July 21, 2017

The Figaro Digital Digest: 21st July 2017

It’s the start of summer and how better to enjoy the not-so-sunny weather than by sitting back and relaxing while catching up on the latest industry news? Here’s our Figaro Digital Digest for the last week.

The World Celebrates World Emoji Day

July 17th 2017 was World Emoji Day and many a movie buff rejoiced when it was announced there would be an upcoming film based around the pictures entitled ‘The Emoji Movie’.

However, despite the upcoming comedy, a recent study has revealed emoji aren’t as popular as they once were in the marketing world. Mailjet has found that, open rates slowed for emails that use emoji in their subject lines. Brits are now 33 per cent less likely to open an email using a crying emoji in its title than an email without it.

Although us Brits and the Americans are losing interest, emoji are on the rise in France and Germany. The study has revealed that the winking face and sunglasses emoji increased 10 per cent and 23 per cent respectively here.

Snapchat Releases Snap Publisher

Snapchat has revealed its browser-based ad creation tool which will allow you to flip videos and images which you can either upload or pull from a website. This is great news for advertisers, as it will allow videos used across all other panels to fit within the Snapchat app.

Further to this, Snap Publisher will also cater for advertisers who don’t have images or videos with 13 templates that utilise generic images and videos of young people.

Native Ad Buying Up 74 Per Cent and Programmatic Down 12 Per Cent

MediaRadar has released a report that has revealed programmatic advertising dropped in the US during Q1 2017. During the same time, the study found native ad placements became increasingly common. Why? Well, the researchers claim it is due to brand safety concerns and transparency for advertisers. The study also claims that native, email and mobile are up due to their strong audience impact.

Facebook is Testing Ads in Marketplace

Marketplace has been a popular addition to the Facebook app, so it’s no surprise that the social giant has decided to test dynamic product ads among its listings.
Michelle Bonner Techel, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook, said:

“We are starting a small test that shows ads to a small percentage of people using Marketplace in the U.S. and will evaluate the response before determining how we move forward,”

These ads will look similar to the now square, organic listings and will feature just one product pulled from an advertiser’s catalogue. They’ll also be labelled as ‘Sponsored’ and will not appear in any category specific filtered feeds.

Google Announces Machine Learning Algorithm for its App

Google has a new feed experience which it says will make ‘it easier than ever to discover, explore and stay connected to what matters to you – even when you don’t have a query in mind.’. Why? Well, Google wants its app to be the ‘one place to stay in the know about exactly what matters to you’ so it has introduced machine learning algorithms in order to further improve its user experience.

This is now available for Android and iOS users in the US and will be rolled out internationally over the next few weeks.

Will you be watching the Emoji Movie when it comes out? And, what about testing out Snap Publisher? Let us know your thoughts by tweeting @Figaro_Digital.