YouTube introduces Premiere to everyone, Video polls are coming to ads? Facebook is testing showcasing multiple brands in one post, SoundCloud moves to Instagram

YouTube introduces Premiere to everyone

This week YouTube announced that Premiere, their feature that they brought out back in June will now be openly available to all of its users around the world. This will primarily benefit creators as the feature can now create scheduled broadcasts in order to create viewing parties; this will in turn generate more interactions and engagements on their videos.

When a creator schedules a Premiere, a public landing page is automatically created, this will help to build up anticipation and hype for their new content. As well as this, when their fans come to watch a premiere, they will then be able to chat with other viewers and even the creator via the live chat option. The video of the new feature explains that:

“It’s as if a creator’s entire community is in one theatre together watching their latest upload.”

These Premieres that are scheduled will be labelled this way on YouTube, and the creators’ subscribers will receive a notification of the upcoming Premiere. Along with this, the viewers will get a notification thirty minutes before the video starts and when it goes live.

With the chat feature, when creators are interacting with their fans during a Premiere, their comments will appear at the top of the thread for a longer period of time so that the fans are aware of the creator’s presence. This is a big move towards communal viewing, with the introduction of live viewing, chats and audience participation in real time and it will be interesting to see where this ends up.

Video polls are coming to ads?

Facebook recently released their Live video polls earlier this month, and now they’re testing them out on video ads too. Facebook is running this new trial with a select few advertisers before widely releasing the new feature.

According to Social Media Today, Facebook has confirmed that the feature has been given to a select few advertisers, but there is no sign of when it will be released more widely. The new feature is being introduced to boost interactions and to make ads more “thumb stopping”.

It’s possible that this new feature is based on new research conducted by Facebook looking into the behaviour of its users and ad accounts over time. And that the value of polling is tremendous, with brands being forced to use the comments or reactions as poll features up until now.

Facebook is testing showcasing multiple brands in one post

It’s no mystery that Facebook is running out of advertising space and needs a solution to avoid cluttering up our feeds, and it looks as though they’ve solved the problem. They plan on sharing multiple brand ads in the same unit, in a sort of carousel format. The new feature is currently being tested in the US, UK and Canada and is encouraging brand collaborations.

According to Facebook, the multi-brand format allows for up to two different brands to be featured in one ad placement. It also confirmed that the advertisers will have to agree to appearing in the same ad together prior to the ad going live. The Product manager at Facebook explained that:

“We are conducting a small test that groups product recommendations from different advertisers into a single experience. We will evaluate if it creates value for people and businesses before deciding whether to expand it.”

This, however negative it may sound, could really benefit a lot of brands. It could lead to lower CPM and increase efficiency for smaller budgets, while also allowing brands to share ad space with those that compliment them.

SoundCloud moves to Instagram

The days of screenshots of your favourite songs or podcasts are no more, as SoundCloud has finally moved across to Instagram just like Spotify, almost. This week it was announced that SoundCloud would be allowing direct sharing to Instagram Stories via the IOS and Android apps. There is one slight difference between sharing a link for a song on SoundCloud and sharing a song from Spotify. You can only share a link for SoundCloud tracks, not the track itself; unlike with Spotify where users can play the song from Instagram, users will be redirected to SoundCloud to listen to the song.

This is great, as it will allow for new artists and podcasts to be discovered, and shared with friends much more easily. It will also allow for creators to promote their tracks via Instagram. Here’s how to do it:

1.Find a track you want to share

2.Tap the share icon at the bottom of your screen

3.Tap the Instagram icon or select “Share to Instagram Stories.”

4.Share the link with all your followers directly to your Instagram Story