Snap Announces Lens Creative Partner Program to Boost Branded Lens Use

As Snapchat continues on its mission to find more ways to generate revenue, the platform is this week launching a new Creative Partner program to help advertisers connect with AR experts for Lens campaigns.

As explained by Snap:

"We're announcing the launch of a Lens Creative Partners program specific to building AR Lenses for brands. This group of certified creators spans large agencies and expert individuals who have been building engaging and immersive AR Lenses for Snap."

The initial collection of Lens Partners includes more than 30 certified creators - TechCrunch reports that the largest number of these providers are located within the U.S., followed by the U.K., then Canada and Australia.To gain Lens certification, Snap says that creators need to be both experienced in developing quality AR, and to have completed a "rigorous course about the development process, creative best practices, ad policies and buy models of sponsored AR Lenses on Snapchat". In other words, Snap's saying that these partners know what they're doing - you can see a full listing of Snap partner businesses here.

The idea is that this will encourage further AR campaign spend. While Snap Lenses are popular, they likely seem beyond the technical capacity of most advertisers, despite Snap opening up its Lens Studio tool to all last year.

By teaming up with an approved creative partner, many more brands will be able to utilize the option - if you've ever thought about using Snap Lenses in an ad campaign previously, but dismissed the possibility, now might be your chance.

And there is a lot of potential there. According to data from Snap Inc., one in three of its 186 million daily active users use Lenses for an average of three minutes each. That's a lot of engagement - if you're looking to reach a younger audience, and you're not sure how to connect via regular Snaps, investing in an effective Lens campaign could be a great way in. 

Snap itself still has other issues to deal with, but its business process does appear to be improving. That could lead to more opportunities for marketers in future, and with Snap still holding a significant amount of influence among younger audiences, it's worth factoring into your planning, if that's part of your target market. 

There are further questions about the company's leadership, and what that means for the future of the app, but there are also opportunities for those who can get it right. 

May be worth consideration in your 2019 strategic plan.

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What Comes Next for Facebook?

2018 has certainly been something of a turning point for Facebook.

The company has come under intense scrutiny over how it uses people's data, how it secures such insights, how it can be used for political manipulation, and various other controversies in-between. Up till now, Facebook has been able to ride out comparable bumps in its path by deflecting and letting them blow over, but now, the questions raised are sticking. 

And while not everyone is 100% sure exactly how misuse of their Facebook data can impact their thinking, the ongoing controversies have certainly made people more wary, and could result in a slowdown in Facebook usage overall.

In fact, we've already seen this - in Facebook's two most recent performance reports, we've seen that its active user rates in Europe have declined for the first time in the company's history.

You can see, too, the slowdown in North American users - that's somewhat to be expected, given that Facebook is close to saturation point. But a decline is definitely a red flag.

Is that because people are becoming more concerned about data misuse more broadly? It's hard to say, but habitual changes like this have definitely got Facebook itself rattled, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is vowing to do something about it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg has told the company's top brass that they're now 'at war' and that they need to be more aggressive in tackling potential threats and concerns. 

As per WSJ:

"During times of peace, executives can move more slowly and ensure that everybody is on board with key decisions, he said during the June meeting, according to people familiar with the remarks. But with Facebook under siege from lawmakers, investors and angry users, he needed to act more decisively, the people said."

That sounds like a return to Zuckerberg's previous 'Move Fast and Break Things' motto, which many within the company credit with forcing missteps. Zuckerberg toned that down in 2014, and has continued to soften the company's strategic approach since, but under renewed attacks, and with increasing questions about its internal practices, Zuck seems intent on fighting back, as opposed to taking a more measured response.

Could that be what saw Facebook launch it's Portal smart speaker device - essentially a Facebook-originated video camera in your home - amid the biggest privacy scandal in the company's history?

In some ways, Facebook had to release its device, or it risked losing touch with others in the space. But it is an aggressive move, at a questionable time. According to the WSJ report, Zuckerberg made his rallying cry in June, and Portal was released in September. It may well be a reflection of that 'war time' approach.

The question then is whether that'll be an effective path to help The Social Network navigate its way out of its current turmoil. Definitely, Facebook's not shirking away from the various problems raised, and it is doing more to address them. But many within the company have said that the 'Move fast...' approach is what lead to the data issues it's now dealing with. Could we be set to see the same in a few years time, when, say, Facebook realizes that its Portal devices were more vulnerable to hackers than it had first thought?

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Instagram Launches New Crackdown on Fake Followers Gained via Third Party Apps

The days of faking your way to Insta-fame could be numbered, with Instagram launching a new push to eliminate inauthentic followers and likes gained via the use of third-party tools which promise to boost your on-platform presence.

As explained by Instagram:

"Every day, people come to Instagram to have real experiences, including genuine interactions. It's our responsibility to ensure these experiences aren’t disrupted by inauthentic activity. Starting today, we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity."That could be a major blow to many prominent users - various investigations have found that fake follower and like services are widely utilized across social platforms, with many seeing follower count as a status symbol, a measure of popularity. Given such, PR people obviously want their clients to have bigger follower numbers than rivals, while some modeling agencies, reportedly, won't even take on clients unless they meet a threshold for Instagram followers on their personal account. 

That then leads to fakes - and when you add influencer marketing into the mix, where people can earn money based on the size of their perceived audience, it's easy to see why such services have become popular.

And they're easy to find too - a simple search for 'buy Instagram followers' comes up with a range of 'authentic' tools.

As noted by TechCrunch, some of the more popular Instagram follower tools have been shut down in recent times, including Instagress and Social Growth. But many others remain, and while there's a market for such options, more will continue to appear. If Instagram wants to cut them out, they'll have their work cut out for them.

So how will Instagram go about removing these inauthentic likes and follows?

"We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts which use these services, and remove the inauthentic activity. Accounts we identify using these services will receive an in-app message alerting them that we've removed the inauthentic likes, follows and comments. We will also ask them to secure their account by changing their password." 

Instagram also notes that many of these apps also use people's accounts to fuel further activity - like liking and following other accounts on their behalf. Those actions will also be reversed, eliminating their effectiveness.

It's an important move for Instagram, particularly, as noted, given the rise of influencer marketing. Parent company Facebook has been working to make influencer marketing more transparent, with tools like Branded Content tags and its 'Brand Collabs Manager', which seeks to connect businesses with relevant platform voices for marketing outreach.  

Given it's so easy to buy influencers, Facebook and Instagram both know that they need to do more to ensure businesses are generating real results from their investment in the practice - otherwise the option loses credibility, and investment dips, which is clearly bad for business more broadly.

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