This week's all about new trends and upgrades, with an unexpected player thrown into the mix. Apple grabbed social media headlines with chatter about its impending social video app, and Twitter upgraded its ad revenue model to attract YouTuber-like influencers to the platform.
We'll also fill you in on the new behavioral targeting soon to make Snapchat marketers by storm, share all we know about Facebook's big update to Offers, and let you in on five easy ways to boost the performance of your YouTube channel. Skim to stay in the know!
Apple reportedly working on a social video app
The initial Bloomberg report says the company's hardware business is slowing, and so it's looking more at its service offerings as a way to boost revenue.
The video sharing and editing app's release is set for some time in 2017, and it's believed to allow users to shoot, apply filters, and draw on media much like on Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
It might be integrated directly to Apple's iMessage or camera apps as the battle between mobile operating systems and social messaging apps heats up, with each trying to gain on the fact that young users' mobile usage revolves around their phone cameras.
Will Apple finally succeed at something social?
1. Snapchat soon to make behavioral targeting a reality
The social network is set to introduce ways for marketers to serve ads to Snapchatters based on the accounts they follow and content they watch, targeting behaviors of users within the app itself.
Although keeping an eye on users' behavior on the Web, outside of when they're using the app, isn't currently in the pipeline, it's a future possibility as Snapchat integrates new "login with Snapchat" buttons on external websites, like it has with Bitmoji.
The new behavioral targeting capability should arrive in the third quarter of this year, and it should help marketers better serve ads and measure performance.
2. Facebook Offers gets an upgrade
Dating back to 2012, it may be one of the oldest features on Facebook, and the social network announced a major upgrade to the platform's Offer section this week that changes the way advertisers create offers and the way users redeem them.
Marketers are now able to target people the social network thinks are most likely to use or share their offers, and can also include barcodes or QR codes to help keep track of redemption rates. The update also means consumers have a digital coupon drawer of sorts, where they can collect, keep track, and receive reminders when offers are set to expire.
3. Twitter pulls a page from YouTube's book, plans to pay creators for videos
Twitter wants the massive audiences that come along with creators like those on YouTube, and it's finally ready to do something about it. The social network is set to begin sharing ad revenue with video creators on the platform, and it will do so with an even more attractive split than YouTube: 70% for the creator, 30% for Twitter.
The revenue split applies only to videos on Twitter—not Twitter-owned platforms Vine or Periscope—and content doesn't have to be exclusive. Creators can also post the content on YouTube and Twitter to get a taste of—or a check from—both.
The move might be too late to attract video creators who already brushed Twitter to the side, but it's a valiant effort that could make creators think twice.
4. Facebook's WhatsApp under attack by users for sharing data with... Facebook
The latest privacy fiasco to awaken the ire of social media users came via the new terms and conditions on Facebook's WhatsApp, which state that the chat app will now share user data with parent company Facebook.
Users can still opt out within the next few weeks, but those who don't will see WhatsApp share their phone number and usage stats with Facebook in an effort to improve the relevancy of the ads it serves and provide better friend suggestions.
Is the outcry justified? In this day and age, probably not.
5. Facebook gets with the times, realizes vertical videos won't go away
The popularity of apps like Snapchat and Periscope have convinced the biggest social player to take another look at its approach to vertical video. Currently, vertical videos on Facebook News Feeds across the world appear as tiny, square blocks, and users have to navigate away from the News Feed to view them full-screen.
With some estimates claiming that vertical video ads have completion rates nine times that of horizontal ones, Facebook plans to roll out an update that will now show vertical videos with a 2:3 aspect ratio—not quite optimized to the level of Snapchat, but far from its current ultra-cropped look.
