Obviously the biggest news of this week is IT’S WARM. So in case you’ve spent this week “working from home” to catch the most of the sun, here’s what you might have missed in digital marketing news…
YouTube launches video banner ads
YouTube has launched a new ad product… “Outstream Video Ads”. The benefit is that with this service advertisers can place YouTube video ads on websites even without a YouTube video. Personally, I’m skeptical. In the past I’ve had clients interested in video banner ads, and a well known programmatic advertiser advised me, “they don’t really work”. While pre-roll and in-stream reaches people at a moment where they’re ready to consume video content, outside of this context, video can be intrusive and annoying. One clue that shows how much YouTube care about a non-intrusive experience is that they’re allowing them to be bought on an interstitial basis (basically a pop up). I’m not holding my breath. More info here.
Facebook trials allowing pre-recorded video as “live” video
Busy week for video producers – Facebook is rolling out a trial where some businesses will be able to publish pre-recorded video segments as a “live” video with its new “Premiere” feature. With live video receiving such visibility within the algorithm at the moment, this is an interesting development. Will we all see our feeds fill with pre-recorded “live” video? It’s being trialled with a small group of advertisers at the moment, but they expect to roll out more widely soon. More info here.
Snapchat continues to roll out new advertising
Over the last few weeks, Snapchat have made a lot of changes. The latest one, Shoppable lenses, allows advertisers to place a Lens in a users’ feed with three calls to action options: Buy Now, Install Now (for apps) or Watch Now (for game or movie trailers). Previous ad formats have allowed advertisers to place ads in Stories and to sponsor lenses, but this takes the platform to a new level in terms of driving user action. Snapchat still suffers from being difficult to access for smaller organisations, and whether they’ll solve this issue (or even want to solve the issue) is another matter. Some more info at Mashable.
