We’re back with another round-up of the latest changes in digital marketing. This month’s updates are focussed are heavily focussed around both social marketing and video content marketing. 

Meta earns MRC accreditation  

What is the update?: The Media Rating Council (MRC) has given Meta accreditation for their brand safety efforts on In-stream Video and Instant Articles across all devices. 
 
Why is it important?: Many brands are questioning the value of the targeting and the return that is seen in their Facebook advertising. Whilst there are still questions to answer on the Return on Investment, brands can be assured that their ads are serving in the right environment. 
 
What action should you take?: No action is required for advertisers following this update. 
 

Instagram Launch In-App Post Scheduling Tool 

What is the update?: On the 8th of November, it was announced that Instagram had rolled out post scheduling capability to all professional accounts, allowing posts to be scheduled up to 75 days in advance! 
 
Why is it important?: With the growing importance of increasing the volume of content shared across Instagram, especially outside of business hours, this update is a useful addition to make scheduling stories, reels and grid posts. 
 
What action should you take?: Whilst this is a good update for start-up business’ we feel that investing in social media platforms such as Buffer or Hootsuite is advisable. Not only do these tools give you the scheduling capability, the analytical capabilities provide insights to help enhance your publishing approach. 
 

YouTube Launch Branding Targeting and Optimisation Feature 

What is it?: On the 10th of November, YouTube has launched a new feature, to allow advertisers to control how many times a unique user will see your ads (ad frequency). 
 
Why is it important?: Whilst we would always say the last place you reduce costs is your marketing, we know that due to the current economic climate, every brand is looking at their budgets and working out whether there is any opportunity to be more efficient. The natural place to cut budgets would be more awareness led activity, over those that guarantee conversions. This update from YouTube is quite timely for such campaigns, allowing a greater control on the targeting. 
 
What action should you take?: For anyone looking to run brand awareness campaigns in 2023, we would recommend that YouTube is part of the mix, as a minimum for tactical branding campaigns. This new feature is available for all advertisers within the Google Ads interface and is also supported in the New Ads Editor v2.2. 
 

Microsoft Audience Network Now Support Video Ads 

What is the update? On the 18th of November, Microsoft announced that they now support video across their audience network. This is available across some of the leading internet markets, including UK, US and France. 
 
Why is this important? This new update from Microsoft, closely following the aforementioned YouTube update provides advertisers with another option for awareness-based activity. Some of the stats provided by Microsoft suggest that their audience are highly engaged towards video content and are unique to those who watch video across Microsoft and YouTube too … 
 
1 in 3 users stays on MSN and Microsoft Edge to get the content they need. 
72 minutes is the average time spent by a visitor on Microsoft Edge per month. 
39% of users watch videos on MSN but not on YouTube. 
57% of users watch videos on MSN but not on Facebook. 
Brands see a 50% higher conversion rate, when adding video to their search strategy. 
 
What do you need to do? For your next Brand awareness campaign, we would recommend carrying out an A/B test with YouTube’s inventory, to understand which platforms resonate better with your customers. This will allow you to judge to what extent you should invest in both, for future campaigns. 
 

Our final thoughts ... 

This month’s updates have been largely dominated by video content. We feel that 2022 has been the year where brands have stepped up the amount of video content that either has been created in-house or by external content creators. We expect 2023 to be the year where discoverability of such content across all channels especially via paid promotion, will be a key part of the marketing mix. 
 
If you would like further information on any of the above updates or you would like to access a free no obligation consultation, please get in touch to understand how we can help you. 
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