Pinterest Launches Promoted Video for Brands

 
interest rolls out Promoted Video, available only on mobile devices, to make them an even better marketing platform for brands. The trend toward video advertising with social media platforms and the internet in general continues with this Pinterest announcement. According to business intelligence firm L2, Marketers are projected to spend $12.82 billion on internet video advertising by 2018, which is up from $7.7 billion spent in 2015. All of the other major social platforms, Facebook, YouTube, SnapChat, Instagram and Twitter have already launched video ad platforms. It's about time for Pinterest to jump in, especially considering its focus on ecommerce.
Pinterest, being a very visual medium and already brand focused seems to be a perfect match for video advertising. "Over 100 million people around the world come to Pinterest every month to discover ideas to try," said Pinterest Product Manager Mike Bidgoli in a post. "One of the best tools for bringing those ideas to life is video, so it’s no surprise this format has been popular on Pinterest. In the last year alone, we’ve seen a 60% increase in videos on Pinterest featuring everything from workouts and home projects to hair & beauty tutorials. That’s why we’re excited to roll out Promoted Video."
Bidgoli noted that of the 100 million monthly Pinterest visitors, 55% use the platform to find or shop for products, according to the 2016 Internet Trends Report. Only 12% of people view other social media platforms as places for ecommerce. Pinterest clearly sees its future revenue source coming from video advertising.

Pinterest has tied Promoted Video with its Featured Pins product in order to differentiate itself from other social platforms that are focused on just views. "While other platforms primarily offer video views, we've coupled Promoted Video with featured Pins below the video," said Bidgoli. "Now the 67% of people who say videos on Pinterest inspire them to take action can experience your brand and then simply click below to do more with your products and services."
Pinterest won't auto-play their video ads in a users feed, it will first play a Cinematic Pin format that they already have to give users a silent teaser of the marketing video. Once people tap on the Pin the full video will open up and automatically start playing with sound. Businesses can run video ads as long as 5 minutes, infomercial style. It will be interesting to see if Pinterest is actually planning on the long-form video marketing concept because of its proven success on TV of driving actual sales. For instance, a person perusing cooking posts could be presented with the Copper Chef ad. Well it convert as good as it does on TV? If it does Pinterest will have discovered a marketing gold mine.
According to Bidgoli, Pinterest will charge marketers based on impressions of the preview Pin on a CPM basis and not just for after click video views. Advertisers will see both the impression numbers for their teaser gif video views, the number of clicks the teaser Pin received, the number of times their full video was viewed at least partially and breakdowns on how far people watched the video (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) and how many clicks the Featured Pin under the video received.


A Millward Brown study commissioned by Pinterest found that Old El Paso Promoted Video ads were 4x more memorable than a non-video ad. At launch, Pinterest has partnered with bareMInerals, PURINA, kate spade, Lionsgate and BEHR to proved the value of Promoted Video. "We’ve run several campaigns with Pinterest and consider video a natural evolution on how we want to connect with our Pinterest audience," said Meredith Schaffner, Marketing Manager, Old El Paso. "Our customers come to Pinterest with high intent and the ability to show a recipe and our products through video is a unique opportunity to drive higher performance."
Video Advertising Trend Toward Social
At Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women International Summit in London, Nicola Mendelsohn, VP EMEA at Facebook, predicted that the Facebook newsfeed will be all video in 5 years. "It will definitely be mobile. It will probably be all video," Mendelsohn said. "I just think if we look, we already are seeing a year on year decline in text. We're seeing a massive increase as I've said on both pictures and video. So yeah, if I was having a bet, I would say video, video, video."
During Facebook's July 2016 earning call, Facebook executives predicted their future will be video, "We see a world that is video first, with video at the heart of all of our apps and services," said Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerburg. ""Over the past six months we have been particularly focused on Live video. Live represents a new way to share what's happening in more immediate and creative ways."
2016 has been the year of not only more spending on video ads, but a movement of dollars from TV to internet video, following consumers wherever they are. In May for instance, Magna Global, which buys ads for Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Fiat and others announced at NewFront that they have agreed to buy $250 million in video ads from YouTube. But that's not the story, it's that Magna is shifting these ad dollars from its clients TV budgets.
Also at the NewFronts, YouTube announced a new way for marketers to take advantage of suddenly viral videos called Breakout Videos, which is part of Google Preferred allowing advertisers to reach the top 5% of videos created by YouTube stars. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki stated, "This will allow marketers to feature their brands alongside the next big thing".
Video is also becoming big on Twitter where tweets have incredibly increased by over 50% since the start of 2016!

Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/pinterest-launches-promoted-video-brands-2016-08/

Google Rolls Out Campaign Drafts and Experiments in AdWords

 

 

Google announced that over the coming weeks, it will roll out campaign drafts and experiments in AdWords to help advertisers test changes to campaigns, measure results, and apply the changes accordingly.
With Drafts, advertisers can prepare and review multiple changes to an existing campaign before actually implementing them.
"For example, let’s say you want to increase mobile bids for ad groups with strong mobile conversion rates," explains AdWords product manager Pallavi Naresh. "You can create a draft of your campaign and set different mobile bid adjustments for those ad groups — without impacting your campaign. If you’re happy with the changes in your draft, you can apply them directly to your original campaign."
"Experiments lets you test changes to your campaigns in a controlled environment," Naresh adds. "Let’s say you want to see how your new mobile bid adjustments perform compared to your original settings. First, create a draft with your new mobile bid adjustments. Then, create an experiment from that draft to test those changes against your current bidding strategy. You decide how much traffic (and budget) to split between your experiment and original campaign, and how long you’d like the experiment to run."
As campaign drafts and experiments roll out, they'll be available for Search and Search Network with Display Select campaigns.

Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum. 

Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/google-rolls-out-campaign-drafts-and-experiments-in-adwords-2016-02/

Google Gets Rid Of Right-Side Search Ads

Going forward, Google will reportedly no longer show ads on the right side of its search results as it has done as long as AdWords has been a thing. Once a global roll-out is complete, desktop users will stop seeing ads in this area unless it's a query where Google is showing Product Listing Ads (PLAs) or Knowledge Panel ads.
Other than that, all search ads will appear at the top and bottom of the page. In some cases, Google will show four ads at the top rather than the standard three.
You might say that's a lot of ads "above the fold" in relation to non-ad content (something Google has historically frowned upon when it comes to other websites).
Though some users have been seeing the change, and Google has been testing it for years, Google hasn't made an official announcement about it. The company did, however, confirm the roll-out to Search Engine Land on Friday.
Regarding the fourth ad, the company is quoted as saying, "We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”
As you would expect, a lot of people aren't happy about the change. Many have seen better conversions from the right-side ads, and some claim their conversion rates have already plummeted as Google has begun the roll-out.

Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow Chris on Twitter, on StumbleUpon, on Pinterest and/or on Google: +Chris Crum. 

Reference:  http://www.webpronews.com/google-gets-rid-of-right-side-search-ads-2016-02/