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How Marketers Can Utilize Instagram’s Branded Content Tool to Boost Their Influencer Marketing Results

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how marketers can utilize instagrams branded content tool to boost their influencer marketing results

Brands are dedicating more of their marketing dollars to influencers every year – in fact, in a recent survey, 57% of businesses said that they were planning to increase their influencer relations budgets in 2020. And the upward trend is more than bandwagon jumping – influencer campaigns are generating results. Some 80% of the marketers we surveyed said that influencer-generated assets performed the same or better than their own branded content, while 61% of 18- to 34-year-olds have, at some point, been swayed in their decision-making by digital influencers.

But brands still want more. They want to know that they’re reaching the right people, they want to test which pieces of content are generating the most engagment. And, of course, they want to see optimal return on their investment, and have the ability to measure business results consistently.

The problem is that while the amount of brands investing in the influencer marketing is increasing, only 18% of marketers say that they’re able to integrate influencer marketing into overall digital marketing ROI calculations.

This is why more marketers should be paying attention to Instagram’s Branded Content tool

Released last June, the option provides new ways to maximize influencer campaigns, target key segments, and better track performance

The problem is, not many know what it is or how it works. Here’s an overview of the how and why of Insta’s Branded Content ads.

Social advertising evolution

Back in 2017, you might remember that Instagram introduced the Paid Partnership tag.

Instagram paid partnership tag

As shown here, the tag is a marker which influencers add to the top of their Instagram post or Story, in order to provide more transparency over paid collaborations. With influencer partnerships rising on the platform, Instagram introduced the tags to avoid confusion, and clarify the process around disclosure of such processes.

Then last year, Instagram stepped it up a gear. For brands and influencers that were using the Paid Partnership tag, Instagram added a new option called Branded Content ads.

Instagram branded content ads

Branded Content Ads enable brands to turn the content created through influencer partnerships into ads, providing a simple way to amplify these posts and Stories beyond a creator’s organic following. And importantly, the option enables brands to promote these influencer-created posts under the influencer’s profile, as opposed to re-sharing from a brand handle. This helps to make the posts feel more native, as opposed to the more clearly signaled brand promotions.

Of course, it still says ‘Sponsored’ on each post, and there is still a ‘Paid Partnership’ tag at the bottom, but the simple fact that the post/Story comes from an influencer handle is significant, and can lead to improved results.

The benefits of Branded Content

So what are the key benefits of Branded Content Ads?

First off, let’s look at reach. When a brand invests in branded content, they, logically, want to reach as many people as possible with their post/s. Branded Content ads can scale a creator’s post to reach a creator’s followers – and then some. While influencer marketing relies on organic reach, Branded Content extends beyond that and can get your brand into the feeds of people who don’t follow that particular influencer.

Then there’s targeting. As a brand, you’ll have your key target audience in mind – their age, their gender, a geographic region, etc. It’s unlikely that any influencer’s following will match each of your key targeting criteria perfectly, which means that your influencer-originated content might only be reaching part of its intended audience, limiting your ability to achieve your goals. Branded Content ads can be targeted with precision, helping you reach more of the people that matter to you.

With this option, brands are free to choose influencers who create the very best content, without being preoccupied by their reach.

Finally, thanks to Shopping Tags, Branded Content ads also enable a frictionless shopping experience.

The rise of mobile and social commerce is changing the way people shop – these days, if a social app user sees something they like, they want to be able to tap and buy straight away, no redirection, no waiting. Branded Content ads give brands the opportunity to turn a browser into a buyer seamlessly.

Instagram shopping tags

The majority of influencers can’t make their regular posts shoppable just yet, but Branded Content ads take that same relatable, aspirational content and make it entirely shoppable through the Instagram Ads process.

Make it work for you

While early adopters of this tool are reaping the benefits, some have also found the process to be more manual than other more established ad options.

But there are things you can do to streamline your system:

1. Set a transparent brief

When briefing influencers, be sure to let them know that you intend to use the Paid Partnership and Branded Content options, so that they realize what’s happening from the get-go. This will ensure that crucial steps in the early days of the campaign go smoothly – for example, if you intend to boost Instagram Stories, they’ll need to be free of GIFs and hashtags.

2. Streamline your Ads Manager

Another helpful preparatory step is to upload your influencer list to your Facebook Ads Manager before they create content. That way, when the influencer adds the Paid Partnership tag, you won’t need to manually approve each influencer.

3. Have a clear goal in mind

Branded Content is perfect for driving conversion, whether that’s boosting sales or app downloads. When setting out the objectives for your campaign, think business metrics over vanity metrics (like engagement), so you can measure its impact and ROAS effectively.

4.  Learn from organic performance

If you’re running an influencer campaign first, use the influencer’s organic post performance to learn which pieces of content are highest-performing and worthy of boosting. While this is not a foolproof science, as different influencers will have different engagement rates, a high-performing piece of influencer-generated content could hint at what will resonate best in the Branded Content phase.

Essentially, Instagram’s Branded Content Ads enable you to add extra fuel to your influencer campaigns, and reach your target audience, as opposed to relying on their own, established following. That can deliver significantly better results – it takes some extra work, and management to get a clear understanding of best practices and opportunities. But it may well be worth the extra effort. 

Socialmediatoday.com

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MARKETING

YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

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