Big brands find pandemic success with e-commerce platforms; Monday’s daily brief
Plus, pitch to speak at SMX
Topic: Social media marketing
Your thoughts on Google paying to link to news publishers; Wednesday’s daily brief
Plus, breaking down President Biden’s social media strategy
Facebook testing brand safety topic exclusions for advertisers
"This is the first time the Feed environment would be managed though controls," company says.
Halting campaigns shouldn’t be your only brand safety precaution
After the storming of the Capitol, some brands are going dark with their social media ads, but a rapid response workflow and diversifying channels can help them continue to drive business.
Social Shorts: Twitter adds frequency caps, Reddit’s audience grows, Facebook buys Kustomer
Twitter enables frequency capping for all campaign types Advertisers can now control the number of times ads are shown to users with campaign frequency caps. The feature is available in ad group details for Reach, Engagement, Video Views, and Pre-Roll Views objectives by default. Why we care. Frequency capping will allow advertisers to tailor their […]
Google adds more discovery to Google Maps with ‘community feed’
The new feed offers more opportunities for local business exposure.
Social Shorts: Snapchat’s TikTok rival is here, Facebook teams with BBB for ad reviews
Snapchat puts the “Spotlight” on top Snaps, will pay creators Snapchat has launched Spotlight to feature the best Snaps in a new feed aimed squarely at countering rival TikTok. Creators whose videos are selected can “earn a share of more than $1 million that we’re distributing to creators every day!,” said the company. Creators can […]
Social Shorts: YouTube expands ad inventory, Twitter launches Fleets, more
YouTube to show ads on channels that aren’t in the Partner Program In it’s latest terms of service update, YouTube creators agree to allow the service to monetize their content with ads (or by charging users for access) but are not necessarily entitled to revenue sharing. To be eligible for YouTube’s revenue sharing Partner Program […]
Social Shorts: Instagram pegs Reels and Shop, Pinterest’s engagement metric, TikTok’s size and more
Why Pinterest moved beyond CTR to understand ad engagement Relying on a straight click-through rate metric to understand how ads are resonating has its shortcomings, explained Pinterest engineers in a blog post. Those shortcomings include not accounting for ad position bias, users’ Save or Hide actions and brand awareness objectives. Instead, Pinterest explains, it developed […]
Social Shorts: Snapchat advertiser certifications, YouTube masthead ads go full CPM, more
Facebook Ads bugs unnerve advertisers Last week, more bugs beset a wide number of advertiser accounts and ads, causing temporary ad disapprovals and accounts being disabled. “This is the second widespread bug that we’ve seen impact Facebook campaigns in the last 4 weeks,’ said Zenia Johnson of 3Q Digital. Why we care. Advertiser frustrations over […]
Social Shorts: TikTok teams with Shopify, Commerce ads dominate Facebook, LinkedIn users top 722 million
TikTok jumps into social commerce with Shopify TikTok’s advertising division TikTok for Business announced a global integration with Shopify Tuesday that makes it easy for Shopify merchants to promote their products on the short-form video social network. The two companies also announced #ShopBlack to amplify Black-owned Shopify merchants on TikTok. Why we care. This marks […]
Social Shorts: Snapchat’s rising ARPU, Facebook’s moves on Nextdoor, Instagram’s age controls
Snapchat’s North America ARPU shoots up Snapchat reported revenues increased 52% year-over-year to $679 million and average daily active users (DAUs) increased by 18% year-over-year to $249 million for the third quarter of the year. One stat that stood out to us in particular was the average revenue per user (ARPU) in North America. Overall […]
Facebook launches new Shopping audiences, Instagram Product Tag ads, tests Shops discounts
Facebook continues to expand Shopping capabilities and features across its platforms.
Social Shorts: Pinterest users index high on gift giving, TikTok’s brand safety solution, more
Pinterest users are heavy gift shoppers Compared to other social media, Pinterest users are the top spenders on gifts and holiday shopping. That’s among the findings from StatSocial which looked at the purchases of millions of U.S.-based users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Pinterest. It found that Pinterest users spend 39.2% more on […]
Social Shorts: Facebook attribution change on hold, Instagram gets more shoppable, turns 10
Scratch that: Facebook’s 28-day attribution window lives, for now In response to advertiser feedback, Facebook will not move forward with a test to remove the default 28-day attribution window for advertisers. Gil David of Run DMG shared the news on LinkedIn, commenting “Facebook demonstrates that they do actually listen to advertisers.” He cited the company’s […]
Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Center for search and social management adds features, opens beta
The free platform is now open to U.S. small businesses.
Social Shorts: Snapchat reach campaigns, Facebook attribution change, TikTok downloads can continue
Snapchat pitches Platform Burst reach option for advertisers Snapchat is floating a new advertising offering called Platform Burst. The idea is to guarantee that “campaigns will reach at least 40% of their target audience 15 times” over a three or five day period, according to Digiday. Platform Burst campaigns can encompass different ad formats across […]
Social Shorts: Facebook’s 20% rule, Pinterest Story Pins, Reddit brand safety options
So long, 20% text limit in Facebook ad images Facebook Ads is officially removing its 20% text rule. The company’s rule that text not take up more than 20% of ad images is now a mere suggestion: “We’ve found that images with less than 20% text perform better. With this in mind, we recommend keeping […]
Social Media Tool Recommendations
If you’re looking for Social Media tool recommendations then look no further than this helpful list of tools I have tested for your convenience. The below social media tools have all been tried and tested for The Online Advertising Guide itself. I can honestly say that each of these is really useful in its own […]
Facebook Business Suite is a new cross-app management tool for SMBs
Seeks to bring simplicity and centralized control to content management on Facebook and Instagram.
Why Should You Have A Blog?
Even if no one reads your blog regularly, it’s surprisingly still worth having in a wide variety of ways. The blogosphere doesn’t have to welcome you with open arms for you to reap the benefits of typing whatever you feel. There are many reasons for this, all of which seem counter-intuitive until you realise how […]
Paid Social Recommendation: Twitter Ads
UPDATE November 2023: I no longer recommend Twitter Ads due to widely reported brand safety issues. This is a shame because I previously quite liked it as a platform despite its lacklustre performance. Hopefully, they can right the ship again. Old Review: Twitter Ads is the only paid social platform that actually makes […]
Social Media Scheduler Recommendation: StatusBrew
StatusBrew is the best value social media scheduler out there bar-none. It comes with bulk uploading and a suite of reporting tools that tell you what you need about your social media efforts quickly and easily. They also have outstanding customer service (which always helps sell things to me). In short, they are great. So […]
Traditional media suffer as digital ad spend grows in 2020 forecast shows
Paid search and social are the big winners of shifting budgets.
LinkedIn lets Page owners view, sort, learn more about their followers
Pages also now have an 'Events' tab for to feature their (virtual) events.
Organic Social Media Quizzes & Exams
Do you know about Organic Social Media? Prove it by testing yourself against our Organic Social Media Quizzes and Exams! There are so many social networks out there, that it’s often hard to keep track. They all work roughly the same, but to be a real pro there are nuances upon nuances to keep in […]
Organic Social – Final Exam
Welcome to the Organic Social Media Final Exam from The Online Advertising Guide. The format of the Final Exam is the same as the Organic Social Mock Exam – you will be asked to answer 50 questions about organic social media that only top Social Media Marketers should know. There is one key difference though […]
Organic Social – Mock Exam
Welcome to the Organic Social Media Mock Exam from The Online Advertising Guide. The format of the mock exam is the same as the easy, normal and hard organic social quizzes, which should have prepared you to get to this point. In this mock exam, you will be asked to answer 50 questions about organic […]
Organic Social Quiz: Level 3
Do you know about Organic Social Media? Prove it! Welcome to the Hard Organic Social Media Quiz – 30 random questions that professional Social Media Managers should know. The quiz is different every time, there is no time limit, and you can try again as many times as you like. Press the “Next” directly below […]
Organic Social Quiz: Level 2
Do you know about Organic Social Media? Prove it! Welcome to the Level 2 Organic Social Quiz – 20 random questions that all Social Media Marketers should know. The quiz is different every time, there is no time limit, and you can try again as many times as you like. Press the “Next” directly below […]
Organic Social Quiz: Level 1
Do you know about Organic Social Media? Prove it! Welcome to the Easy Organic Social Quiz – 10 random questions that even novice Social Media Marketers should know. The quiz is different every time, there is no time limit, and you can try again as many times as you like. Press the “Next” directly below to […]
Majority of chains call local-digital marketing an ‘untapped opportunity’
But 77% of multi-location brands complain executing locally at scale is very challenging.
Social Shorts: TikTok’s future, Quora lead-gen ads, Facebook’s India plans
TikTok and LinkedIn under one roof? “Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions, as President Trump said on Friday that he was considering taking steps that would effectively ban the app from the United States,” The New York Times reported Friday. The […]
Social Shorts: Twitter ad engagement drops, Snap Minis launch, more brands pause Facebook Ads
Twitter ad engagement suffers. Snapchat user gains slow We’re starting to get a clearer picture of how the pandemic affected social platforms last quarter. This week, even as monetizable daily active users increased by a whopping 34% to 186 million, Twitter reported ad revenue fell by 23% year-over-year to $562 million in Q2 (total revenue […]
Social Shorts: Google’s ShopLoop, Instagram Shop overhaul, Snapchat brand pages
ShopLoop: Google’s mobile commerce experiment Google’s experimental lab Area 120 is out with a new e-commerce experience for mobile web that incorporates social feed engagement and video product demos common on YouTube. Shoploop features a feed of short (90-seconds max) videos from creators using or talking about products. Every post links out to the relevant […]
Less than a third of consumers aware of Facebook ads boycott, Gen Z most engaged
Nearly 70% were unaware or had not formulated an opinion of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign.
Facebook Ads boycott: What will be the measure of success?
Claiming the advertiser boycott as a success or failure won't likely be clear cut.
CPG giant Unilever announces no more Facebook, Twitter ads through 2020
We have entered an entirely new and higher stakes era of digital activism.
Social Shorts: TikTok for Business, Instagram Reels, Audio Tweets
TikTok’s new advertiser hub TikTok debuted its new studio hub for brands and agencies Thursday. TikTok for Business is available globally across the app’s 20-odd markets and will host services and ad formats for advertisers. It also debuted Brand Scan, an AR ad format, with tech partners Bare Tree Media, Subvrsive and Tommy. Why we […]
Microsoft launches a free Search and Social campaign management platform for SMBs
Digital Marketing Center powers both organic social media and ad campaigns across Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.