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Instagram’s making everybody happy: Creators and advertisers alike
Instagram simply wouldn’t be the same without influencers, and to illustrate this the platform’s most recent move is all about supporting creators.
Yesterday, the company announced two ways to help creators monetize their content. But don’t worry, dear marketers, there’s something for you as well:
- Badges in Lives: Viewers can purchase badges from creators to support their work. The badges will appear next to the creator’s name throughout the live video, and fans that purchase badges in Live will stand out in the comments and unlock additional features.
- IGTV Ads: Starting next week, the company will introduce ads on IGTV. The IGTV ad revenue will then be shared with influencers.
How much will creators make? Earnings will be calculated based on how much advertisers pay and how many monetizable views the video received.
Anyway, as shared by SocialMediaToday, the Instagram Creators account answered several questions about this new monetization format.
Let’s focus on the IGTV Ads: They will be built for mobile, last up to 15 seconds and will initially appear when the user clicks on the video preview for the Feed.
Instagram has also said they’ll test more options throughout the year “to make sure the final result works well for people, creators and advertisers.”
Happy about the new placement?
Google is coming for FB with this new placement
If you haven’t already noticed, Discovery Ads have passed the beta stage and are now available to all advertisers globally.
How are Discovery Ads different? They’re inspired by Facebook! More specifically, they stem from Facebook’s visually impactful formats, as well as targeting based on data rather than search intent.
This opens up new avenues for both Google and advertisers and will reach out to an audience of 2.9B users across the following eligible platforms:
- YouTube Home.
- Watch Next feeds.
- Discover feed on the Google Search app.
- Gmail Promotions.
- Social tabs.
Currently, Google is only showing ads with the best image assets and those most relevant to users. Plus, there is just one slot, in position three on the Discover feed.
Tests in the beta stage reported positive performance down the funnel, with up to 48% lower CPAs compared to social ads.
In addition, advertisers using social media style creatives have been the most successful in using Discovery Ads.
Learn more on how to get started with Discovery campaigns here.
Is UGC so powerful that you can ditch influencers?
UGC (user generated content) is powerful, but does it work better when you run UGC ads with your own Page or with Influencers’ accounts?
There’s only one way to find out: By testing it!
And that’s exactly what Cory Dobbin did. He put $12k down on a Business Page vs Influencer Page test.
The test goal: To determine whether it is better to run a piece of UGC content through an Influencer Page with their own copy or through the company’s FB Page with its own copy.
The test results
Influencer Page with its own copy:
- Spend: $6,380
- CPM: $5.73
- Clicks: 2,206
- CPA: $228.19
- ROAS: 0.77
Brand Page with control copy:
- Spend: $6,389
- CPM: $6.90
- Clicks: 3,495
- CPA: $113.94
- ROAS: 1.75
Takeaways
- Spend was pretty much even across the board.
- CPM was much cheaper for the Branded Content campaign (the one running from the influencer Page).
- ROAS for the Business Page was 2.27x higher than the influencer campaign.
Bottom line?
As Cory said, this test proves the power of UGCs. Results will vary depending on the niche but, in this case at least, Brand+UGC definitely outperformed Branded Content.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- SEO: Google’s Core Web Vitals, a critical set of metrics to measure the user experience, now have their own report in Search Console.
- INFLUENCER: Alibaba wants to build a horde of influencers to help scale its business globally. They want to hire 1M creators in three years. That’s an army! Sounds scary…
- GOOGLE: Unsolicited location tracking claims get Google in troubled waters again, this time in Arizona.
- FACEBOOK: Cory Dobbin’s rep stated that Ad Set Based Lookalikes, which creates new LLAs from your best-performing ad sets, might be rolling out soon.
- GOOGLE: The first phase of credits to provide $340M for eligible small and medium-sized businesses has started rolling out. New Zealand is first in line.
- FACEBOOK: The Facebook Marketplace isn’t just a Craigslist lookalike. It opened up to US-based businesses and here are four reasons to jump in as a retailer.
- TIKTOK: A heads up from Savannah Sanchez when running TikTok Ads: Opt-out of automatic placement, otherwise you’ll end up on placements only available in India and Japan.
BRAIN TEASER
Re-arrange the letters, O O U S W T D N E J R, to spell just one word. What is it?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
The world is opening up… again!
It’s happening! The world has started easing out of lockdown and into the new normal, with some places reopening for travel and tourism purposes. Those which rely on tourism for their economies are being quickest off the mark. .
- Portugal became one of the first European countries to welcome back visitors. However, since flights from outside the EU are not allowed until June 15, these tourists are mainly from Europe.
- Italy announced the reopening of international travel starting June 3.
- Saint Lucia plans to be the first Caribbean island to reopen to tourists by June 4.
- The Florida Keys are opening up for visitors by June 1 at 50% occupancy.
- Mexico’s Cancun, Tulum, and Riviera Maya plan to open up to tourists by the beginning of June.
- Greece is planning to welcome visitors back by mid-June.
- Spain aims to welcome back tourists in late June.
- Antigua and Barbuda will allow international flights by June 4.
Of course, things won’t just go back to the ‘old normal’. This is all about traveling in the post-apocalyptic way and there will be a tremendous amount of safety measures in place.
Even so, the above list does sound delicious for now!
Where are you dropping the pin? Don’t forget that we’re waiting for you in Vienna as soon as the borders open up!