Social Media Industry Round-Up #39: Instagram’s Content Publishing API, Visual Product Search on TikTok, AI-Powered Google Campaigns and More Ad Options on Pinterest

Our Marketing team is back with a roundup of news & industry updates. This way, we keep our team, clients and interested marketers up to date with what's going on in the social media industry :)

Instagram Creator accounts can now access the Instagram Content Publishing API to share content via third-party platforms. The latest updates are:

• User tagging for Reels

• ‘Original audio’ rename

• Increased limit of daily media posts per account from 25 to 50 across all media types

Six months ago, Instagram released its new feature ‘Notes’, a Twitter-like option that appears on top of DMs. Last week, they announced that users can add a music track alongside their notes.

Meta’s version of Twitter, called Barcelona, or P92, is currently talking to celebrities such as Oprah or the Dalai Lama about being early users.

Here’s what we know about the platform so far:

• It will use Instagram credentials to log in.

• It will use the Instagram ID as the username in the new app.

• The maximum length for posts will be 500 characters.

TikTok is testing a new visual product discovery option allowing users to take a photo of an item and find similar matches in TikTok Shop listings.

Open Applications are a new campaign type on TikTok Creator Marketplace that allows advertisers to post the details of upcoming campaigns for creators to apply proactively.

Then, each creator application includes a short pitch or concept for the brand campaign, examples of relevant TikTok videos they’ve created, their contact information and a proposed fee.

1. Create a new campaign on TikTok Creator Marketplace

2. Fill out brand information and campaign details

3. Set your preferred creator qualifications

4. Add screening questions

5. Set the deliverables

6. Set payment method

7. Publish the campaign and wait for creators to apply

TikTok has introduced ‘Creative Codes’, six essential tips for creating top-performing TikTok ads.

1. Build brand love by thinking TikTok-first

2. Use trends as storytelling templates

3. Follow production principles to make creative work harder

4. Structure your videos to hook viewers and inspire action

5. Stimulate attention with editing techniques

6. Turn up the volume with the right soundtrack

TikTok has launched a new education hub for partner agencies and SMBs with case studies, tools, ad policy documents, explainers, brand safety and several guides.

Due to growing concerns about TikTok’s use of data, the platform has announced ‘TikTok Truths’, a new information series that will address key questions about TikTok’s data practices.

Google keeps investing in AI to improve its performance marketing capabilities. The latest announcement has been the launch of two new AI-powered campaigns:

• Demand Gen: Shows your best-performing video and image assets across the most visual and entertainment-focused touchpoints (YouTube, Shorts, Discover and Gmail), and preview how they’ll look before they run.

• Video View: To maximise views across in-stream, in-feed and now YouTube Shorts, all within a single campaign.

Back in March, we announced the launch of Spotlight Ads, a way for brands to ‘own’ the Search tab on Pinterest, with a video placement that takes up around 50% of the tab screen.

After seeing good results on the initial launch, Pinterest has expanded it to advertisers in Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

With this new ad option, hotel and rental brands can upload their full travel catalogue to Pinterest and automatically create dynamic product ads for each listing. These will show relevant details such as the brand, pricing and descriptions directly on the Pin itself.

Facebook announced some new updates for Reels, which will help users edit better-quality videos & encourage them to share more on the platform.

• Inspiration Hub: Inside the Professional Dashboard containing popular Reels, hashtags, topics and music.

• Simplified Editing: Audio, music and text will be in a unified editing screen, making it easier to layer elements.

To compete with TikTok and Twitch, YouTube has changed its entry requirements for monetisation so it’s easier for creators to make money on the platform and, therefore, encourage them to share more content.

Creators will need:

• 500 subscribers (compared to the previous 1,000)

• Three valid public uploads in the last 90 days

• And either 3,000 valid public watch hours (compared to the previous 4,000) in the past year or 3M valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days (compared to the previous 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days)