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the week in social: vr hangs, snapchat lives on and influencers are bae

24 Apr 2017 Cassandra Megraw

Move over TV advertising, it’s all about influencers these days

Ok wannabe influencers, now’s the time to get your Instagram on point and make it happen. With traditional TV advertising becoming obsolete (Adidas recently announced it’s ditching traditional TV ads and opting for a digital marking approach instead), more and more companies are turning to influencer marking as their go-to advertising hook. The already $1 billion industry on Instagram alone is set to double by 2019.

Snapchat lives on in young Millennials

With Instagram and Facebook offering their very own version of Stories, some might be wondering what’s happening with Snapchat these days. But, as always, it has its loyal users who remain faithful. Advertising and public relations agency SCG recently surveyed 333 US high school and college students about their preferred social media networks. 78% of the mostly female audience said they still use Snapchat daily, with around 70% saying they use it more than six times per day and more than 50% saying they use it more than 11 times per day. Separate data from Fluent revealed over half of 18 – 24 year olds use the platform all the time – more so than their older counterparts. Though it’s projected that millennial share of the Snapchat market will shrink each year, eMarketer predicts they’ll still account for 56% of the platform’s users by 2020.

In-stream video ads just launched on Twitter

Considering every social media platform is currently gung-ho for video, it’s no surprise that Twitter has its sights set on a larger portion of the video advertising market, recently launching in-stream video ads. Senior product manager, revenue Mo Al Adham said in a blog post: “Twitter is home to brand-safe video from hundreds of the world’s top publishers. That means brands can now run in-stream video ads to align with videos—highlights, clips and livestreams—from Amplify partners including top TV networks, major sports leagues, major publishing houses and magazines and professional news outlets. This includes pre-roll and mid-roll ads.”

Facebook Spaces launches in the Oculus Store

Goodbye pants, make up and in-person social life – virtual reality got a whole lot more social last week, with Facebook’s VR app Facebook Spaces for Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch launching in the Oculus Store. It lets users hang out in non-IRL via VR. Along the way, users can create and customize their identities, draw with virtual markers, view Facebook content, use Messenger calling to invite friends, and take advantage of the app’s selfie stick (for capturing those unforgettable VR moments).

Snapchat ups their lens game

As if they weren’t already the king of photo offerings, Snapchat is bringing it even harder these days with the recent launch of World Lenses. These lenses let users add augmented reality-enhanced 3D “experiences” to any part of images captured via their cameras. These function as though they’re real world objects, getting smaller in size as you get further away, and larger the closer you get. The first offering of World Lenses include a cloud, a rainbow, flower and a floating OMG… naturally.

YouTube users with at least 1k fans can now live stream

Back in February YouTube gave users with 10k fans or more the ability to live stream their lives from their phones to said fans. This month all that changed (for some users), and now people with over 1k fans have the feature. No one seems to know exactly when it happened (seems it got swept up in the flurry of April Fool’s pranks), but it is real and it’s apparently open to everyone with more than 1000 subscribers, though there still seems to be a few bumps to iron out there.