Download on Digital Marketing: September 2019

What’s the marketing news from last month? Facebook launched an off-site activity tool and is testing search ads, Twitter introduced a new video ad bidding option, and Instagram addressed its problem with growth hacking.

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Facebook introduced an off-site activity tool
This new tool, titled Off-Facebook Activity, lets you see a summary of the apps and websites that provide Facebook with information on your activity. It also allows you to clear this information from your account. While the tool will be available worldwide in the coming months, it remains to be seen how many users will actually choose to wipe their browsing history. For those running Facebook ads, this could have a significant impact on targeting.

Twitter launched a new video ad bidding option
The new ad option is based around 6-second video ad bidding, meaning advertisers are only be charged for views lasting longer than 6 seconds. With studies showing that brand impact happens within seconds when watching a video, and plenty of accidental views running up ad budgets, this option will help advertisers optimize for completed views. The new option also puts more reliance on Twitter’s ad system to showcase content to relevant audiences who are more likely to watch.

Instagram addressed their Growth Hacker problem
If your brand advertises using Instagram Stories, you may have recently seen a surge in views from non-followers based in Russia. Now, before you get excited about your new Russian leads, Instagram has identified this surge as the result of growth hackers paying third parties to develop fake accounts. The goal is to create the illusion of increased engagement and while this has been around for years, it’s recently gotten out of hand. Instagram is looking into ways of removing the fake accounts.