Twitter is making itself more accessible to the visually impaired. The social network is in the middle of a big shift to more multimedia messages: More and more images, GIFs, videos and other embedded content are appearing in tweets. But this makes it more difficult to people who have sight problems and rely on accessibility […]
Online audio streaming platform SoundCloud has launched a new subscription service, SoundCloud Go, that provides ad-free access to an expanded music library for consumers using its app or online version. The service enables users to save audio offline, and grants access to extensive back-catalogues for three major labels and over 20,000 independent record companies. The […]
Although marketers know mobile is a strategic imperative, the vast majority still fail to strategically integrate it into their marketing mix, according to fresh findings from Forrester. Only 13% of marketers say they strategically integrate mobile systematically. Not surprisingly, therefore, only 27% of marketers surveyed by Forrester said the ROI of their mobile marketing campaigns […]
Ad industry sources reveal that Pinterest’s “long-awaited video ads” are here. “Pinterest had been considering how it could implement video ads for months,” noted Garett Sloane in a post for Digiday. “Promoted video pins are being tested among a small group of users, and internally at Pinterest, according to one source briefed on the tests.” […]
Chinese consumers enamored of the convenience and power of mobile payments learned this week that Samsung Electronics and China UnionPay are jointly launching Samsung Pay in China. Billed as being a “simple, safe and easy-to-use mobile payment service,” Samsung Pay works virtually anywhere you can swipe or tap your card in China. According to the […]
Snapchat has started testing ads that let marketers like AT&T attach branded articles containing text, images and GIFs to their 10-second video ads. Snapchat’s advertising business has only been around for about 17 months, and in that time its ad formats have been pretty basic: 10-second vertical videos slotted between posts in its Live and […]
Snapchat has launched ‘Chat 2.0’, a major update for the social app’s ‘Chat’ messaging functionality. The update introduces audio calling, 200 emoji-style stickers, and short video and audio ‘notes’, looping clips which can be up to 10 seconds long. Chat’s video calling feature has also been updated to be more intuitive. These changes bring Chat closer in line with Facebook’s […]
Instagram is extending the maximum length for videos from 15 seconds to 60, and enabling users to create single videos from multiple clips. These changes follow a 40 per cent increase in time spent watching videos on Instagram over the past six months. Longer videos have been available to advertisers since February, but will now […]
Mobile phones and tablets now account for 46 per cent of all viewing globally, according to a report from Telstra-owned premium video specialists Ooyala, up from 34 per cent in 2014. A large part of this is being led by certain APAC markets, according to the report, with five out of 15 APAC countries outperforming […]
Mobile ad spend is set to surge 35 per cent compared to 12 months earlier and surpass desktop media investment to hit £4.58bn in 2016, and account for 27 per cent of total UK media budgets, according to eMarketer. The research firm on March 10 released the numbers which show that the wider ‘digital’ category […]