It’s Instagram’s world in this week’s serve of digital updates and people have mixed feelings about all of the new changes! With Instagram’s carousels being expanded to up to 20 slides, saying goodbye to square feed posts and Meta removing targeted exclusions for campaigns, it seems like the end of an era! There’s lots to get into in this blog so there’s no time to waste!

What’s new with Meta?

Meta Removes Detailed Targeting Exclusions

Meta has quietly removed the option to exclude specific demographics, interests, or behaviours from your ad audience. This change is based on Meta’s research, which shows that these exclusions actually harm ad performance. While it might seem counterintuitive, Meta’s advanced AI systems are now better at targeting ads without your input, potentially leading to improved results.

Our tip / key features:

• Improved performance: Meta says that, in their testing, the median cost per conversion for ad campaigns improved by 22.6% when removing detailed targeting exclusions from the mix. This implies that even if you’re sure about who to exclude from seeing your content, their algorithms are likely to be more effective at reaching the right people. Go figure!
• Existing Campaigns: Live campaigns that are currently using exclusions will continue to run until January 31, 2025, but new campaigns will no longer have this option.
• Alternatives: Meta clarifies that advertisers can continue to leverage other exclusion tools, such as custom audiences and account-level advertising settings, to limit ad reach based on brand protection or employment considerations. This update just removes the ability to have exclusion on a campaign-to-campaign basis.

Recommendations for business owners: If you currently already have campaigns with exclusions that are performing well don’t feel pressured to take them down straight away! However, for the future of your meta campaigns, we suggest you focus on creating high-quality content and building relationships with your audience, as Meta’s AI will handle ad targeting.

Want some help running your Paid Ads? Enquire now and never worry Meta updates again.

What’s new with Instagram?

Instagram’s “Insights” Gets a Makeover 📈

Instagram is changing how it measures success! Now, whether you post a photo, video, or Reel, the number of “views” your content gets will be the main metric to see how well it’s performing. For reels, Views will measure the number of times a reel starts to play/replay and for other non-reel posts, it measures how many times it appears on users’ screens. This update means that the same metric is being used across all post types and therefore can be used to compare the performances of your posts, regardless of their format!

Key features:

• Reels: For reels, the Plays metric will be replaced by Views. This transition will occur over the next month.
• Non-Reels: Views will be the primary metric to measure content performance, replacing Accounts reached (which will still be tracked and available in Insights). “Impressions” is also to be phased out of insights and will only be available in Meta ads Manager.

Recommendations for Business Owners: We think this update will make comparing the different formats of Instagram posts a lot easier to see whether your posts, reels or stories receive more “Views” and how these Views translate to engagement or conversion. Other than that, iIt doesn’t seem like these changes will affect the function of using your Instagram insights but it’s helpful to note the changes that are happening so you can be across them when they are carried out!

Quick Fire Instagram Updates For You!

There is SO much going on in the world of Instagram updates so we thought we’d do a little “dump” of all of the recent additions we’ve seen on our feeds! So here we go!

Update Dump:

1. Send new posts directly to friends🫂: We noticed this one when posting on our Instagram and seeing a pop-up suggesting to send our post directly to friends. This little addition further enforces the messaging we’ve seen from Instagram they they have been focusing on personal connection and one-on-one DMs between their users.

2. Square Posts No More! ◻️: We have been seeing these updates all over our TikTok feeds but it still doesn’t seem real! Many users have reported seeing portrait layouts on their feeds like in the example below! This has created cropping issues for users who had purposely framed their posts to leave out the top or bottom of the photo from their feed! Even if this hasn’t rolled out on your feed, we’d definitely take notice of this so you know what your feed might look light portrait-ified!

3. Pack More into your Posts: Carousels can now have up to 20 photos or videos, so you can share more content or bigger product showcases. We had noticed Instagram trying out longer carousels, as back in March they let some people add up to 15 photos or videos instead of the usual 10. This update is so welcome from us as sometimes that extra slide is SO needed for our educational posts.

4. Go for Gold 🏅: To celebrate the Olympics and Paralympics, Instagram has been turning Notes gold if they use specific words! If you want to test it out and engage in the Olympic and Paralympic conversation use one of these words or emojis in your notes: Gold, Olympics, Olympian, Podium, Victory, Media, Goat, 🏅, 🥇, 🐐.

Want to take Instagram off your hands? Enquire now and have a month’s worth of content scheduled at all times, your comments replied to and NEVER have to struggle with content ideas again!

What’s new with YouTube?

👀 Tests spotted on YouTube this week:

• YouTube is trying out a new way to show ads during live streams! Instead of interrupting the action with a full-screen ad, they’re testing smaller ads that appear in a corner of the screen. This means you can keep watching your favourite streamer without missing a beat, and creators can still earn money from ads.

What’s new with TikTok?

TikTok’s New Feature “Spotlight” Shines on Movies and TV 🎬

TikTok has launched a new tool called Spotlight to help movies and TV shows reach a wider audience. It gathers popular TikTok videos about a specific title and presents them in a dedicated space. This allows fans to discover more about the show or movie, connect with other fans, and easily purchase tickets or stream it. While this is a premium service, it offers studios a powerful way to harness the popularity of TikTok and engage with their fanbase.

What you need to know: Currently, it’s a premium service with a premium price tag, so not quite accessible to everyone on the platform yet but we’ll be sure to watch this space to see whether this kind of format expands to regular businesses.

Struggling to get results with TikTok? Enquire now and we’ll prepare a strategic content calendar, along with direction for filming, editing all of your TikToks, posting and community management. And we provide a monthly report so you can see exactly how it’s contributing to the bigger picture.

With all of those Instagram updates it will be interesting to see how users respond to their familiar platforms constantly changing as it’s getting hard to keep up! Feel free to sign up for our weekly summary here so you never miss the best updates. AND don’t forget, if you do miss out you can always go back to last weeks blog posts here.

XOXO

OMD SQUAD