As the number of Internet users has increased over time, social media has revolutionised the landscape of brand marketing. Social media platforms have become the go-to tools for advertisers and marketers to bring their brands to centre stage. By utilising social media features, memes, moment marketing, and more, brands put in a lot of effort each day to polish their image and become favourites among their customers.
Platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and even tech giants such as Google employ various tricks and techniques to reach unparalleled potential. The advantages of marketing one’s brand on social media include real-time feedback from customers, insights from experts, shareability that fosters organic growth, influencer marketing, and amplified visibility that can lead to profits from multiple perspectives.
All the above-mentioned tools translate into a powerful asset for targeted advertising, as brands can leverage algorithms and data analytics to reach specific demographics based on interests, behaviours, and location. These targeting methods aim to maximise return on investment and establish a trust-based relationship between the audience and the brand.
From assisting brands to bringing more features to the platform for better user experience, social media platforms are always packing something new for everyone. From Google expanding the bounds for hotel advertisers to X making improvements to the revenue share model for the creators, multiple platforms have come up with improvements. Marketing Mind has curated its fortnightly list of updates that can help brands, creators, and users-
Social media platforms are always packing something new for everyone and are constantly evolving by offering new features to enhance both brand engagement and user experience. From Google’s expanded tools for hotel advertisers to X’s upgraded revenue-sharing model for creators, platforms are rolling out valuable improvements. Marketing Mind has curated its fortnightly roundup of key updates to help brands, creators, and users stay ahead-
Meta
Meta announced testing of new brand suitability controls, expansions to our continued partnership with Meta Business Partners, and new ways businesses can save time with more efficient Meta ads tools.
The platform has announced the testing of a new control that allows businesses to turn off the comments on their Facebook and Instagram ads. The platform said, “We understand this functionality can be important for brands when running sensitive campaigns or during periods of heightened sensitivity. Comment controls are currently available to a limited number of businesses, and we will continue to test and iterate on this functionality and its availability.”
Earlier, the platform enabled businesses to run ads on Facebook and Instagram profiles, helping them reach more engaged customers. Now, based on interest, it’s expanding a “publisher block list” feature, which lets businesses block their ads from certain Instagram profiles, to include Facebook profiles. Businesses can upload a list of public profiles where they do not want their ads to appear.
X
The platform in a tweet said, “Big news for creators! We’ve made improvements to our revenue-sharing program. Up to 25% of your Premium subscription now goes directly to creators. Our goal is to make it possible for anyone to earn a living on X.”
The platform plans to help creators monetise their content through a few techniques like- content quality and not ad impressions, higher sales engagement, audience analysis, and spam prevention.
Additionally, X is also planning to introduce a change to its block function. The platform clarified that if users’ posts are set to public, accounts they have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).
The travel planning begins with us looking for hotels, destination reviews, commute and so on. Keeping this in focus, Google has clarified that the hotel advertisers can now showcase feed data, such as hotels, prices, dates, ratings and images, in ad format on Google. Further, it is also experimenting with expanding this format to include things to do, car rentals and events.
The tech titan in a blog post said, “We’re experimenting with expanding Travel Feeds in Search Ads beyond hotels to things to do, car rentals and events in the coming months. This means that soon more advertisers will enjoy the benefits of dynamic feed data in other travel verticals.”
YouTube
On a different note, YouTube has introduced “over two dozen” improvements across web, mobile, TVs, and YouTube Music including- fine-tunable playback speed which will allow for adjustments in 0.05 increments, better browsing in landscape, larger thumbnails and bigger text.
After a long wait, users will finally be able to browse YouTube while simultaneously watching a video with the ‘miniplayer’. Users will be able to resize and move the miniplayer in the YouTube mobile app. On the other hand, do you like to stream videos on YouTube before you go to bed? Well, the platform has introduced Sleep Timer, which lets users set a timer to automatically pause videos after a certain duration of time.
The platform, in regard to the ‘Sleep Timer’ feature, said, “We tested this feature with our Premium members earlier this year to rave reviews. And we’re now excited to make it available to all our users on YouTube across mobile devices.”
It is also bringing ‘badges’ to the list of new features on YouTube and YouTube Music apps on mobile devices. The platform clarified that they are starting with just a few at launch, with badges that celebrate unique-to-YouTube milestones, such as being one of the first set of paid members of a creator’s channel, and so on.
The visual changes rolling out on web and mobile will also come to the YouTube app on TV. While watching Shorts on TV, a new UI offers continued interaction with the content. Whether it’s reading comments or browsing the shop, users can do it all without interrupting the viewing experience, the platform stated.
Last month, YouTube brought immersive channel pages to YouTube on TV. When visiting a creator’s channel, a video will begin playing automatically, giving viewers a teaser of the creator’s content and taking them right into the action.
The platform said, “Whether it was greater control, richer personalisation, or useful features, we’ve been hearing from our users that they wanted to get the most out of YouTube in a way that’s unique to them. These updates are a direct result of that valuable feedback, and they represent just the beginning of our ongoing effort to make YouTube better for everyone.”
