Social Media Industry Round-Up #40: TikTok Summit, Subscriber-Only LIVE, Instagram Drafts on iCloud & Downloading Reels

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 :)

Last week, TikTok celebrated an online summit to present all the new updates, share tips and best practices, as well as ways brands can make the most out of the platform.

In case you missed it, they’ve posted the on-demand version, which contains the full agenda:

• The Future of Commerce

• The Power of TikTok Shop

• TikTok Shop 101 - Get Ready

• Affiliate Marketing - Work With Creators

• How to TikTok Shop - Get Onboard

• TikTok Shop & Shop Ads: Better Together

• Content That Sells

According to TikTok, subscriber-only LIVEs increased earnings for creators by 17%, so they’ve launched the option for all users.

TikTok’s Q&A feature will be replaced by ‘Add Yours’, allowing users to create prompts and add their videos to prompts.

By tapping and holding your finger down anywhere on a video, it’ll speed it up by 2x. When released, the video will resume at normal speed.

TikTok has released Standard and Premium interactive Add-Ons for In-Feed Ads. These Add-Ons will be popups, stickers and other visual elements that will help to engage viewers with the ads.

These are the different interactive Add-Ons available:

• Premium: Pop-out Showcase, Gesture & Super Like 2.0.

• Standard: Display Card, Gift Code Sticker, Voting Sticker & Countdown Sticker.

Instagram announced that all drafts will be backed up on iCloud. This means that if users uninstall the app, the drafts won’t be lost the next time they download it.

Instagram is currently testing showing the number of likes and views the content on the explore page has.

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, announced that US users will be able to download Reels shared by public accounts into their camera roll. However, public accounts can turn off this feature in Account Settings, to stop other users from downloading their content.

To encourage more brands to use Reels, Meta has expanded its Reels ad options while testing new third-party verification elements to reassure brand partners.

• Expanding ads on Reels: Image ads directly on Reels content without interrupting the person watching the Reel.

• Bringing app promotion ads: Also known as app install ads.

• Testing music optimisation in Facebook Reels: To help advertisers make single image Reels more entertaining and engaging by using free music from the Meta Sound Collection library.