related video extensions here.

9. Pinterest Rolls-Out Shopping List & Other Features - People are already saving ideas and products they love on Pinterest, and Pinterest knows that Pinners are over 7x more likely to purchase products they’ve saved (Pinterest Internal Data, May 2021). This is why they have launched Shopping List, a way for Pinners to have their product Pins automatically saved in one place, making it easier for them to come back and shop the items they’ve been eyeing when they’re ready to buy, just like they would in their favorite local shops. Pinners will also be notified when they can get a good deal on products they’ve saved with price drop notifications. Available first in the US and UK, Shopping List will be coming to Australia, Canada, France and Germany later this year.

Pinterest is also expanding its newest suite of merchant tools to help retailers of all sizes, with the launch of the Verified Merchant Program in the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Germany, as well as of shop tab on profile, and product tagging in Australia, Canada, France and Germany.

In the US, UK and Canada, they will reveal  “The Goods by Pinterest”, a two week Shopping Spotlight that will give Pinners access to limited edition products exclusively sold through Pinterest from emerging brands such as Outdoor Voices (US), Olive & June (US), Lucy and Yak (UK), Charlotte Tilbury (UK) or Park and Fifth (CA).

10. Apple Announces New Privacy Features That Will Upend Digital Marketing - This week at the WWDC Conference Apple announced that it will be bringing out new features for its Mail and Safari applications to ensure that their users are not tracked online.

According to Apple many advertisers use pixels online to track when a user opens their email and determine their IP address through all this information. All this can be used to help advertisers with targeted advertisements as well as track when you opened the email. So now Apple will block this pixel so that it hides the IP address, location and when the email was opened.

In Safari, Apple is going to launch a new privacy feature called Private Relay. When Private Relay is turned on, nobody can track your browsing history -- not your internet service provider, anyone standing in the middle of your request between your device and the server you're requesting information from. 

The third feature you should know is 'Hide my email.' It lets you generate random email addresses when you sign up to a newsletter or when you create an account on a website. If you've used 'Sign in with Apple,' you know that Apple offers you the option to use fake iCloud email addresses. This works similarly, but for any app.