The Trending Report: May Edition
By Cassey Deveau
We all enjoyed old favourites like It’s Gonna Be May, and May the Fourth Be With You, but from IGTV’s glow-up, Alexa’s new secretive skills, a new New Coke, and Google taking us on a trip, we’ve got all the new news that was #trending in May.
Social
IGTV got a glow-up to try and increase usage of the slow-to-adopt platform. The new style looks very similar to the Snapchat discover page. Instagram has done away with the categories and the lower section of the screen featuring categories, opting for a singular feed of algorithmically-defined content that plays through, one-by-one, while it’s also added larger video tiles which you scroll through vertically.
Instagram also unveiled a special curated account called @Shop that brings together posts from online merchants that sell products through the app. @Shop aims to showcase top shopping categories including fashion, beauty and home decor. Feel jeans, Glossier Play Colorslide and Mented Cosmetics are among the emerging brands that Instagram plans to highlight with the new account. The account already has almost 100K followers.
Facebook got called out again, but this time they were betrayed by one of their own. Co-founder Chris Hughes claims that Facebook has grown too big and powerful, and urged it’s time to break up Facebook before it’s too late. In a lengthy opinion piece for the New York Times, he argued that the company gives too much power to founder Mark Zuckerberg. He has called for Facebook to be broken up, citing the FTC’s decision to allow Facebook to take over Instagram and WhatsApp as a huge mistake. You can read the full piece here.
Facebook has also reinstated its “View as Public” feature which they had to remove in 2018 due to security issues. They’ve also reportedly been developing new stickers for their Facebook Stories including “Link” and “Mention”.
YouTube is adding new still image ads. The platform announced it will soon provide non-video advertisers with a new still image option that will appear within YouTube home feeds. Called Discovery Ads, the new option will use audience targeting to display your ads to relevant users, based on their activity. YouTube is also reportedly testing a new tool to automatically generate 6-second ad variants from longer videos for use in YouTube’s ‘Bumper’ format — without the advertiser having to actually create those shorter clips themselves.
Tech
Alexa is learning to keep a secret with the addition of new security features from Amazon. In addition to the inclusion of a built-in camera shutter on the new smart displays they announced an update that allows users to delete voice recordings with an Alexa command of “Alexa, delete what I said today” or “Alexa, delete what I just said”.
Google’s new Translatotron converts one spoken language to another, no text involved. A new research project from Google takes spoken sentences in one language and outputs spoken words in another — but unlike most translation techniques, it uses no intermediate text, working solely with the audio. This makes translation quick, but more importantly lets it more easily reflect the cadence and tone of the speaker’s voice.
Google’s giant gallery ads for search are coming. Advertisers using these will be able to feature up to eight images in gallery ads — Google’s new mobile search ad format. Users can swipe through the images or click one to expand the gallery into a vertical view that users can swipe down. A call to action to go to the advertiser’s site appears at the end of the gallery.
Disney has taken control of Hulu with majority share as they aim to become their own player in the streaming world.
Reporting & Analytics
Following a prolonged goodbye, Google+ has officially been put to rest. Google is now testing a new G Suite app named Currents — a product developed to fill the Google+ gap that was left behind.
The Google My Business product catalog is now available for business view on mobile and desktop. Still in beta testing mode, the catalog enables businesses to showcase products you sell in-store, in the products section of Google My Business.
Content Marketing
Netflix & Coca-Cola are hitting us hard with some nostalgia marketing to bring back New Coke for Season 3 of Stranger Things. The beverage company tweeted that it will pop open a limited release of New Coke as part of a promotion of the new season. The limited-supply run will be available in the company’s online store and Coke will be setting up some free vending machines filled with New Coke in select cities.
Podcasts are taking the content marketing world by storm right now, and podcast ads are projected to grow to 4.5% of global audio ad spending by 2022. 78% of podcast listeners don’t mind ads, and many of those listeners go on to look into ad products and make a purchase. This is a great opportunity for businesses to reach a very specific audience and make the most of ad dollars as they try to move off the feed.
P.S. you should totally listen to our brand new podcast, re:VERB.
Travel
Google is making moves to become a huge player in the travel industry. They’re essentially becoming a virtual travel agent, offering hotels, flights, experiences, and trip combinations that include all of the above. The first move was to launch Google Flights in 2011. Next, they revamped their Google Hotels page to be better integrated with maps in 2018, and then earlier this year evolved the way their hotel search works, especially on mobile, with better price filtering, easier-to-find amenity information, and a seamless way to purchase directly in the platform. A new deals filter uses machine learning to highlight hotels where one or more of Google’s partners offer rates that are significantly lower than the usual price for that hotel or similar hotels nearby. Wondering who these partners are? They’re advertisers, and that’s where Google is making money off the platform.
The latest move by Google to position themselves as a big leader in the industry is launching Google Travel. This is huge. It’s a desktop website that puts flights, hotels and vacation packages, as well as a variety of trip-planning tools and recommendations, all on one page. The features are also available in Google Search and Google Maps and users have the ability to track prices on any of these.
Booking.com is dropping the hotel booking requirement to book tours and activities. After acquiring tours and activities software provider FareHarbor last year and launching options to book activities in 150 cities, Booking.com is expected to announce that it is debuting an offering in 10 European and Middle Eastern cities that enables customers to book tours and attractions on a standalone basis without having first to book a hotel room. The pilot program, available in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, Vienna, Prague, Edinburgh, and Dubai, is available on city pages on the site, and offers everything from a skip-the-line ticket for Madame Tussauds Amsterdam to museum tours, and hop-on-hop-off bus and boat tours. The listings are available in 43 languages.
Cassey is a Paid Social Media and Content Coordinator with VERB Interactive — a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.
