Instagram announces Instagram Partners programme, boosts advertising options

Instagram has announced an initial set of 40 partners to help advertisers of any size find best in class technology partners to work with on the platform.

The Instagram Partners programme is a set of experts who have been vetted by Instagram and deemed to be capable through their propriety tools of helping in one of three key areas of expertise on the platform. These include ad tech, community management and content marketing.

Instagram has revealed that early results have already proved the positive impact such partnerships can have. In August House of Blues Entertainment worked with one of the partners, CitizenNet, to use its audience modelling capability to help sell tickets for a gig in the US.  By targeting residents with similar musical tastes during a 13 day campaign the company saw a 64% higher ROI then their previous benchmark after which they expanded their advertising efforts to more than 40 venues in the US.

Another of the initial partners in the programme is Kenshoo, who are providing expertise in the area of ad tech. “Through integrating with the Instagram Ads API we’ve witnessed firsthand the power of advertising on Instagram,” said Will Martin-Gill, chief product officer for Kenshoo. “By being named an initial member of the Instagram Partners Program we can continue to guide the world’s leading advertisers in optimising their investment,” he said.

Instagram revealed in September that it was rolling out ad functionality worldwide by the end of the month with Kenshoo revealing what it said was best practice in terms of how advertising work on the platform. 

The partner programme may force a new trend among other social platforms. 

Twitter just supersized the way photos appear on your timeline

Twitter is beefing up your Twitter timeline, again.

Starting Monday, the platform is enhancing the multimedia experience on your timeline by uncropping photos. The update is web-only, and the company didn't specify if or when it'll roll out to mobile.

Individual photos will appear uncropped, which means you won't have to click on one to view the whole image in a popup window.

Tweets with multiple photos will also get a facelift. Instead of seeing multiple cropped images in an evenly-spaced grid, the tweet will present the first image as larger than the rest, with smaller thumbnails for the others.

"Some of the best moments on Twitter are when you see the world through someone else’s eyes," the company wrote in an annoucement of the changes. "Astronaut Scott Kelly’s awe-inspiring #YearInSpace actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus onstage at the Emmys, Brian Dickinson’s solo summit of Mt. Everest — these photos bring us right into the moment."

Of course, Twitter users are already using the feature less for "awe-inspiring" moments and more for humor.

The update follows a wave of other changes to visual content. In June, Twitter implemented a video-sharing tool that plays Vine videos, GIFs and clips automatically. In October, the controversial Moments was introduced to show collections of curated tweets about current events and specific stories.

The change of visual contents will direct the markets to think about how to pose their products in a more efficient way.

Twitter video highlights 2015's best social media moments

We took a look on Sunday at some of the biggest trends and important moments of 2015 on Twitter, all of which made a historic year.

But in addition to the social media platform's data, which helped to deliver an accurate read of the past year's news pulse, the company has also released a video to illustrate exactly what we all experienced.

The two-minute clip combines still imagery, tweets and videos to highlight the best and worst moments that typified the activity on the social media platform in 2015.

In it, we're reminded of poignant moments that were crystalized by hashtags like #JeSuisCharlie, the hashtag that represented an outpouring of support for French journalists at Charlie Hebdo in the wake of a terrorist in January.

The video also spends some time framing events through heavily retweeted celebrity tweets from the likes of TV host Ellen DeGeneres and actor Ellen Page, who both weighed in publicly on the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage.

Twitter's video also tracks powerful moments around the Black Lives Matter movement, and surfaces a brief clip of President Barack Obama singing "Amazing Grace" at a gathering in Charleston, South Carolina.

Although the video is short, it offers a colorful recap of just how impactful the year on Twitter in 2015, just weeks before we enter the new social media arena of 2016. and it also help marketers to think about its own position in participating in these topics.

DIY App Builders Make Digital Marketing Easier Than Ever

In the rapidly evolving space of mobile technology, mobile applications continue to pry their way into both our personal and professional lives. But, for many small businesses and non-profits, mobile applications remain beyond their budgets. This gap in need and availability has led to the creation of easy-to-use, affordable and quick do-it-yourself (DIY) app development software.

The rise of DIY app development software has begun. These tools remove the need for a strong technical background and, even more importantly, remove the large price tag usually associated with app development.

I think the reason of the emerging of DIY app is that marketing teams in small and medium sized businesses often have three things in common: they lack coding experience, they work on a limited budget and they need measurable results—fast. Many of the app builders can address all three issues by popping out a really great looking app within a few hours—as opposed to custom app development, which can take months.

App builders can help businesses meet a number of goals across marketing, mobile commerce and vertical-specific needs, often yielding nearly immediate results. Expect to find a few specific features to be common in most of these app building tools:

Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter compete for customers This Holiday Season Using the Hit Buy Button

1> Facebook announced its test of the buy buttion in July 2014, but the service remains limited to a small group of merchants. Consumers are more likely to see a button that says "shop now" alongside ads.

The distinction is significant. With the buy button, a user is purchasing a promoted item and the transaction occurs inside the Facebook app, while the shop now feature sends traffic to the advertiser's app or mobile Web site.

People are increasingly discovering products on mobile and Facebook, and businesses are seeing strong results using the carousel format and dynamic product ads to drive sales

Similarly, Facebook's Instagram app recently launched a shop now button letting advertisers customize their promotions within photo streams. J.Crew is running a holiday campaign around its online gift guide.

2> Pinterest waited years before enabling shopping, but now the online bulletin board is moving faster than any of its peers. Michael Yamartino, Pinterest's head of commerce, said the company carefully vets businesses before letting them onto the platform and is very clear with consumers that support and fulfillment are in the hands of the merchant.

Since Pinterest introduced so-called buyable pins in June, more than 10,000 businesses have jumped on board making over 60 million products available for purchase inside the app. Top-selling items include vegan leather leggings, blanket scarves and women's anoraks.

From July to September, online marketplace Madesmith received 7 percent of its total orders from buyable pins, according to data supplied by Pinterest.

3> Commerce has been less of a focus for Twitter. The company has been noticeably distracted by a CEO change and is contending with troublesome user metrics and a plunging stock price. The buy button didn't even come up in the company's latest earnings call.

But in September, a year after launching the feature, Twitter made some headway. The company announced partnership with Shopify, Bigcommerce and Demandware as well as Stripe's Relay service, which makes it easier for retailers to sell across social networks.

For me, this holiday season is more like a test ground for these three companies and would become a good indicator of who would have the best potential to get the most market share in the next few years.

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Pinterest Users Can Now Search With Pictures

Pinterest introduced a feature Monday that allows users to search for products with pictures instead of words.

Dubbed visual search, the technology might make searching for that rondeau pot for your kitchen a little easier. For example, a user looking at an image of a living room could zoom in on a lamp and search for similar ones in different colors or sizes. More so, the tech can even get specific and tell Pinners the lamp is an "antiqued metal funnel pendant" that can be purchased from Restoration Hardware.

I think this move can help Pintrest generate additional advertising revenue as it ramps up toward a possible IPO. The image bookmarking service has more than 100 million users worldwide. Also this is a significant leverage to compete with Google who also has offered the pic search function.