Ten Things You Need to Know — 02/02/18

Digital Europe

02-02-2018

Adobe and Appnexus Move To Radical Transparency On Fees: Building on last year’s announcement around advertising supply chain transparency, Adobe Advertising Cloud will, beginning March 2018, reveal all fees taken by the DSP, including the platform fee and any add-ons, as well as AppNexus’ bill to the publisher, which will help marketers track media dollars through the supply chain. From this point on, users of Adobe Advertising Cloud will be able to see exactly where—and how—their budgets are being spent, in a move which we hope will help the programmatic industry take a step towards better business practices and increased transparency throughout the marketplace.
Facebook Watch Party: Do you remember how nice it was, in THE PAST, when we all used to cluster around the tiny 13” black and white analogue television wearing deely boppers and munching on cardboard ready meals, laughing together at bad game shows and variety hours? When we all used to have real conversations like a real family, before The Screens came and RUINED IT ALL? Well fear not, because Mark’s going to bring the good times back, and that wonderful communal feeling of staring at an ENTERTAINMENT all together! A feature coming to Facebook Groups “over time”, currently being tested, “In a Watch Party, allows members of a Group to watch videos together in the same space at the same time—videos are chosen by the Group admins and moderators, and can be any public videos on Facebook (live or recorded).” Superb for fan groups, wonderful for fan service, great for advertisers (and further evidence that Group-level advertising is very much on its way).

Some Changes Potentially Coming To Messenger: Everyone was apparently too stunned by Facebook’s BIG NEWS to actually put out any news this week, so instead I am feeding myself (and, by extension, you, nibbling partially-digested scraps of newscud from my slavering maw) on whatever meagre gossip leavings I can find. This is a whole article based on a series of quotes from someone who runs Messenger, which suggest that the service might get a feature cull later this year, which will streamline it a bit, add proper group video chat, better customer service options, and more ads. It’s all very exciting.
How FB Changes MAY Affect Publishers: Take a pinch of salt along with this piece, not least because it’s increasingly clear that Facebook’s own engineers don’t actually quite know how all this stuff’s going to work yet and are scrabbling to keep up with Zuckerberg’s godlike pronouncements. But it’s an interesting look at how the algorithm changes _may _affect publishers, particularly in the UK. The short answer, according to this analysis, at least, is that Pages whose articles see a higher degree of peer-to-peer sharing will do fine, whereas those whose reach is predicated largely on posts from dedicated Publisher Pages will find that reach being chopped off at the knee. Really, though, NO ONE KNOWS.
Page Speed To Determine Google Ranking: As of July 2018, a Page’s ranking on Google’s mobile search will be partly determined by its load speed. That means if you’ve got a rubbish mobile site, you might want to spend the next few months fixing it. It’s genuinely amazing to me quite how many large businesses have websites which would have been considered shonky in 2013
You Can Now Link To Snapchat Stories: This has been trailed previously, and is now HERE! You can now get a url to link directly to a Snapchat story from elsewhere. These currently only play nicely with Twitter, where a linked Story will play in-feed. Elsewhere it’ll just be a link which takes you to the Story on Snap, and it could, potentially, bring the platform to a whole new audience (who will in all likelihood look at it and go “Oh, look, it’s like an Insta Story! They copied Insta! Weird.”).
Snap App Install Ads Now Come With Deep Links: I can’t be bothered to paraphrase this, sorry. This means Snap ads will now have the ability to “drive traffic to a specific section by targeting users who have already downloaded and opened an app. For example, a mobile game developer might want to target players once they hit a specific level in the game, or a retailer could spotlight a product page that a user added to a shopping cart but didn’t buy.” GOOD NEWS!
Snaplenses: There was, when I checked at the start of the week, a whole website collecting Snap Lenses that had been built by the community as part of Snap’s Lens Studio rollout, which you will, of course, recall happened last year. The site’s now down, sadly, so instead the link above sends you to the subRedditwhich collects examples of home-made Lenses. The main takeaway from this so far is that making a good lens is HARD, and that there is a lot of really lame humour going on over on Snapchat. Still, you can get a 3d Clippy on your Snaps, so, you know, 2018’s looking pretty good. If you’re generally interested in seeing more creative uses of Lenses on the platform, Snapchat’s own ‘Lenses Challenge’ rewards creators who make the best use of the platform’s tech each month, and could provide some inspiration should you need any.
DDDance Party: You remember Gif Dance Party from a few years ago, right? Well this is that but BETTER (or worse, depending). You’re presented with a 3d “dancefloor” onto which you can place a seemingly HUGE number of animated 3d figures, all taken from memes and pop culture (from the dancing hotdog to Mike from Monsters Inc., to a very much not approved by Disney Luke Skywalker, and on and on). Select the backing track, move the dancers around, set their dancing speed and size and jankiness, and YOU TOO can create your own totally pointless slice of internet dance floor. This is a silly and fun thing to play around with, but it’s also incredibly impressive as a piece of webdev. Oh, and you can also submit your own characters for inclusion. We’ve been busy submitting figures from Adobe Stock all week to enjoy the fun.
You Are The Stylist: SUPERB interactive music video, this, for the band Broken Back’s latest song — the gimmick here is that at any point once the video kicks in you can change the lead character’s outfit with simple controls. The joy here is not so much in the interactivity, though that’s beautifully executed, but the seamlessness of the transitions between outfits; this is superbly built, so well done to the devs whoever they may be.

Digital Transformation UK