Google chief questioned by US Congress about political bias and data transparency, UK regulators banning harmful gender tropes in advertising, Marketers concerned about data freedom after Brexit and Facebook's pop-up attempt to re-build trust
One of the biggest news stories this week has to be Google being questioned by Congress about how search works, data privacy, China plans and political bias. In just under four hours of questioning, the covered a lot of ground, some of which our roundup will take a look at.
When it comes to marketing and advertisiting in the UK, the big announcement was that negative gender stereotypes are going to be banned in adverts. In a bid to avoid stereotypes causing real-world harm, new regulations are st to come into effect in 2019.
Our roundup also takes a look at the concerns that marketers have about the impact that Brexit could have on the free flow of data.…
O2 experienced a major network issue, the UK government has published a selection of Facebook's internal documents and Iceland's banned Christmas advert has been named 'most powerful' of the festive offerings
While the news has been fairly slow this week in the digital and marketing worlds, Facebook's ongoing struggles following the Cambridge Analytica scandal are continuing. The UK government has now released some documents seized from the social media platform, which includes some interesting internal emails.
One of the biggest stories of the week is O2's massive network issues yesterday (Thursday, December 6th), which left millions of customers without access to their data and many people unable to make calls or send texts.
Ending on a positive note, Iceland's banned Christmas advert has been named the most powerful of all the festive adverts of 2018 - leaving many of the big-budget ads at the bottom of the pile.
Find out more with this week's news…
Disney is moving it's digital brands to Google Ads, Facebook is testing 'Today In', Uber receives data breach fine, Australia's SVoD subscriptions are due to outstrip Pay-TV and TfL has banned junk food advertisements
The last week has seen some interesting announcements, not least the fact that Disney will now be using Google Ads as its only ad-technology platform, meaning Google is replacing Comcast's FreeWheel.
Facebook is testing yet another new feature, this time aimed at bringing local communities together by keeping them more informed. But what does 'Today In' mean for the platform's attempts to police fake news?
On top of these big stories, this week has seen Uber get fined again for its 2016 data breach, the rise of subscription video on demand in Australia and junk food advertising being banned on any part of London's public transport system.
Find out more about five big digital and marketing stories this week.
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Amazon's recent data breach, Taco Bell's fun marketing campaign, Facebook funding new journalists, Instagram launching new shopping features and Pinterest creating new shopping tools with key US retailers
The last week has seen some positive changes across social media platforms, aimed at making the shopping journey simpler as more people head to social for purchase inspiration.
With Instagram adding yet more new features to help brands make the most of tagged products and Pinterest proving its relevance in the world of online shopping, brands definitely need to start looking at their social media shopping strategy.
As well as these updates, this week's news roundup takes a look at Amazon's data breach and Facebook's latest announcement that it will be funding the training of new British journalists. We also explore Taco Bell's latest marketing campaign to announce it's first London location.
Find out more about five of the biggest stories from this week:
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Chart of the day: Facebook Users' Privacy Concerns
In the wake of global data disasters, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where an individual’s online privacy has fallen at risk of being misrepresented and misused for falsely priming political agenda - people have undoubtedly become wary of their personal details saved online. However, it’s interesting to see that even though privacy concerns amongst users are high, Facebook daily visits seem to have been largely unaffected by this disaster.
Recent research by Marketing Charts shows that personal data security is the top concern with Facebook. According to a Gallup survey, 55% of Facebook users are very concerned and 25% are somewhat concerned about their personal data being sold to and used by other companies and organization, among many other…
Back at the start of the year, we told you that Mark Zuckerberg had boldly announced a significant change to our Facebook newsfeeds
An updated algorithm would see posts prioritized by family and friends over public branded content.
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571[/embed]
I said it was bold.
Why the change?
This flip-reverse in direction has come out of a lack of mobile advertising inventory on Facebook, and a general dissatisfaction amongst users that the platform isn’t ‘very social’ anymore.
Just take a look at your own newsfeed and you’ll probably see post after post from brands whose Pages you follow, video content from media outlets or sponsored adverts, but you’ll also have noticed a few other posts sneaking in. I’m talking about posts your friends have commented on, or events they have expressed an interest in.
Facebook wants more of this kind of content. It wants to predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about,…
The social media giant is finally listening. Facebook has recently been switching things up to “better” suit its users - or has it really?
A while ago, Facebook announced changes to its algorithm, showing users less public content, like posts from businesses, brands etc., and more personal content shared by friends and family. And now, they’ve come up with yet another change, this time, specifically aimed for marketers.
To give businesses more of an insight into how the impact of their advertisements is calculated, Facebook has introduced new labels on some of its metrics. “We’ve heard that businesses want more insight into our measurement tools and metrics. So today, we’re introducing new labels on some of our metrics to clearly show how they are calculated”, the social channel stated in its latest blog post on Thursday.
Facebook has been on the receiving…
Chart of the day: Most shared Facebook content 2017
Even though there isn’t one single formula for what makes content go viral on social media, it’s crucial for content creators to understand which type of content tends to work well online and therefore, should be pushed across their social channels.
Recently, BuzzSumo analyzed two billion articles and posts that were published on Facebook in 2017, and established the top content over the year. Although these viral posts can hardly ever be replicated, such analyses provide insights into viral content creation, through gaining as much positive attention, as quickly as possible, while also engaging with your audience.
In the analysis, experts at BuzzSumo found out most of the top posts that went viral were videos, with the exception of only 3 out of 20 top post. The most popular topics in video were:
Practical hacks
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Chart of the Day: Image and Link post contribute to a 20% decrease in engagement
Analysis of 880 million Facebook posts by brands in the last 12 months conducted by Buzzsumo has revealed that the average engagement was relatively steady in 2016. Come January, engagement started falling and didn't stop until June where we see a small increase. The post types that have seen the biggest decline are image and links post, whereas video has been able to remain consistent.
There could be many reasons why this decline has been so substantial:
The organic reach on Facebook has been falling for years with Facebook pushing brands down the route of paid promotions. The issue with this strategy is that you get lower engagement due to people seeing them as ads rather than interesting content for their favourite pages.
So much content. With an average of over 1,000 stories…
