Digital Advertising Update: Carousel Ads for Instagram Stories
February 2, 2018
Instagram bringing carousel ad format to Stories, Google to let users mute remarketing ads, Twitter lets advertisers sponsor publishers’ Moments and Amazon already sells more ads than Snap & Twitter.
Here’s what’s new from 01/29/18- 02/02/18.
Instagram’s Carousel ad format is coming to Instagram Stories
Instagram is announcing plans to bring its Carousel Ads
into Stories. That means the ads in Stories are no longer limited to one piece of media (which could be a photo or a video) — they can now include three.
From a user perspective, you can interact with these ads the way you would with any other Instagram Story, pausing or swiping backward when there’s something interesting, or swiping forward when you’re ready to move on.
Instagram says it’s starting to test this with a handful of advertisers, including the Gap, Coca-Cola and Paramount, before rolling these capabilities out more broadly. You can see a sample ad from Gap on the Instagram blog.
Google has updated
its ads settings to let users mute ads they’ve seen too many times.
This applies primarily to remarketing ads. Google calls these “reminder” ads, and users can now mute reminder ads from specific advertisers when they become too repetitive.
A new section within Google’s ads settings, called “Your reminder ads,” allows users to see who is currently retargeting them with Google display ads. From there, users can mute advertisers individually.
When an advertiser is muted, the user will no longer see remarketing ads from them at all. It is not just a specific ad being muted in this case. Muting lasts for a limited time of 90 days, so advertisers will not be permanently blocked from remarketing to specific users.
Twitter now lets advertisers sponsor publishers’ Moments
The company announced
it’s offering brands the ability to sponsor Moments – the “Stories”-like feature that includes a series of tweets, often including images, GIFs and video – from select publishers.
The first Sponsored Moment is already live, Twitter says, and the feature is now broadly available to all publishers who participate in In-Stream Sponsorships worldwide.
Amazon Already Sells More Ads Than Snap And Twitter
Advertising is still just a small piece of Amazon’s growing empire. But “small” is relative. In 2017, the company’s ad business generated $2.8 billion
, making it bigger than the ad platforms managed by Twitter ($2 billion) and Snap ($800 million).
Only three online ad platforms outrank Amazon’s: Google, Facebook, and Oath.
The bulk of Amazon’s ad revenue is generated by placements within Amazon.com. For example, sellers pay to appear in search results, or display custom banners above the results.
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