Instagram to hide "likes"

In order to prevent competition, Instagram is said to decrease the visibility of "like" values. Actually only the content owner would see how many "likes" he/she gets, but not the community. Of course, "likes" would continue to fuel the algorithms, but the intention is to reduce the pressure on "how many likes you get for your post" vs "how many I get for mine". This change is reported effective in Canada (where it was implemented first), Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Ireland and Italy.

Pinterest advertising now available in Belgium

According to the Global Web Index (Q1-2019), Pinterest has a penetration of 11.5% among Internet users aged 16-64 years. It has been finally made available to Belgian advertising.

Pinterest is a social network where people look for visual inspirations in all domains of their life (fashion, home decoration, travel destinations, make up, design ideas and many more topics). You can create your inspirational boards, classified by topic, to get to your life goals. You can create and share creative ideas and stay tuned on the latest creative trends. This platform is a little bit skewed towards female audiences.

Pinterest feed looks like many other social networks, where you can see posts (called "pins") from people and brands you follow. You can also use the search part of Pinterest, where you can look for specific creative inspirations. Finally, there is your personal space where you can create your creative boards and pin based on your own inspirations.

Advertising on Pinterest consists of promoted posts ("pins") in various formats: standard pin (image), promoted video, promoted app pin and promoted carrousel. These are available, either on the feed or in the search part of the platform. They look exactly like any other pins, it is just mentioned “promoted by” at the bottom of the ad.

Several targeting options do exist:

• Interest, based on what people like while browsing on their feed. An ad target that way will then appear on Pinterest feed.
• Keywords allow to reach people based on the keywords they are looking for while making a search on the platform. With this option, the ad will appear in the search part of the platform.
• Custom audiences based on a data base (for example e-mail addresses), visits on a given website, and look alike (people with similar profiles to visitors of a website or the database.

As it is the very beginning on Pinterest in Belgium, it is rather a matter of testing.

Screeninfluence: RTL to extend brands presence

IP/RTL Belgium has closed a deal with Stellar, a platform dedicated to influencers marketing. Their common objective is to develop a cross media proposal that will enable brands to be associated with the most active social media users from the RTL teams, regardless of their medium, radio, television, digital or social networks. This offer is called "Screenfluence" and will be launched in September, for the new schoolyear.

Rossel allies with Efluenz to develop influencer marketing

Rossel Advertising has closed a partnership deal with Efluenz, start-up specialized in influencer marketing. Their influencer portfolio consists of more than 800 people, mainly nano and micro-influencers. With that network, Efluenz already have realized around 30 campaigns such as Tomorrowland Winter.

The partnering between Efluenz and Rossel will provide  Rossel with a larger inventory with new advertising formats available.

With a large offer of influencers, Efluenz can match each brand with the right people to showcase it. It could be a good complement to a traditional advertising campaign.

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.