June 2019 Digital Marketing News Updates – Facebook Algorithm Changes, IGTV Horizontal Video, Google Top 3 Ranking Factors
Krista Neher
Jun 07 2019
Facebook News Updates
Algorithm update using surveys – Facebook announced another new update to the algorithm. This update will incorporate survey results to determine what people see vs. just basing their newsfeed off of previous behaviors. This could increase your Page visibility if people want to see your content.
Video ranking updates – Over the next few months Facebook will roll out updates to how videos are ranked in the newsfeed. Specifically rankings will now incorporate loyalty and intent, duration watched and originality. As always, the best way to future-proof your content is to create great videos that people like.
Facebook tool to manage off Facebook activity – This new tool will launch in the next few months and will allow people to manage (and delete) the data that Facebook uses and collects about them off of Facebook. This could make the pixel (and pixel data) less meaningful as users can opt-out. This could reduce the ability to target off of Facebook.
New tools for small businesses – Facebook launched a variety of ad tools aimed at making it easier for small businesses to run Facebook ads including audience suggestions, recommended budgets and automatically generating different creatives.
Facebook test adding paragraph formatting in groups posts – I haven’t found a link to an article for this but in groups I participate in some users report having the option to create paragraphs, use bullets and better format their text. Adding paragraph formatting to social posts would be a game changer 😉
Instagram News Updates
IGTV will support horizontal videos – One of the biggest challenges in creating video these days is managing all the video sizes for different networks. IGTV will now allow horizontal videos making it a good choice for repurposing content.
BONUS Checkout Crop to resize videos – If you struggle with creating videos in all formats, check out crop that makes it easy to resize horizontal to vertical or square.
Instagram explore includes more content – Instagram is pushing explore and wants to make it as relevant as possible. They are now including IGTV and Stories content here which could make these formats more relevant.
Twitter lets you go live with guests – This is a new twist on live in that it is private and you have to accept/invite people. It will be interesting to see if this feature captures usage and is replicated by other networks.
Twitter ad revenue is up 18% – Marketers haven’t left the platform and are actually spending significantly more.
YouTube News Updates
Youtube launches auto bumper tool – Youtube will now use AI to automatically create bumper (6 second) video ads from your longer ads by looking at a variety of factors. It will be interesting to see if the storylines still make sense in the shorter view – maybe this is where we still need humans?
YouTube launches image ads – Video ads are a barrier for some businesses to advertise on YouTube – it is now easier with image ads.
LinkedIn News Updates
LinkedIn ad transparency tool – Following Facebook this allows you to see all of the ads run by a Page in the last 6 months. This is a great way to see what competitors are doing.
LinkedIn share 10 surprising stats – Most of these aren’t surprising, but the most relevant and notable is that VIDEO is important and gets the most engagement.
Search News Updates
Google shares top 3 ranking factors – This should not be a surprise but it comes down to content (good and relevant), metadata and performance. This shows that Google is thinking about user experience as well as traditional signals.
Digital Advertising News Updates
Snapchat survey shows optimal frequency – A new study from Snapchat shows the optimal frequency for recall on the platform – it is around 2/week. These finding could also apply to other social networks.
Google launches 3 new ad types – Discovery aimed at making your business more discoverable, gallery which increases engagements on mobile with a scrollable gallery in search results and showcase, which showcases items in non branded search results.