Ten Things You Need to Know—19/01/18

• Retail Inno­va­tions Announced in Adobe Expe­ri­ence Cloud: As a new year’s gift to you all, Adobe have announced a whole raft of new fea­tures and updates for the Adobe Expe­ri­ence Cloud. These cov­er in-store cus­tomer track­ing, VR imagery, and auto-opti­mi­sa­tion of images.
• Face­book To Depri­ori­tise Pub­lish­er Con­tent: You will all, no doubt, have read up on this by now, but it’s worth not­ing again. This is not unex­pect­ed; it’s been trailed in var­i­ous more-or-less-cryp­tic ways for months, but the impli­ca­tions for brands on Face­book are going to be sig­nif­i­cant. Bear in mind that these changes are going to be imple­ment­ed “in the com­ing months.” As yet there’s very lit­tle clar­i­ty about exact­ly how they will affect con­tent. Sim­ply put, users will “see less pub­lic con­tent like posts from busi­ness­es, brands, and media. And the pub­lic con­tent you see more of will be held to the same standard—it should encour­age mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions between peo­ple.” What does this actu­al­ly mean? Well, it means that the con­cept of “organ­ic reach” for brand is large­ly dead in 2018, and adver­tis­ing spend is even more of a pre­req­ui­site to attain cut-through. It also means that all that mon­ey peo­ple spent to equip them­selves to be video cre­ators doesn’t look like quite the sound invest­ment it may once have. Brands and pub­lish­ers will now have to focus on cre­at­ing con­tent that dri­ves mean­ing­ful engage­ment in com­ments. Smart teams will already be think­ing about how to posi­tion employ­ees and wider net­works to assist with this, or about how to ensure that below-the-line engage­ment is a con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion for tal­ent in future. If you want to read a slight­ly more in-depth expla­na­tion of how this is like­ly to work, this inter­view with Wired with Adam Mosseri, a Face­book vice pres­i­dent, is illuminating.
• Face­book Test­ing Local News and Events Sec­tion: TESTING, so, you know, not actu­al news. Still, this chimes with the “mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions” stuff. It seems that Zuckerberg’s announce­ment will also work to pro­mote more local/community con­tent, so this would dove­tail with that. No word on when, or indeed whether, this will actu­al­ly be a thing, but one to bear in mind.
• Some Updates To Twitter’s DMs for Busi­ness: Basi­cal­ly these are just some tweaks such as read receipts, typ­ing indi­ca­tors à la Mes­sen­ger, etc. Noth­ing huge, but if you use Twit­ter for cus­tomer ser­vice these are all sen­si­ble, help­ful updates.
• Google Assis­tant Comes To More Devices, Launch­es ‘Actions’: The main thing that’s impor­tant to note here is that, as of the now, Google’s Voice Assis­tant lets any­one build ‘Actions’ for it, much like the Recipes which you can build for Alexa. Obvi­ous­ly sub­ject to approvals, etc., but if you’re think­ing of mak­ing stuff for voice, then bear in mind that you should con­sid­er Google as well as Amazon’s device.
• Snapchat Con­sid­er­ing Mak­ing Sto­ries Embed­d­a­ble: Alleged­ly. No idea whether or not this is true, but it would seem like a rea­son­ably good idea what with the platform’s report­ed chal­lenges with user growth and gen­er­al discoverability.
• You Can Now Buy Ani­mat­ed Snapchat Fil­ters: Like the ordi­nary ones, but, er, ANIMATED! If you’re a brand with sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand quid to throw at Snapchat, THIS is what you can spend them on. OK, fine, I am guess­ing at the price, but judg­ing by pre­vi­ous prod­uct fees, one can make a few assump­tions. Still, how can you put a price on the abil­i­ty to cre­ate an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of your brand val­ues for users to inter­act with as they doc­u­ment their own PERSONAL LIVED BRAND STORY? Well, quite.
• Snapchat Usage Data: This is inter­est­ing: a whole bunch of alleged­ly secret info from Snapchat about how users actu­al­ly use the plat­form, con­tain­ing data on the num­ber of mes­sages sent over time, Sto­ries usage, etc., etc. The main take­away from this, should you want me to spoon feed you rather than draw­ing your own con­clu­sions, is that (SURPRISE!) peo­ple use Snapchat as a mes­sag­ing app far more than they do to con­sume sto­ries. It’s a peer-to-peer net­work, rather than a broad­cast one.
• Con­fer­cal: As far as I can tell, this is a REALLY prac­ti­cal list­ing site for con­fer­ences and events in mar­ket­ing and tech world­wide. Take a look, it might be helpful.
• What­sApp Busi­ness Launch­es on Android: This is actu­al news. It’s out in the UK! Right now! Cre­ate a busi­ness pro­file, put your What­sApp details on your website—go crazy! The suite of fea­tures looks use­ful; def­i­nite­ly worth play­ing with and con­sid­er­ing adding to your infu­ri­at­ing­ly long list of ways cus­tomers can make your life a misery.