Apr 19 Instagram and Snapchat Both Change Up Ad Options | Social You Should Know

Instagram Allows Links to Products While Snapchat Kills Brand Stories

Instagram is now running its first ad campaigns that allow brands to link to their products. This is all part of a larger ad strategy for Instagram, nicely described in this AdWeek article. If you’re interested, bring at least $200,000 for the opportunity. On the flip side, Snapchat killed their brand stories concept, first used by the horror movie Ouija. Clearly advertisers want to reach the millennial audience on Snapchat and are willing to pay to do so. Brands can get included in Snapchat Discovery (for upwards of $100,000 per day), but no doubt Snapchat will add other brand opportunities soon. We’ll let you know.

Wait, People Still Use Foursquare?

Maybe not as much as they used to, but Foursquare has amassed over 7.5 billion check-ins, in part by powering location for Pinterest and others. Now Foursquare is rolling out Pinpoint, which will allow brands including Google, Samsung, Choice Hotels and more to use location data for ad targeting across mobile devices and the rest of the web. Apparently, the folks at Yahoo like location data enough that they are reportedly looking to buy Foursquare. Foursquare has struggled to monetize over the years, but perhaps between Pinpoint and Yahoo, an answer will reveal itself. Wait, people still use Yahoo?

Yes, You Have to Pay Influencers

If you still don’t believe that you need to pay influencers, take a look at the following article. Leading YouTube channels can earn over $100,000 a month. Wondering why they didn’t use your free sample in their content? Everybody is still trying to monetize it and the best content producers are getting paid for their work. If you want to work with the best, you’ll need a fully disclosed payment as part of it, plus a strategy that makes the content make sense for the content producers’ audience. We do it every day with our new Carusele platform and it’s helping drive everything from buzz to measurable sales for our brands.

As a last bit of good news, I’m proud to say that Ignite Social Media is one of only 4 finalists worldwide for “Social Agency of the Year” in the Corporate Social Media Awards. The winner will be announced on June 15th in New York. Wish us luck!