A plethora of updates this week, including Snapchat testing commerce solutions and Facebook experimenting with new features to diversify its uses and remain in tune to the needs of a younger audience.
Headlines
- Instagram has added video carousel ads and is currently testing business profiles
- In a move to direct monetisation, Snapchat has been testing their first shoppable ads
- Snapchat, BuzzFeed and NBC ink huge deal to deliver the Olympics highlights, next move to Facebook and Twitter in their conquest for a piece of the sporting pie
- Facebook is testing a disappearing version for Messenger and a ‘discover’ function for Groups, allowing users to find like-minded people
Insights
- An insight into four publishers WhatsApp strategy
- Facebook videos get 75% of views in first 4 days and some brands are using the new ‘reactions’ to gauge the success of their campaigns
- Google are looking into why we block ads, in a bid to establish what an ‘acceptable’ ad experience should be
Cool
- Twitter’s Word by Word typewriter will type Shakespeare’s complete works as they are tweeted at the Globe Theatre in London
- First look at the Burger King Facebook ‘burger bot’ that allows you to order through Facebook
- Puma creates a robot to help runners train while a new smartphone app gives you a hard incentive to get fit
Deep Read
- Podcasts are on the up but where next for the medium?
- Forget software or hardware as a service – consider ‘everything as a service’
- Inside the camps where YouTube makes its next generation of stars as well as the other side of working with influencers
