Social Media Industry Round-Up #33: Updated UGC Policies on Instagram, Feedback Options on Reels, Small Business Month on TikTok & New Ad Options on Snapchat

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 has updated its policies, so all branded content ads will now be partnership ads.

Partnership ads allow brands to boost creators’ posts, meaning more posts will be up for putting some spend behind and maximising their reach.

Instagram has also announced that brands will be able to boost any posts where they’ve been tagged, provided that the creator has previously shared a partnership ad with them. However, creators can review and remove any ad partners they no longer wish to share permissions with.

Instagram is testing an option to help brands find UGC to share on their accounts and promote their products in their shop.

Some users have seen a prompt saying ‘Add user-generated content’, and Instagram will highlight posts where the business has been tagged.

On top of that, it’s quick and easy to request permission to share content from users and gives creators more control over how their content is used.

Instagram is launching a new sticker creation process where users will provide text prompts, and the AI system will create a visual from it.

Meta is adding more feedback control options on Reels clips so users can choose what they want to see more or less on their feeds.

TikTok has released a new policy that simplifies ad structure by limiting the number of active groups within a single ad account. Therefore, the remaining ad groups will have a higher chance of passing the learning phase, reaching a stable performance and improving the average lifespan of all ad groups.

This new policy will be introduced gradually starting May 23rd.

TikTok has announced a new set of workshops for Small Business Month to help SMBs make better use of the platform for promotions and provide $2 million in funding to support Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs.

• TikTok TakeOff series: four-week series of workshops: inspiring stories, useful tools, finding an audience and growing on the platform. The sessions will take place on Wednesdays starting on May 10th.

• TikTok Highlights: The platform will highlight small businesses throughout the month and how they use the platform to their benefit.

TikTok is launching a new ad option for selected brands to maximise ad placement. In addition to this premium option, TikTok is expanding Pulse offerings:

• Pulse Seasonal Lineups: TikTok's first-ever moment-specific ad offerings where advertisers can run ads next to the most trending Pulse-eligible videos around a particular marketing moment, cultural event, or season at a time when interest in the specific topic will spike.

• Max Pulse: New buying mechanism that allows advertisers to run their creatives adjacent to the top 4% trending content across all categories on TikTok, in addition to those represented by the existing Pulse lineups.

Campaigns that include Pulse have proven to increase brand recall by +9.8% and awareness by +6.8%, by placing brands next to the top culturally impactful content with a highly engaged and primed audience.

TikTok has announced the date for its ‘TikTok World’ event, where they’ll share more about their latest product developments, ad tools and creator options.

• Video Reach: 60-second vertical video in a variety of ad placements to help brands reach the right audience, which will also now include Shorts as a surface where promos can be shown.

• YouTube Select: Premium ad presentation option, which ensures that your promotions are shown alongside the top trending content of the day.

Google has launched blue checkmarks for verified brands on Gmail. According to Google:

‘This will help users identify messages from legitimate senders versus impersonators.’

Elon Musk announced that rolling out next month, Twitter will allow media publishers to charge users on a per-article basis with one click. This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per-article price when they want to read an occasional article.

Twitter is exploring new ways to present media content on user profiles, reshape user experience, and enhance video content.

• First Story: Will enable ad partners to ensure that their ad is the first to be shown between friend Stories in the app on any given day.

• TikTok-like feed: Short videos where Snapchat will include Spotlight ads between clips.

• Snap Star Collab Studio: A brand/creator partnership where experienced teams will help brands create and execute sponsored Stories and bespoke ad creative with Snap Stars.