Facebook and Pinterest Update Ads, New Snapchat Tools, Google Lens, and More Social Media News

In this month’s social media news, Facebook cracks down on misleading content, while Snapchat and Pinterest appeal to advertisers.

If you sense that the competition between social media networks for users and advertisers is heating up, you’re not alone. This month, Facebook continues its quest to cut down on the sharing of false information and misleading content while launching better lead-tracking tools for ads. Twitter moves to protect user privacy by updating its terms and conditions. And exciting new technology launches at Google, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

Here’s the latest social media news for the supply chain.

Facebook reduces links to low-quality web pages and misleading ads

After months refining its News Feed algorithm and ads, Facebook announced another update to weed out false information and spam in a blog post: “We reviewed hundreds of thousands of web pages linked from Facebook to identify those that contain little substantive content and have a large number of disruptive, shocking or malicious ads. We then used artificial intelligence to understand whether new web pages shared on Facebook have similar characteristics. So if we determine a post might link to these types of low-quality web pages, it may show up lower in people’s feeds and may not be eligible to be an ad. This way people can see fewer misleading posts and more informative posts.”

As changes roll out gradually in the coming months, publishers with high-quality landing page experiences might notice an increase in traffic, while those with negative experiences will see a decline. Businesses looking to improve their web experiences can read the full Facebook Business post and visit the Help Center for tips.

Twitter updates opt-out process

Twitter is helping users weed out irrelevant personalized ads and protect their privacy. The Twitter website tag will now “rely on the Digital Advertising Alliance’s consumer choice tool and other ways to opt-out described here.” Site owners must update the privacy policy to notify their users of this new opt-out process.

Google unveils Google Lens

Google’s latest product, Google Lens, will leverage computer vision and AI technology to enable smartphone cameras to not only see, but to understand what it’s seeing to help users. For example, if you take a photo of the login information on the sticker on your router, the lens will identify the action by offering to connect you to the Wi-Fi, using the photo of the network name and password.

Snapchat reaches 166 million daily active users, rolls out limitless snaps, adds ad lenses and geofilters

In its first quarterly earnings report since going public in March, Snap Inc. announced that its daily active user (DAUs) base grew to 166 million in Q1 2017. Additionally, the Snapchat app released four new creative tools:

Infinity timer setting: This option eliminates the 10-second time limit and allows your videos to play as long as you like. The snap then erases when closed.
Looping: Users can choose to have their photos or videos loop indefinitely until viewers close the snap.
Magic eraser: Users can select and remove objects from snaps.
Emoji drawings: Users can now draw with emojis using the pen tool.

Ad partners also have three new creative tools at their disposal:

World Lenses are an extension on Snapchat’s Sponsored Lens, which already let advertisers turn users’ selfies into ads. Sponsored World Lenses allow advertisers to create content for the rest of the photo beyond the face, like floating 2-D or 3-D objects.
Audience Lenses let advertisers buy a guaranteed number of Lens impressions for a specific audience. This includes those that are targeted by demographics like age and gender, as well as those identified as falling in one of Snapchat’s Lifestyle categories.
Smart Geofilters automatically add location information or other real-time information to a nationwide or chain Geofilter. This ad type allows users to activate branded overlays that appear when they swipe left or right on the camera.

Pinterest applies visual search technology to ads

Pinterest announced that it’s now leveraging the technology behind its newly released visual discovery tools — Shop the Look, Instant Ideas and Lens beta — to make Promoted Pins even more effective. Machine learning allows the platform to identify what is most relevant to a user based on the images s/he pins. For example, if the user pins images of blue, formal, A-line dresses, Pinterest will begin to show similar images in that user’s feed. The same technology will now be applied to ad content. “We help people find your ads in the very same way, connecting people to products they like the looks of, but don’t quite have the vocabulary to describe. As a result, your ads feel more relevant, and they can reach audiences you may not have considered before.”

Not sure how to use Pinterest’s advertising tools? Check out these 4 free webinars for businesses.

Facebook enables targeting to users who have saved posts, adds offline conversion solution for lead ads

Facebook page admins can now see the number of saves for each page post, then “create custom audiences of people who have saved [their] posts and retarget them with different content.”

Additionally, Facebook is now allowing businesses to connect their CRM, point of sale, or even their call-center systems to their Facebook ad campaigns to help advertisers monitor which of their lead ads drive those business results. This is huge for advertisers who have been trying to attribute conversions from lead ads based on offline activity.

Ellen, Ludacris, Katy Perry and more to star on YouTube’s exclusive new shows

YouTube announced plans to launch seven new “star-studded” shows, exclusively premiering on the video platform “beginning later this year.” Stars include Kevin Hart, Rhett and Link, Ellen DeGeneres, Katy Perry, the Slow Mo Guys, Demi Lovato, and Ludacris. The shows will be fully ad-supported and thus free to watch.

Facebook releases “Latest Conversations” feature

Facebook’s new Latest Conversations feature shows timely topics that many members across the network are discussing in its search results. It appears in its own section of the search results and includes a running count of how many people are talking about the topic at the moment. This feature is currently only available on the mobile app.

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