101 News Podcast Season 2 Episode 5
Welcome back to 101 NEWS, the podcast within a podcast bringing you the latest news and updates from the Marketing world. Our main podcast also has a lot of content covering fantastic tips, hacks and other bits to help you accelerate your strategy.
This week, we will be covering Instagram’s cheeky unskippable ads, YouTube’s multiple thumbnail testing and the sale of the Social Media app, BeReal.
Unskippable Ads on Instagram
It seems that Instagram is testing ads that appear at the bottom of your friend’s stories, and they aren’t removable. 404 Media reports that ads were spotted showcasing a game called ‘Super Rumble’, which is a game from Meta’s virtual reality platform.
Instagram has been recently experimenting with unskippable ads, which means that you can’t scroll past or tap off them until a set timer has counted down. The ads pop up in a way that means the user is likely to accidentally click on them. It seems like ads are taking over – Black Mirror anyone?
YouTube’s A/B Testing on Thumbnails
Video platform YouTube have finally rolled out the ability for creators to test and compare how multiple video thumbnails perform, a bit like A/B testing on paid ads.
The company announced the update in early June, with the feature being labelled as the ‘Thumbnail Test & Compare’. Creators can test up to three thumbnails on one video, which will be shown evenly amongst viewers and then a thumbnail is selected based on which one of the three generates the most watch time.
This could be a fantastic tool for creators to get to know what makes their audience tick!
The Sale of BeReal
Social Media platform, BeReal, has been sold to Voodoo – a French video game developer for $500 million.
The new owner plans to launch ads in the app (see what we mean about ads), and wants to grow the active user base to 100 million. It seems as if the current owners have struggled to maintain a growth momentum, with restricted monetisation capacity.
We will soon see whether Voodoo manage to almost double the current active user rate!
Meme of the Week
I can’t say I’m a fan of clowns, but this week’s meme of the week has forced me to face my fears. Art the Clown, a famous clown from the slasher film, Terrifier 2, has been storming social media in a comical way. The clown’s rapid change of facial expressions went viral on TikTok, being used as an exploitable.
This means that the footage of the clown changing its face from a ‘caught-in-the-act’ look to a sinister smile has been paired with different captions or contexts to achieve the desired humorous effect.
That concludes this week’s roundup!
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