Most of former Cascade titles on their own

Last year, publisher Cascade was taken over by Medialaan-De Persgroep. The new owner of the magazines Eos, Motoren & Toerisme, For Girls Only, Bahamontes & Primo finally sells most of the titles. Only Primo is included in the Medialaan-DPP portofolio. A non profit association, Eos Wetenschap, is taking Eos over in the aim of promoting science and technology in Flanders.

The remaining magazines:  Motoren & Toerisme, For Girls Only and Bahamontes will be owned by De Deeluitgeverij. Ad sales will be operated by this company.

New HLN App, 4 in 1

The new version of the HLN App (IOS & Android) consists of 4 topics: “News’, ‘Nearby’ ("In de buurt"), ‘Video’ & ‘Fun’. "News" will remain the biggest one, while the most innovative is the "Fun" channel, with over 30 games, quizz or puzzles "In de Buurt" covers granular local information. For "Video", new formats will be proposed. All current users will be automatically updated.

Medialaan-DPP annouces that viewability of ad formats has been enhanced in this new version. Daily reach of the App was over 400.000 users 12+ in March-April 2019 (source: CIM Internet).

More interactivity in paid Instagram stories

More than 500 million of Instagram accounts are using Instagram stories on a daily basis. This format allows brands to tell bigger and stronger messages. Every month, 60% of the branded accounts use an interactive element within their organic stories. It can be a hashtag, a mention or a poll sticker.

Today, Facebook offers the opportunity to introduce these elements within paid stories, and it starts with poll stickers.

Allowing interactivity adds a new dimension within paid stories;  it enhances engagement with brands.

Moreover, those stickers are a good way to increase the ad consumption. Ever since it was introduced, the video consumption has become 3 seconds longer in 9 out of 10 campaigns.

IGTV Ads are coming to Instagram

IGTV is a platform available since May 2018 on Instagram which allows users to post longer videos, up to 60 minutes. It is mainly used by influencers for behind the scenes, unpacking, styling advices, cooking recipes, travelling videos and many other topics requiring longer videos than the 120 seconds allowed in Instagram feed or Instagram stories.

Accessing IGTV is easy. You just need to connect to your Instagram account and to click on the IGTV logo on the top right of your screen. You can then enjoy all the videos of your favourite influencers and Instagram creators.

Until now, IGTV has mainly been used by advertisers in collaboration with influencers who would showcase or review their products. However, now it is also possible to create regular ads on IGTV.

IGTV ads consist of maximum 15 seconds videos as in-stream adverts. As IGTV display vertical videos, we warmly recommend to also use vertical videos for IGTV ads.

Improving Location Settings on Android

Even though Android and IOS are the two most popular mobile operating systems, their location settings work differently.

Android: you have an ON/OFF switch button that allows to decide if you want to share your location, or not.

IOS: you have the same options; share your location, or not, but you also have the additional option to decide if you want your location to be shared whenever the Facebook app is in use.

Therefore, it is not clear whether or not the location of Android users is tracked when they are using the Facebook app.

Facebook recently announced an update on how they collect and store the location information from users on Android.

With the new update, users will be able to choose if they want to share their location, even when they are not using the app (see screenshot below).

However, you will get a message from Facebook only if you activated the location feature in the past; Facebook will ask if you wish to keep your location information like this, or if you whish to switch it off.

If you have never turned the location feature in the past, it will remain on off unless you decide to turn it on willingly.