1. Microsoft Advertising Sunsetting ETAs Too & Auto-Generate Remarketing List - Following Google Ads footsteps, Microsoft Advertising announced that beginning June 30, 2022, responsive search ads (RSAs) will be the only search ad type that can be created or edited in standard search campaigns. introducing a new product that can automatically generate remarketing lists for advertisers. The three types of auto-generated remarketing lists are:

Advertisers can use one, two or all three lists simultaneously, along with their existing remarketing and audience targeting lists. Universal Event Tracking and active conversion goals will need to be configured to leverage the All Converters and Smart Remarketing list options.

2. Pinterest Adds New Shopping Features, Including Brand Profile Details and Sponsored Idea Pins - Andrew @ Socialmediatoday.com writes - Pinterest is adding a new ‘Slideshow for Collections’ promotion option, which will source products from your uploaded catalog “into an automatically generated, attention-grabbing collections ad”. The new Slideshow for Collections ad unit will appear in-stream in relevant searches, helping to reach people that have already shown interest in similar products. When tapped, the unit then expands into a more focused collection of your products, again, all automatically generated based on your inventory.

Pinterest is also adding new merchant details to brand profiles, which will enable businesses to showcase their values in the app. This provides another way to facilitate stronger brand connection, especially among more socially-conscious, younger shoppers who are increasingly looking to buy from brands that align with their values.

Pinterest is also expanding its Verified Merchant Program, which highlights businesses that meet Pinterest’s customer service and brand connection guidelines with a verified checkmark in the app. Launched last year in the US, Pinterest’s Verified Merchant program ensures that more businesses are linking their product catalog into the app, while also adhering to Pinterest’s customer response standards.

And finally, Pinterest is also testing a new sponsored content option for Idea Pins, which is Pinterest’s take on the Stories format. Sponsored Idea Pins are displayed with a profile image of the creator, along with a “Paid Partnership” tag to disclose the brand relationship. Sponsored Idea Pins will also, importantly, provide Pinterest with another means to help creators earn money, and get paid for their efforts, which will ensure more, higher quality Idea Pins keep flowing.

3. Snapchat Rolls Out Run for Office Mini - From socialmediatoday, over the past few years, Snapchat has been working to get its young user base more involved in the political process, through voting awareness stickers, polling location tracking, voter registration pushes, Discover programming and more. And now, Snap’s looking to take the next step in civic engagement, by prompting its users to actually become politicians, and directly influence political shifts.

The ‘Run for Office’ mini provides a range of key insights into local political positions, as well as explainers on the steps that people need to take in order to nominate themselves for relevant local ballots and positions. The mini will also include info on filing deadlines and signature requirements, and provide contact information for local election offices.

Snapchatters in the US can access the new ‘Run for Office’ mini by opening Snapchat and swiping down on the camera screen to access Snap’s in-app games, where the mini will be listed, or you can search ‘Run for Office’ within Snapchat.

4. Snapchat Announces New Creator Monetization Tools as it Seeks to Maximize In-App Engagement - From SocialMediaToday.com, Snapchat’s launching new ‘Spotlight Challenges’ (payment program for its TikTok-like Spotlight feed), which will provide cash prizes for users who post the best videos on a specific theme. The new Spotlight Challenges will outline the specifics of each trend, as well as the prizes on offer for the best performing clips in each category.

It’s a fairly straightforward process, and it could provide a means for Snapchat to fuel rising content trends, which is one of the key ways that users engage on TikTok. It could also provide a new revenue opportunity for the app, with brands eventually able to sponsor specific Spotlight trends relative to their promotions.

“The total prize amount for individual Spotlight Challenges will typically range from $1k to $25k, although occasionally we may make available a larger sum for a particular Challenge, and the minimum prize a Snapchatter can win in a Spotlight Challenge is $250.”

At launch, in November last year, Snapchat announced that it would pay out $1 million per day, to be shared among the top-performing Spotlight clips, as means to incentivize engagement, and kick-start the offering. Which worked – by the end of Q1, Spotlight had jumped to 125 million monthly active users (out of Snapchat’s 280m total actives), but by that stage, Snap had already paid out $90 million in creator payments, with more to come, and the cost-to-benefit ratio was starting to look a little out of whack.

Hindsight aside, with the costs continuing to mount up, in June, Snap announced an update to its Spotlight payment process, shifting from daily payments of $1 million for Spotlight clips to a more vague 'millions per month'. That’s caused various problems for Snap creators, who had already raised concerns about delayed payments and other issues with the program. Maybe, then, this will be a more logical, and sustainable means of funding Spotlight clips, which could also entice a broader range of creators into the program, as opposed to the top creators taking the lion’s share of the funding.

5. Mailchimp Helps SMBs Optimize Email Campaigns - Mailchimp, the email marketing platform, has announced new functionality to help optimize email campaigns. Content Optimizer will recommend specific improvements to email campaigns based on an AI-driven comparison of the content with best content practices gleaned from Mailchimp’s billions of marketing data-sets.

Content Optimizer will make recommendations relating to readability, typography, CTA placements and compliance with brand standards.

This is Mailchimp’s latest attempt to level the playing field between small and larger businesses by providing affordable automation of an important marketing process

6. Twitter Professional Profiles Available to More Businesses - After an initial rollout to a small test group, Twitter is now opening up applications for professional profiles to all interested businesses. All businesses can now apply for a professional profile on Twitter, which grants access to exclusive features.

A professional profile is a free upgrade to standard profiles, which is available as an option to those with professional accounts. You can use a professional profile to display information you’re not able to showcase on a standard profile.

Businesses, publishers, developers, and creators can display the following information on their upgraded profile page:

In addition, a professional profile opens up access to enhanced features that aren’t available to businesses with a standard profile. A couple that can be added to a professional profile today include Newsletter & Shop module.

In order to qualify for a professional profile you must first have a professional Twitter account. A standard account can be converted into a professional account from the settings screen by selecting “Switch to Professional.” From there Twitter will guide you through the rest of the steps. Along with having a professional account, your business must meet the following criteria: 

Note that any business can submit an application, but Twitter is going to review every application that comes through to make sure the business qualifies. Businesses are asked to submit a brief form to confirm their eligibility for a professional profile.

7. Clubhouse Makes Clips Available for All iOS Users - Last week in Episode 76, we covered the announcement about Clips. And this week, it was rolled out to all iOS users. Coming soon to Android.


8. Instagram Combines IGTV, Feed Videos Into Single Format, Instagram Video - From Instagram: 

“Starting today, we’re combining IGTV and feed videos into one format - Instagram Video. We’re also introducing a new Video tab on your profile, where this combined video format will live, to make it easier for people to discover new video content.”

The new video tab, signified by a play button icon, will now display all of your uploaded videos in one place. The merging of IGTV and general Instagram video will also provide new playback functionality, with viewers able to tap anywhere on the video to enter full-screen mode, while users will also be able to keep scrolling “to discover new video content from creators that may interest them”.

In addition, Instagram’s also adding new trimming tools and filters for all uploaded video clips, as well as location tagging in videos (previously not available for IGTV).

“Video previews in feed will now be 60 seconds long, unless the video is eligible for ads - in which case, the preview will still be 15 seconds.” That means users will be able to view more of your content without having to tap through, which could help generate more interest, and will have impacts for those looking to maximize engagement with their in-stream previews.

And finally, Instagram’s also changing the name of its video ads: “With Instagram Video, IGTV Ads are now called Instagram In-Stream video ads. Eligible creators can still monetize their long-form content, and brands can reach audiences engaging with long-form video. For businesses interested in boosting their videos to reach more people, videos must be no longer than 60 seconds in length.”

9. Google Shifts AdSense to First-Price Auction. How Will It Impact Google Ads? - Per Google: “In the early days of online display advertising, ad space was sold to advertisers in a second-price auction, where the final price paid by the winner was determined by the amount of the second-highest bid. Over time, many ad selling platforms in the display advertising ecosystem, including Google Ad Manager and Google AdMob, switched their auction to first-price. In a first-price auction, the final price reflects the winning bid.”

For example, right now, in AdSense bidding, the final price of each ad is 0.01c higher than the second-placed bid. So if two brands bid $5 and $6 respectively for an ad slot, the winning bidder ends up paying $5.01. Under a first price auction model, however, the winning bid would be the full top bid – so the advertiser would pay $6 for the impression.

That will likely mean more revenue for publishers, and Google – though Google says that the actual impacts will be limited.

You can read more about the coming update here.

10. Google Adds Search Console integration to Google Analytics, New Data Attribution Modeling - From Google: “Search Console provides detailed information about your website’s organic Search performance, including the site’s rank in Search results, queries that led to clicks, and post-click data, like engaged sessions and conversions. With the new Search Console integration, you'll be able to understand the role that organic Search plays in driving traffic to, and engagement on your site, relative to other marketing channels like Search ads, email, or social.”

Analytics has always incorporated various search insights, and for many, those will be enough to provide a picture of how Google search is driving traffic to your site (or not). But for those looking to further optimize their SEO processes, the new Search Console integration will provide more specific data, which could help you develop a more all-encompassing, and engaging, SEO optimization process.

In addition to this, Google’s also adding data-driven attribution, with no minimum threshold requirements, to Google Analytics 4 properties. BTW, we cover a lot more about data-drive attribution in episode 76 of the TWIMshow where we shared how Google is moving away from last-click attribution wherever possible, as it’s not an accurate indicator of overall digital marketing performance. 

“Google’s data-driven attribution models give you a better understanding of how all of your marketing activities collectively influence your conversions, so you don’t over or undervalue a single channel. Unlike last-click attribution, where 100% of the credit goes to the final interaction, data-driven attribution distributes credit to each marketing touchpoint based on how much impact the touchpoint had on driving a conversion.”

And finally, Google’s also looking to counter the loss of attribution data, amid the shift to more data privacy controls, by adding new modeling prediction capacity to Analytics.

“Using Google’s advanced modeling technology, the new Google Analytics allows you to fill gaps in your understanding of customer behavior when cookies and other identifiers aren’t available. It analyzes vast amounts of historical data, identifies correlations and trends between key data points, and uses those insights to make predictions about the customer journey.”

11. YouTube Ads Available on Connected Television (CTV) Platforms - YouTube is looking to help advertisers tap into the rising consumption of YouTube content on home TV sets with the expansion of Video Action campaigns to Connected TV (CTV) placements. Video action campaigns now include CTV inventory to help advertisers reach new customers and drive more online sales. 

Per Google, “If your goal is to drive online sales or generate leads, we recommend using Video Action campaigns. Video Action campaigns make it easy to find new customers efficiently in a single campaign by combining inventory from across YouTube and Google video partners - and now YouTube CTV. For the first time, performance advertisers can take advantage of YouTube on CTV to drive and measure conversions.”

Video Action campaigns display a URL at the bottom of the screen, prompting further action on the brand’s website. Which, given that people can’t click or tap on a URL link on their TV set, is one of the best ways to drive direct response – though it is less ‘direct’ than the normal definition of that term.

The expansion of Video Action campaigns is the latest advance on this, while YouTube also provides Masthead ads for CTV, and has improved its ad targeting options specifically for CTV campaigns.

It’s a good addition, which will be valuable for brands seeking traditional TV-like ad placement. And as CTV consumption continues to rise, TV-like ads are becoming more affordable, with better targeting and more specific audience options to better balance cost, and maximize efficiency. 

You can find out more about YouTube’s Video Action campaigns here.