Ready the arsenal
How’s your stockpile of TikTok Ads looking? Now’s a better time than ever to ready the arsenal, because Instagram just announced yesterday that ads are coming to Reels. Which, as you know, is a synonym for TikTok-but-on-Instagram.
All Instagram users now have a Reels tab on their homepage, too. Here are the details:
- Hello there, Reels and Shop. Facebook made an announcement yesterday, in which the company stated that Shop and Reels tabs were rolling out to all Instagram users. Not everyone at The Crew here is seeing the changes yet, though.
- Ads are coming to Reels. Though Instagram’s TikTok lookalike has been around for a couple months, it hasn’t offered a big opportunity for advertisers – until now. Instagram’s Adam Mosseri told CNBC yesterday that ads are coming. As to when, though, that is anyone’s guess.
The Crew’s take: This is one of the more substantial updates we’ve seen from Instagram lately on their aggressive march towards e-commerce. For businesses, the new Shop tab makes it more important than ever to set up a functional Shop on Instagram. And, for marketers, the upcoming ads platform should be a fun one.
LinkedIn made a mistake
Yesterday morning, Matt Navarra dropped some news on Twitter that caught our attention:
“LinkedIn has been over-charging a lot of advertisers for video view campaigns and impressions.
Overcharging occurred on iOS devices when LinkedIn users rotated their phones to watch videos, it counted them as additional views.”
And by the afternoon, LinkedIn had post
ed an official update on their blog with more answers – as well as what they’re doing to make things right:
- For more than two years – up until August – up to 418k people advertising on LinkedIn may have been overcharged. The main reporting issue, it seems, had to do with impressions and video views. Matt Navarra’s explanation about iOS devices being the issue seems to be the likely answer.
- The issue sounds scary, but it probably didn’t cost you too much. LinkedIn says that more than 90% of the customers affected were overcharged by less than $25. That still leaves almost 42k marketers and businesses, though, above that threshold.
- LinkedIn is working to make things right. The company said it was working with all customers involved to provide the proper credit in return. Better late than never, right?
Between their questionable engagement algorithm and this issue, it’s starting to look like LinkedIn’s infrastructure might need some patching up. If you were affected by this issue, we’d love to hear from you on the process and what LinkedIn is doing to fix things!
SEO
Zooming in on Featured Snippets
mains in the world on mobile and desktop for 2018 and 2019.
And the study involves three countries: US, UK and Germany.
Let’s start from the bottom of the blog post by Kevin Indig:
The average clickthrough rate for Featured Snippets (FS) is 43%, meaning that if your website gets featured as an FS, you get most of the clicks.
It’s a winner-take-all phenomenon…
In his study, Kevin highlights the high volatility in how Google shows Featured Snippets.
Let’s see have a look at the stats:
- In 2019, Google significantly increased the number of FS. In Germany, the number of Featured Snippets in the SERP increased by 86% on mobile. For the USA, the growth has been 38% on mobile and 45% on desktop. Although, in the UK, the number of snippets decreased. This brings us to the next point:
- Google tests Featured Snippets and shows them based on the results it gets from the tests. If your content is drawing in more clicks and attention, it’s likely that you’ll keep the top spot.
- Google shows more Featured Snippets on mobile than desktop. This makes sense, as mobile users want quick results. In the US, for instance, the correlations between Featured Snippets in mobile and desktop search results is 0.92.
- The degree of Featured Snippets in the SERPs and the keywords they show up for vary greatly by country. Most countries and devices show Featured Snippets on 5-10% of SERPs, but in the UK, for example, 20-25% of mobile search display Featured Snippets. Google tests and adjusts locally.
There you go.
This isn’t something you can apply to increase your chances of more of those juicy featured snippets in the SERPs. However, it can help you better understand how Big G operates.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
YOUTUBE: Rewind, a yearly roundup from YouTube and possibly the internet’s least favorite thing, isn’t happening this year. Hey, at least there’s a silver lining to 2020!
E-COMMERCE: Chipotle announced their first digital-only restaurant this week. Check out the AdWeek article to see what that might mean for the future of fast food.
ADVERTISING: We’ve got good news and bad news. The good news being that CPRA isn’t coming until 2023, and – you guessed it – the bad news being you should start preparing now.
FACEBOOK: The rumored, Snapchat-style “vanish mode” is now available on Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
BRAIN TEASER
What runs but never walks?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
The PS5 is out, but nobody can get it
It’s finally here – the PS5 launch date that gamers worldwide have been dreaming of for about half a decade.
Except, there’s one problem. Nobody can seem to actually get their hands on a PS5, as stock is limited and the few online stores that have them have been crashing all day.
Gamers in the United States have had few options to buy the console – and many of them have turned to Walmart, since the company announced specific drop dates for the console.
If you want a laugh, check out the Google Trends statistics for “walmart site down” searches. Spoiler alert: The search interest spiked from 0 to 100, literally, at the specific times Walmart announced the console drops. Safe to say, the website wasn’t working very well.
The new Playstation consoles are also currently selling for more than $1k on eBay, double their retail price. For those of you in Europe (or most other countries)…Your release date is next week, on the 19th. Get ready.