Instagram & Twitter’s Cards: Next Frontiers in Advertising and Content Marketing

by Marcos Ortiz, Marcos Ortiz Valmaseda

If you read my last post about the Future of Marketing, you should know that Content Marketing is becoming in one of the first choices to create compelling Advertising campaigns to put Return on Investments (ROI) in a skyrocket. But the future is even bright right now with the last news related to Advertising from Instagram and Twitter teams.

Mobile devices are changing Advertising business for good (I think), and everybody who is immerse in this industry knows the key role which smartphones and tablets are playing here. Did you read the last report from comScore called “2013 Mobile Future in Focus”? If you haven’t read it, you should read it right now (I will be waiting for you here, jejeje). In the report, there are lot of insightful statistics who can help you a lot to get inside these trends and how Mobile world is changing almost every industry related to technology.

And who are big players in this space? Instagram with its 150 millions of users (128 millions after Facebook’s acquisition), and Twitter with more than 554,750,000 users; yes, there are serious contenders, I think. So, they could change the industry. But how? Keep reading

Instagram

Instagram have come with small but solid steps to become in an engaging platform for Advertisers. First the inclusion of Instagram’s Feed on the Web, then the inclusion of videos in the app, after that; the introduction of Instagram’s Web Embeds. All these cool things are becoming to Instagram in a remarkable platform for Visual-Based Advertising with the great power of images.

But, there is more. Instagram added to Emily White like her Director of Business Operations from Facebook, and me and many people think that this is an internal awesome hire for the team, for her vast experience first working at Google helping to make AdWords a reality, and after her roles at Facebook for Mobile platforms and Ads business divisions. She made the announcement like a pro, simple awesome !!!:

[caption id=”attachment_175165561" align=”aligncenter” width=”600"]

Emily announcing on her Instagram’s profile the exciting news[/caption]

But, she and Kevin’s team have a hard work in front of them, because there are several concerns about all this. For example: How to generate revenue from Advertisers and keep the platform simple, usable and UI-friendly like right now? This is a very hard question to answer but I think that they can do it, even begin to test it right now with selected brands like Nike (who has exactly 2,254,759 followers today), Pepsi, Samsung Mobile (one of the Advertising champions) and Target. Look Nike’s profile:

[caption id=”attachment_175165580" align=”aligncenter” width=”600"]

Nike’s profile in Instagram[/caption]

Another concern is: How to create engaging mobile-focused campaigns without to disturb to the users? There are several companies working on this, so why not rely in one of them like a partner to drive success? Names? I will let you three:

Based in the recent interview by the Washington Post, she said that Ads business could be rady to use in a year, so just a simple phrase for you Emily: WE WILL BE WAITING.

“Playing Cards” with Twitter

Another platform who is becoming an a great choice for Advertisers is Twitter with its new Cards offering. This is very good for the imminent IPO that Twitter’s management is planning for the next months, who could result in a massive valuation of the platform.

But, beyond that, they have amaze great partnerships with Media and Sports brands to drive its Marketing efforts, even, they have created several Twitter accounts in the platform for it:

and they added some valuable features and choices for Small Businesses too; so everybody can gain a benefit of these new things in the platform. Look a remarkable example:

“By utilizing Lead Generation Cards, @RockCreek generated over 1,700 new email contacts in less than one week.” https://t.co/PlvrVRt8ro

— Marcos Ortiz (@marcosluis2186) September 10, 2013 and this one:

A personal blog can be an avenue to build trust, enhance transparency, and amplify the executive voice http://t.co/OZQMAaCWOz

— KPMG (@KPMG) August 26, 2013

Conclusions

I think that this is just the beginning of something big in the Digital Advertising, so, Marketer, Marketing pro, CMO, you that love Marketing; you must keep a clinical eye above these platforms to figure out which is the best way to engage more users and to have a better Leads generation and a better Marketing ROI. Thanks a lot for reading.