Social Shorts: Twitter Next, Facebook pushes Story Ads, Adobe’s latest consumer survey

This collection of social media marketing and new hire announcements is a compilation of the past week’s briefs from our daily Marketing Land newsletter. Click here to subscribe and get more news like this delivered to your inbox every morning.

Twitter rebrands and expands in-house brand strategy team. Twitter has given its in-house brand strategy team a new name, Twitter Next, and has expanded the group to include a newly-formed lab made up of technologists, program managers and designers.

“Through data-driven experimentation, Twitter Next’s new lab has already stewarded more than 200 custom programs in 2019, with advertisers across all industries globally,” writes Alex Josephson, the head of Twitter Next. He said his team is focused on “re-imagining the technological possibilities” of the platform.

Work so far has included campaigns for KFC, BET and Samsung Spain. “I’m not sure we’ve ever seen one of our campaign messages — in this case #BatallaQLED — more talked about on Twitter,” said Samsung Spain CMO Alfonso Fernandez, “I think of Twitter as more than just a media platform; the team at Twitter Next are truly creative partners for us.”

The Twitter Next group also rolled out a beta of its Brand Reminders platform, a tool that lets brands set up auto-reply campaigns to alert fans when new content has been released. The tool has been piloted by more than 70 advertisers who have used it for sales promotions, movie trailer drops and TV program announcements.

“Stories Can Do It,” says Facebook’s marketing team. Facebook is rolling out a global campaign to drive adoption of its Story Ad format. The company kicked off the “Stories Can Do It” campaign during the first day of Advertising Week with OOH ads and live activations planned during the advertising event this week. The company is also running ads across Facebook, Instagram and other digital channels and in print in North America. As part of the campaign, Facebook said it is launching a website built around Story Ads, “With creative inspiration, client success stories, best practices and resources for building stories ads.”  During its first-quarter earnings call in April, Facebook reported more than one billion Stories are shared across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp per day.

It looks like Reddit’s redesign worked. Reddit COO Jen Wong said the site has experienced a lift in page views and time spent on its desktop and mobile platforms since the company completely overhauled its site last year. “We’ve seen significant growth in user engagement and conversations — demonstrating that users are deepening their relationships with each other and with Reddit communities,” writes Wong on Reddit’s Upvoted blog. Reddit partnered with YPulse to survey its Gen Z and Millennial social media users, surveying more than 1,300 people between the ages of 13 and 39. “What we discovered was that community plays a unique and valuable role in the lives of our users,” writes Wong.

Hiring is about to get hot on LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn’s internal data from the last five years, October is the busiest month for job postings on the site. “There are more available job postings on LinkedIn in October than any other month,” writes Catherine Fisher, LinkedIn’s head of global integrated marketing and communications. The company reports it currently has more than 20 million jobs listed on the site, and that 89% of hiring managers claim it takes less than four weeks to fill a role. For professionals searching for a new position, candidates who are among the first 25 to apply to a job posting are three times more likely to win the job. “Being an early applicant gives you a clear advantage,” writes Fisher. 

Tens of thousands of apps suspended. Facebook VP of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong published an update on Facebook’s app review process and all the company has done to block malicious apps since news broke more than a year ago that Cambridge Analytica had used an app to harvest user data. The number of apps suspended by Facebook has grown from the 400 it reported in August of last year to now tens of thousands.

“It is important to understand that the apps that have been suspended are associated with about 400 developers. This is not necessarily an indication that these apps were posing a threat to people. Many were not live but were still in their testing phase when we suspended them,” writes Archibong.

He notes that it is not unusual for developers to submit multiple apps that never get rolled out — or the developer fails to respond to Facebook’s request for more information, resulting in the app being suspended. Archibong said that only in a few cases have apps been banned entirely. On top of Facebook’s recent updates to app reviews, a process that involves much more strict guidelines than before, developers also must now comply with the FTC’s rules which require developers to certify they are in compliance with Facebook’s policies on an annual basis.

Facebook greenlighted 2 new apps for teens. Facebook’s NPE (New Product Experimentation) Group, which is tasked with building new products from scratch, recently released two new Facebook-owned apps — Bump and Aux, according to The Information. The apps were both made available via Apple’s Canadian App Store in August and looked to be aimed at teen users. The Daily Dot reported the Bump app is designed as a “matchmaking app for connecting students from the same school” and that the Aux app, which has already been removed from the app store, integrated with Spotify and Apple Music. 

Indicators

Adobe: Consumers more likely to blame the website than the brand when ads are poorly placed

Adobe surveyed more than 4,000 consumers to find out how different generations respond to brand safety issues. When asked who was at fault for bad ad placement, Baby Boomers were more likely to blame everyone (the brand, digital platforms and ad agencies), while the other three groups — Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X — were more likely to hold the website that ran the ad responsible.

An alarming number of Gen Z (63%) and Millennials (52%) claimed they were unaware of news stories about personal data misuse, or believe the stories are inflated or manufactured, according to the survey findings.

“This appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle with participants, but distinctly younger generations, feeling vulnerable and easily misled online,” writes Adobe, “Yet, despite feeling these concerns, younger consumers may either be complacent or indifferent to the risks posed by personal data misuse or to determine the veracity of data leaks, social engineering, and other forms of online manipulation.”

The Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers surveyed for the Adobe report all ranked Facebook as their most used social network, while Instagram was the most popular social network among the Gen Z crowd, followed by Snapchat (which didn’t even make it into the top three for the other generational groups).

On the Move

Stephanie Fried has been named CMO for the global entertainment platform Fandom. She will lead the company’s brand vision, and oversee consumer and sales marketing, research, events and communications. “Hundreds of millions of users around the world use Fandom’s platforms to interact with like-minded fans in communities best suited for them. Stephanie will help further this mission by deepening fans’ connection to each other, and to the films, shows and games they love,” said Fandom CEO Perkins Miller. Fried comes to Fandom after serving as the EVP of marketing research and analytics for Condé Nast.

Arby’s has promoted its CMO Jim Taylor to president. He will succeed Rob Lynch, who left his leadership role at Arby’s to take on the CEO role at Papa John’s, and will report to Inspire Brands CEO Paul Brown. “During Jim’s time at Arby’s, he has helped introduce one of the most dynamic and innovative product pipelines in our industry and has a proven track record of driving strong sales for the brand,” said Brown. Before being named Arby’s CMO, Taylor was the senior VP of brand advertising and activation and served as a senior VP of product development and innovation for the restaurant chain. Before Arby’s, Taylor was the senior VP of enterprise strategy, innovation and marketing for Darden Restaurants. 

Hilton Hotels has named Julie Nestor as its new VP of marketing and ecommerce for its Asia-Pacific Region. In her new role, Nestor will be relocating to Hilton Hotel’s Singapore offices. “Hilton is on a huge growth trajectory with a massive pipeline of new hotels, so it’s a really exciting time to be joining and I’m really looking forward to being involved in the hospitality industry,” said Nestor. Prior to joining Hilton Hotels, Nestor served as eBay’s CMO, and previously held the role of VP of consumer marketing at American Express.