Trump’s having troubles, Cheryl Cole is officially single again and (spoiler) Selasi got the boot on Bake Off, but what happened in the digital industry this week? Here are a few of the biggest digital stories:
Would You Purchase Gig Tickets or Order Food Over Facebook?
This week, Facebook announced a suite of new tools that they say will ‘make life easier and faster for businesses and people’. As part of Facebook’s aim to revamp its pages and events products, this new suite will allow users to book appointments, purchase event tickets and even order food through the platform.
Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Vice President of Engineering, Ads and Pages at Facebook explained:
“There’s a huge existing behavior of people going on the site and … trying to get information from a restaurant and, frankly, having a frustrating experience,” The changes are designed to provide “more value when you do connect with a business on Facebook.”
LinkedIn Endorsements Are Changing
Endorsements have long been LinkedIn’s way of allowing you to verify connections’ skills and improve their individual profile. Now the professional networking platform has announced it’s shaking things up a bit.
The new changes mean that featured endorsements are now based on the viewer’s own connections, while suggested endorsements will now be shown to the people who know you best. Yolanda Yeh, Product Manager at LinkedIn said:
”We’ve improved targeting to suggest endorsements to connections that know the skills and your work best. This means the right connections are much more likely to validate you for the skills that you want to be recognized for. Tip: Check that your skills are listed in order of the strengths you want to highlight and we’ll do the rest by targeting suggestions for those top skills.”
New Facebook Push Campaigns Now Out of Beta
Earlier this year, Facebook announced it would be releasing new customisable push campaigns, and this week the social network announced that these are now out of closed beta and are available to all businesses. There is also a redesigned targeting section too to make sure push notifications get the conversions they should.
The result? Well, Brian Ni claims push notifications could see retention rates rising by up to 180%.
The UK Spent £1.7billion on Mobile Ads in the First Half of 2016
We frequently hear that mobile is on the rise, but new figures show how quickly it is developing. A recent report reveals that UK mobile ad spend reached £1.7 billion in the first half of 2016 – 59% more than the year before.
£4.7 billion was spent on digital advertising as a whole in the first half of this year, and ad spend in search doubled, while display is up 50%.
Live Video Scheduling, Broadcast Sharing and Pre-Broadcast Lobbies Launch
Facebook has announced it will help broadcasters to plan and promote their live streams by helping brands to build audiences in waiting rooms, so as soon as they press play there are viewers.
That means you’ll no longer have to spontaneously begin streaming or have to preannounce your stream in a Facebook post in advance, making it easier to build an audience. This new service should be available to all within the coming weeks, including in third party Live API tools.
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