Pinterest Announces IPO
At the end of February, Pinterest made the big announcement that they will launch their initial public offering! As the platform has recently been striving to make the site more marketer-friendly, this move seems to follow their new push towards profitability. The platform currently has over 250 Million monthly active users and is growing rapidly.
One of the biggest changes to monetize these users has been direct, on-platform purchases. Users can now use “Shop the Look” Pins to see items they find appealing and buy them directly from that page.
They have also recently launched new catalogs, and even personal recommendations to further expose their users to products. Brands will now be able to upload their entire product catalog onto the platform and turn each item into shoppable ‘Product Pins’
The new feature set will also come with a “More like this” tab for users to explore similar items.
New ‘Offers’ Section In Google My Business
This week, Google announced a new feature which allows users to highlight specific deals in their search results.
As explained by their team:
“When creating a post in the Google My Business App, you’ll see an option to categorize it as an offer. From there, you can tailor the details to your specific needs. An offer can include a description of the promotion, a coupon code or any terms and conditions useful to your audience. You can surface up to 10 unique offers in the carousel, providing a list of choices.”
Youtube Removes Comments On Videos Featuring Minors
In a recent statement to their creator blog, YouTube has announced that they have disabled comments for tens of millions of videos in an effort to stave off predatory behavior. As explained by their team:
“These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months. Over the next few months, we will be broadening this action to suspend comments on videos featuring young minors and videos featuring older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior.”
Their team went on to say that certain creators will be able to keep comments enabled, but will require that they actively moderate them. Additionally, these users will have to prove that they are at a lower risk of predatory behavior.
LinkedIn Releases Salary Insights On New Job Listing
LinkedIn has released a new feature which will allow users to find new opportunities which will come with a salary boost. As explained by their team:
Now, when you’re searching for jobs on LinkedIn in the U.S., UK and Canada, we’ll show you personalized insights about jobs where you could make more money on the job card and within the job listing.To receive personalized insights, you must submit your salary within the LinkedIn Salary tool
In the same statement, they also released the most promising jobs ranked by salary. Here are the top 5
1. Site Reliability Engineer: Median Base Salary: $200,000
2. Enterprise Account Executive: Median Base Salary: $182,000
3. Machine Learning Engineer: Median Base Salary: $182,000
4. Cloud Architect: Median Base Salary: $155,00
5. Solutions Architect: Median Base Salary: $139,000
Facebook Introduces ‘Showcase’ For Premium Video Advertisers
Although it has not had the start the platform desired, Facebook is looking to monetize their new Premium Video content. For those who may not know, here is a list of the more popular programs.
As explained by their team:
Showcase gives online video and TV ad buyers participating in the upfront selling cycle new opportunities to reach their target audiences within the highest-quality videos on Facebook. Showcase is now available for campaigns targeting US audiences.”
The new products will include:
- In-Stream Reserve allows advertisers to reach people watching video from a selection of hundreds of the most engaging, highest quality publishers and creators. These placements are bought in advance at a fixed cost and delivered to in-target audiences verified by Nielsen. On average, nearly 100 million people in the US watch In-Stream Reserve eligible content across Watch, Newsfeed and Pages on Facebook each month.1
- In-Stream Reserve Categories includes all the features of In-Stream Reserve, and allows advertisers to reach people within contextually relevant content. These categories include sports, fashion/beauty and entertainment. And today, we’re adding food and news categories as well.
- Sponsorships allow advertisers to be the exclusive sponsor of a program for US viewers, giving advertisers the opportunity to place their ads in specific shows.
The team went on to further explain that through this new premium content, advertisers can target younger audiences, and provide viewers with a more dynamic and interactive experience.
Showcase helps advertisers connect with people through premium content and unique video experiences. Today, we’re announcing a new animated comedy series on Watch, “Human Discoveries,” starring Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick. We’re also partnering with MTV Studios to launch reimagined versions of the iconic “MTV’s The Real World” on Watch with all-new seasons in the US, Mexico and Thailand. Beginning this week, people will be able to vote on a cast member to enter each of the new Real World houses and vote on which three past seasons of the show will be available on Watch.
Showcase can help advertisers reach younger-skewing audiences that are increasingly difficult to reach on TV. Over the past three months, 43% of people in the US who watched In-Stream Reserve-eligible content on Facebook were 18-34 years old,2compared to 29% of the TV universe in that age demographic.3
