Due to the ability it gives businesses and organisations to target audiences quickly and effectively, social media advertising has grown substantially in popularity. There has been a move away from attracting consumers through ‘organic posts’ only and brands are getting smarter at utilising the advertising tools available at their disposal.

As social media advertising continues to grow, it also continues to evolve. Platforms are constantly updating, from an organic and advertorial perspective, meaning it is essential to stay up to date and well informed with social media advertising news across each platform as they continue to offer new and improved services to make targeted advertising and boosted posts more accessible to businesses.

With that in mind, here’s a round-up of the latest social media advertising updates that occurred last month.

Twitter

Twitter has updated data tracking options for Website Click and App Install campaigns

Last month, Twitter launched an improved website tag process to help businesses and organisations keep and analyse data on ad responses. Twitters new website tag has moved away from using third-party cookies for user response tracking and it has instead rebuilt its own website tag process.

This allows Twitter to offer business users first-party data to measure the campaigns they launch – and subsequent responses. Rather than using cookie attribution, which is stored by a user’s device, once a Twitter user clicks on a website URL, their ID will be captured and sent directly to Twitter, rather than a third-party organisation.

By expanding their own control over tracking clicks, Twitter can update Twitter Ads Manager with more accurate, first-party data. This first-party tag process will allow businesses using the platform to keep a tab on ad performance like never before.

Twitter removes ‘Ad Transparency Centre’

Late in January, Twitter gave the public very little notice as they closed their ‘Ad Transparency Centre’ – which previously allowed any user to view all Twitter ads being run by another account. The Twitter Ads Transparency Centre was only launched in 2019 with the intention of providing greater transparency for political ad campaigns across the platform.

This change is possibly in response to the 2020 Presidential Election and the conclusion of the Trump Presidency; after banning the former President from their site, Twitter is no longer under as much pressure to reveal campaign costs and advertisement strategies amongst political groups.

Consequently, marketers and business competitors will no longer be able to scrutinise fellow Twitter users live campaigns. They will have to return to second-guessing.

Twitter launches data tracking options for businesses via it’s ads manager

Snapchat

Snapchat Publishes New Data on the Rising Effectiveness of 6-Second Ads

The attention span of the average ad viewer is shortening. Because of this, the ‘6-second ad’ may be the solution to marketing on snapchat. This shorter, snappier type of advertising may be the sweet spot to drive engagement.

To better understand this, Snapchat recently partnered with MAGNA Global to conduct a study of over 7,700 users, on both desktop and mobile devices, in order to get an idea of their reactions to varying video ad types. To contrast with other social media platforms, Snapchat says that, regardless of length, full-screen vertical ads on Snapchat drove more than 2x the lift in awareness than other platforms tested. More importantly, the research indicated that its 6-second ads were more persuasive than 15-second slots. These results were demonstrated across all age-groups.

The results suggest that it could be worth while for businesses and influencers to test their own advertorial content and see what resonates best with their followers by trialling a mixture of long form videos as well as short and snappy campaigns. For effective targeting and creating engagement amongst target audiences – it might be that those shorter ads do actually perform the best.

Research by Snapchat highlights the benefits of using short, snappy video ads

Facebook

Facebook Tests New Topic Exclusions for Advertisers Within News Feeds

Facebook announced at the beginning of February that they will begin testing advertiser topic exclusion controls. This will allow businesses to stop their ads appearing next to certain topics in the news feed based on ‘brand suitability preferences’.

For example, businesses may be able to choose to select ‘politics’, therefore preventing their own content from being shown alongside other political ads or news. This update gives businesses further control over the placements of their ad campaigns – meaning they can help determine where the target audience sees the ad on their Facebook news feed.

Facebook gives brands more control over ad placements

Instagram

Instagram influencers cautioned by Advertising Standards authority over ‘misleading’ ads

The Advertising Standards Authority has warned Instagram influencers to take particular care when advertising beauty products on their channels. Recently, several influencers have had their posts removed by Instagram for misleading and exaggerating products in their posts.

In light of this, the ASA has now ruled that ‘filters’ on posts that promote beauty products is not allowed. This move is a bid towards making the platform more ‘real’ and allowing consumers to see honest, genuine results before buying products promoted by influencers.

The ASA release new guidelines on influencers using ‘filters’ to promote products

 

At Prohibition, we work with a range of brands across all sectors to create paid social media strategies that allow brands to promote their products offerings and services to their target audience. Get in touch today to find out how we could help you: hello@prohibitionpr.co.uk.

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