This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Twitter rebrands and expands in-house brand strategy team. Twitter has given its in-house brand strategy team a new name, Twitter Next, and has expanded the group to include a newly-formed lab made up of technologists, program managers and designers.
“Through data-driven experimentation, Twitter Next’s new lab has already stewarded more than 200 custom programs in 2019, with advertisers across all industries globally,” writes Alex Josephson, the head of Twitter Next. He said his team is focused on “re-imagining the technological possibilities” of the platform.
Work so far has included campaigns for KFC, BET and Samsung Spain. “I’m not sure we’ve ever seen one of our campaign messages — in this case #BatallaQLED — more talked about on Twitter,” said Samsung Spain CMO Alfonso Fernandez, “I think of Twitter as more than just a media platform; the team at Twitter Next are truly creative partners for us.”
The Twitter Next group also rolled out a beta of its Brand Reminders platform, a tool that lets brands set up auto-reply campaigns to alert fans when new content has been released. The tool has been piloted by more than 70 advertisers who have used it for sales promotions, movie trailer drops and TV program announcements.
“Stories Can Do It,” says Facebook’s marketing team. Facebook is rolling out a global campaign to drive adoption of its Story Ad format. The company kicked off the “Stories Can Do It” campaign during the first day of Advertising Week with OOH ads and live activations planned during the advertising event this week. The company is also running ads across Facebook, Instagram
It looks like Reddit’s redesign worked. Reddit COO Jen Wong said the site has experienced a lift in page views and time spent on its desktop and mobile platforms since the company completely overhauled its site last year. “We’ve seen significant growth in user engagement and conversations — demonstrating that users are deepening their relationships with each other and with Reddit communities,” writes Wong on Reddit’s Upvoted blog. Reddit partnered with YPulse to survey its Gen Z and Millennial social media users, surveying more than 1,300 people between the ages of 13 and 39. “What we discovered was that community plays a unique and valuable role in the lives of our users,” writes Wong.
Hiring is about to get hot on LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn’s internal data from the last five years, October is the busiest month for job postings on the site. “There are more available job postings on LinkedIn in October than any other month,” writes Catherine Fisher, LinkedIn’s head of global integrated marketing and communications. The company reports it currently has more than 20 million jobs listed on the site, and that 89% of hiring managers claim it takes less than four weeks to fill a role. For professionals searching for a new position, candidates who are among the first 25 to apply to a job posting are three times more likely to win the job. “Being an early applicant gives you a clear advantage,” writes Fisher.
Tens of thousands of apps suspended. Facebook VP of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong published an update on Facebook’s app review process and all the company has done to block malicious apps since news broke more than a year ago that Cambridge Analytica had used an app to harvest user data. The number of apps suspended by Facebook has grown from the 400 it reported in August of last year to now tens of thousands.
“It is important to understand that the apps that have been suspended are associated with about 400 developers. This is not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people. Many were not live but were still in their testing phase when we suspended them,” writes Archibong.
He notes that it is not unusual for developers to submit multiple apps that never get rolled out — or the developer fails to respond to Facebook’s request for more information, resulting in the app being suspended. Archibong said that only in a few cases have apps been banned entirely. On top of Facebook’s recent updates to app reviews, a process that involves much more strict guidelines than before, developers also must now comply with the FTC’s rules which require developers to certify they are in compliance with Facebook’s policies on an annual basis.
Facebook greenlighted 2 new apps for teens. Facebook’s NPE (New Product Experimentation) Group, which is tasked with building new products from scratch, recently released two new Facebook-owned apps — Bump and Aux, according to The Information. The apps were both made available via Apple’s Canadian App Store in August and looked to be aimed at teen users. The Daily Dot reported the Bump app is designed as a “matchmaking app for connecting students from the same school” and that the Aux app, which has already been removed from the app store, integrated with Spotify and Apple Music.
Indicators
Adobe: Consumers more likely to blame the website than the brand when ads are poorly placed
brand safety issues. When asked who was at fault for bad ad placement, Baby Boomers were more likely to blame everyone (the brand, digital platforms and ad agencies), while the other three groups — Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X — were more likely to hold the website that ran the ad responsible.
An alarming number of Gen Z (63%) and Millennials (52%) claimed they were unaware of news stories about personal data misuse, or believe the stories are inflated or manufactured, according to the survey findings.
“This appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle with participants, but distinctly younger generations, feeling vulnerable and easily misled online,” writes Adobe, “Yet, despite feeling these concerns, younger consumers may either be complacent or indifferent to the risks posed by personal data misuse or to determine the veracity of data leaks, social engineering, and other forms of online manipulation.”
The Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers surveyed for the Adobe report all ranked Facebook as their most used social network, while Instagram was the most popular social network among the Gen Z crowd, followed by Snapchat (which didn’t even make it into the top three for the other generational groups).
On the Move
Stephanie Fried has been named CMO for the global entertainment platform Fandom. She will lead the company’s brand vision, and oversee consumer and sales marketing, research, events and communications. “Hundreds of millions of users around the world use Fandom’s platforms to interact with like-minded fans in communities best suited for them. Stephanie will help further this mission by deepening fans’ connection to each other, and to the films, shows and games they love,” said Fandom CEO Perkins Miller. Fried comes to Fandom after serving as the EVP of marketing research and analytics for Condé Nast.
Arby’s has promoted its CMO Jim Taylor to president. He will succeed Rob Lynch, who left his leadership role at Arby’s to take on the CEO role at Papa John’s, and will report to Inspire Brands CEO Paul Brown. “During Jim’s time at Arby’s, he has helped introduce one of the most dynamic and innovative product pipelines in our industry and has a proven track record of driving strong sales for the brand,” said Brown. Before being named Arby’s CMO, Taylor was the senior VP of brand advertising and activation and served as a senior VP of product development and innovation for the restaurant chain. Before Arby’s, Taylor was the senior VP of enterprise strategy, innovation and marketing for Darden Restaurants.
Hilton Hotels has named Julie Nestor as its new VP of marketing and e-commerce for its Asia-Pacific Region. In her new role, Nestor will be relocating to Hilton Hotel’s Singapore offices. “Hilton is on a huge growth trajectory with a massive pipeline of new hotels, so it’s a really exciting time to be joining and I’m really looking forward to being involved in the hospitality industry,” said Nestor. Prior to joining Hilton Hotels, Nestor served as eBay’s CMO, and previously held the role of VP of consumer marketing at American Express.
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Portal: Now on TV screens. Facebook rolled out three new Portals on Wednesday, expanding its family of video-calling devices. The new models include an upgraded version of the 10” Portal device, an all-new 8” Portal Mini and a Portal TV device that can be placed below or on top of a user’s TV, offering in-screen video-calling from the TV screen. The three devices range from $129 for the mini to $179 for the upgraded 10” Portal. The Portal TV costs $149.
All three include the same video-calling capabilities with Messenger and WhatsApp integrations. What’s new among the devices is an option that allows users to turn off the “Hey Portal” voice storage setting.
“If you have the ‘Hey Portal’ enabled, Portal listens for the phrase ‘Hey Portal.’ If it’s detected, Portal sends a short audio recording and transcript of the ‘Hey Portal’ voice interaction to Facebook. A trained team may review a sample to make our voice services smarter and more accurate for everyone,” writes Facebook on its Newsroom blog.
Turning off the setting will stop Facebook from storing or reviewing any voice interactions on the device, but the setting is turned on by default. In other words, if users do not want any conversations that happen via a Portal to be recorded and stored by Facebook, they must go into the device settings and turn off the “Hey Portal” option.
About those “Hey Portal” recordings. Just in time for the release of the new Portal devices, Bloomberg reported that Facebook was not only recording and storing audio from Portal devices, but that some of the audio was transcribed by contractors.
“Those commands [“Hey Portal” voice interactions] were recorded and stored on Facebook servers, and some of them were transcribed by contractors working with the company to improve software algorithms used to understand the commands,” reports Bloomberg.
In light of Facebook’s user privacy issues, the company had paused “human review” of the Portal audio recording in August, according to an earlier Bloomberg report. But now that users have the option to turn off the setting, it is resuming its recording and reviewing process for voice interactions — a practice Facebook claims is important in terms of training the company’s software programs to accurately understand user requests.
3D Snaps. Snapchat has released a new 3D camera mode, making it possible for users to take 3D-like selfies via the app. “The 3D selfies captured in Snapchat can be shared on the app or saved to a user’s camera roll and shared elsewhere. Sharing outside the app will take away the ability for people to move their phone around to change the image’s perspective,” reports The Verge. The update is currently only available on iPhone X or newer iPhones, but a Snapchat spokesperson told The Verge the 3D feature will eventually be supported on more devices.
LinkedIn now offering Skills Assessment tests. LinkedIn has released a new skills assessment feature for users, offering various free multiple-choice tests that allow users to verify their capabilities in areas such as computer languages, software packages and more. According to TechCrunch, the company rolled out the Skills Assessments feature globally on Tuesday. Prior to the launch, LinkedIn reported that more than two-million tests had been taken during a beta period: “A sign of how the full service might well be a very popular, and needed, feature,” reports TechCrunch.
Facebook’s latest efforts to fight hate. Facebook released an update outlining recent actions it has taken to fight hate and extremist content on the platform. To date, the company has banned more than 200 white supremacist organizations on its site and removed content praising or supporting such organizations using a combination of AI and human expertise. “The process to expand the use of these techniques started in mid-2018 and we’ll continue to improve the technology and processes over time,” writes Facebook on its newsroom blog. The company has also updated how it defines terrorist organizations, clarifying that, “While our previous definition focused on acts of violence intended to achieve a political or ideological aim, our new definition more clearly delineates that attempts at violence, particularly when directed toward civilians with the intent to coerce and intimidate, also qualify.”
Snapchat launches archive of political ads. Snapchat has created an archive of the political ads that have appeared on the platform in 2018 and 2019. Similar to Facebook and Twitter’s efforts to offer more transparency around political ad campaigns on their platforms, Snapchat’s political ad archive includes various details on the campaigns, including the organization that paid for the ad, the total spend, impressions and targeting information. The big difference is that Snapchat’s archive is only available in an Excel spreadsheet that you must download to review.
YouTube tries out new features and updates analytics for creators. YouTube is testing two new features for creators: commenter profile cards and a personalized message on the watch page. The profile cards will display more information about a commenter so that creators can get a sense of what a commenter is writing and to help creators recognize some of their best commenters. If you’re scrolling through the comments for a video, the profile cards will display recent comments left by the commenter on the same channel during the last 12 months.
YouTube is also allowing a small group of creators the ability to post a personalized message to see if it impacts the likelihood of a potential fan subscribing to the creator’s channel. The message will appear on the watch page near the subscriber button.
The company is also updating its impressions and click through rate (CTR) analytics within the YouTube Studio beta analytics section to offer creators fresher data that is closer to the time of upload. The site is rolling out up-to-the-minute reports so that creators will be able to see impressions and CTRs within three hours of the video being made public. Three hours after a video is posted, the analytics will reflect up-to-the-minute data.
New rules for articles shared in Reddit’s technology group. According to a post in the Reddit technology subreddit, /r/technology, a group that has more than 8.1 million subscribers, the group moderators are considering banning any links to websites that have a paywall or capped number of visits by viewers. “Yes, we know that there are work-arounds, but that also works around the purpose of this move,” writes the moderators, “We, the mods of /r/technology, hope that we can encourage websites to allow access to their content for others to enjoy without cost to visitors.” While some protested, the majority of commenters said they were in favor of banning such links — or possibly creating a tag that would let readers know if there’s a paywall attached to an article shared in the group.
YouTube stops counting ad views to rank music videos. YouTube announced last Friday it would no longer count video views generated from paid advertising to calculate its music chart rankings. It will only use organic views to rank artists’ videos.
Previously, YouTube Music Charts, a listing of the most popular new releases from bands and musicians on the platform, counted all views to rank the most popular music videos. Artists and production companies with ad budgets could potentially get their music video debuts further up the list by running the videos as paid ads — a tactic some would consider unfair since not all artists debuting new music have the same advertising budgets as major music labels.
By removing views generated from paid advertisements, YouTube aims to level the playing field for its music charts, adding more transparency to its ranking system and putting in place the same policies used by official charting companies like Billboard and Nielsen.
“Our goal is to ensure YouTube remains a place where all artists are accurately recognized and celebrated for achieving success and milestones,” writes YouTube, “Videos eligible for YouTube’s 24-hour record debuts are those with the highest views from organic sources within the first 24 hours of the video’s public release.”
YouTube defines “organic sources” as direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features such as the platform’s homepage, watch next and trending sections. The company said the changes will not impact its existing 24-hour record debut holders.
On the Move
Former iProspect Global CEO Rob Murray has been named president of 3Q Digital. He will report to the agency’s CEO David Rodnitzky, and is succeeding Maury Domengeaux, who is moving into an advisory role. “Rob’s proven leadership, deep agency experience, and understanding of growth marketing will be of tremendous benefit to our clients, as well as our business,” said Rodnitzky. Murray will oversee 3Q Digital’s operations in the U.S. and abroad. In addition to his previous role at iProspect, Murray served as the president of Skyword and most recently as a senior advisor with the Boston Consulting Group.
Impact XM, a brand engagement agency that specializes in live marketing, has appointed Heather Griffin as its new vice president of marketing. In her new role, Griffin will be charged with helping grow the agency’s brand. “Heather is joining our team with a wealth of experience in strategy and execution for both digital and live marketing. She is a proven leader in her field that will bring new and refreshing insight to our marketing team,” said Impact XM Senior VP of Client Development John Capano. Before joining Impact XM, Griffin served as the VP of marketing and e-commerce at Duggal Visual Solutions.
Marisa Kollias has been named senior director of communications for C-Strategies, a Chicago-based communications and public affairs firm that specializes in public policy and political campaigns. Kollias comes to the firm with 18 years experience as a communications strategist and former television journalism experience. “I am looking forward to being part of a firm known for elevating important public policy issues facing our city and state, while empowering and lifting up women in the business and civic spaces,” said Kollias about her new role. Previously, Kollias was the VP of corporate communications at Tribune Publishing and consulted on Chicago Mayor Lori Lighfoot’s transition team.
About The Author
Similar projects can benefit from shared resources
When we reviewed all the applications, we saw that many people are trying to tackle the same problems and are even using the same approaches to do so. For example, we received more than 30 applications proposing to use AI to identify and manage agricultural pests. The report includes a list of common project submissions, which will hopefully encourage people to collaborate and share resources with others working to solve similar problems.
You don’t need to be an expert to use AI for social good
AI is becoming more accessible as new machine learning libraries and other open-source tools, such as Tensorflow and ML Kit, reduce the technical expertise required to implement AI. Organizations no longer need someone with a deep background in AI, and they don’t have to start from scratch. More than 70 percent of submissions, across all sectors and organization types, used existing AI frameworks to tackle their proposed challenge.
Successful projects combine technical ability with sector expertise
Few organizations had both the social sector and AI technical expertise to successfully design and implement their projects from start to finish. The most comprehensive applications established partnerships between nonprofits with deep sector expertise, and academic institutions or technology companies with technical experience.
ML isn’t the only answer
Some problems can be addressed by using alternative methods to AI—and result in faster, simpler and cheaper execution. For example, several organizations proposed using machine learning to match underserved populations to legal knowledge and tools. While AI could be helpful, similar results could be achieved through a well-designed website. While we’ve seen the impact AI can have in solving big problems, you shouldn’t rule out more simple approaches as well.
Global momentum around AI for social good is growing—and many organizations are already using AI to address a wide array of societal challenges. As more social sector organizations recognize AI’s potential, we all have a role to play in supporting their work for a better world.
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
How to find an expert on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has added a new feature for posting on the platform. Users can now choose a “Find an Expert” button when creating a post that will launch a series of options to define what kind of expert you need. LinkedIn will then automatically add relevant hashtags to the post to help it get more exposure. The feature is currently available within the LinkedIn app on Android and iOS devices, but doesn’t appear to be available on desktop. In related features, LinkedIn recently added the option for SMBs and service providers to list the services they provide directly on their LinkedIn profile, making it possible for users to filter general searches on the platform based on the services they need.
Facebook settles lawsuit over fake Likes. Facebook has settled a lawsuit it filed against Social Media Series Limited, a New Zealand-based company charged with selling social media bots that generated fake likes on Facebook and Instagram, according to The Verge. The two companies have reached a truce after Facebook charged the company in April with using a variety of names to sell “millions” of automated Likes across its platforms. “We don’t know the terms of this settlement, only that the companies have agreed to resolve this matter,” reports The Verge.
The NFL heads over to YouTube. On Wednesday, the NFL premiered its “NFL Game Day All-Access” program, a weekly show that will air exclusively on YouTube, offering fans an “intimate” look at the full game day experience through the lens of NFL players and coaches. The first episode featured Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, Arizona head coach Kliff Kingsbury and more. “For players, each game starts well before kickoff and continues after the final whistle,” says NFL Films Senior Executive Ross Ketover, “This series will deliver our fans the best of these moments each week throughout the season.” The shows are produced by NFL Films and run 20-minutes in length.
Twitter’s “how-to” guide for marketers. Twitter has published a 30-page Agency Playbook, created as a “how-to guide” for marketers, social media managers and community managers on the platform. “In each chapter, you’ll find insightful tips for every stop of the game, from the very people behind Twitter Business,” writes Twitter’s Michelle Lee on the company’s business blog.
The playbook offers tips on combining organic and paid Twitter strategies, creating effective profiles and crafting engaging Tweets. It also includes data-backed cased studies and a breakdown of Twitter’s ad offerings, targeting options, creative ad specs and analytic tools provided by the platform.
“The ins-and-outs of our various campaign types, advanced interest-based targeting tools, creative ad specs, and analytics are all laid out here to eliminate confusion and consolidate the necessary, must-have information in one place,” writes Lee.
You can find a download of playbook here: Twitter Agency Playbook.
Spotify Snaps. Spotify has integrated a new Snapchat feature that lets users send a Snap of whatever they’re listening to on Spotify. As long as users have both Snapchat and Spotify apps installed, the feature will appear in Spotify’s share menu. “When chosen, Snapchat will automatically create a Snap that includes song info and album art for the currently playing track,” reports The Verge. Users can share songs, albums, playlists and podcasts to individuals on Snapchat or via a Story.
Comments still showing up on YouTube kid videos. In February, YouTube said it would no longer allow comments on videos containing minors, a move to improve safety measures for children’s content on the platform. But, six months later, an investigation by CNET found comments had been enabled on more than 100 videos posted in the last month by more than 100 different channels, all containing young children.
After being alerted to the issue by CNET and given a list of the videos with comments turned on, YouTube disabled comments on nearly half of the videos and sent the following comment from a YouTube spokesperson: “We invest significantly in the teams and technologies that allow us to provide minors and families the best protection possible. We’ve suspended comments on hundreds of millions of videos featuring minors in risky situations and implemented a classifier that helps us remove two times the number of violative comments. We continue to disable comments on hundreds of thousands of videos a day and improve our classifiers.”
Facebook’s efforts to help prevent suicide and self-harm. On Tuesday, Facebook announced its latest policy updates aimed at helping users who are at risk of committing suicide or exhibiting self-harm behaviors. The company said it was adding a health and well-being expert to its safety policy team, exploring new ways to share public information on how people talk about suicide and self-injury topics on the platform and working to surface more resources for people in need.
The company also reported it has removed more than 1.5 million pieces of suicide and self-injury content on Facebook between April and June of 2019. “During that same time period, we took action on more than 800 thousand pieces of this content on Instagram and found more than 77% of it before it was reported by a user,” writes Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis.
Facebook is also giving a select group of academic researchers access to the social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle so that they can better understand how information shared on Facebook and Instagram can be used for suicide prevention efforts.
On the Move
Philippe Krakowsky has been named chief operating officer of IPG. Krakowsky has been with the ad agency since 2002, most recently serving as the chief strategy and talent officer and CEO of IPG Mediabrands. “For more than a decade, Philippe has played a key part in major strategic actions at Interpublic that have been integral to our long-term success,” said IPG CEO Michael Roth, “He has helped me in the design and execution of our cross-agency ‘open architecture’ model that delivers the best of IPG solutions to our clients.” Daryl Lee will take over the IPG Mediabrands CEO role and Eileen Kiernan has been promoted to global CEO for UM, IPG’s media-buying division previously managed by Lee.
General Motors has named Deborah Wahl as its new chief marketing officer. Wahl previously served as CMO for GM Cadillac where she was charged with redefining the brand’s reputation. “By aligning marketing across GM under Deborah’s leadership, we will build stronger brands while ensuring more effective, efficient and agile customer engagement,” said GM CEO Mary Barra. Wahl will report to Barry Engle, president of the Americas for GM, and her role as Cadillac CMO will be filled by Melissa Grady who previously served as the director of media and performance marketing for Cadillac.
IAB has hired Zoe Soon to serve as the organization’s vice president for mobile. She will oversee the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, and work with the digital media and marketing association stakeholders to solve problems, develop best practices and help generate growth across the mobile marketing landscape. “Her combination of big-picture thinking and tenure of building products in technology-driven businesses will allow our members to not only understand the broad, industry-wide changes facing their businesses, but also develop actionable strategies that allow them to succeed,” said IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg about Soon’s new role. Prior to joining IAB, Soon was the general manager of apps and email at Business Insider.
Acquisition Announcements
MuteSix now part of the iProspect family. Dentsu Aegis Network’s iProspect has acquired MuteSix, a direct-to-consumer marketing agency. Founded in 2015 by Steve Weiss and Daniel Rutberg, MuteSix will now be known as “MuteSix, an iProspect Company” and Weiss and Rutberg will continue to lead the agency, reporting to iProspect U.S. CEO Jeremy Cornfeldt. “Together with iProspect, MuteSix is able to service the best direct-to-consumer brands on a global scale, extending our capabilities and offerings to provide solutions to clients beyond Facebook and Google,” said Weiss.
Bazaarvoice buys Influenster. The product review and UGC platform Bazaarvoice has acquired Influenster, a product discovery solution with nearly six million community members. “Influenster’s product sampling and review generation offerings further strengthen our core product ratings and review solutions, and their hyper-targeting and gamification capabilities will allow us to better support our customers’ broader marketing initiatives,” said Bazaarvoice CEO Joe Davis. Influenster’s co-founders Aydin Acar and Elizabeth Scherle will remain on board, keeping key leadership functions at Influenster.
Cohesion, a Drupal web builder platform, acquired by Acquia. The digital experience agency Acquia has acquired Cohesion, a Drupal website builder platform that lets those with minimum coding skills create Drupal websites. “This acquisition allows Acquia to continue simplifying the way organizations of all sizes build, style, and design websites,” said Acquia CTO Dries Buytaert. This acquisition follows Acquia’s purchase of Mautic,
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire
announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily
Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Facebook’s tag suggestion replaced with face recognition setting. Earlier this week, Facebook announced that anyone new to Facebook or anyone who had previously had the “tag suggestions” setting turned on (a feature that allowed Facebook to suggest which friends to tag in photos) will now have the face recognition setting instead.
“Our face recognition setting lets you manage not only whether Facebook uses face recognition technology on photos of you in order to suggest tags; it provides an easy onor off switch for a broader set of uses of face recognition, such as helping you protect your identity on Facebook,” writes Facebook AI Applied Research Lead Srinivas Narayanan.
The tag suggestions setting, which only suggested friends to tag in photos and videos, will no longer be available. Anyone who had it turned on will begin to see a notice in their feed about the face recognition setting detailing how the technology works on the platform. Users who have not been using the face recognition setting previously (it first rolled out in December 2017), will not see a notice in their feed about the technology.
Finding love on Facebook. After more than a year since the original announcement for Facebook Dating app, the company has launched Facebook Dating in the U.S. and 19 other countries, and says it has plans to launch in Europe by 2020. Facebook users must opt-in to the app and build a dating profile which will remain separate from their Facebook profile.
“We’re also giving people the ability to integrate their Instagram posts directly into their Facebook Dating profile and giving people the ability to add Instagram followers to their Secret Crush lists, in addition to Facebook friends,” writes Facebook Dating Product Manager Nathan Sharp.
Anyone with the most recent version of the Facebook app, who is 18 years or older, will be able to access Facebook Dating. Once they’ve created a profile, Facebook will suggest their account to others who have also opted-in to the platform. Suggestions to connect are based on a user’s preferences, interests and other Facebook activity. Facebook said all Dating activity will remain in the app and will not be shared with the rest of Facebook. Prior to launching its dating app, Facebook said it consulted with privacy and consumer protection experts to make sure privacy protections “were embedded” into app’s core.
Are #WeReady for some football? The NFL has entered into a multi-year partnership with the short-form video app Tik Tok, according to TechCrunch. As part of the deal, the NFL has launched its official Tik Tok account and started a #WeReady hashtag challenge on the platform, asking fans to post NFL-themed videos using the #WeReady hashtag. “The platform reaches a fast-growing global audience of NFL fans and future fans,” said NFL VP of Digital Media Business Development Blake Stuchin. “Hashtag challenges are a perfect way to kick off the NFL’s 100th season – with fun, new content that will entertain fans.” According to the report, Tik Tok will also have a presence at the NFL’s September 5 season kick-off at Soldier Field Stadium in Chicago.
YouTube’s new review process for Community Contributions. YouTube announced via its @TeamYouTube Twitter account that it’s making changes to the review process for Community Contributions. Going forward, creators who have opted to turn on the Community Contributions feature will have to manually review any Community Contributions before they are published and check for spam. YouTube said the change was based on feedback from creators. The Community Contributor feature allows viewers to add video titles, descriptions, subtitles and closed captions to videos, and can be turned on so that it applies to all videos on a channel or individual videos selected by the channel owner. Previously, contributed content was automatically published when it received enough reviews from the community.
An update on YouTube’s safety efforts. YouTube reports it has reduced the number of views on videos that are later removed for violating content policies by 80% during the last 18 months. Per its most recent transparency report outlining its efforts to clean up the platform, the company showed a significant increase in the number of videos and comments that were removed for hate speech, along with the number of channels that were terminated for the same reason. “Spikes in removal numbers are in part due to the removal of older comments, videos and channels that were previously permitted,” wrote YouTube on its Official Blog. During the second quarter of 2019, YouTube removed more than 100,000 videos for violating hate speech policies and terminated more than 17,000 channels for promoting hate speech — five-times more than the number of videos and channels it had previously removed from its platform for hate speech violations.
On the Move
The Goodway Group, a digital media services company, has launched a new data science and analytics division and created two new roles to lead the department. Lluis Canet has been named VP of data science and analytics and Benjamin Diesbach is joining the firm as lead data insights analyst, reporting to Canet. “The new division will allow our clients to plan their campaigns more strategically by transforming their approach to data,” said Goodway Group President Jay Friedman. Canet will report to the company’s VP of Product, Marketing and Data Huanlei Ni. Prior to joining Goodway Group, Canet held data science roles at 21st Century Fox, JP Morgan Chase and PulsePoint. Diesbach most recently served as VP of analytics for Accordant Media.
The global content production company CreativeDrive has made two new hires. Douglas Castro is joining the firm as a managing director and will lead its Central America region, focused on growing both local market clients and digital creative solutions for CreativeDrive’s global team. Before joining CreativeDrive, Castro served as a managing director at Leo Burnett. Shaun Coulter is coming on board to oversee new business efforts in the Atlanta, Georgia and Bentonville, Arkansas regions of the U.S. Coulter joins the company from Advantage Solutions.
Jerry Tomaiolo is joining Centerline Digital as VP of digital media. He will be based in the marketing agency’s Raleigh, North Carolina headquarters and lead digital media strategies. “We believe Tomaiolo is the perfect fit for Centerline Digital,” said Centerline Digital CEO Charles Long, “We are thrilled to welcome him to our team to amplify our digital technology and social media offerings.” Tomaiolo has held leadership roles at various agencies, including Saatchi Advertising and The Cimarron Group. Most recently, he oversaw B2B and B2C social media profiles for the luxury technology apparel company Buki Brand.
Shyne Group, a California-based cannabis holding company with a fully, vertically-integrated asset and license portfolio, has hired Elisabeth Baron as its chief marketing officer. “Elisabeth has a proven track record of successfully designing culturally relevant and authentic marketing campaigns,” said Shyne Group CEO Brian Mitchell, “Authenticity is one of Shryne Group’s core values and we couldn’t be prouder to have Elisabeth running our marketing program.” Prior to joining the Shyne Group, Baron led marketing at Diageo, working with consumer brands like Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker and Grand Marnier. She also led marketing for the luxury cannabis flower brand, Canndescent.
Konrad Gerszke has been named president of the digital ad platform MediaMath. He will oversee all day-to-day operations and corporate functions, and report to the company’s CEO Joe Zawadzki. “As we accelerate the work we’ve begun towards the creation of an accountable and addressable supply chain, I am confident Konrad is the right leader to help us move MediaMath into its next phase of growth,” said Zawadzki. Gerszke spent 13 years with McKinsey, eventually being elected partner at the organization, and most recently served as the group president for Nielsen Lead Markets.
The fan-first global entertainment platform Fandom has appointed Adil Ajmal chief technology and product officer. He will report to the company’s CEO Perkins Miller and be charged with increasing fan engagement across Fandom’s existing platforms and lead development for new subscription products, gaming tools and data services. “As a huge sci-fi fan, and someone who consumes way more content than I probably should, I’m extremely excited to join the Fandom team and work on a product that I, along with millions of other fans, enjoy every day,” said Ajmal. Before joining Fandom, Ajmal was the chief technology officer for LendingHome.
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Messenger appointment setting feature moves to beta. Facebook is opening a beta of the appointment setting feature for Messenger that was first announced in May at the company’s F8 Developer Conference. The beta program is being offered only to a select group of developers and businesses right now, allowing them to offer clients a real-time booking feature via Messenger that integrates with the business’ existing calendar booking software. “With this feature, businesses can convert Messenger conversations into in-store traffic, online and phone appointments, and more,” writes Ted Helwick on the Facebook for Developers blog. The feature is set to roll-out globally later this year.
Say goodbye to the Messenger Discover tab. As part of its announcements on the Developers blog, Facebook said it is phasing out the Messenger Discover tab over the next several months. The move is part of Facebook’s initiative to simplify its messaging app and create a more streamlined communication experience. “We want to make it more seamless for people to reach out to businesses on Messenger in places where they’re already looking to connect,” wrote Helwick on the Facebook for Developers blog. He went on to say Facebook plans on investing more in tools that connect people and businesses, including ad products that lead to Messenger.
Are IGTV videos coming to Facebook Watch? App researcher and reverse engineer Jane Wong has discovered a new feature possibly being tested within the IGTV app, Instagram’s long-form video platform. Per Wong’s findings, Facebook may be working on an initiative that would allow creators to simultaneously post IGTV videos to Facebook and Facebook Watch, as well as post a preview of the video to Instagram. A screenshot of the IGTV app shared by Wong on Twitter shows how users would be given the option to automatically post their video on Facebook and a preview of it on Instagram when they upload a video to IGTV. According to Wong, the feature appears to be a non-functional UI prototype for now.
Instagram tries out a direct message app. Instagram is reportedly testing a new direct messaging app called Threads that lets users automatically share details like their location, speed and battery life along with text, photo and video messages with their Instagram followers. According to The Verge, the app is, “Designed to promote constant, automatic sharing between users and the people on their ‘close friends’ list on Instagram.” Users are able to opt-in to automatic updates via the Threads app, meaning it will regularly update the user’s status with real-time information on their location, speed and more.
New features coming to Snap Lens Studio. Creators on Snapchat are getting a wide array of new features via Lens Studio, the desktop app that allows creators and marketers to build out their own AR effects on the platform. Among the new releases are six new facial templates and Landmarker templates for 14 real-world locations. “The new Landmarker templates are perhaps the most compelling,” reports VentureBeat, “They provide creators with examples of how real-world locations can be augmented with digital content such as persistent decorations and special effects.” There is also a new interactive-tour for first-time Lens Studio users. The new features rolled out on Tuesday in eleven countries, including the U.S. and the UK.
Twitter Safety and Trust Council not feeling it. Members of the Twitter Safety and Trust Council — a group of outside experts formed to, “Ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter” — have sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressing their concerns that the group is not being utilized. The disgruntled members of the group, which was formed in 2016, say that Twitter’s leadership has been far less communicative than it should be. The letter, which was obtained by Wired, claims the group has not received any advance notices on Twitter’s policy and product updates, and sometimes go months without any communication from Twitter or the ability to reach their contacts within the company. Twitter formed the group when it began its initiative to improve the integrity and health of the platform.
More customization options for Story ads. Marketer Emma Franks has spotted eight new static image templates for creating Story ads in the Facebook Ads Manager. The new templates make it possible to vary the position, order background and color schemes for ads, giving advertisers more custom options for their static image ads. As Frank notes, this will be a boon for marketers without the budget to create video ads: “The ability to leverage existing image assets within the Stories placement opens up a new set of currently-less-expensive social inventory.”
Broader roll-out for Facebook’s updated Ads Manager. It appears more advertisers are getting access to Facebook’s updated Ads Manager interface that was announced in April. The company began launching the updates when they were announced, but not all advertisers have received access to it yet. The redesign includes more simplified navigation features, a cleaner interface and an updated campaign management experience, with a copy and paste feature for building ads and an auto-naming feature to help advertisers quickly customize campaigns. Facebook said the roll-out will continue throughout the end of the year.
Indicators
Social media spend to climb 89% over the next 5 years
Read more »
On the Move
Nordstrom has promoted Teri Bariquit as the retailer’s first chief marketing officer. In this newly created role, Bariquit will report to the company’s co-president Pete Nordstrom and lead both the full-price and off-price merchandising teams. Fashion United news reports Bariquit first joined the company in 1986, and most recently served as the EVP of merchandising. “During her 33-year career with Nordstrom, Teri has demonstrated unparalleled understanding of our customer needs and has an excellent grasp on the complexities of our industry. Merchandising is in her DNA and I’ve consistently been inspired by her ability to reimagine the future,” said Pete Nordstrom.
Walmart has appointed Michael Francis to serve as interim CMO with the departure of its current CMO Barbara Messing, who will be exiting the company on August 30. Francis has consulted for Walmart since 2015. During his career, he has served as the CMO for Target, chief brand officer for DreamWorks and president of JC Penney. Walmart’s Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside said that Francis is joining Walmart full-time to guide the retail marketing team while the company searches for a new chief marketing officer and a senior vice president of retail marketing who will report to the newly hired CMO.
The West Coast beverage retailer BevMo! Has named Matthew Champion as senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Champion will oversee all aspects of the beverage retailer’s traditional and digital marketing, in-store activations and e-commerce efforts. “His consumer-focused growth mindset and expertise in leading cross-functional teams to deliver profitable growth is what makes him the right leader to continue our digital transformation,” said CEO Dimitri Haloulos about the new CMO. Prior to joining BevMo!, Champion was the head of marketing for Amazon Canada.
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Bringing music to Waze. YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium members can now access YouTube Music through the Waze app. “All of the albums, playlists, personalized mixes, and more that fans love to listen to are now available with a couple of quick taps as they navigate to where they need to go,” writes YouTube on its company blog. The integration began rolling out on Thursday and will soon be available in all 50 markets where both YouTube and Waze are accessible. The company is also offering a free trial to try out YouTube Music Premium via the app. Users can tap the music note icon within the Waze app and select YouTube Music as the audio app.
No more DMs. YouTube announced via its Community Help Forum that it is shuttering the direct message feature that lets users share videos via a private channel. “We’re constantly reevaluating our priorities and have decided to discontinue YouTube’s native direct messaging feature while we focus on improving public conversations,” wrote a Google employee on Wednesday. First launched in 2017, YouTube’s direct messaging feature will no longer be available after September 18.
The top 10 Bumper Ads. YouTube has released a leaderboard of the top ten performing six-second Bumper Ads in the U.S. released during the past year. Subaru took the top spot with its “Long Stick” ad, proving everyone loves a good dog video — even if it’s only six seconds long. Frito-Lay, Eggo, Halls and Charmin all made the top five. Food and snack brands accounted for half of the top ten ads, with spots from Frito-Lay, Eggo, Almond Joy Mounds, Reese’s and Cheetos. Earlier this year, Google introduced a “Bumper Machine” that uses machine learning to automatically create six-second Bumper Ads from longer videos.
No more targeted ads on kids videos. YouTube is planning to stop targeting ads that show up on kid-related videos, according to Bloomberg. While the company would not confirm the report, three people familiar with the decision said the company is “finalizing” plans to end targeted ads delivered to content produced for kids. This move may be connected to the FTC’s investigation into whether or not YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA), which restricts behavioral ads targeting children under 13 without a parent’s consent. “It is not clear if YouTube’s changes to ad targeting are a result of the settlement,” reports Bloomberg, “The plans could still change, said the people, who asked not to be identified citing an open investigation.”
Twitter makes an acqui-hire. Twitter has brought on board the team from Lightwell, a startup that builds developer tools for creating narrative apps. Lightwell CEO Suzanne Xie will become a director of product for Twitter, leading the company’s conversations initiative, and will be bringing her small staff with her. A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We are excited to welcome Suzanne and her team to Twitter to help drive forward the important work we are doing to serve the public conversation.”
LinkedIn’s latest transparency report. LinkedIn says it took action against 21.6 million fake accounts between January and June this year. This includes stopping 19.5 million fake accounts at the point of registration, and identifying and removing two million fake accounts before they were reported. “This was possible by pairing human review with artificial intelligence and machine learning,” reports LinkedIn. The company said 98% of its actions against fake accounts was the result of automated defenses that used machine learning and AI technology.
A Public Access Network from Reddit. After teasing announcements via an r/pan thread on the platform, Reddit has confirmed it is testing a new “public access network” that will allow users to broadcast live-stream videos. The test began on Monday and ran between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. through the end of this week.
Alex Le, Reddit’s VP of product, told Wired that video content will be “tightly” curated, with no more than 100 streams airing simultaneously. Live-streams will be 30-minutes or shorter, and Redditors will be able to upvote and downvote streams the same as Reddit posts. “We think Reddit will lend itself more toward shorter-form content, capturing something that’s really interesting in the moment, so that users can cycle through and see a bunch of different perspectives,” said Le.
A monetization platform for YouTubers. Google’s Area 120 lab, a division focused on new product experiments, is testing an events-centric crowdfunding platform for YouTube creators called Fundo. According to a report from Variety, the platform lets creators offer virtual meet-and-greets with fans, along with other online events, for a fee.
A Google spokesperson sent the following comment to Marketing Land about the tests: ”One of the many projects that we’re working on within Area 120 is Fundo, an audience engagement and monetization platform for YouTube creators.” Google said it is very early in the experiment phase with the platform and it has no details to share.
According Variety, one YouTuber has used Fundo to host multiple virtual meet-and-greets, charging $10 per ticket. Another creator used the platform to sell personalized shout-outs to fans.
YouTube Originals available for all. YouTube announced it’s moving its original programming off of its Premium platform beginning September 24, making many YouTube Original series, movies and live events available to all viewers. The content will be ad supported, but Premium members will still have the option to watch the videos ad-free, according to TechCrunch. “Premium subscribers will have access to all the available episodes in a series right when they premiere, says YouTube, and they’ll be able to download them for offline viewing,” reports TechCrunch.
New rules for YouTube’s Manual Claiming tool. YouTube is barring music owners from using its Manual Claiming tool for monetization purposes. “One concerning trend we’ve seen is aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetized videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed,” writes YouTube on its Creator Blog. To rectify the matter, YouTube is changing its policy and forbidding music copyright owners from using its Manual Claiming tool to monetize creator videos that include short or unintentional uses of their music.
Music owners can still file a claim against creators that use their music in videos, but they can’t use the Manual Claiming tool to do it. YouTube clarified that claims made via the Content ID match system, which it says represents the vast majority of claims, are not impacted by this policy update. “Without the option to monetize, some copyright owners may choose to leave very short or unintentional uses unclaimed. Others may choose to prevent monetization of the video by any party. And some may choose to apply a block policy,” writes YouTube.
Twitter tries out new follow feature. Twitter announced on August 9 that it was testing a new feature that would allow users to follow sports topics in their timeline. According to a Tweet via the @TwitterSports account, the company is experimenting with new ways for users to follow topics relevant to their interests and are starting with a small test on Android that lets users follow sports. According to The Verge, the test will soon expand to include celebrity and TV shows as well. “Topics will be curated by Twitter, with individual tweets being identified through machine learning rather than editorial curation,” reports The Verge.
On the Move
The data and analytics platform Alteryx, Inc. has hired Amy Heidersbach as its new chief marketing officer. She will lead the company’s global go-to-market strategy and data-driven programs. “Marketing is a critical driver in our success, and we believe now is the time to further invest in modern, integrated marketing strategies that communicate our unique value to the market,” said Alteryx President Scott Jones, “We are excited to welcome Amy to the Alteryx team.” During Heidersbach twenty-year career, she has worked with a number of brands, including Capital One, PayPal, CareerBuilder and Visa.
Kevin Sellers is joining Ping Identity as the security technology solution’s chief marketing officer. He will lead all aspects of Ping’s marketing functions, focusing on the expansion of its enterprise market and growing the brand globally. “Kevin Sellers is a highly experienced, accomplished marketing leader with a proven record of building global brands in the technology sector, making him a natural addition to our leadership team,” said Ping COO Chris Nagel. Previously, Sellers was the CMO for Avnet and held multiple leadership roles at Intel.
Jonathan Bartlett has been named chief product officer for the personalization platform Monetate. He will be responsible for launching new products and lead the company’s technical partner development. “Jonathan brings a wealth of innovative product leadership experience and operational discipline to our executive team that will greatly strengthen our ability to develop and rapidly deliver market-leading personalization solutions,” said CEO Stephen Collins. Prior to joining Monetate, Bartlett served as the VP of Product for Contently.
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Pinterest pushes auto sales. According to new data from Oracle Data Cloud, Pinterest users tend to be early adopters of new car models.
Oracle’s report revealed that people on Pinterest are 28% more likely
to buy a new vehicle than people who don’t use Pinterest, and 31% are
more likely to buy a new SUV model. Pinterest also says it now reaches
one in two adults who plan to buy a car in the next six months, based on
a March ComScore Plan Metrix Audience Profile report. “People are
actively using Pinterest to learn more about their car shopping
options,” writes Pinterest on the company’s blog, “Over seven million
people on Pinterest engage with car-related content.”
Reddit comes to the Midwest. As part of its continued effort to bring more brands to the platform, Reddit is opening an office in Chicago’s historic Merchandise Mart location. “In addition to key Chicago and Midwest-based brands,
Reddit’s Chicago team has built strong relationships with the region’s
leading agencies and media companies, including Starcom, Publicis, OMG,
and GroupM,” writes Reddit on its Upvoted Blog. Reddit began its dive
into the Chicago market in April of 2018, working with Midwest-based
brands like McDonald’s, Target and KFC. The Merchandise Mart office is
Reddit’s first office in Chicago.
Instagram Story views are, literally, unreal. Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch that it is aware of an issue with Stories getting a high volume of
views by Russian accounts — and is working to fix it. “It [Instagram]
also said this inauthentic activity is not related to misinformation
campaigns but is rather a new growth hacking tactic,” reports
TechCrunch. The bad actors involve third parties that are paid to boost
account profiles by generating inauthentic activity like watching
Instagram Stories — an effort aimed at winning the account more
followers. Hydrogen,
a UK social media agency, called mass viewing of Instagram Stories “the
new buying followers of 2019” when it noticed the trend in June.
What time is the show? Facebook has rolled out two new ad units for movie studios:
movie reminder ads and showtime ads. The movie reminder ads allow
moviegoers to click an “Interested” button on a film advertisement in
their News Feed for a film that hasn’t come out yet. When the movie hits
theaters, users will get a notification that it is now playing, with
details on showtimes and tickets.
For
films already released, the showtime movie ads include a “Get
Showtimes” button within the ad that links to the Facebook Page listing
where and when the movie can be seen. Available for advertisers in the
U.S. and the UK, Facebook’s new ads for movie studios were beta tested
by Universal Pictures, which reported a significant increase in showtime
look-ups and ticket purchases after using the ads.
Changes to Facebook Group settings. Facebook has revised its Group options to include only two settings: public and private. Previously, Group
admins had access to three settings: public, closed and secret. The
revised options are designed to offer more clarity around a Group’s
setting and simplify the privacy model for Facebook Groups.
“Having
two privacy settings — public and private — will help make it clearer
about who can find the group and see the members and posts that are part
of it,” writes Facebook Product Manager Jordan Davis on the Facebook
Newsroom blog. Groups that were formerly set to “secret” will now be
switched to “private” and “hidden,” while Groups that were formerly set
to “closed” will now be “private” but “visible.” Public Groups will
remain “public” and “visible.”
Group admins will also be able to choose whether or not a Group can be found in Search or other places on the platform.
Quora integrates LiveRamp IdentityLink. Advertisers on Quora will now be able to add audience lists to Quora’s Ads Manager via LiveRamp IdentityLink,
the same platform used to add customer audiences to the Microsoft
Advertising platform. “Now, marketers can use segments from their
offline records in order to activate and run ad campaigns on Quora, all
in a privacy-conscious way. This should also increase match rates for
targeting, exclusion, or lookalike modeling,” writes Quora Software
Engineer Ryan Oshima on the Quora for Business Blog. LiveRamp is an
identity resolution platform that helps brands and agencies implement
people-based targeting campaigns.
Spectacles 3: The latest version of Snap’s sunglass cameras. Snap is rolling out the latest version of its Spectacles sunglasses,
wearable cameras that let you capture images and upload to Snapchat.
This marks the third generation of the devices, which will begin
shipping in the fall and costs $380 — up from the $200 price tag on the
last version. Spectacles 3 include new 3D effects, 3D filters and 3D
lenses. “It will have dual cameras to add depth and dimension to photos
and videos. After uploading the content to the messaging app Snapchat,
users can add new lighting, landscapes and three-dimensional effects to
the images,” reports Reuters.
Spark AR on Instagram now available to all developers. Facebook has moved Spark AR on Instagram out of closed beta, making the AR development platform available to all
developers. Along with the AR platform, Facebook is launching an
Effects Gallery where developers can search for new filters. “To find
it, users will have to reach the end of the effects tray in the
Instagram camera and click on it there. Users will also be able to see
the effect being used in Instagram Stories,” writes TechCrunch reporter
Lucas Matney.
YouTube testing new appeal process. YouTube confirmed to The Verge that it is testing a new appeal process for creators who have lost
monetization privileges. The pilot program will allow creators to submit
a video appealing the decision in real-time, versus the current policy
that enforces creators to wait 30 days before making an appeal. The
videos are reviewed by YouTube team members who then, within a seven-day
time period, decide whether or not monetization for the channel can be
reinstated.
Facebook reportedly offering million-dollar licensing deals to news publishers. Multiple “big-name” news publishers have been approached by Facebook to sign content licensing deals, according to the Wall Street Journal. Per the report, Facebook is offering as much as $3 million a year to republish stories from the likes of ABC News, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and The Washington Post.
In response to the Wall Street Journal report, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to CNBC the company does have plans to launch a dedicated news section later
this year, but would not comment on the licensing deals: “No details to
share on the WSJ report, but I can confirm we’re working on a news tab
to launch this fall.”
Reports claim Facebook’s licensing deals with publishers could last as long as three years. As part of the deal, news outlets would have control over how their stories appear on Facebook, and whether or not readers get full access to the content or only a headline with a snippet from the article.
On the Move
Karuna Rawal has been appointed CMO for the biotech startup Sustainable Bioproducts. She will serve as the
company’s first CMO, reporting to CEO Thomas Jonas. In her new role,
Rawal will be charged with strategic marketing and innovation
initiatives that support the company’s mission to launch new alternative
protein product lines. “Karuna’s acumen as a storyteller and innovator
along with her deep experience in building iconic brands that connect
with consumers at an emotional and purposeful level is exactly what we
need for the next stages of our company’s growth,” said Jonas. Prior to
joining Sustainable Bioproducts, Rawal spent time at the Publicis
Groupe, leading its Arc Worldwide shopper and commerce agency, and was
the chief strategy officer for Leo Burnett’s Farmhouse, the agency’s new
venture and innovation group.
The cloud data integration platform Talend named Lauren Vaccarello as its new CMO.
She will lead the company’s marketing organization and oversee its
branding efforts. “Lauren is a dynamic leader with a deep understanding
of the software industry and proven skills at helping SaaS organizations
increase revenue and retain and grow their customer base through
cutting-edge marketing techniques,” said Talend CEO Mike Tuchen. Before
joining Talend, Vaccarello was the vice president of marketing at Box,
and has held marketing roles at AdRoll and Salesforce. In addition to
her marketing leadership experience, Vaccarello has published two books
focused on the marketing industry: “Complete B2B Online Marketing” and
“The Retargeting Playbook.”
GroupM, WPP’s media investment group, has named Christian Juhl as its next global CEO.
Juhl will take over the role on October 1, 2019. “Christian has the
right combination of leadership, people and technology skills to build
the modern media company, something he has demonstrated extraordinarily
well at Essence,” said CEO of WPP Mark Read. Currently, Juhl serves as
CEO for Essence, the digital ad agency that was acquired by WPP in 2015.
Juhl will succeed Kelly Clark who currently serves as GroupM’s CEO.
Clark will continue to serve as a senior advisor to WPP and GroupM
following his departure as CEO.
About The Author
This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.
Instagram Marketing Partner caught scraping data. Instagram has sent HYP3R, one of its former ad partners, a cease-and-desist letter after Business Insider revealed the company was scraping user data. According to Business Insider’s report, the company had taken advantage of “configuration errors and lax oversight” on Instagram’s part, making it possible to harvest a high volume of public user data that was meant to vanish after 24-hours.
An Instagram spokesperson said HYP3R’s actions
But HYP3R argues it didn’t break the rules, claiming it was accessing public data and that, “Any issue with Instagram would be resolved shortly.” Business Insider said it is unclear how much data HYP3R accessed, but the company claims it has a dataset that includes “hundreds of millions of the highest value consumers in the world.” Sources connected to HYP3R told Business Insider that more than 90% of that data was from Instagram.
Facebook’s latest move to fight ad fraud. Facebook has filed a lawsuit against LionMobi and JediMobi, two app developers accused of click injection fraud on the Facebook Audience Network ad platform. According to Jessica Romero, Facebook’s Director of Platform Enforcement and Litigation, the app developers created apps available via the Google Play store designed to infect users’ phones with malware that produced fake user clicks on Facebook ads.
“Our lawsuit is one of the first of its kind against this practice,” writes Romero on the Facebook Newsroom blog, “Facebook detected this fraud as part of our continuous efforts to investigate and stop abuse by app developers and any abuse of our advertising products. LionMobi and JediMobi have been banned from Audience Network and their accounts have been disabled.” Romero said the advertisers impacted by LionMobi and JediMobi’s ad fraud practices were refunded in March of this year.
Ad fraud continues to be an industry-wide problem, but platforms are paying more attention to publisher and advertiser concerns and taking actions to reduce problematic activity. Google announced this week that Google Ad Manager and AdMob, Google’s mobile ad network, will support IAB Tech Lab’s app-ads.txt anti-fraud protocol for app publishers beginning August 27. When implemented, the app-ads.txt protocol blocks ad serving of unauthorized in-app ad inventory for publishers.
ProKarma expands offerings with latest acquisition. The digital services company ProKarma has acquired Connective DX, a digital experience agency with offices in Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts. “Together, we will expand on our end-to-end digital capabilities while defining, designing, and engineering best-in-class solutions that transform businesses and elevate the customer experience,” said ProKarma Co-Founder Vijay Ijju.
“It’s a remarkable fit between our two organizations, and I am thrilled to see the meaningful growth potential with our joint teams and clients,” said Connective DX CEO Paul Williams.
Both companies currently have their headquarters in Portland, Oregon. According to the announcement, the acquisition will help “fuel” ProKarma’s expansion into the Northeast U.S., as well as help build out ProKarma’s content and martech capabilities with the addition of Connective DX’s customer-focused solutions.
On the Move
Leo Burnett Chicago has promoted Jordan Doucette to Chief Creative Officer, reporting to the agency’s President and Chief Strategy Officer, Emma Montgomery and Leo Burnett Worldwide’s Chief Creative Officer, Liz Taylor. “Jordan’s open approach to creativity helps deliver great work from big, integrated teams and brands. She is a true partner and is the evolution of what a creative leader needs to be in today’s environment,” said Montgomery. Previously, Doucette held the role of EVP/Executive Creative Director at the agency, and was the creative lead for The Kellogg Company and Miller-Coors accounts. In her new role, she will continue as the creative lead for marquee clients and oversee the agency’s creative and production departments.
Saad Rehmani has been named Vice President of Engineering at Reddit. He is tasked with scaling the company’s engineering organization, optimizing site performance and supporting the launch of new features on the platform. “With the growth of our engineering teams in recent years, we knew we needed someone that had proven themselves in leading large teams with a focus on staying flexible and nimble. Saad has the right mix of experience to evolve and support our teams as they tackle our ambitious plans for the future,” said Reddit CTO Chris Slowe. Rehmani comes to the social platform with more than 15 years of experience leading engineering teams, most recently as the VP of Engineering for GrubHub.
Veracode, an application security testing platform, has named Elana Anderson Chief Marketing Officer. She will report to CEO Sam King and lead the technology company’s global marketing, branding and communications programs. “Elana’s success building global brands in established and emerging markets is a testament to her deep technology expertise and marketing prowess. She is a proven executive with boundless energy and innovative ideas that will help us further our mission to help our customers change the world securely and drive the next chapter of Veracode’s growth,” said King. During her career, Anderson has served as the CMO for Vidyo and SVP of Worldwide Marketing for Demandware.
Craig Stimmel, the former head of digital media and global partnerships for P&G, has been recruited by Snap to serve as its new head of brand partnerships. Based in Chicago, Stimmel will lead efforts to gain bigger budgets from Fortune 500 brands on the social platform, according to Business Insider. Stimmel was with P&G for more than eight years. During his time there, he led efforts to bring more media buying in-house and gathered first-party data from P&G’s own platforms.
Paradigm Talent Agency has named Lori Feldman as its first chief marketing officer. In her new role, Feldman will lead brand partnerships and marketing efforts for clients in the music area, as well as work on enhancing brand and partnership opportunities for the agency’s talent and literary clients. “She is an innovative thinker with vast experience working with artists and brands to create cultural moments that resonate around the world,” said Paradigm CEO Sam Gores. Before joining Paradigm, Feldman served as the executive vice president of strategic marketing for Warner Records.
Pet food company WellPet LLC has appointed Clark Reinhard as its new chief marketing officer. Clark will be charged with accelerating global growth across WellPet’s family of brands and oversee brand management, marketing, advertising and public relations for a number of the company’s product lines. “We’ve strategically invested in brands that are shaping the pet nutrition category and are putting team members in place uniquely experienced to help them flourish,” said the company’s CEO Camelle Kent. “There’s no doubt in my mind Clark will do just that for all of our brands at WellPet.” Reinhard previously led growth strategy efforts, marketing and product innovation at Ocean Spray.
About The Author
Despite upsetting data privacy breaches like the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook situation, there’s no doubt that social media is here to stay. After all, everyone is on it, it keeps everyone connected, and it’s a helpful tool for businesses to market and sell their products.
The problem with social media? It’s oversaturated with noise! Even if you have something useful to say, how do you call (and keep) your audience’s attention?
Using images may help. A Skyword study found that, on average, including images in your content results in a 94% increase in page views versus those without images. Recognizing people’s short attention spans (they’re even shorter than a goldfish’s!), it’s become more important now than ever to use visual imagery to capture people’s attention.
The Importance of Using the Right Social Media Image Sizes
It’s not enough just to create an image, upload it to all your social media profiles, and consider your work done.
Creating social media images isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing: each social network requires different image sizes in different profile areas. Each social media site also crops and optimizes uploaded images differently, so it’s important to determine how to position your images in a way that showcases the best of your brand.
If you’re looking for the TLDR; of this article about social media image sizes and want a lazy approach to visual marketing, you can stop reading after this section. According to Buffer, although most social sites require different image sizes, they’ve found that these dimensions commonly work for sharing images with news feed updates:
- Landscape (horizontal): 1024 x 512 pixels
- Portrait (vertical): 800 x 1200 pixels
But if you’re looking to create a better visual experience that always renders perfectly, check out our frequently updated guide to social media image sizes: including guidance for Facebook image sizes, Twitter image sizes, and every other major social platform!
- Facebook Image Sizes
- Twitter Image Sizes
- LinkedIn Image Sizes
- Instagram Image Sizes
- Pinterest Image Sizes
- Google Image Sizes
- Tools for Social Media Images
Facebook Image Sizes
Facebook is the largest social networking site, with over 2.2 billion monthly active users (as of Q1 2018).
a Facebook page.
Here’s what you need to know about Facebook images sizes on every aspect of your profile and news feed posts:
Facebook Cover Photo
Your cover photo can only be viewed as a whole when people visit your Facebook profile or page (but people can see a thumbnail in other areas on Facebook). A cover photo is larger than a profile photo, which is why most people use their cover photos like a banner to showcase their brand or identity.
Facebook cover photos are displayed as 820 x 312 pixels on a desktop and 640 x 360 pixels on smartphones. If you upload anything smaller than that, it will be stretched. Note that there is also a minimum size for photos you’re considering as cover photos: 400 x 150 pixels. If you have any trouble with quality on higher resolution displays you might also try 1640 x 624 pixels.
For optimum image quality, it is advised to:
- Save photos with logos or text as a PNG file.
- Upload a sRGB JPG file less than 100 KB.
Facebook Profile Photo
Your profile photo is a key piece of branding as it represents you and/or your brand to the people that visit your personal or business profile/page. Be it your personal or business page’s profile photo, it must be at least 180 x 180 pixels. For higher resolution displays we recommend 480 x 480 pixels.
Your Facebook profile photo is displayed as 170 square pixels when users access Facebook through desktop, 128 square pixels when viewed on smartphones, and 36 square pixels on most feature phones. Your profile photo also appears throughout Facebook as a 32 square pixel icon.
Open Graph tags on a page when it chooses the image to be displayed on the link, specifically the og:image tag.
The og:image tag is powered by the Open Graph Protocol, which allows webmasters to tell third-party providers (like Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites) about the type of content found on their pages. It is responsible for determining which photo shows up when your content is shared on social media and how the photos look.
Note that every platform displays an image differently in terms of image size or cropping. Without designating platform-specific images, your image might look nice on Facebook but crop weirdly on LinkedIn.
You can add and edit the og image tag in the section of every page of your website. If you want to prevent it from looking different across all platforms, you can use plugins like Yoast SEO or Social Warfare, which identifies and specifies the best image for each platform you share your content to (with proper setup). You can even manually set the Facebook image per page or post with the Yoast SEO plugin (as seen below).
Facebook Debugger to fix this issue.
Facebook Highlight Images
Highlighted images appear only on your Facebook page. Facebook allows you to post highlights for every time you’ve achieved a milestone. Images are optional, but since they appear larger than a shared image or link, it’s a good way to call attention to your achievements or milestones.
Highlighted images appear on your page as 843 x 504 pixels but the recommended size is 1200 x 717 pixels.
Facebook Event Images
With so many ads and posts filling the Facebook newsfeed, creating a Facebook event will help capture your audience’s attention. Besides sending them a notification inviting them to the event, they will be reminded of the event—especially for smartphone owners who have the Facebook calendar connection enabled.
Event images appear on your feed as 470 x 174 pixels but the recommended size is 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Facebook Group Cover Images
Facebook group cover images can vary. For high-resolution Facebook group cover images, we recommend a size of 1920 x 1080.
Facebook marketing strategies.
Twitter Image Sizes
Twitter allows people to easily connect with one another (even big names!), and is primarily used to send and receive short real-time updates (tweets are limited to 280 characters). Although it’s not as large as Facebook, Twitter has 330 million monthly active users.
Connecting with others is possible through the use of @mentions and #hashtags. When you click on a hashtag or search for a term, all (public) tweets containing the search term or hashtag appear. Businesses use this functionality to listen for feedback from users or to join in on conversations.
Twitter Profile Photo
Like every other social networking site, Twitter users have the option to customize a profile photo representative of themselves/their brand. This appears in three places:
- Your Twitter profile. If you don’t upload a profile photo, the profile photo area will display an egg with a blue background.
- On the Twitter feed. Followers or those reading through a Twitter search where one of your tweets is included can see your profile photo.
- Who to follow. The Who to Follow box appears to the right of your Twitter feed. Twitter will often recommend accounts to follow that are similar to yours, or people who you might know.
Twitter profile photos are a minimum of 400 square pixels, with a maximum file size of 2MB. They can be in JPG, PNG or GIF formats. A square sized photo is recommended, even though Twitter will display it in a circle.
313% more engagement than those without.
Twitter images appear as a minimum of 440 x 220 pixels (2:1 aspect ratio). The recommended size that works best is 1024 x 512 pixels. On Twitter, any aspect ratio that is between 2:1 and 1:1 works well.
On a desktop, images appear as a minimum of 506 x 253 pixels, while 1200 x 675 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio) is the ideal image size to display your image fully on mobile (which also works great for desktop).
Twitter #Marketing Strategies to Beef up Your Social Game ? https://t.co/qvie7tLTtl #smm
— Kinsta (@kinsta) July 4, 2018
Any image larger than 506 pixels will have the top and bottom cropped away with the height adjusted accordingly. The maximum height an image can have is 506 pixels.
Meanwhile, if you have an image that is smaller than 506 x 253 pixels, Twitter won’t stretch the image to fit. Instead, there will be whitespace to the right of the image.
If you’re uploading four images, they will all appear as square images with the first one larger than the other 3. Here’s what else you need to know if you’re uploading 2-4 images:
- When you upload four images, each image will be scaled to 379 pixels tall and cropped to 379 pixels wide, with an aspect ratio of 2:1 for all images (when displayed on mobile).
- If you’re uploading three images, each will be scaled to 337 pixels tall and cropped to 337 pixels wide, with an aspect ratio of 7:8 for the first (and largest) image, and 4:7 for the other two images (when displayed on mobile).
- If you’re uploading two images, each will be scaled to 252 pixels tall and cropped to 252 pixels wide, with an aspect ratio of 7:8 for both images (when displayed on mobile).
How Twitter Chooses Images From Shared Links
If nothing is set up, Twitter will fall back to Open Graph tags. However, we recommend that you set up Twitter cards on your WordPress site. This will add a special Twitter card markup.
Just like with Facebook, you can even manually set the Twitter image per page or post with the Yoast SEO plugin (as seen below).
Twitter marketing strategies to take your social media game to the next level!
LinkedIn Image Sizes
LinkedIn is known as the social network best for getting business done, with over 500 million users.
Apart from its large user base, multiple improvements to the site, after being acquired by Microsoft, makes LinkedIn one of the best places to network and generate more leads. In fact, LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter.
Success on LinkedIn lies in optimizing your personal profile and company page (which includes adding necessary photos to appear trustworthy) and sharing content on either (or both).
We’ll drill down into specific social media image sizes for both individually but here are some general rules for images on LinkedIn:
- Linkedin shared images. As with most other social networks, you can also share images on LinkedIn. The recommended image size is 520 x 320 pixels, though a moderator on a LinkedIn forum shared that the recommended image size is 552 x 368 pixels. Anything between these two is a safe bet. LinkedIn crops the sides of landscape (horizontal) images to fit the 368 pixel height and crops the bottom of the image exceeding the 552 pixel height if you upload a portrait (vertical) or square image. Note that you can still view the whole image when you click on it; only the image view is cropped.
- LinkedIn shared links. When you share links to LinkedIn, a feature image also appears, much like in Facebook. This image appears as 520 x 272 pixels.
9x more connection requests and 21x more profile views. The recommended photo size is anywhere between 400 square pixels and 20,000 square pixels, with a maximum file size of 10MB.
LinkedIn Company Page
- Company Logo. If you’re in charge of managing your company’s LinkedIn company page, know that this is one of the two logos that you’ll need to be uploading. This logo appears at the upper left corner of your company page, next to the company name. It also appears on the “Companies you may want to follow” section. The minimum and recommended size is 300 square pixels.
 and Career pages (which gives potential employees a glimpse of what it’s like to work for your company). When you add these pages, you have the opportunity to add more images, specifically the hero image. The minimum and recommended image size is <strong>1128 x 376 pixels</strong>: landscape layout only.</li>
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Instagram Image Sizes
Instagram is one of the world’s largest photo and video sharing applications, now with over a billion users after being acquired by Facebook. What was once only an app-exclusive program, Instagram is now accessible through the web via desktop—though Instagram makes it difficult to upload photos via desktop.
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<p>Instagram is mostly targeted to millennials (18-29 age group) who love the ability to showcase their visual creativity. Most people use Instagram to post aspirational and curated lifestyle content, which helped usher in a new type of advertising: influencer marketing.</p>
<h3>Instagram Profile Photo</h3>
<p>Your Instagram profile photo appears as <strong>110 square pixels</strong>, with a 1:1 aspect ratio. However, we recommend uploading one that is <strong>180 square pixels</strong> for higher resolution displays. Make sure it is recognizable.</p>
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 images is <strong>1080 x 566 pixels</strong>.</li>
<li>The optimum resolution for portrait (vertical) images is <strong>1080 x 1350 pixels</strong>. Photos appear on your feed as 510 square pixels, but smaller featured header images appear as 204 square pixels, and larger feature header images appear as 409 square pixels. To be effective, ensure that photos maintain an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 4:5.</li>
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 content, like Snapchat. In fact, since many users are already on Instagram, the number of daily Stories users had already <a href=)
overtaken Snapchat’s, by the time Stories turned a year old.For Instagram Stories, images have a 16:9 aspect ratio. The ideal resolution is 1080 x 1920 pixels, and the minimum resolution is 600 x 1067 pixels. Instagram has a maximum file size of 4MB for every photo uploaded to the platform.
Make sure to also check out these awesome Instagram WordPress plugins you can use to display interactive feeds on your site!
Pinterest Image Sizes
Although many associate Pinterest with DIY/stay-at-home moms that craft and bake, the site is so much more than that: Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine that can drive tons of relevant traffic to your website, if you know how to use it correctly. This is because 90% of Pinterest pages are external links.
Pinterest Profile Photos
You can sign up for Pinterest using Facebook, Twitter, or using your email. If you use a social sign-in method, Pinterest will use your profile photo from those sites as your Pinterest profile photo by default. If you want to upload a different photo, it’s not hard to do.
Your Pinterest profile photo appears on the homepage as 165 square pixels, and on the feed as 32 square pixels. Though it certainly would be hard to do, note that you can’t upload files larger than 10MB in size.
. On the board display, there are three featured images. The most prominent one is <strong>222 x 150 pixels</strong> and other images below it are 55 square pixels. Pinterest says <strong>600 x 900 pixels</strong> is optimal – or any 2:3 size.</p>
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Google Image Sizes
Google was launched as Google’s version of a social network but with the premise of replicating interactions offline rather than online. It allows you to join and create Communities, which allows you to interact with people who have the same interests. It also allows you to create Collections, which are like Pinterest boards.
Although not as popular as the other networks, Google is still an important site for businesses to be on because when people search for your brand, Google includes your Google profile in the search engine results.
Google Profile Photo
As much as possible, have the same profile photo across all your social networks so people will know that they are your official profiles. For profile photos, the recommended size is 250 x 250 pixels. Note that although Google requires a square photo, it will eventually be shaped as a circle, so make sure the photo is positioned so as not to cut off important parts.
Google Cover Image
The recommended size for Google cover images is 1080 x 608 pixels, with a minimum size of 480 x 270 pixels. Sprout Social tested different image sizes and found that you can upload an image with a maximum size of up to 2120 x 1192 pixels.
Sprout Social says that the images appear in the home stream and on your page at a width of 426 pixels (height is scaled).
- Buffer says that it will appear with a width of 431 pixels.
- Hubspot says images appear as 506 pixels wide.
- Social Media Today says it appears as 502 pixels.
What does Kinsta think? A safe bet would be anywhere between 426 and 506 pixels.
Google Shared Link
Shared links appear with a 150 square pixel thumbnail. For shared links with a larger image, photos appear with a maximum width of 426 pixels, with the height scaled to size.
 social media image sizes for each kind of photo on each network, it’s time to create images for each.</p>
<p>These tools make it easy:</p>
<h3>Image Design and Creation</h3>
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Canva is an extremely popular tool to create social images, for good reason. Even without any graphic design experience, Canva makes it easy for you to create images with its drag-and-drop functionality, an extensive collection of fonts, colors, and even layout templates. Another thing that makes Canva great is that when you create a new image, it also allows you to choose from a set of predefined image sizes so that you don’t have to memorize all of the social media image sizes here.
- Pablo is a free and easy-to-use image creation tool offered by social media scheduling tool company Buffer. It allows you to create simple text-overlay images.
- Adobe Spark. Adobe is known for its powerful graphic design and video editing software but many find the industry standard hard to use. Adobe Spark is their answer for users clamoring for a simpler image creation process. Uninspired? Image creation is made easier with a library of premade templates. With the free plan, Adobe adds its logo to the bottom corner of your design. Paid plans start at $9.99/month.
Or of course, you can go with a more manual approach and use Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or Sketch.
Image Resizer
While most photo creation and editing software programs have resizer functions available, Social Image Resizer Tool is a nifty tool to have when you don’t have this guide to social media image sizes on hand. It helps you crop and resize every kind of image you need with specific pre-formatted options like: Twitter header, Twitter display image, Twitter profile photo, and more.
Image Compression
Even though social media images don’t always load on the front-end of your WordPress site it’s still important to compress them. WordPress image compression plugins allow you to optimize your WordPress images—maintaining a high-quality look at a more manageable file size.
Here are a few image compression plugins for WordPress that we recommend:
- Imagify (this is what we use at Kinsta)
- ShortPixel Image Optimizer
- Optimus Image Optimizer
- WP Smush
- EWWW Cloud
Summary
With all content marketers competing for people’s limited attention, images are the perfect way to capture your audience’s attention on social media. But it’s not enough to create attention-grabbing images—ideally, you’ll optimize them for each social media site, taking these social media image size standards into consideration. Make sure to also keep your branding consistent across all of your social channels.
Any other tips and tricks that you want to share about social media image sizes and bridging the gap designing for desktop and mobile? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Instagram Image Sizes
Google Image Sizes
Sprout Social says that the images appear in the home stream and on your page at a width of 426 pixels (height is scaled).
Canva is an extremely popular tool to create social images, for good reason. Even without any graphic design experience, Canva makes it easy for you to create images with its drag-and-drop functionality, an extensive collection of fonts, colors, and even layout templates. Another thing that makes Canva great is that when you create a new image, it also allows you to choose from a set of predefined image sizes so that you don’t have to memorize all of the social media image sizes here.