Welcome to this week's edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media.
On this week's Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore Facebook Showcase video ads and fan subscriptions with special guests Andrea Vahl and Owen Video.
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For this week's top stories, you'll find timestamps below that allow you to fast-forward in the replay above.
Facebook Announces Facebook Showcase for Premium Video Advertising: Facebook debuted Facebook Showcase, a new premium video ad program that gives online video and TV ad buyers participating in the upfront selling cycle new opportunities to reach their target audiences on Facebook. (5:15)
Facebook’s video ecosystem is growing with a diverse mix of content from original series to creator content, and today, we're introducing a new premium video ad program.
Posted by Facebook Business on Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Facebook Cuts Portion of News Programming on Facebook Watch: Along with Facebook Showcase, Facebook also announced that it's being “more selective and careful” about the content it funds and has opted not to renew two-thirds of its news programming. Reports suggest this is due to lagging viewership. However, Facebook is still committed to developing Facebook Watch programming, including a new animated comedy series and a reality TV series with audience participation and voting. (12:47)
Publishing sources stressed that Facebook is still paying for news shows on Watch — the company is just being more selective and careful about what it funds going forward. https://t.co/cdBDlA5JjO
— Digiday (@Digiday) February 26, 2019
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Facebook Clear History Tool Due to Launch at the End of 2019: At a tech and media conference earlier this week, Facebook CFO David Wehner stated that Facebook will launch its long-awaited Clear History tool later this year. This feature was initially announced at the company's annual F8 conference in May 2018 as a response to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. At the time, it was described as working similarly to clearing one's browser history. (18:00)
Facebook will launch long-awaited clear history feature this year, and it could hurt ad targeting https://t.co/8aVQahdbw1
— Salvador Rodriguez 🕷 (@sal19) February 26, 2019
While the company hasn't yet confirmed how the Clear History tool will actually work, there's concern that it could have a substantial impact on Facebook's ability to target ads and generate revenue should enough users actively remove information collected about their online activity.
Facebook Policy Document Establishes Fees for Fan Subscriptions Feature: A policy document obtained and published by TechCrunch reveals that Facebook plans to take a cut of up to 30% of subscription revenue minus fees from its Patreon-like experimental Fan Subscriptions feature. (27:19)
Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5% https://t.co/4fQ5plh9o7 by @joshconstine pic.twitter.com/hgThej1wjS
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) February 26, 2019
The terms for fan subscriptions aren't publicly available and the feature is only visible to Facebook pages that have been invited to test it. Facebook notes that no fees will be collected initially but it reserves the right to change them at any time, as well as retain the rights to the creator content.
YouTube Clarifies Policies Around Online Giveaways on the Platform: Over the past few weeks, the YouTube community has noticed that giveaway videos on YouTube are being flagged. In a response via tweet posted earlier this week, YouTube confirms that giveaways aren't being banned from the platform. However, it's cracking down on the practice of linking to external websites that are solely designed to drive up engagement metrics. (41:20)
Giveaways are still allowed! What we don't allow is linking to sites that solely aim to drive up subscriptions or other engagement metrics (views, likes..) through external contests or other means. Since that's the case with this site, it violates our external links policy.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 25, 2019
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