Utilizing its 2014 purchase of online video ad-tech firm LiveRail, Facebook will soon be launching an automated ads exchange and demand-side platforms. The exchange will bring ads to even more sites and will round out a suite of products to rival Google’s DoubleClick Digital Marketing Suite. Coupled with the social network’s recently announced Product Ads, enabling advertisers to target Facebook users with specific items from their catalog of products, Facebook is making huge moves toward becoming a one-stop-shop for social media advertising.
This week, Twitter announced its new ‘partner audiences,’ which will enable advertisers to target users based on their web activity, even while signed out of their account. Gathered by Twitter’s Marketing Platform Partners, audiences can now be highly targeted based on assumed purchase intent, though users can still opt out of being reached with ads… for now. The increasingly visual nature of the channel – photos are now displayed in users’ feeds and ads often feature corresponding images and strong calls-to-action – makes this new offering especially compelling to travel brands looking to reach users in the midst of trip planning.
While Facebook and Twitter are still several steps ahead in their call-to-action offerings, Instagram is making strides with the introduction of its “Learn More” button and multi-photo posts for advertisers. Whereas brands previously had to clutter their feeds with sponsored posts featuring the same or similar products, the channel’s growing pool of advertisers may now include a ‘carousel’ of photos, including a clickable “Learn More” on the final image, which will open a site within the app where users can further interact with the brand. Instagram still has a long way to go to catch up with its cohorts’ measurement capabilities, but for now, this is a step in the right direction for the exponentially growing social media channel.
This was a big week for social media advertising technology, with new and emerging tools now at our fingertips. Which ones are the right match for your brand? Drop us a line to learn more.